Happy Vappu!

There aren’t many events that bring throngs of Finnish people together. Finns tend to avoid situations where they have to be with many people at once. This is a country, after all, where they sit one per row on the bus even when traveling with friends and hold their time in their summer cottages as sacred. But Vappu is one of those exceptions to the rule.

I admittedly have been avoiding Vappu all week. We’ve had plenty of emails telling us about all of the parties and events going on around campus. Every one of these promises copious amounts of alcohol. This is decidedly not my scene and so I resolved to skip Vappu altogether.

That resolve did not take long to thaw away. Curiosity got the best of me.

In the most basic sense, Vappu is like Labor Day in the US. It is meant to honor those who work by giving everyone a day off. But it also heralds spring and after the long Finnish winter, everyone in Finland is ready for color and life to come back.

The first part of my Vappu experience was with a Finn who lamented on multiple occasions that the Finnish weather was putting a damper on the celebrations. He had a point. In the two hours we were walking outside, the weather swung back and forth between being sunny and bright to stormy and hailing. Still, this was an improvement from the weather forecast which had called for snow and slush all day.

My favorite part of Vappu

I had told him that he was the Vappu expert and left it to him to show me what the holiday was all about. He took me to Kauppatori which was full of tents, most of which were selling candy. Candy in Finland is as colorful as it can get. There was a stall selling at least 15 flavors of licorice. He offered to buy me some but after Salmiakki I am a suspicious of Finnish licorice, no matter how appealing the color.

From the market Vappu didn’t seem like much of a holiday to me except for a very good excuse to eat a lot of munkki. Munkki are the same as donuts (minus the icing and sprinkles) but the name sounds so much better in Finnish. There were also plenty of balloons in all shapes and sizes. Pikachu seemed to be a popular one. The market was mostly empty with the weather being so temperamental.

Waiting to put on their hats. If you look at their pants you can see the
overalls and the patches covering them.

But then we walked into the university campus where the scene was quite different. The square in front of the Educarium was full of students wearing different colored overalls, each color representing their student organization. People were drinking and enjoying the sun, which seemed at that point to have decided to stay out. It had a carnival-like atmosphere with a live band and people sitting on every surface they could find. People were bursting into song, undoubtedly aided by the drinks in their hand. I’ve never been to Mardi Gras but I imagine this is what it would be like.

The hats are on!

In the evening I set out to see the main event of Vappu. The largest crowd I have seen in Finland was gathered on one street in front of the Art Museum. People were holding onto their Vappu hats, which all Finns get when they graduate from high school. Having the hat felt like belonging to an exclusive club except that pretty much everyone could join. The purpose of everyone gathering was to listen to a speech welcoming spring, drink Champagne and, at the appointed moment, put on your hat. The sight of seeing the crowd gradually become a sea of white as people put on their hats was quite impressive. We then headed to the river to watch people clean a statue’s head with a very large toothbrush and to put a hat on her head as well. It admittedly felt a bit odd to be standing and waiting to watch people put a hat on a statue.

In a country where it’s the norm to keep to yourself, even among family members, it was nice to see so many people coming together and sharing a common experience. My expereince with Vappu didn’t have the characteristically Indian chaos that I have come to love and expect from big national holidays but it had a Finnish charm to it nonetheless. Of course, I may just have skipped that part after all.