For many years, Finland was a European country, which championed tolerance to ethnic differences. However, it turned out at least a part of the Finnish society has completely different sentiments. An innocent black young woman selected to be a symbol of a winter fest became a victim of race hatred. What is this about?
Saint Lucia is a holiday widely celebrated in Catholic and Protestant nations on December 13. Its background is related to a tribute to Saint Lucy (Lucia), a martyr of Syracuse, who was blinded for her faith in Christ and killed during the time of the Roman emperor Diocletian.
This holiday is especially popular in Sweden from where it came to Finland since 1930 with the help of the local Swedish community. The ceremony of Lucia crowning takes place in Helsinki Cathedral every year. A young woman is selected to play the role of Lucia to perform the crowning ceremony.
This is followed by Lucia’s Parade visited by thousands of Finns. In December and January, the newly crowned Lucia visits senior homes, hospitals and kindergartens. Funds are raised to support the poor.
How to become a Lucia? A dedicated jury screens candidate applications to select a dozen of top candidates to make the final choice. They receive lots of applications, as hundreds of Finnish girls dream of being a Lucia, which brings honour and fame. A voting is held further, which is open to everyone.
The long-lasting tradition is that each new Finnish Lucia is a lady with long fair hair. However, in 2017 the Finns broke the tradition by selecting the dark-haired Anna-Kajsa Edström, a young woman of Columbian origin adopted by a Finnish family, to be the symbol of the holiday. It caused lots of grumbling and discontent back then.
But a much stronger surprise came for the Finns in December 2024. A 20-year-old Daniela Owusu, a daughter of a Finnish man and a Ghanaian woman, was selected to be a Lucia.
When the winner’s name became known, many Finns were shocked by such ‘disrespect for national traditions’. Just after her win, the woman faced a true hate barrage. She and her relatives started receiving thousands of racial hate messages in their social networks. Haters texted that Owusu ‘was not good enough’ to represent Finnish women during one of the most renowned holidays nation-wide and must yield this role to ‘a more suitable’ candidate.
In total, she received over 10 thousand hate messages. Stina Heikkilä, an organiser of Lucia’s holiday, reported that the content of these messages and comments was typical of Neo-Nazis. ‘They used the N-word stating that the woman did not belong in this country. We all are upset and angry. We are having a big problem in this country: racism is everywhere, in all age and language groups, both among women and men’, Heikkilä complained.
On December 17, Daniela, aka Lucia, visited the parliament and met with Finland’s prime minister Petteri Orpo who was there too. The head of government looked very much confused: he expressed regrets about the insults against the woman adding he wanted to build a Finland, which is safe for all people living there.
The prime minister later confessed that the barrage of insults against Owusu dealt a significant blow to the image of the Finnish government. ‘It was shocking to hear the young woman and her family receive thousands of messages. I cannot accept this’, said Orpo. The Finnish president Alexander Stubb flagged this situation. ‘This is shocking and must be condemned’, said Stubb.
In an attempt to soothe the negative impact, Saint Lucia contest organisers went on convincing that most of Finns ‘are not like this’, that people expressed support for Daniela in phone calls and emails and that they could raise as much as EUR 156 thousand of donations during the celebration.
Finally, the Finnish police took up this case. They are analysing the messages received by Owusu and her family and decide, on a case-by-case basis, if an investigation of threats and insults is needed. The police do not rule out that someone has orchestrated the attack against Daniela.
A small group of people started the barrage of insults in an organised manner. The hate flow became rampant involving thousands.
An open discussion started in Finland, with statements made that many Finns supported racist ideas. It is for a reason why there were so many people voting for the far-right True Finns party, which helped it build the second biggest parliamentary faction and become part of the ruling opposition. There was a series of revelations last year when a number of newly minted ministers from the True Finns party were accused of racist statements and even of supporting Hitler’s Germany. Well, today True Finns’ voters are firing insults at Daniela Owusu.
By the way, it turned out this is not the first such scandal. Looking back, we can remember Lola Odusoga, an entertainment industry entrepreneur, who became Miss Finland in 1996. At that time, she faced outward harassment because of her Afro-American origin.
The context of the current scandal with Lucia should also be noted. It started only a week after a few other scandals. For example, the Neo-Nazi 612 march took place in Helsinki on December 6 on the occasion of the National Independence Day, which was attended by MPs from the True Finns party. The march ended in riots.
The Nazi sentiments in Finland are driven by two factors. The country is going through a long economic downturn (largely caused by the break-up of usual relations with Russia). In hard times, the number of far-right ideology supporters tends to increase, as Nazism can point at simple decisions on who to blame and what to do.
Negative attitudes to black people is fuelled by the fact that migrants often become part of ethnic crime – the opposite side of this process is the increasing number of far-right organisations’ supporters promising to protect the Finns from ‘foreign savages’. Ultimately, many Finns come to hate all migrants regardless of whether they do anything wrong or not. And this often leaves innocent people like Daniela Owusu suffering.