hiidenkonttibeta

The winter solstice (talvipäivänseisaus) occurs today. This was the shortest day of the year, and a really wintery one. The sky was clear, the trees very white with frost (it was around -18C), and the Sun was peeking at the horizon, as if to wave and yell “hey! come this way, I’m here!”

There are only four nights until the jouluaatto (christmas eve), and a lot of preparations to do! Make yourself a nice mugful of glögi and let’s start packing the presents.

This article is most useful for a foreigner spending the christmas in Finland. Not knowing the traditions, you’ll have a lot of questions.

For example, what do people give each other as a christmas present in Finland? Since yuletide is traditionally associated with good food and eating it, what would make better present than food? A bucketful of butter was once considered a valuable present, but nowadays vegetable oil based butter substitutes are also acceptable. Another timeless, traditional Finnish food is of course the fabulous hernekeitto. Pick either one (or even both, if you really want to make a lasting impression) and your present won’t stay unnoticed!

We begin by gathering the presents, some required tools and the wrapping material on the working table:

Essential tools in Finnish craft of present wrapping are a small pocket knife, a roll of transparent tape, and a sturdy stapler. Pretty wrapping paper and flat string are also required, obviously.

Let’s start with the easier present, the butter. Here we have a substitute which comes in a package made of plastic and cardboard, with a practical, geometrical shape. Using the pocket knife, cut a piece of wrapping paper (don’t try to rip it with bare hands, the knife will give much nicer and smoother edges). The piece should be just big enough to cover the present. If it’s too big, wrapping it is awkward since the staples won’t hold well through a thick layer of wrapping paper.

Begin the wrapping process by attaching one end of the wrapping paper to the present with a stapler, as shown in the following photo:

Next, fold the paper around the present and add another staple to hold the loose end of the paper. Then proceed to the open ends. Fold the paper flat agains the present and add two staples to hold it securely. Then wrap the flat string around the present to give it a more present-like appearance. Tie the string tightly (the present loses a lot of glamour if the string is too sloppy). You can make beautiful curly ends to the string with the knife:

Press the string against the knife edge with your thumb and pull. The string goes curly when it is scraped against the edge this way. Here’s how your completed present should look like:

By now you might be eager to move on to wrapping the other present, the hernekeitto. Novices often jump straight into action without listening to the instructions thoroughly, and come back crying, “master, I’m desperate! the can of hernekeitto is too tough, my stapler isn’t hardcore enough and I can’t attach the paper – oh please show me the way!”

Actually it’s very easy, easier than wrapping the butter, but only if you know the correct technique. The technique explained next applies to wrapping of all presents of irregular shape.

First, cut a piece of wrapping paper of correct size for the present. Next, moisten it under the tap:

Moist wrapping paper is easily fitted around any kind of shape. In the case of hernekeitto, simply roll the can to wrap it:

Then, twist the paper around the open ends and secure it with a small pieces of transparent tape. Attach a pretty tag indicating the recipient and you’re done. This is how the completed present should look like:

Hint: you can give the presents a little personal touch, so they’ll be even more joyful surprises than stuff straight out of shop shelves. Giving them a special “christmas feel” is surprisingly easy. Before wrapping the butter, open the cover and sprinkle a layer of ground cinnamon on the top:

Then wrap it up as described above, and smuggle the presents to the recipient’s living room under the christmas tree (the traditional place for keeping the presents in Finland, we don’t use any hanging socks). If you’re spending the christmas eve with them, you’ll be lucky indeed to be able to watch their surprised expressions when they find and unwrap the presents you gave them.

Now that the jouluaatto (christmas eve) is only a few days away I thought that our friends abroad would like to take a little inside peek into Finnish joulu (yule, christmas) preparations and traditions.

To properly get into joulumieli (christmas spirit), we begin with the traditional Finnish christmas drink, the glögi. Glögi means “spiced vodka” in Finnish (my dictionary translates it as mulled wine, but I don’t understand what wine has got to do with it).

Traditionally it’s prepared for drinking by adding some more spices. First, we gather all the ingredients:

Here we have raisins, almond, a snaps mug, and of course the glögi itself. Notice the jolly christmas red bottle cap, which warns the buyers that this is glögi and not your normal vodka and may contain spices, i.e. sugar, up to 18g/l (government regulation).

The basic recipe is as follows:

Step #1: Add raisins and sliced almond to the snaps mug. Note that we show a plenty of them in here to make them more obvious in the photo, but as a beginner you should begin carefully and add more as you get accustomed to the taste:

Step #2: Pour the glögi into the snaps mug. Leave a bit headroom so that the valuable drink doesn’t spill when moving the mug. More attention must be paid to step #2 when preparing subsequent drinks.

Stir with a spoon, and the basic version is ready for drinking.

If you tried and liked the basic glögi, and are adventurous enough (people often are, after drinking some glögi), you might like to taste the advanced version.

The advanced recipe adds one step to the procedure, and it requires one more ingredient: ground cinnamon. So, after carefully preparing your glögi following steps #1 and #2 above, do the additional step described below.

Warning: do not try this at home without an experienced glögi master supervising your progress.

Advanced step #3: using a hot plate, heat the glögi up, but don’t let it boil! During the heating, add a pinch of cinnamon and stir well.

When it’s steaming, it’s done. Just don’t burn your mouth! The advanced version is somewhat an acquired taste; not all people can stand it’s extreme spicyness. But if you’re one of the few, making the rest of christmas preparations is a joy with a mugful of hot glögi!

Last week we visited the new Salvation Army flea market on the bus station. There was a set of Mhing (a version of Mahjong, played with cards instead of tiles, with simplified rules), but I didn’t buy it.

Afterwards I read a very positive review of the game, which also tells that it’s an old game (meaning the edition released in Finland) and rare, since it’s only available second hand. Today I went back and bought it (luckily they still had it):

This edition was released in early 80′s, it seems complete (two out of three ~50-card decks were still shrink-wrapped!), has instructions in Finnish and a lot of scoring sheets. The cardboard box is a bit damaged, but all in all, it’s quite easily worth the 2.50€ I paid :-D

I finally watched the movie Sin City. Didn’t see it in theaters since everyone I knew had already seen it and I didn’t feel like going to see it alone. A masterpiece! B&W (or actually, selective colouring) is quite striking, since there aren’t too many that kind of movies around.

It’s also quite violent. One of the keywords assigned for it in imdb is “Nude With A Gun” – but the best movie having this keyword is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Was there a scene of Clint in bath in that one?

6th of December was a day off (the independence day of Finland), and because it was Tuesday, I took also Monday off. It so happened, that Finnish television channel 2 showed a gig YUP made last summer in the morning.

YUP is another one of experimental bands emerging from 80′s / early 90′s punk scene. In the early days they were called the “little brother of CMX”, but they’ve been riding on their own reputation for many years now. While Yrjänä’s lyrics are considered “deep” and mystical, Martikainen’s are “fun” and clever, sometimes just a play of words, but usually either absurd or right to the point criticism of human behaviour.

Minä tulen sieltä missä itkijänaiset kirkuen takovat päitään lattiaan

Anyway, I’m only familiar with the early YUP records (Yövieraat and earlier, post-mid-90′s in quite unkown for me) so I bought two more records: Outo elämä and Normaalien maihinnousu. Outo Elämä sounds rather bland and I got bored with it, but Normaalien maihinnousu is what I except from YUP and I’ve been playing it the whole evening. And there’s still several more of their records to check out.

A small greenish shoot had appeared on a piece of ginger root that hid in my kitchen for a few months. I planted it in black soil (had some from a few years back when I tried to revive a dying plant I had) in a construction made of two cottage cheese containers:

I’m no gardener so the poor little ginger has only a chance (not guarantee) of survival. But if it does keep on growing, it’ll be interesting to see what a groving ginger looks like. A quick googling brought up quite a variation of results, and I have no idea if there’s only one type of ginger used as a spice, or if there are several.