15 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me

I started my instagram account shnordic about six years ago as I had given up my career in a pharmaceutical research for family reasons and wanted to have something to do. I didn’t really know what to expect or where it could take me (if anywhere), but I liked having a project. We had just finished renovating our previous house and I had done a interior design course to help me designing our home, and a photography course to help me document it on this little photo sharing app called instagram I had been using a couple of years to post (bad) photos of my kids and cups of coffees I was about to drink.

I embarked on my social media journey with zero knowledge of anything (I hadn’t even heard of a hashtag) but I loved the challenge and have since successfully grown my following to over 900k+ followers across Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest. It’s been a steep learning curve, and not always an easy one. I’m an introvert, I don’t like being the centre of attention and I’m also quite a private person, none which makes putting yourself out there especially easy. But getting out of my comfort zone has helped me to create an amazing business, enabled me to work from home and having so much flexibility over my hours and projects. Not to mention how incredible it feels to have created such a supportive community and had opportunities to work with so many amazing brands over the years.

15 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me

Today, I’m sharing 15 things you probably didn’t know about me!

• I am dying to get a dog. I keep chatting to dog owners on our walks and daydreaming what kind of dog I would have but it does feel like a big commitment so we don’t want to rush into it. We also used to travel often, and for longer periods pre-covid so that complicates things a bit too. EDIT. we did it!! After years of ‘researching’ we finally got our gorgeous puppy and she is amazing!

• I was born and raised in Finland. Most of my family still lives in Finland and I love visiting as often as possible. I’ve also lived in Brussels and NYC before moving to London.
• I grew up on an old farm with my family, and went to a tiny village school. There was 3 people in my class, me and two boys.
• I met my husband, Mr Nordic, on a beach in one of the Caribbean islands. We had a very brief holiday romance as I was there only for 3 days. Somehow we kept things going despite living in different countries for nearly two years before I moved to the UK.
• We had a small wedding of less than 20 people and I loved that it was so relaxed and non-formal.
• I used to do a lot of competitive cross country skiing when I was in primary school. I also won a fair few trophies despite always being very lazy at practising.

• And whilst being on the hobbies, I also took 6 years of piano lessons and was completely hopeless at it. Also didn’t ever practise.
• I have a masters degree in neurobiology and I worked in academic research before swapping that to a job in a pharmaceutical company. I carried working as part-timer after having kids, before setting up my own photography & content creation business. It felt absolutely terrifying at the time and I was so out of my comfort zone, but I loved the chance to do something new & creative (and still do love it, 6 years later!)
• My first science related job was a research assistant in a group that did genetic studies on drosophila melanogaster, aka fruit fly. They were kept in plastic containers, and there were hundreds of them. My duties included making special malt porridge for the flies, and transferring the flies to new containers when they had eaten the porridge in the old ones.
• I love to learn new things and after running my business in a similar format for a few years I’m thinking 2023 could be year to introduce something new. I’ve been working behind the scenes for the last few months and I can’t wait to share more with you as soon as I can. Make sure to sign up for my newsletter to be first to know!
• I have lived&worked in the UK for over a decade, which means I can apply for dual citizenship. This is one of my goals to make that happen (this decade)!
• If you are familiar with Meyers-Briggs, my personality type is INFJ.
• I really dislike having to call to people I don’t know as I have a fear of introducing myself and explaining why I’m calling. Not sure why, but makes me feel so awkward and whenever possible, I get my husband to call places. But if someone calls me first, I’m happy to call back as I feel like the introduction part is already done. So my fear only applies to cold calling 🙂 And I have no problem of introducing myself when meeting people in real life, just on the phone. Go figure.
• I have a massive sweet tooth and my favourite treats are salty liquorice, salted caramel ice cream and any chewy sweets like Haribos. Cinnamon buns & carrot cake are also my favourites, but I’m really not fussed about biscuits!
• I was drinking coffee way before I hit double digits. I still remember when I stopped using sugar in my coffee, at ripe age of 9! Caffeine was clearly not considered that bad where I grew up.

What’s next for us?

We are looking to move to the countryside! If you love English countryside and beautiful period houses, join us at the Country House Club community! It’s a membership club where the members get a front row seat for our house search in the English countryside. See the highs and lows of our journey as we visit the houses we view and feel like you are onsite with me. You’ get a firsthand look at the beautiful details, the stunning architecture, and when we hopefully find our dream house!

Other membership perks include:

• Member-only Q&A coffee chats 
• Q&A sessions with Experts 
• Private Community
• Beautiful downloadable wallpapers to brighten up your phone and laptop
• Full tour of our rustic red cottage in Finland 
• Downloadable and printable content like planners, to-do lists, etc.
• A full tour of my current house that is not available on instagram