First Finnish Impressions
It’s hard to describe the thrill of setting foot in a new place for the very first time. A new town, a new city, a new forest, a new cafe—there’s something so delicious about the unfamiliar, the sights and sounds and smells you’ve never experienced before. Arriving in an entirely new COUNTRY is like that, on steroids. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a new (to me) country, and so it was extra thrilling when my flight touched down in Finland yesterday and I stepped foot on Finnish soil for the very first time. So much jet lag mixed with so much anticipation and excitement!
My first impression of Finnish vegan food culture came before I ever stepped foot on Finnish soil: I was 35,000 feet in the air, flying from Frankfurt to Helsinki on FinnAir. I love taking the local airline of a country I’m visiting because it’s a fun way to see how the country chooses to present itself to the world. FinnAir did not disappoint.
While soda and alcohol cost money on this flight, two drinks were on offer for free: water and FinnAir’s signature drink: wild blueberry juice from blueberries (technically bilberries) foraged in the Finnish wilderness. How could I say no?!
Served in a tiny paper cup (why do we use plastic cups on US airlines?!), the juice was this gorgeous deep purple color. Unlike the domesticated blueberries of the US, wild blueberries in this part of the world are quite small and blue inside and out (US blueberries are actually white inside). They’re known as “bilberries” in English, but in Norwegian they are simply “blåbær”—blueberries. (I have no idea what they are called in Finnish!) The flavor is so much more intense and, for lack of a better word, wild, than the blueberries back home.
Normally on short-haul flights where there’s no vegan “special meal” to order, I’m stuck with a sad bar of mini pretzels to snack on. FinnAir had other tricks up its sleeve, however: the humble but mighty and quintessentially Nordic bowl of porridge—with local (to Finland) oats and wild, hand-foraged lingonberries from the Finnish wilderness. YUM.
This stuff was delicious! Vegan and gluten-free and local and wild and complete with a small wooden spoon (why do we use plastic spoons on US airlines?!), it tasted like real food.**On an airplane. This was a first. And it got me thinking: why does this feel so hard to achieve in the United States? Seriously, why all the plastic when paper cups and wooden spoons are obviously a thing there too?
That the porridge came complete with a Marimekko napkin was the icing on the vegan cake—it was further proof that I could not have been flying to anywhere in the world other than Finland. I grew up watching my Norwegian grandmother dress herself in countless highly fashionable Marimekko dresses, each more beautiful and quirky and unique than the last. To me, Marimekko epitomizes Nordic design—timeless, bold, elegant, unafraid of making a statement—and also my grandmother. I’ve never been to Finland, but wiping the wild lingonberry porridge off the corners of my mouth with my Marimekko napkin at 35,000 feet? It felt like home.
**The only less-than-real ingredient was the Xylitol used as the sweetener. Why? Why not use beet sugar? Sigh.
