Makkara

Finland is an outdoorsy country. Pretty much everyone has, at some point in their life, camped, fished, skied, gone trekking, picked berries, built a fire, punched an elk, etc.

What you soon realise though, is that the main objective for any outdoor activity in Finland, is to get to a place, often a laavu, where you can cook and eat sausages (Makkara).

The Finnish sausage is a bit of a sorry beast. Most people seem to peel of the plasticky skin, often burnt anyway, and then cover the sawdust meat inside with mustard. Those that know me will confirm that I am almost completely devoid of national pride, but the Finnish sausage is a poor imitation of its German or British equivalents.

Makkara

British Sausage

The countryside here is full of laavus, traditional shelters once used by the farmers when they went out to cut the hay meadows. Nowadays pretty much every ski day or trekking day is designed around a visit to the laavu where desperate skiers/trekkers hurry to the fireplace to get their burnt sausage fix.

They really are makkara addicts. This year I joined a kayak club and on the beginners' course they explained how the kayak has a little storage space just perfect for storing a barbecue for your sausages. Having passed the course, we adventured off to a nearby island only to find it full of people who'd come over for the day in their yachts. We watched them land, walk to the barbecue spot, cook their sausages then get back on their boats and sail away again.

So passionate are the Finns about cooking sausages al fresco that they have even invented telescopic barbecue forks which fit neatly into your backpack/ski pants.

Sometimes it feels a bit like the Pokemon craze where going out is actually an unintended consequence of getting to a place where you can wave your phone at imaginary Japanese characters/ cook sausages. At least it gets him out of the house.