Rajala believes that a new chapter is just beginning for pessimism in Puolanka. Social media has amplified the brand; the online shop receives a steady stream of orders for T-shirts with slogans like “grumpy old man” and “difficult hag”. The musical last summer attracted audience members from around the country and will likely be repeated this summer. A new communal space dedicated to pessimism will be available for visitors passing through the town centre on their way to Lapland.

As for the future, Rajala would like to see the pessimists on magazine covers. Yet, he says, there hasn’t really been a strategy so far. “We’ve just been doing the things that seem like fun to us.”

Don’t fight windmills

Timo Aro believes the cycle of decline in rural municipalities like Puolanka will continue. “Many places like Puolanka wait for that one big change,” he says; some talk about an “anti-urbanisation” movement that would see people shunning cities, but so far that isn’t happening. Yet Aro believes that Puolanka is playing the hand it’s been dealt quite well. “Even though every [demographic] measure places it at the bottom of the pile, there’s still a sense of turning the negative into a shared resource.”

Mayor Harri Peltola is more hopeful. He believes that Puolanka’s calm, natural environment will appeal to some. Indeed, the surrounding forests offer a bounty of berries and mushrooms, while Hepoköngäs, one of the country’s tallest waterfalls, is a stone’s throw away. There’s an abundance of snow and clean air. Even if people don’t live there permanently, many people have summer cabins in and around Puolanka; during holidays, the town’s population can almost double. The challenge is to make people aware of what it offers. “You have to have something that gets people interested – and I think pessimism has worked well for that,” he says.

While Rajala thinks that there is still a lot to be done with pessimism, that doesn’t stop him from seeing that the days of this small town are probably numbered. After all, a pessimist never gets disappointed. “If you live here and spend time dreaming about how Puolanka will get better, and how more people will come one day, you’re fighting windmills,” Rajala says. Those kinds of daydreams lead to frustration.

“But if you accept the facts as they are, and then use that reality to your ends, living and functioning here is entirely possible,” he says – sounding suspiciously like an optimist.