Survival course teaches how to live on wild plants

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By Sami Soininen
     
      New books have been published again this spring, detailing how wild plants can be turned into culinary delights by adding a little cream, olive oil, and grated cheese. Wild greens are a trendy way for city people to supplement the offerings of a summer food table.
      A somewhat different view of the nutritious bounty of nature emerges when a person has to survive for a week eating nothing else.
      From the mid-1970s, courses have been arranged in Finland teaching survival in the outdoors without extra food, warm sleeping bags, or tents. In addition to wild plants, the menu also includes fish, if they happen to be biting. Sleeping takes place in shelters built from available materials.
      "Some say that people take these courses in order to starve. I say that we lie in the midst of food", says Björn Corander, trainer at the Survival Guild of Finland, which arranges the courses.
     
The courses are certainly not for the indolent. Those taking part have to walk long distances, picking plants as they go. A week of foraging teaches primitive wilderness skills, as well as the psychology of survival.
      Corander, who lives in Inkoo, west of Helsinki, has agreed to show what kinds of edible wild plants grow near his home.
      But first, a cup of tea. With a sly grin on his face, Corander takes out a container made of spruce bark, revealing a burnt-looking flaky lump. He cuts a few chips from it with a knife, and throws them into boiling water. Soon the dark liquid is ready.
      Surprisingly, the taste is very good, especially with sugar added. It seems incredible that the tasty drink comes from a shelf fungus growing on the trunks of birch trees.
     
Corander leads the guests to the banks of the Inkoonjoki river, where he finds woolly burdock. The plant's large leaves and soft sprouts can be eaten in the spring as a salad, or boiled. The boiled roots are also edible.
      A few more steps, and we find young arrowroot. The tender peppery leaves can be used to add a spicy taste to salads. The leaves of the plantain, which grows next to it, can also be used in salads.
      Even coltsfoot can be used in an emergency.
      Corander says that the large leaves can be boiled and used like cabbage leaves for wrapping foods, and that smaller spring leaves can be used in salads.
      Birch trees are growing nearby. Their small leaves can be used, naturally enough, as raw material for salads. However, the taste takes some getting used to.
      "It has a flavour that slightly resembles a sauna whisk", Corander observes. "It's not bad at all."
     
By the time we get to tasting the willow herb, I have to admit that the use of natural plants as such takes some getting used to.
      "The taste certainly is a bit strange, but in the old days people would eat much more bitter food", the survival trainer says.
      Corander says that ten years earlier his son took part in one of the courses. Porridge made out of Iceland moss soaked in ash lye was not to the liking of the younger Corander.
      "I said that you just need to add some taste. Try lingonberries."
      People taking the course have also eaten ant eggs and snake meat.
      "Ant eggs have a slightly sour taste, but you get used to it quickly. Snake meat is like something between fish and chicken."
     
In the man-made landscapes of Southern Finland it is fairly easy to find plants to eat in the spring. However, survival courses are also held in the middle of the summer, and in the autumn, in places ranging from Finnish Lapland to the archipelago islands.
      "Many plants can be utilised in the early spring or late autumn. When their flowers are in bloom it is not as easy to get nutrition from them", says Mika Kalakoski, who has been on survival courses 18 times, as both a participant and an instructor.
      The greatest challenges have been trying to find food on the rugged fells of Finnish Lapland. As hunting wild game is generally forbidden on the courses, fish has been the most important survival food for the participants.
      "There is always a feeling of exhilaration in the course if we succeed in catching a half-kilo pike with a hook made out of juniper", Kalakoski says.
     
About 800 people in Finland have taken the survival course. Pupils have ranged from Frontier Guard trainers to high-school girls interested in biology.
      Kalakoski emphasises that the purpose is to learn to move around in nature easily without having to carry heavy supplies. It is also good to know how to survive if a backpack with all the food falls into the rapids during a canoe trip, for instance.
      Kalakoski notes that there has never been a course in which food would actually have been abundant. That has not been the aim: one of the purposes is to experience how the body reacts to limited nutrition. Eating less makes the summer feel colder. It is easier to catch a chill.
      "Everyone has a psychological nadir. You just have to grab yourself by the scruff of the neck, even if you are terribly tired and hungry, and the mind is running slow."
      In such a situation, finding a spot with wild strawberries the size of the tip of a thumb is strangely exhilarating. But even less-appetising foods will taste good:
      "Hunger is the best spice. You don't always need butter or cream."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.6.2005  

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: Favourite survival delicacies

Links:
  Survival Guild

SAMI SOININEN / Helsingin Sanomat
sami.soininen@hs.fi