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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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