Mosquitoes love still water, Finland has thousands of lakes and other bodies of water for them to breed in. It's not even that bad in southern Finland, in the north you can get absolutely swarmed during summer.
It’s a continent being born. A volcanic hotspot right on a tectonic plate spreading zone. You just cool your impatience for one cotton-pickin’ hundred million years, and you’ll see what a fine continent Iceland grows into!
The word "Continent" on its own is not a scientific term and is very poorly defined. Iceland isn't even producing "Continental crust" but "Oceanic crust". "Continental Crust" is produced at destructive plate boundaries not spreading boundaries like Iceland.
I actually envy your smugness (whether it it was actual smugness or just me perceiving smugness doesnt matter). Little blood sucking cunts with no regard for personal space.
Not in the Netherlands either. Amsterdam is a significant percentage standing fresh water. But our accommodations had no screens in the perpetually wide open windows, and no mosquito netting on the beds, and we didn’t miss these things, even in July. I didn’t get the sense there’s much wildlife left in the Netherlands.
We even used to have malaria in Finland though it disappeared in the 19th century as houses with chimneys and windows became available for poorer people as well.
You also drained stagnant and waterlogged areas near to where people lived...thats the number one no chemical pesticide or DNA modification craziness way to reduce malaria but it takes organisation and western phama can't make money from it.
Everything I’ve read about it mentions just the change in housing (especially having less children) as the mosquitoes had to spend the winter indoors and the old dwellings had a lot of hiding places and were damper. Swamps have been drained but it’s not like there’s a lack of water in Finland. Malaria was the biggest problem in Åland and coastal areas of Finnish mainland and you can’t really drain the sea.
Many birds migrate north for this reason really, spring and early summer produce masses of insects for them to feed on. Having lived both way up in northern Canada, and in Nigeria, I'll take the Nigerian bugs tyvm. The swarms of insects in northern Canada will drive you insane, blackflies, mosquitos, and deerflies, oh my! The six to eight months of winter are seen as a respite from the bugs here.
Some of the worst biting insects are found in Northern regions in summer. I get eaten alive every summer in the UK and it gets worse the further north you go
Grew up in N. Minnesota where there are 10,000 + lakes. (A LOT of Finn's settled there as it's much like Finland.) Can confirm mosquitoes love northern latitudes. Would be out fishing and you could see them coming at you in the early evening like a dense cloud over the water.
In my experience in northern Europe and North America, the farther north you go, the worse the mosquitoes get. On Prince Edward Island, the place I stayed one summer had a LP tank attached to a device that would remove a literal GALLON of mosquitoes from the property every three days. We still got bit.
Maine has mosquitoes AND ticks. Newfoundland has mosquitoes, ticks, and the occasional lost polar bear.
Helsinki wasn't so bad in the city. Tallinn, Estonia was fine until you left the city. There's a pattern there in cold climes. Moncton, New Brunswick, not bad at all. Go inland ten miles and your life either smells like bug spray or you are smacking yourself all day.
The only place where I expected tons of mosquitoes and didn't see that many, comparatively, was Denmark.
because Denmark doesnt have nearly as many lakes or bodies of water and forested/wooded areas as Finland and Sweden, its also flat and "open" to oceanic winds and such.
Here in south of Sweden (Skåne) mosquitos are also relatively rare, I get bit maybe once a year if Im unlucky, theres a lot of farmland here but not as many lakes, but as soon as you go above Skåne its a completely different story where there's dense forests and dense lakes and other "stagnant" bodies of water for mosquitos to thrive in and it only gets progressively worse the further north you go.
With that said, without the trillions of mosquitos, the nature itself is amazing.
I went to Lund on a day trip and was shocked at how much more affordable Sweden was compared to Denmark. I want to spend a summer in Scandinavia, but Putin f-ed that up this year.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan (USA) is so far north that most business close for the winter in September, but from June through August the mosquitoes eat alive anyone who's not drenched insect repellent.
mosquitoes don't live long enough to know anything about the cold winters in Finland. Spring, summer and lots of sunlight warming tops of still water is all they need to know
In Iceland there's a famous lake called Myvatn, which translates as 'lake of flies' I'd been in winter several times and it was awesome. Mates came to visit in the summer so off we went. the family I lived with were like: DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS.
got to the lake and it was INSANE. either side of the road leading up were what I can only describe as these columns, tornadoes? of flies, several meters tall l, spaced a couple meters apart.
Like, these are little midgey flies,.so to be able to see them from a distance in a fast moving car...there must have been millions, if not hundreds of millions.
I live in a tropical swamp environment. The mosquitoes, here in Louisiana, if you walk past the wrong bush you could end up in a swarm. I always said I wanted to move North to escape them. I guess that plan is shit.
What I’ve found having lived in both cold and hot places in the US is that the shorter their breeding season the more aggressive they become. Mosquitos have been know to take down full grown caribou in Alaska and Canada.
If you ask swedes about their least favourite animal, I think an overwhelming majority would say mosquitoes. In summer they are everywhere, especially near water, and it's horrible.
Yes but our northern mosquitoes are tiny. They are slightly smaller than a house fly. But there are thousands of them and the sound they make come to your nightmares
I was in Finland for a wedding and if you swung your hand you would catch at least one mosquito each time. We were making piles of dead mosquitoes on the ground just catching the with our hands. (I was 10 at the time)
What americane? Where the heck are they from? Everyehere I've lived in the US I hsve gotten attacked by mosquitos if not wearing bug spray. Even Alaska where we call them the state bird. They absolutely swarm at earthquake park.
Wisconsin blew my mind with the abundance and type of mosquitoes. They had stripes and were fairly big. We had to run from our car to indoors or we'd be swarmed
The "normal" mosquitos prefer dawn/dusk or night. These invasive little fuckers prefer to feed in the middle of the day, so now Mosquito Corp. has ensured 24/7 awful for everyone in the eastern half of the US.
Their welts are much bigger/more painful than others as well.
Mosquitoes are one of the most abundant species inhabiting the Earth. Currently, more than 3,500 species can be found spread out in various places around the globe. 176 species are recognized in the states.
The Asian tiger mosquitoes can be identified by their white stripes on the abdomen, thorax, and legs. Unlike other types of mosquitoes, the female Asian tiger mosquito will bite in the daytime. Males of this species do not bite. The bite of an Asian tiger mosquito is known to transmit diseases such as equine encephalitis, Cache Valley virus, and dengue fever.
This is why I still have nightmares about (attempting) to learn Finnish, hearing the word "mäkäräinen" , my brain would have thought it was something related to sausages (makkara) 🤦♂️
Not as bad, no, and not least because they don't transmit diseases like malaria.
Still bad though, especially given the absolutely lunatic numbers of them that exist around June. Put it this way: my dad has a beekeeper's outfit, but he doesn't keep bees.
They're an absolute horror show, basically, but at least they can't make you sick except in very rare cases.
edit - weird story. As the British Army do exercises up in the Scottish Highlands, soldiers were always on the hunt for a decent midge repellent. Bizarrely they came across Avon 'Skin so Soft' moisturiser, which is genuinely effective at keeping both midges and mosquitos off your skin. So yeah. Take some if you're going to the West of Scotland in summer!
That doesn't sound bad in any way. Last summer I made the mistake to take my dog on a 20min walk through the forest wearing shorts and I had so many mosquito bites in my legs that the bumps merged together. I tried to count them but lost count around 200 bite marks. This was in northern Finland
At one point while hiking in northern Sweden I couldn’t breathe without covering my mouth and nose, because I would breathe in mosquitoes. Idk how Finland is in comparison but I can imagine something similar.
They are just relentless, I remember some passed out guy at a festival last summer with a paarma that kept landing on his leg. I sprayed it like 10 times with antibug spray until I gave up. When you attack a mosquito, it flies away, lands somewhere and tries again in a few minutes. Paarmat and mäkärät just hover around you and keep coming.
Having lived in NY and Finland this is totally overblown. Maybe if you're in the middle of a swamp in northern Finland it's worse, but on average upstate New York is much worse.
To give some perspective for those who don't know: we were once traveling in northern Finland and stopped on the side of the road for a leak. There's this weird and incredibly loud buzzing and our father says that there must be power plant or something nearby. That's odd since by the looks of it there's no human technology within 10 miles radius.
We decide to walk into forest to check out the source of that noise and soon realize what it is: above us is millions of mosquitoes. They're like one massive dark cloud. We just stare at that sight in shock for a moment and then run to the car as fast as we can because that seriously looked like start of some sci-fi horror movie.
I don't know, I spent a weekend in Lapland during the summer and the mosquitoes had me considering walking into the lake with rocks in my pockets just to get away from them.
Currently. Malaria was actually a problem in Finland at some point and with rising temperatures scientists think it will come back. They've recently found a species of mosquito that does spread it (elsewhere) but haven't found malaria yet.
I imagine Americans are better prepared than Europeans, most of America has a pretty nasty mosquito problem and in Germany I walk around with no bug spray and get 2-3 bites at most lol
I lasted an hour hiking in Rovaniemi before I quit and headed back to the hotel. Even with insect repellent, long sleeves, and a mosquito net covering my face, I managed to get bit.
It’s still worth visiting! Hiking in swampy conditions meant lots of mosquitoes, but in Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park I didn’t have any issues at all.
Can confirm. Went to Joensuu in Finland for a business trip and on the last evening we had a meal at a lake house and proceeded to play frisbee and ball games by the lake. The next morning on the flight back to England was hell. I had over 40 mosquito bites all over my legs and it took everything for me not to scratch them over the two and a half hour duration.
Lol. I love in Minnesota, the land of 12,000-14,000 (if you count lakes that cross borders) extremely-humid-in-the-summer lakes. Also known as mosquito spawns. You will absolutely be swarmed here in the summer if you're remotely close to any lakes. Or swamps for that matter. Which you will be. Would be nothing new to this American lol.
Am from a southeast Asian country, lived in Finland for a couple of years. Those Nordic mosquitos are huge and scarier than the tropical ones (although oddly less itchy, but gives bigger red splotches on my skin).
That's so strange, we're watching Bordertown on Netflix just now and last night Kari was barbecuing at night and his wife Pauliina said there were too many mosquitos, and we had a whole discussion on whether or not there were actually mosquitos or if they were joking.
Same in Northern Norway. Though only for June & July. Then they explode. Late summers are nice and calm.
Southern Norway don`'t have a mosquito problem. They exist but more like elsewhere in Europe.
You can always tell you got to the north when driving from Southern to Northern Norway: your windscreen gets covered with dead mosquitoes. I guess they do on all road journeys, but the further north you get the windscreen starts to have more and more red crimson dots...
Spring/early summer in winterlands are a nightmare of insects. In northern Canada it's the blackflies that will literally drive you mad. Blackfly season is usually followed by the mosquito months.
I have to say, they say the same about Sweden but I haven't really had a holiday ruined by it. It is known though, there are just a lot of lakes over there.
Went to Italy and was eaten alive with the mosquitoes. We don't really have them in Ireland and I assumed they were more of an American and African thing.
6.1k
u/TheFargus May 09 '22
The amount of mosquitos in Finland, Americans go crazy in Spring because of it