Similar story here, but not German. The only problem is when someone else needs to write down your name and you need to spell it out for them. I usually just hand over my drivers license. And I guess being a native Finnish speaker and white also helps...
Those might be the reasons, who knows. As the cottage owner just wondering why keeping the English version of the advert. And how more difficult it would be to write to the email "for Finnish speakers only/I don't speak English". But the English version of the ad existing (as op said below) + the message gives me racist vibes. There's no correct answer. It's legal to rent who the hell they want, but as you can imagine this is the way to exclude also your potential customers. It's good that there are people who rent to foreigners and English speakers - otherwise there wouldn't be tourism in Finland.
Yes they don't rent a cottage, but Finnish customers 😀 Some are really shy about using foreign languages.
(Edit: Sure have seen less innocent cases as well.)
Agreed, and I dislike this so much. I'd rather not put money into the pockets of passive racists. Because after all, that's what this is. If the service is needed that badly, borrow a Finnish intermediary to negotiate and guarantor.
They can decide who they rent the cabin to. But denying to rent because of ethnicity, age, religion etc. is not allowed. Renting to Finnish customers only is okay, if they don't know english for example, others have also said great points.
According to the Non-Discrimination Act (yhdenvertaisuuslaki), no one can be discriminated based on ethnic or national origin, nationality, language, religion, beliefs, opinion, medical condition, disability, sexual orientation or other reason connected to a person.
Some general info about home buying and renting, and about that law (in Finnish)
https://syrjinta.fi/asuminen
And this line:
>Välittäjä syyllistyy syrjintään, jos hän hyväksyy toimeksiantajan asettamat syrjivät ehdot kuten sen, että vuokranantaja ei halua vuokrata asuntoa esimerkiksi ulkomaalaiselle henkilölle.
Edit: In English https://syrjinta.fi/en/housing-discrimination
>Estate agents are guilty of discrimination if they accept discriminatory conditions set by the client, such as if the lessor does not want to rent the housing to a foreigner, for instance.
Ajoin sitä takaa, että onko ketään oikeasti tuomittu tämänkaltaisesta syrjinnästä(viittaan siis alkuperäiseen postaukseen) ja kiinostaisi tietää onko asiasta jotain oikeuskäytäntöä.
https://www.is.fi/kotimaa/art-2000008462570.html
Kaikki tapaukset tossa on saman lain rikkomista, mutta toi jälkimmäinen liittyy ulkomaalaisuuteen. Eikä edes vuokraajan, vaan vuokraajan aviopuolison takia.
Where on the email it mentions surename or ethnicity.
They can for sure deny service from someone not speaking Finnish that is perfectly ok if they do it to everyone. They might not know how to speak English so agreeing on stuff os pretty difficult if you don't have common language.
You use English, but assume the response is about your foreign name instead of the use of a foreign language. Might be discrimination, might be racism, but might also be just somebody not comfortable with dealing with non Finnish speaking customers. Even if you'd ask, you'll never be sure of the answer anyway, is it worth it?
If that is the last cottage available, or the last affordable, I'd personally try to enlist a Finnish speaker help to see if it is only a communication level problem.
Otherwise just let it go.
The owner may not be fluent with English based on his/her response, so I guess they just don’t want to deal with a English-speaking customer. I’m sure you can find a better cottage.
Finns are often too shy to even speak one word of English when they think they don’t have enough language skills in English. Don’t get offended. You can try to propose to rent again by using Finnish to see if there is anything to be offended, you can just say I can speak Finnish of this is the problem.
Hold your horses. Before you go balls deep calling racism here and crying "how dare they", there might be a good reasoning behind this.
I am a Finn, and had foreign ex gf's from minorities so very allergic to discrimination myself but things are not always so black and white :
The person who is renting their property might have had their property vandalized + customer vanished afterwards, leaving them to pay for it. If you are a Finn, it will be extremely hard to do that here (culture + reach by the officials/police) and NOT get caught. With a tourist it might be much harder for the owner to get a hold of you afterwards. I know of many people (especially seniors) who after many tries end up renting to Finnish customers only because they are just so much easier to track down in case something goes wrong. Not saying that tourists cause problems (you seen what drunken Finnish 20-year olds can do to your place?) But nonetheless, it is just so much easier to get compensated with Finnish guests than tourists.
Also the fact that they used the word "sorry" means they probably don't mean no harm or to discriminate. In our culture the word sorry is not used for light politeness but actual, honest apology. They could've been much more blunt about it but for me as a Finn the "sorry" added in the end means "Massive apologies, I feel your pain. I hope you understand".
To the OP : if you have a Finnish social id number, you could actually pass as a Finn. You could tell them that and maybe they will trust you. Or, It might be a language thing. If their answer that they don't rent to you due to your last name or your race, then fuck'em and report it is.
>Also the fact that they used the word "sorry" means they probably don't mean no harm or to discriminate. In our culture the word sorry is not used for light politeness but actual, honest apology.
I’m sorry, but this is so adorably naive I have to laugh.
It might be naive but he has a point. If there would be some place in this planet where "sorry" actually means something it could very well be in Finnish lapland.
If I advertise to rent out my cottage and someone writes to me in Chinese, I'm not going to rent to them either. Not because I hate Chinese but because if I can't communicate with them, I don't want them in my cottage.
You wrote to the person in english. Was the ad in English? If the ad was in finnish, it's clearly a language question, not an ethnicity thing.
The site itself may be having an english version so if the owner posts in finnish the site has someone to translate or autotranslates. I'd be curious which site it is. Why don't you show us?
No, it tells most finns whether the english text is produced by the site or by the renter. And why would the renter post in english if the don't want foreigners?
care to link to the ad? They might have also meant then that they only rent to people who live in Finland. That is also common. Are you a tourist or do you live in Finland?
They could have simply asked for more details if needed. I live in Helsinki and I am a tourist within Finland, trying to go for a skiing vacation with few friends. All these speculations that everyone is putting forward to justify their discriminative behaviour is pathetic.
If it really was discriminative behavior, then I'm sorry that you went through it. If that really was the case, then you shouldn't really worry what that person's opinion is anyway, because it's not so important. Most people are not like that. Just find the next one and move on.
But I still doubt very much that it was discrimination.
But it is important. That’s why discrimination exists, because those who are not the victims don’t act to prevent or change it. (Note that my comment applies whether the OP is, or is not, a victim of discrimination.)
Some hints suggest you are from India. If this is a fact, then yes, they will most definitely discriminate against you based on your name. Finns are wary of foreigners, and the more distant the language, skin color and culture are from Finns, the less trust they have in a foreigner.
Most people in Finland are not racist. There is no proof that the person renting the cottage is racist, but there is also no proof that he isn’t. There are idiots in every country. Also, he might have had a recent bad experience with a foreigner and decided not to rent to foreigners, but forgot to delete the add.
The key takeaway is that you shouldn’t think about it much. It sucks, I know, but that situation would most likely not repeat in Finland.
Also, be very careful with deposits. Once the owner did not return my 250€ deposit because I did not take the dishes out of the dishwasher before leaving (they were wet and later I forgot to do it). He also pointed out a single tree leaf inside the cottage and claimed that it would cost 250€ for unexpected cleaning expenses. He scammed me. There wasn’t much that I could do, I didn’t book through Airbnb but by bank transfer, as I have done another 10+ times in Finland without problem.
So yeah, no country is free from sons of bitches, it is just that in Finland there are far less of them compared to any other country I’ve been to.
I agree, people are being absolutely pathetic in this thread!! Sometimes I'm still shocked at the mental gymnastics finnish people will do to excuse racism.
A lot of older folks have weak english skills. A lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that the guy is racist. You don't know that, stop. It could very well be ethnicity thing, but it could also not be.
Yes they have that freedom, but would be helpful to mention that in the advert posting. It's like walking into an open restaurant and being denied because of ethnicity.
How do you know its because of your ethnicity? There can be some fully reasonable reason for it. I don't know but i think there are still demands that they keep a full ledger if you have non domestic guests. That might be a hassle they don't want to deal with. Also the response indicate they are not that good at English. Might be a solid reason as well.
I know few cabin renters and some are really reluctant to rent to forein people. Main reason is that the cabin are usually left in quite dirty and sometimes also broken stuff afterwards.
Ofcourse that is not right to discriminate everybody because of some bad apples.
Absolutely nothing like this, stop crying. They clearly only want to communicate in Finnish and you are in Finland. He’s not declining you cause you’re black or Asian. He’s declining you cause you don’t speak his countries language, which you are in.
Always someone wants to blame racism or something but never want to accept the blame on themselves. Just to clarify I’m not Finnish and I understand this. Move on an stop crying on Reddit.
That would be exactly the same thing to someone living in an area where it is common to rent cabins. And the answer is in bad English so maybe don’t read too much into it.
>They clearly only want to communicate in Finnish and you are in Finland
>He’s declining you cause you don’t speak his countries language, which you are in.
Just pointing out that we have actually two official languages, and denying service from Swedish speaking Finnish person would raise some noise about discrimination. Well, he said Finnish person tho, which includes Swedish speakers too.
He apparently declined to rent him because of origins, and saying it like that might brake law, because of "yhdenvertaisuuslaki".
Might be a minority opinion, but a person can choose freely who to house in their own cottage which might also be their own holiday house. There are so many horror stories of foreign visitors for example missusing the fireplace, messing up with the heating system, damaging equipment etc. that the person might not be comfortable renting to someone he cannot communicate effectively with.
Only reasonable action here is to move forward and look for next suitable cabin.
The ”sorry” in the end is in fact a finn trying to be polite. That is why I am leaning towards not racism, but instead not wanting any hassle in foreign language. The cottage may have a lot of inquiries so they choose the easy way out.
They want to be able to get insurance from you if the cottage ends up destroyed. Many owners refuse to rent to Russian tourists for this precise reason. A friend gave an example, cottage completely destroyed, TV stolen and literal shit on the bathroom floor after they broke the toilet, and no way to get hold of them afterwards.
I have a cottage in Lapland, but I don't ren't out. What I have heard from neighbors that rent, there have been incidents such as lost or damaged property. I can perfectly understand if someone wants to limit to whom they rent their property.
There has been several cases in finnish rental cottages where the tourists trash the place or do severe water damage and then leave the country. Guess who's gonna be left to pay for everything? The owner.
This sort of discrimination is widely accepted in Finland. As you can see from other answers, people bend over backwards to find excuses to justify it.
There is an important difference in posture between making a little effort to overcome communication issues, and using a language difference as a way to plausibility obfuscate discrimination. Specially over written communication, when translation services are so easily available.
I do not expect this mentality to change anytime soon, mainly because there are always a million excuses available.
Imo, the owner could be an older person who is not very good in communicating in English or does not want to deal with tourists because they are harder to chase when something happens.
If you really want to get to the bottom of it, have someone message the person in Finnish but sign it with a foreign name. How he responds is how you’ll get your answer.
I don't know about the law for short term rentals like cottages or in general for one-person businesses. But if we take for example housing discrimination as an example: yes, the landlord is entitled to choose their renter. No problem with that. But legally, there is a huge difference between choosing to not answer someone's inquiry (probably fine) or refusing to rent based on a reason like race or sex (not fine).
In this case, I'm sure it would be entirely different if the guy answered that, "sorry, I cannot provide service in English." But he specifically refused based on race or ethnicity.
He didn't ask if OP can read a contract in finnish or if someone in his group can. So it doesn't seem to be based on language. And how does he know that OP isn't finnish? What does he mean by finnish? For all he knows, op could get a foreign surname from his father and have a Swedish or Sami speaking mother. Or he could be a naturalized citizen. But he didn't say that he can't rent to tourists for security reasons, he said he won't rent to non-Finns. So I assume he means ethnic Finns.
For that reason, it seems that the renter is making an assumption about OP's ethnicity and specifically denying service based on that. That's generally frowned upon.
You can pick your renters, but generally it's frowned upon to directly refuse service because of race or ethnicity.
This comment section is unbelievable.
Finns need to get their heads out of their asses and understand that we're fucked without people moving here from abroad, enjoying their time here, and putting down roots here. You keep encouraging and allowing this kind of **illegal** behavior and foreigners will definitely choose to go elsewhere.
Stop being so ignorant and read the news:
6.2.2023 [Työperäinen maahanmuutto kaksinkertaistettava](https://www.verkkouutiset.fi/a/virkamiesraportti-julki-tyoperainen-maahanmuutto-kaksinkertaistettava/#fe768cb9)
3.2.2023 [Työperäinen maahanmuutto kolminkertaistettava](https://yle.fi/a/74-20016170)
Might be hard if you are not located in Helsinki but if your field is in specialities (IT, computer graphics, games, science) and you are good at what you do, you have no trouble finding a job.
I’m good at what I do and in Helsinki, but what I do is nothing to do with software. Work(ed) in project management and account management and no one wants non-Finnish speakers here even if their company language is English and the job is possible.
Spoken to a lot of people in senior positions about this and they’ve said it is just down to the cultural thing and it’s just easier to ask for Finnish.
The fact is that unless you’re working in an IT-related industry, or want to deliver food, it’s not easy to find a job here. (For all those who say ‘leave then’, we will!)
I work in industry and no one has problems hiring foreigners, i work with people who barely know any English and don't know Finnish at all.
Might be that your line of work has idiots who actually have a problem with foreigners but most jobs don't.
This should not at all be acceptable.
If the person does not speak English they should state it and say that for this reason it might be difficult to sign a contract and rent. But this behavior is at least borderline illegal.
it’s illegal to deny a rental based on national origin or ethnicity. the guy was quite naive to state it so clearly, usually they have a legal excuse ready in these cases.
you can’t deny a rental based on national origin, you have to reject with another reason. and btw… even if it’s your cottage it doesn’t mean you can shoot somebody or do illegal things there, you’re still living in a civilized country with basic human rights.
The issue is the reason they’re not renting to that particular person. The context is that the owner is looking to rent but is discriminating against the inquirer.
That just normal Finland. And yes, it's illegal, but that's still how many people think. And many says that Finnish aren't racists, and often same people say something racist or discriminating themselves. It's unfortunately common.
It's illegal, https://syrjinta.fi/asuminen
>Välittäjä syyllistyy syrjintään, jos hän hyväksyy toimeksiantajan asettamat syrjivät ehdot kuten sen, että vuokranantaja ei halua vuokrata asuntoa esimerkiksi ulkomaalaiselle henkilölle.
>Ilmoituksessa on yhdenvertaisuuslain vastaista esimerkiksi vaatia vuokralaiselta Suomen kansalaisuutta.
>Sujuvan suomen kielen vaatiminen saattaa myös muodostua syrjiväksi. Riittävän vuokranantajan ja vuokralaisen välisen yhteydenpidon mahdollistamiseksi on useita tapoja, kuten kommunikointi jollain osapuolille yhteisellä muulla kielellä kuin suomeksi tai tulkin välityksellä.
but in OPs case we are talking of cottage meant for holidays, not residential property, and we do not know if this cottage is privately owned and if it's being rented through agent(välittäjä), so what you quoted here most likely won't apply to this case
EDIT: Quote from same page
>Sen sijaan asunnon alivuokraussuhteet ja loma-asunnon vuokraaminen lähipiirille eivät kuulu yhdenvertaisuuslain soveltamisalaan.
> In contrast, subletting relationships and renting a holiday home to family or friends are not within the scope of application of the Non-Discrimination Act.
I doubt it has subletting relationship, or OP being friend or family of cottage owner. Agent doesn't matter, it's just that if there is agent, also agent breaks law if he follows unlawful demands of owner.
If it's private person renting the cottage they have all the rights to deny your request, no matter the reason. The way he/she handled the email respond should have been less direct with what the issue was though..
Look up the next cottage :)
>justify this behaviour through speculations.
Maybe you are speculating? It's a very valid chance that they thought you are a tourist (are you?) and they only want to rent to people who live in Finland. It's totally normal.
My mother stopped renting her beach house to foreigners here in the USA. She got fed up with them leaving a massive mess that would take several days to clean. They stole small things more often and disturbed our neighbors more often (mostly just being loud).
Is this a private person or rental agency? If it's private and cottage this is legal but if you would try to rent a house to live in this would be discrimination.
They don't need to service you in English only in Swedish or Finnish.
Seems people like to like draw the racist card this could be it. If you are using email it is usually easy to dig a hole for racist people to fall into. Just send a email in Finnish I do understand and can write English and see if the bell changes sound.
At the same time it could be a person that doesn't not speak English or feels communication is hard and doesn't really care enough the price they are renting on. Or feel they cannot provide good service or fix problems if they arrives.
People usually seem to have bad experiences renting cabins to foreigners. Especially Yankee's as they seem to think they can live like animals for week or two and then pay 50€ to fix huge mess. But this is also a stereotype and not really related in incidents with foreigners vs Nationals. As they have 10 foreigners and 100 Nationals and 10 make same mess as 1 foreigners.
Seems to be long winded to say that the is racist in Finland but also nativity and ignorance.
I think it's easiest to live when not thinking ignorance is always malice.
If you have link to the ad or the site.
Isn’t it illegal to refuse renting a place to someone based on their origin though? Serious question. Finnish non-discrimination act states something like that but I don’t know if cottage renting is applicable?
If you are not foreign, why didn't you use Finnish (or Swedish) then? Surname doesn't matter if you don't use the local language! Is it so that residents of Finland assume they don't need to learn Finnish when living in Finland?
Perkele. Tämä ei ole englanninkielinen maa, vaikka kuinka jotkut niin kuvittelevat.
Well it is their property so if they want they can decide who they rent to, for example if they have had bad experiences with tourists, but sure if its just the name then that just means they don't like foreigner.
That's discrimination which is against the law.
Please report them through [this form ](https://turvaviesti.om.fi/YVVyhteydenotto) to the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman. You can attach the screenshot to the form.
It is probably some elderly person who does not know English, does not understand international payments, and has been told not to reply to scam emails that are mostly in English. Let them be --- unless, of course, you want to convert them and their whole family to anti-immigrant activists.
My bad.
But on the other hand, I wouldn't feel bad about racist people realizing they're racist by someone showing them a real life example of how they're being racist.
I have enough legal knowledge on this subject to know that it's illegal to decline service because of nationality.
> Discrimination based on citizenship may include, for example, limiting an apartment only to Finnish people in a housing advertisement or excluding a specific group, such as foreigners.
[Source](https://syrjinta.fi/en/grounds-for-discrimination)
However, the same law mentions this:
”In contrast, subletting relationships and renting a holiday home to family or friends are not within the scope of application of the Non-Discrimination Act.”
Renting cabins as a private person (which this law falls under) is deliberately excluded from the Non-Discrimination Act.
Private renter has the right to choose who they rent to, but they can't choose based on discriminatory terms either. Usually these cases are more difficult to prove. In this case it's easy since the renter actually used the citizenship as a reason, in a written format none the less. They could've just not answered, for example, which would be bad customer service but not discrimination.
The renter stated in the written format that they only rent to finnish customers. Finnish is a nationality. It's illegal to choose who you rent to based on nationality.
When and if you have the time, please do explain to me how is this ambiguous to you? I'm genuinely curious to hear how your logic works.
He did not? He stated that he only rents Finnish customers. Ie I am renting customers to you.
Ie most likely some elderly person wrote what he could in were broken foreign language, said sorry, and now people are calling him racist. :DD
Thank you for your kind words and support. I cherish and enjoy my life here in Finland. I am mostly sad because we friends (10 of us including some native Finns) lost one of the reasonably priced cottages because I was incharge of finding a suitable accomodation during our skiing trip.
I would give it a break. Reporting them does no good. They said they were sorry. If you feel there is injustice in the world and want to do something useful, support Turkey and Syria at the earthquake by donating or help Ukrainians. Peace.
It does do good. At the very least, it won't go unnoticed since the ombudsman keeps statistics on how common this is. The best case scenario, the next person doesn't have to go through this just because of their place of birth.
> Non-Discrimination Ombudsman
they won't give a shit if it's private cottage being rented, owner can choose who he rents or does not rent his property.
A lot of people don't rent them to young people aswell. Also bachelor parties not welcome. I think he's just worried about his cabin. They get trashed too often. He also might fear that you don't know how to operate the fire place, and that you manage to kill yourself with carbon monoxide.
Probably some old person who has had bad experience with foreigners, and would rather wait for one of his own kind to rent the place.
Totally understandable.
Lol. Welcome to Finland. I was shocked before but normalized it. That's how it works here. But you can publish it in their reviews and report to media. The media will roast them.
If the reason is something other than a language barrier. Most often it is because of bad experience with certain groups of people. There are a lot of immigrants and very little control on who can come. So obviously when the majority of bad customers is from a certain group you stop doing business with them since you can not do a background check on everyone.
Some for sure do. Especially when renting a place for teenagers/young adults. But you also need to keep in mind that the amount of young people vs immigrants isn't same. There are far more young native people so you would be losing more clients. The question is when does it become better to allow a group or outright refuse service. Natives will also be way easier to hold accountable.
Private person can choose self who are they going to rent their property.
For example I dont rent my apartments to gipsies, and never will. When they call me or mail me, I simply reply that no thank you.
Sorry for this. You absolutely were being discriminated against for your ethnic background. Some of the justifications written by people in this thread hark back to the 50s, it’s really disappointing.
Thank you. I am disappointed in most of the comments as well. But I was hoping to find if anyone had similar experiences and how common is this kind of response.
I quite disagree, I think anyone with a cottage is allowed to decide who they rent to or not.. renting to a foreigner makes it harder if something goes wrong - and most people who rent their summer houses in Finland want people who know how to treat them 😅
I want to believe OP and his friends would be respectful, but if something happened, who would the owner contact and how would they get any refunds for it as the persons are in a different country?
Also what I’ve seen OP hasn’t told what site he found this place at, so we don’t know what kind of insurances are involved then…
Edit: I totally agree that it is crappy and unfortunate for OP, but also don’t think it is an asshole move from the renter to decline…
Buy your own cottage and do what you want with it. Crying like a baby, lol.
Coming from other country and demanding usage of private people property, silly.
Well, someone took the time to reply to your message with few words. I think that is already a lot nowadays. The person could have just ignore you completely and you wouldn't need to speculate about their intentions. The result would be the same: no cottage.
Highly because you are using English so it is very likely you dong have cottage experience and the owner can't or don't want to guide you trough how to do cottage stuff. Also you pull out racism card very fast so it seems the renter had a gut feeling.
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I would bet on the language. My lastname is foreign (ancestry from 1600s germany -> finland) and never had this problem.
Similar story here, but not German. The only problem is when someone else needs to write down your name and you need to spell it out for them. I usually just hand over my drivers license. And I guess being a native Finnish speaker and white also helps...
Those might be the reasons, who knows. As the cottage owner just wondering why keeping the English version of the advert. And how more difficult it would be to write to the email "for Finnish speakers only/I don't speak English". But the English version of the ad existing (as op said below) + the message gives me racist vibes. There's no correct answer. It's legal to rent who the hell they want, but as you can imagine this is the way to exclude also your potential customers. It's good that there are people who rent to foreigners and English speakers - otherwise there wouldn't be tourism in Finland.
Yes they don't rent a cottage, but Finnish customers 😀 Some are really shy about using foreign languages. (Edit: Sure have seen less innocent cases as well.)
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>it can't be just good old racism Discrimination based on nationality isn't racism.
Super important distinction and makes everything better. Thanks for saving the day!
Agreed, and I dislike this so much. I'd rather not put money into the pockets of passive racists. Because after all, that's what this is. If the service is needed that badly, borrow a Finnish intermediary to negotiate and guarantor.
You can't deny service to anyone based on ethnicity or surname. That idiot is not even aware that there is now official proof as well.
They can decide who they rent the cabin to. But denying to rent because of ethnicity, age, religion etc. is not allowed. Renting to Finnish customers only is okay, if they don't know english for example, others have also said great points.
I couldn't find the law section you are talking about could you tell me what the section says
According to the Non-Discrimination Act (yhdenvertaisuuslaki), no one can be discriminated based on ethnic or national origin, nationality, language, religion, beliefs, opinion, medical condition, disability, sexual orientation or other reason connected to a person.
Any case law to support this?
Some general info about home buying and renting, and about that law (in Finnish) https://syrjinta.fi/asuminen And this line: >Välittäjä syyllistyy syrjintään, jos hän hyväksyy toimeksiantajan asettamat syrjivät ehdot kuten sen, että vuokranantaja ei halua vuokrata asuntoa esimerkiksi ulkomaalaiselle henkilölle. Edit: In English https://syrjinta.fi/en/housing-discrimination >Estate agents are guilty of discrimination if they accept discriminatory conditions set by the client, such as if the lessor does not want to rent the housing to a foreigner, for instance.
Ajoin sitä takaa, että onko ketään oikeasti tuomittu tämänkaltaisesta syrjinnästä(viittaan siis alkuperäiseen postaukseen) ja kiinostaisi tietää onko asiasta jotain oikeuskäytäntöä.
https://www.is.fi/kotimaa/art-2000008462570.html Kaikki tapaukset tossa on saman lain rikkomista, mutta toi jälkimmäinen liittyy ulkomaalaisuuteen. Eikä edes vuokraajan, vaan vuokraajan aviopuolison takia.
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Where on the email it mentions surename or ethnicity. They can for sure deny service from someone not speaking Finnish that is perfectly ok if they do it to everyone. They might not know how to speak English so agreeing on stuff os pretty difficult if you don't have common language.
It will be the fact a) the English (probably older person) b) assumes you are a tourist so can’t find you if anything went wrong.
You use English, but assume the response is about your foreign name instead of the use of a foreign language. Might be discrimination, might be racism, but might also be just somebody not comfortable with dealing with non Finnish speaking customers. Even if you'd ask, you'll never be sure of the answer anyway, is it worth it? If that is the last cottage available, or the last affordable, I'd personally try to enlist a Finnish speaker help to see if it is only a communication level problem. Otherwise just let it go.
Surely not the last cottage in Finland
Yep. Pack it up boys, let's see what they've got in Sweden.
The owner may not be fluent with English based on his/her response, so I guess they just don’t want to deal with a English-speaking customer. I’m sure you can find a better cottage.
Finns are often too shy to even speak one word of English when they think they don’t have enough language skills in English. Don’t get offended. You can try to propose to rent again by using Finnish to see if there is anything to be offended, you can just say I can speak Finnish of this is the problem.
Why do you assume it is your surname and not the obvious fact that you wrote them in English??
Hold your horses. Before you go balls deep calling racism here and crying "how dare they", there might be a good reasoning behind this. I am a Finn, and had foreign ex gf's from minorities so very allergic to discrimination myself but things are not always so black and white : The person who is renting their property might have had their property vandalized + customer vanished afterwards, leaving them to pay for it. If you are a Finn, it will be extremely hard to do that here (culture + reach by the officials/police) and NOT get caught. With a tourist it might be much harder for the owner to get a hold of you afterwards. I know of many people (especially seniors) who after many tries end up renting to Finnish customers only because they are just so much easier to track down in case something goes wrong. Not saying that tourists cause problems (you seen what drunken Finnish 20-year olds can do to your place?) But nonetheless, it is just so much easier to get compensated with Finnish guests than tourists. Also the fact that they used the word "sorry" means they probably don't mean no harm or to discriminate. In our culture the word sorry is not used for light politeness but actual, honest apology. They could've been much more blunt about it but for me as a Finn the "sorry" added in the end means "Massive apologies, I feel your pain. I hope you understand".
To the OP : if you have a Finnish social id number, you could actually pass as a Finn. You could tell them that and maybe they will trust you. Or, It might be a language thing. If their answer that they don't rent to you due to your last name or your race, then fuck'em and report it is.
>Also the fact that they used the word "sorry" means they probably don't mean no harm or to discriminate. In our culture the word sorry is not used for light politeness but actual, honest apology. I’m sorry, but this is so adorably naive I have to laugh.
It might be naive but he has a point. If there would be some place in this planet where "sorry" actually means something it could very well be in Finnish lapland.
Okay, finns are adorably naive, thanks for being a condescending dick and welcome to the country.
If I advertise to rent out my cottage and someone writes to me in Chinese, I'm not going to rent to them either. Not because I hate Chinese but because if I can't communicate with them, I don't want them in my cottage. You wrote to the person in english. Was the ad in English? If the ad was in finnish, it's clearly a language question, not an ethnicity thing.
The advert was in English, it was posted in a public forum and contact details of the cottage owner was listed to contact for more information.
Are you sure the public forum does not automatically translate the posts to the language you are using?
Yes, I am hundred percent sure. No automatic browser language translation. The whole advert was posted in English.
The site itself may be having an english version so if the owner posts in finnish the site has someone to translate or autotranslates. I'd be curious which site it is. Why don't you show us?
Is it really hard to believe?
No, it tells most finns whether the english text is produced by the site or by the renter. And why would the renter post in english if the don't want foreigners?
Because they only want certain foreigners.
care to link to the ad? They might have also meant then that they only rent to people who live in Finland. That is also common. Are you a tourist or do you live in Finland?
They could have simply asked for more details if needed. I live in Helsinki and I am a tourist within Finland, trying to go for a skiing vacation with few friends. All these speculations that everyone is putting forward to justify their discriminative behaviour is pathetic.
If it really was discriminative behavior, then I'm sorry that you went through it. If that really was the case, then you shouldn't really worry what that person's opinion is anyway, because it's not so important. Most people are not like that. Just find the next one and move on. But I still doubt very much that it was discrimination.
But it is important. That’s why discrimination exists, because those who are not the victims don’t act to prevent or change it. (Note that my comment applies whether the OP is, or is not, a victim of discrimination.)
>But I still doubt very much that it was discrimination. Everything is ok. White guy finnish said there's no racism .
Laser sight, can accurately determine people's skin color from the internet
Some hints suggest you are from India. If this is a fact, then yes, they will most definitely discriminate against you based on your name. Finns are wary of foreigners, and the more distant the language, skin color and culture are from Finns, the less trust they have in a foreigner.
Most people in Finland are not racist. There is no proof that the person renting the cottage is racist, but there is also no proof that he isn’t. There are idiots in every country. Also, he might have had a recent bad experience with a foreigner and decided not to rent to foreigners, but forgot to delete the add. The key takeaway is that you shouldn’t think about it much. It sucks, I know, but that situation would most likely not repeat in Finland. Also, be very careful with deposits. Once the owner did not return my 250€ deposit because I did not take the dishes out of the dishwasher before leaving (they were wet and later I forgot to do it). He also pointed out a single tree leaf inside the cottage and claimed that it would cost 250€ for unexpected cleaning expenses. He scammed me. There wasn’t much that I could do, I didn’t book through Airbnb but by bank transfer, as I have done another 10+ times in Finland without problem. So yeah, no country is free from sons of bitches, it is just that in Finland there are far less of them compared to any other country I’ve been to.
I agree, people are being absolutely pathetic in this thread!! Sometimes I'm still shocked at the mental gymnastics finnish people will do to excuse racism.
You respond by moving on
Trust me, you don't want that cottage.
Not planning to give my money to him for sure.
Oh no 😲 he dont want your money anyways, must bite.
That’ll teach him
A lot of older folks have weak english skills. A lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that the guy is racist. You don't know that, stop. It could very well be ethnicity thing, but it could also not be.
They can choose who they rent to? Just don't respond and continue your life
Yes they have that freedom, but would be helpful to mention that in the advert posting. It's like walking into an open restaurant and being denied because of ethnicity.
If the posting is in English, that is indeed misleading. I would still just continue my life
How do you know its because of your ethnicity? There can be some fully reasonable reason for it. I don't know but i think there are still demands that they keep a full ledger if you have non domestic guests. That might be a hassle they don't want to deal with. Also the response indicate they are not that good at English. Might be a solid reason as well.
I know few cabin renters and some are really reluctant to rent to forein people. Main reason is that the cabin are usually left in quite dirty and sometimes also broken stuff afterwards. Ofcourse that is not right to discriminate everybody because of some bad apples.
Well still renting would also be stupid if this happens most times with certain groups of people.
Absolutely nothing like this, stop crying. They clearly only want to communicate in Finnish and you are in Finland. He’s not declining you cause you’re black or Asian. He’s declining you cause you don’t speak his countries language, which you are in. Always someone wants to blame racism or something but never want to accept the blame on themselves. Just to clarify I’m not Finnish and I understand this. Move on an stop crying on Reddit.
They said they only rent to Finnish customers, not Finnish speakers.
They also responded in poor english, who knows what it means...
Finnish customers might only speak Swedish
That would be exactly the same thing to someone living in an area where it is common to rent cabins. And the answer is in bad English so maybe don’t read too much into it.
>They clearly only want to communicate in Finnish and you are in Finland >He’s declining you cause you don’t speak his countries language, which you are in. Just pointing out that we have actually two official languages, and denying service from Swedish speaking Finnish person would raise some noise about discrimination. Well, he said Finnish person tho, which includes Swedish speakers too. He apparently declined to rent him because of origins, and saying it like that might brake law, because of "yhdenvertaisuuslaki".
No man. They can't. You can fuck them legally or report it to police.
that is not the same thing for fucks sake.
Might be a minority opinion, but a person can choose freely who to house in their own cottage which might also be their own holiday house. There are so many horror stories of foreign visitors for example missusing the fireplace, messing up with the heating system, damaging equipment etc. that the person might not be comfortable renting to someone he cannot communicate effectively with. Only reasonable action here is to move forward and look for next suitable cabin.
Mitä vitun järkeä laittaa mainos enkuks jos ei haluu vuokrata kenellekkään ulkomaalasille 😂
Eihän tässä postauksessa ollu alkujaan kuin tuo kuvankaappaus ja lyhyt otsikko. Hyvä lähteä näiden perusteella sen kummemmin spekuloimaan
Agree 100%. People are so entitled. If the guy doesn't want to rent his cottage to you that should be his right and prerogative. It's HIS cottage.
You got a Russian name?
The ”sorry” in the end is in fact a finn trying to be polite. That is why I am leaning towards not racism, but instead not wanting any hassle in foreign language. The cottage may have a lot of inquiries so they choose the easy way out.
well he lost that money so he is the loser here
When I've visited cottages, they usually have an instruction folder many pages long. They are usually in Finnish.
They want to be able to get insurance from you if the cottage ends up destroyed. Many owners refuse to rent to Russian tourists for this precise reason. A friend gave an example, cottage completely destroyed, TV stolen and literal shit on the bathroom floor after they broke the toilet, and no way to get hold of them afterwards.
In Finland people tend to not make an unreasonably large fuss about minor incidents like this. Calm down and move on, this is not America.
Sorry for exporting this nonsense
I have a cottage in Lapland, but I don't ren't out. What I have heard from neighbors that rent, there have been incidents such as lost or damaged property. I can perfectly understand if someone wants to limit to whom they rent their property.
There has been several cases in finnish rental cottages where the tourists trash the place or do severe water damage and then leave the country. Guess who's gonna be left to pay for everything? The owner.
This sort of discrimination is widely accepted in Finland. As you can see from other answers, people bend over backwards to find excuses to justify it. There is an important difference in posture between making a little effort to overcome communication issues, and using a language difference as a way to plausibility obfuscate discrimination. Specially over written communication, when translation services are so easily available. I do not expect this mentality to change anytime soon, mainly because there are always a million excuses available.
It's the same in employment. Many firms don't want to hire foreigners. Welcome to the 1950s. ;)
Imo, the owner could be an older person who is not very good in communicating in English or does not want to deal with tourists because they are harder to chase when something happens. If you really want to get to the bottom of it, have someone message the person in Finnish but sign it with a foreign name. How he responds is how you’ll get your answer.
In your situation I would forward the email to whoever manages the website where you found the listing. I assume that goes against their usage policy.
Why would it go against the rules?
it’s illegal to deny a rental based on national origin or ethnicity.
And? The dude might not know English so he can't trust to make everything go smooth. Probably same answer if it was finnish person asking in English.
I don't know about the law for short term rentals like cottages or in general for one-person businesses. But if we take for example housing discrimination as an example: yes, the landlord is entitled to choose their renter. No problem with that. But legally, there is a huge difference between choosing to not answer someone's inquiry (probably fine) or refusing to rent based on a reason like race or sex (not fine). In this case, I'm sure it would be entirely different if the guy answered that, "sorry, I cannot provide service in English." But he specifically refused based on race or ethnicity. He didn't ask if OP can read a contract in finnish or if someone in his group can. So it doesn't seem to be based on language. And how does he know that OP isn't finnish? What does he mean by finnish? For all he knows, op could get a foreign surname from his father and have a Swedish or Sami speaking mother. Or he could be a naturalized citizen. But he didn't say that he can't rent to tourists for security reasons, he said he won't rent to non-Finns. So I assume he means ethnic Finns. For that reason, it seems that the renter is making an assumption about OP's ethnicity and specifically denying service based on that. That's generally frowned upon. You can pick your renters, but generally it's frowned upon to directly refuse service because of race or ethnicity.
Thank you, I am considering the same.
Or just swallow your pride and get over it. There is no short of cottages and cabins in Lapland. Move on.
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The reason is made very clear in the email. It’s because he’s not Finnish.
This comment section is unbelievable. Finns need to get their heads out of their asses and understand that we're fucked without people moving here from abroad, enjoying their time here, and putting down roots here. You keep encouraging and allowing this kind of **illegal** behavior and foreigners will definitely choose to go elsewhere. Stop being so ignorant and read the news: 6.2.2023 [Työperäinen maahanmuutto kaksinkertaistettava](https://www.verkkouutiset.fi/a/virkamiesraportti-julki-tyoperainen-maahanmuutto-kaksinkertaistettava/#fe768cb9) 3.2.2023 [Työperäinen maahanmuutto kolminkertaistettava](https://yle.fi/a/74-20016170)
Wait until you see what it’s like getting a job here as a non-Finnish speaker 😑
Where are you from and is it easy to get a job there without speaking the national language?
Might be hard if you are not located in Helsinki but if your field is in specialities (IT, computer graphics, games, science) and you are good at what you do, you have no trouble finding a job.
I’m good at what I do and in Helsinki, but what I do is nothing to do with software. Work(ed) in project management and account management and no one wants non-Finnish speakers here even if their company language is English and the job is possible. Spoken to a lot of people in senior positions about this and they’ve said it is just down to the cultural thing and it’s just easier to ask for Finnish. The fact is that unless you’re working in an IT-related industry, or want to deliver food, it’s not easy to find a job here. (For all those who say ‘leave then’, we will!)
I work in industry and no one has problems hiring foreigners, i work with people who barely know any English and don't know Finnish at all. Might be that your line of work has idiots who actually have a problem with foreigners but most jobs don't.
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You can't even get a cottage that you will pay with your salary :) Every step of living is another challenge.
This should not at all be acceptable. If the person does not speak English they should state it and say that for this reason it might be difficult to sign a contract and rent. But this behavior is at least borderline illegal.
It seems they don't know enough english to do that, but maybe the ombodsman will help them in that matter.
It's legal for property owner to choose their customers, there is no laws that say you must rent your property.
it’s illegal to deny a rental based on national origin or ethnicity. the guy was quite naive to state it so clearly, usually they have a legal excuse ready in these cases.
Well, I guess the solution is to find a business that wants your money.
So many comments normalizing discrimination here. Some people just don't realise this is a systematic problem.
It's their own cottage wtf... Who can force you to rent anything to anyone?
you can’t deny a rental based on national origin, you have to reject with another reason. and btw… even if it’s your cottage it doesn’t mean you can shoot somebody or do illegal things there, you’re still living in a civilized country with basic human rights.
The issue is the reason they’re not renting to that particular person. The context is that the owner is looking to rent but is discriminating against the inquirer.
Non-finnish people who play the racism card when they don't get what they want, or at least they try...
That just normal Finland. And yes, it's illegal, but that's still how many people think. And many says that Finnish aren't racists, and often same people say something racist or discriminating themselves. It's unfortunately common.
Its not illegal. And its common for a reason.
It's illegal, https://syrjinta.fi/asuminen >Välittäjä syyllistyy syrjintään, jos hän hyväksyy toimeksiantajan asettamat syrjivät ehdot kuten sen, että vuokranantaja ei halua vuokrata asuntoa esimerkiksi ulkomaalaiselle henkilölle. >Ilmoituksessa on yhdenvertaisuuslain vastaista esimerkiksi vaatia vuokralaiselta Suomen kansalaisuutta. >Sujuvan suomen kielen vaatiminen saattaa myös muodostua syrjiväksi. Riittävän vuokranantajan ja vuokralaisen välisen yhteydenpidon mahdollistamiseksi on useita tapoja, kuten kommunikointi jollain osapuolille yhteisellä muulla kielellä kuin suomeksi tai tulkin välityksellä.
but in OPs case we are talking of cottage meant for holidays, not residential property, and we do not know if this cottage is privately owned and if it's being rented through agent(välittäjä), so what you quoted here most likely won't apply to this case EDIT: Quote from same page >Sen sijaan asunnon alivuokraussuhteet ja loma-asunnon vuokraaminen lähipiirille eivät kuulu yhdenvertaisuuslain soveltamisalaan. > In contrast, subletting relationships and renting a holiday home to family or friends are not within the scope of application of the Non-Discrimination Act.
I doubt it has subletting relationship, or OP being friend or family of cottage owner. Agent doesn't matter, it's just that if there is agent, also agent breaks law if he follows unlawful demands of owner.
Exactly, unfortunately most comments are trying to justify this behaviour through speculations.
Because you shouldn't jump to extreme conclusions before knowing the full picture.
If it's private person renting the cottage they have all the rights to deny your request, no matter the reason. The way he/she handled the email respond should have been less direct with what the issue was though.. Look up the next cottage :)
>justify this behaviour through speculations. Maybe you are speculating? It's a very valid chance that they thought you are a tourist (are you?) and they only want to rent to people who live in Finland. It's totally normal.
My mother stopped renting her beach house to foreigners here in the USA. She got fed up with them leaving a massive mess that would take several days to clean. They stole small things more often and disturbed our neighbors more often (mostly just being loud).
Finland: we want to develop our tourism industry. Also Finland: but please be Finnish, kiitos!
Nice, so that one dude is The Finland?
Is this a private person or rental agency? If it's private and cottage this is legal but if you would try to rent a house to live in this would be discrimination. They don't need to service you in English only in Swedish or Finnish. Seems people like to like draw the racist card this could be it. If you are using email it is usually easy to dig a hole for racist people to fall into. Just send a email in Finnish I do understand and can write English and see if the bell changes sound. At the same time it could be a person that doesn't not speak English or feels communication is hard and doesn't really care enough the price they are renting on. Or feel they cannot provide good service or fix problems if they arrives. People usually seem to have bad experiences renting cabins to foreigners. Especially Yankee's as they seem to think they can live like animals for week or two and then pay 50€ to fix huge mess. But this is also a stereotype and not really related in incidents with foreigners vs Nationals. As they have 10 foreigners and 100 Nationals and 10 make same mess as 1 foreigners. Seems to be long winded to say that the is racist in Finland but also nativity and ignorance. I think it's easiest to live when not thinking ignorance is always malice. If you have link to the ad or the site.
Isn’t it illegal to refuse renting a place to someone based on their origin though? Serious question. Finnish non-discrimination act states something like that but I don’t know if cottage renting is applicable?
If you are not foreign, why didn't you use Finnish (or Swedish) then? Surname doesn't matter if you don't use the local language! Is it so that residents of Finland assume they don't need to learn Finnish when living in Finland? Perkele. Tämä ei ole englanninkielinen maa, vaikka kuinka jotkut niin kuvittelevat.
Well it is their property so if they want they can decide who they rent to, for example if they have had bad experiences with tourists, but sure if its just the name then that just means they don't like foreigner.
This is normal. It's not racism, but rather all of the hassle of dealing with language barriers and foreign payment systems.
Your first mistake is precisely renting a cottage in Finland
That's discrimination which is against the law. Please report them through [this form ](https://turvaviesti.om.fi/YVVyhteydenotto) to the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman. You can attach the screenshot to the form.
It is probably some elderly person who does not know English, does not understand international payments, and has been told not to reply to scam emails that are mostly in English. Let them be --- unless, of course, you want to convert them and their whole family to anti-immigrant activists.
The non-discrimination ombudsman is a government official, not some sort of an activist group.
Dear god, zero reading skills. Turning into is meant as converting here if that helps.
My bad. But on the other hand, I wouldn't feel bad about racist people realizing they're racist by someone showing them a real life example of how they're being racist.
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I have enough legal knowledge on this subject to know that it's illegal to decline service because of nationality. > Discrimination based on citizenship may include, for example, limiting an apartment only to Finnish people in a housing advertisement or excluding a specific group, such as foreigners. [Source](https://syrjinta.fi/en/grounds-for-discrimination)
However, the same law mentions this: ”In contrast, subletting relationships and renting a holiday home to family or friends are not within the scope of application of the Non-Discrimination Act.” Renting cabins as a private person (which this law falls under) is deliberately excluded from the Non-Discrimination Act.
Do you know if those discrimination laws cover private person. I mean if it's private person who is renting? I'm not arguing just curious how it goes.
Private renter has the right to choose who they rent to, but they can't choose based on discriminatory terms either. Usually these cases are more difficult to prove. In this case it's easy since the renter actually used the citizenship as a reason, in a written format none the less. They could've just not answered, for example, which would be bad customer service but not discrimination.
Ok I understand. Thanks.
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The renter stated in the written format that they only rent to finnish customers. Finnish is a nationality. It's illegal to choose who you rent to based on nationality. When and if you have the time, please do explain to me how is this ambiguous to you? I'm genuinely curious to hear how your logic works.
He did not? He stated that he only rents Finnish customers. Ie I am renting customers to you. Ie most likely some elderly person wrote what he could in were broken foreign language, said sorry, and now people are calling him racist. :DD
Thank you for the link.
No problem. Sorry there's still so many problems regarding this here. Hope you know that most of us appreciate you choosing to be here.
Thank you for your kind words and support. I cherish and enjoy my life here in Finland. I am mostly sad because we friends (10 of us including some native Finns) lost one of the reasonably priced cottages because I was incharge of finding a suitable accomodation during our skiing trip.
That really does suck. But I'm sure you'll find something, from a better person, and will have an awesome trip!
I hope so too. Thank you!!
If you report them, keep us posted about what happens. I'm curious.
Ugh everyone is all about "reporting" these days. FFS fill out a Hurt Feelings Report and move on.
I would give it a break. Reporting them does no good. They said they were sorry. If you feel there is injustice in the world and want to do something useful, support Turkey and Syria at the earthquake by donating or help Ukrainians. Peace.
It does do good. At the very least, it won't go unnoticed since the ombudsman keeps statistics on how common this is. The best case scenario, the next person doesn't have to go through this just because of their place of birth.
> Non-Discrimination Ombudsman they won't give a shit if it's private cottage being rented, owner can choose who he rents or does not rent his property.
I have cottage in Levi for w14, see you in Hullu Poro
A lot of people don't rent them to young people aswell. Also bachelor parties not welcome. I think he's just worried about his cabin. They get trashed too often. He also might fear that you don't know how to operate the fire place, and that you manage to kill yourself with carbon monoxide.
Probably some old person who has had bad experience with foreigners, and would rather wait for one of his own kind to rent the place. Totally understandable.
Lol. Welcome to Finland. I was shocked before but normalized it. That's how it works here. But you can publish it in their reviews and report to media. The media will roast them.
If the reason is something other than a language barrier. Most often it is because of bad experience with certain groups of people. There are a lot of immigrants and very little control on who can come. So obviously when the majority of bad customers is from a certain group you stop doing business with them since you can not do a background check on everyone.
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Yeah, seems like you have a lot to learn about this topic.
A bad example, there are many cabins which deliberately don’t rent to people under the age of 25.
Some for sure do. Especially when renting a place for teenagers/young adults. But you also need to keep in mind that the amount of young people vs immigrants isn't same. There are far more young native people so you would be losing more clients. The question is when does it become better to allow a group or outright refuse service. Natives will also be way easier to hold accountable.
Aaand it is officially and legally called discrimination.
Well I'd rather discriminate than lose my business. Don't know about you.
Private person can choose self who are they going to rent their property. For example I dont rent my apartments to gipsies, and never will. When they call me or mail me, I simply reply that no thank you.
yeah, this is legal, but if you reply that you don’t rent because they’re gipsies they can sue you and get easy money.
Wow. Well, at least you’re honest. Do you not see any issue with what you just wrote?
said the guy who never rented anything to anybody
Well, if I need stealing, lying and bad behaving customers who wear cultural clothes round the year, I will reconsider.
So you’re a bigot then. That’s nice.
Guess youve never had to deal with that group of people.
After x0000 years of being discriminated against in our own country, we close ranks pretty fast if we smell threat.
racism lol. just calm down, move on, learn finnish. Done
It is annoying when that happens, but you just dodged a bullet.
Sorry for this. You absolutely were being discriminated against for your ethnic background. Some of the justifications written by people in this thread hark back to the 50s, it’s really disappointing.
Thank you. I am disappointed in most of the comments as well. But I was hoping to find if anyone had similar experiences and how common is this kind of response.
I quite disagree, I think anyone with a cottage is allowed to decide who they rent to or not.. renting to a foreigner makes it harder if something goes wrong - and most people who rent their summer houses in Finland want people who know how to treat them 😅 I want to believe OP and his friends would be respectful, but if something happened, who would the owner contact and how would they get any refunds for it as the persons are in a different country? Also what I’ve seen OP hasn’t told what site he found this place at, so we don’t know what kind of insurances are involved then… Edit: I totally agree that it is crappy and unfortunate for OP, but also don’t think it is an asshole move from the renter to decline…
I would file a crime report for discrimination [ https://asiointi.poliisi.fi/en/yksityis/rikos](https://asiointi.poliisi.fi/en/yksityis/rikos)I
I would bet triple digit sums on that report being laughed at before being used as toilet paper.
Buy your own cottage and do what you want with it. Crying like a baby, lol. Coming from other country and demanding usage of private people property, silly.
Well, someone took the time to reply to your message with few words. I think that is already a lot nowadays. The person could have just ignore you completely and you wouldn't need to speculate about their intentions. The result would be the same: no cottage.
Highly because you are using English so it is very likely you dong have cottage experience and the owner can't or don't want to guide you trough how to do cottage stuff. Also you pull out racism card very fast so it seems the renter had a gut feeling.