Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland is divorcing her husband after three years of marriage.
Marin and Markus Raikkonen have been together for almost two decades and have a five-year-old daughter, Emma Amalia Marin.
"We are grateful for the 19 years together and our beloved daughter. We will remain best friends, close to each other and loving parents," the couple each said in a statement released on their Instagram stories on May 10. “Going forward we will still spend time together as a family and with each other. We wish you will respect our privacy. We won't comment further on this.”
Marin is in the final phase of her time in office. First elected in 2019, she was the youngest prime minister in the world, per Reuters. Marin is known for her progressive views and for breastfeeding her daughter while in parliament.
In April, Marin’s party – the Social Democratic Party – lost the parliamentary election. The party was outperformed by the right-wing National Coalition Party and the nationalist Finns Party. Marin’s loss was attributed, in part, to her party’s view on the Finnish economy, per Sky News.
As prime minister, Marin has led her country’s bid to join NATO and the nation’s response to the global spread of the COVID-19 virus. She publicly apologized in December 2021 after videos of her dancing at a nightclub with her husband and friends after being exposed to someone with COVID-19 went viral.
“I did wrong. I should have considered the situation more carefully,” Marin said in a broadcasted apology. She tested negative in the subsequent days.
Marin later apologized in 2022 after a video leaked of her dancing at a private party with several Finnish musicians, TV personalities and politicians. While Marin confirmed she had been drinking, she denied allegations that she had been using drugs.
Marin and Raikkonen got married in August of 2020 at their official residence in Kesaränta.
"We have lived our youth together, entered adulthood together and grown into parents for our dear daughter together," Marin wrote on Instagram after the wedding.
Marriage in Finland has been on the decline for the better part of the last decade. In 2017, a Finnish statistical analysis group noted that adults were delaying marriage later than ever with the average age for first-time marriages reaching 36.8 for women and 38.3 for men. The majority of Finnish women – 74% – got married between the ages 20 and 34 in 1900. By 2017, just 54% of the same age group had entered into their first marriage.
According to the Daily Finland, just over 19,420 marriages were recorded in 2021 – marking a 2,654 decline from 2020.
