Finnish nurse finds a calmer working life in Norway

A Finnish nurse who feared job cuts and uncertainty found permanent work and a calmer pace in Norway, Yle reports. Around 100 Finnish nurses work in Norway each year, drawn by higher pay and better working conditions.

Piia Granfors, from Vaasa, began considering a move in 2024 while recovering from a cold. At the time, the Ostrobothnia wellbeing services county was discussing savings measures, including reducing the number of night nurses. Granfors, in her fifties, had worked several temporary contracts and was worried about her future.

After her husband supported the idea and their children, who are adults, were no longer living at home, she started the process. She was offered two permanent jobs in northern Norway. Granfors now works night shifts for Nordøyan home nursing in Tromsø and has moved there permanently.

Norway’s statistics agency says around 100 Finnish nurses work in the country each year. Some commute in rotations, spending two or three weeks working in Norway before returning to Finland for several weeks. Over the past 15 years, the number has ranged from just under 100 to 166, according to Katja Laakkonen, a researcher at the University of Eastern Finland.

Laakkonen has studied Finnish nurses’ working lives in Norway and is now part of a four-year research project examining how cross-border work affects the careers and personal lives of middle-aged nurses. She says many nurses she has interviewed do not plan to return to Finland’s labour market.

Pay is one reason nurses move. Norway’s 2025 statistics put a nurse’s basic monthly salary at about 4,900 euros, and a specialist nurse’s at about 6,000 euros before supplements. In Finland, the average basic monthly salary for a nurse in a wellbeing services county was about 3,200 euros in 2025, according to Statistics Finland.

Granfors says Tromsø is one of Norway’s most expensive cities, with high rents and costs. She says she could earn more elsewhere in Norway, but values her home and colleagues and does not want to risk losing them by changing jobs. She also says nurses in Norway earn relatively little compared with the country’s general income level, although the difference is significant from a Finnish perspective.

Yle also spoke with three other healthcare professionals who have worked in Norway for years: intensive care nurses Tiina Pikkuhookana and Tiina Wiitanen, and dialysis nurse Tero Surakka. They have commuted between the countries or lived in Norway, and all currently have homes in Finland. They describe Norwegian working culture as more flexible, including workers’ ability to influence their shifts.