The dream of the summer cabin lives on
Even the urban high-flyers now spend traditional vacations at the cottage, although some of their rural survival skills are as rusty as the lock on the outhouse door
By Anna-Stina Nykänen
A Helsinki woman in her thirties, working in the advertising business, explains why she wants to spend her vacation at the cottage year after year.
The cottage is a haven of peace and beauty. It is a place to escape to, to cut yourself off. you don't need to dress, you don't need to put on make-up. We live in the centre of Helsinki, but we're both originally from small places in the country. Perhaps there's a subconscious yearning for sitting with your feet hanging off the wooden jetty, staring into the lake or back to the trees; nature means more out there.
My boyfriend and I, we have this strange common understanding that when we are at the cottage we don't have to DO anything. A cabin holiday is just loafing - a permitted week of putting mind and body in neutral.
First we spend a fortnight in Berlin, then from there to the cottage for a week, and then back to work. It's the perfect combination.
She says that all those around her are avid cottage-goers, even those high-flying urbanites that she meets through her work.
She also notes that people are prepared to pay big bucks for the joys of spending a week up-country "at the cabin".
So the Finnish yen for getting back to nature on holiday has not waned. Going to the cottage got a big injection of enthusiasm in the 1960s, when the population began its headlong flight from the land to the cities. The summer cabin was a return to the roots.
Now it is even those who have no roots in the countryside who wish to avail themselves of its delights.
They say that in the midst of globalisation a respect for "the local" is sharpened: first we take Berlin - then we take the Finnish cabin in the woods and by the lake.
Cottage life brings Finns together in a quite exceptional manner, argues researcher Antti Karisto. "The lakeside sauna, the sunset over water, and the haunting call of the black-throated diver form a combination that represents a kind of ur-Finnishness in the mind of the cottage-goer."
This is an image that can be recognised and embraced even by those who do not have a cottage. The cabin landscape, pines and lakes, is the Finnish milieu-ideal, something that everyone feels is worth striving for, says Karisto. He points out that studies have indicated that a mere 7% of Finns say they have no relish whatsoever for a cottage vacation.
Karisto charges that there are common features to the Finnish cottage experience, even if the vacation is spent in very different places and in very different ways. All, for instance, have a sense that they are living a simple life, close to the warm bosom of mother nature.
This basic concept just happens to mean rather different things to different people.
In a week-long stay at a rented cottage, there is not much one can do about the surroundings, but plenty of choices that can be made in one's own way of life.
It has all mod cons. But I don't use the dishwasher, mind you. You get so little in the way of dishes to wash out there in the forest that I prefer to wash them up myself, says the Helsinki advertising lady.
It's part and parcel of cottage life that the "doing" doesn't have to be all easy. Fiddling about with things is one part of it. Food is made from start to finish - no packet recipes. Yes, you buy sausages for the grill, but no ready-made convenience things or TV dinners, but rather you go to the market and get healthy ingredients.
Yes, we watch TV there, but it's only an ancient black-and-white receiver, and you can only get two channels on it, and neither of them have decent reception, because the antenna doesn't work properly.
In consumption at the summer cottage, there is a distinct sense of competition over the virtues of modesty, "naturalness", use of local produce and services, and what are held to be agrarian values, claims Karisto.
"Conspicuous consumption is frowned on as tasteless, and luxury is carefully kept out of plain sight. The ‘comforts' of the cottage are born out of the (nowadays somewhat debatable) fact that the place has no creature comforts."
And what are these creature comforts that are present - or not present? To one, the height of luxury is an indoor WC, to another an eco-loo, for a third a decorated gingerbread-house dry toilet outhouse in the woods.
The TV set can be hidden away and the justification for its presence can be delivered at length. There is also the concept of "the cottage TV". This is the junk receiver that "would otherwise have been tossed into the garbage at home".
Self-sufficiency is cherished as a cottage virtue, along with doing it yourself.
The acme of cottage bragging-rights is if you have built the place yourself from scratch. But for some it is a major achievement, worthy of record, that they chopped up their own firewood with an axe.
"Chopping firewood for the sauna, lifting rocks with a crowbar, and turning over the soil in the vegetable patch are all exercises through which the urban pen-pushers convince themselves that they would have been handy artisans in the former pastoral society", says Karisto.
The cottage is a bridge back to that earlier, less complicated time. Traditions are nurtured and the rules set by grandparents are adhered to. The distribution of labour between the genders, too, harks back to a more conservative style than in the city.
At the cottage, people look to find some kind of original grasp on life, something primitive, even.
"Even if the master of the house is grilling Brazilian chateaubriand from the supermarket meat-counter, he sees himself living in the barter economy or leading his family's doughty struggle for survival as a proud hunter-gatherer", remarks Karisto.
The amount of work that gets done varies, but in any event the summer cottage is seen by Finns as a realm of freedom, claims the researcher. Nobody looks at their watch, summer beards are allowed to sprout. Things at the cottage have to be done in a certain way, yes, but at least you get to make up the rules yourself.
You can mess around with building something or other, but then again you can toss the results of your handiwork behind the woodshed and resolve to start again on it next year, and nobody is going to complain.
It is not necessary to realise all one's dreams.
There's a katiska* [see note below] at the cottage. Still, we've never once put it into the water all these years, even though every summer we talk about doing it. We buy our fish from the locals. You can always get it fresh, says the 30-something advertising agency cottager.
It is important for the cottage-goers to know the local population, says Karisto. The relationship towards the local community is often rather romanticised.
"More or less every cottage has in the immediate vicinity some exceptionally fine natural features, whether scenic or something else. This is THE place in all Finland to catch this or that fish in abundance, or the local bakery makes THE most scrumptious in the entire country", says Karisto.The list goes on.
Emotional ties to the locale are strong. Karisto notes that summer cottages are changed a good deal less often than houses or apartments.
In the mind of the owner, one's cottage is quite simply the most wonderful place in the world.
"Under no circumstances is it done to criticise another person's cottage, its style, or the scenery."
Perhaps because then you would be pricking another's dreams?
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 29.5.2005
NOTE: A katiska is a kind of cage, of chicken-wire construction, used as a trap for fish. The idea is to row it out to a suitable point and toss it overboard, marking the spot with a buoy. Fish swim in through the broad opening, but cannot find their way out again
More on this subject:
 But how do you empty the huussi?*
ANNA-STINA NYKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anna-stina.nykanen@hs.fi
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| 31.5.2005 - THIS WEEK |
The dream of the summer cabin lives on
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