Dolce far niente -moments in Finland — Life at the summer cottage
Finnish summer is short but sweet and it’s best spent at the summer cottage.
Since child, I have spent all my summers in a cottage in the archipelago of Southern Finland. Just smelling the fresh sea breeze and hearing the seagulls sing, bring me a thousand beautiful memories and relaxes me in a second.
The summer cottage and sauna are obviously two essentials of Finnish wellbeing since almost everybody loves them – there are only 5,5 million people living in Finland, and an estimated half a million cottages and two million saunas!
Part of Finnish mentality seems to be that at times we love to escape and isolate ourselves in the middle of nowhere and be a bit anti-social. I am an ambivert personality, and I love living in a big city, but sometimes a part of me longs for peace and loneliness, and the cottage life in silent nature is the perfect way to leave the world behind. It’s Finnish dolce far niente at its best.
Sweet summer moments with my lagotto romagnolo Okariina.
Midsummer magic. It is almost a nightless night in Southern Finland.
As it’s said that creative people need time to sit around and do nothing, I tend to spend my cottage days without making too many plans. As our cottage is on a small island, I love to swim, walk by the shore with my dog and take little boat rides in the archipelago.
A true cottage person enjoys a simple cottage life no matter the season or weather. When it rains, it’s lovely to sit inside listening to the rain hitting the roof and reading or playing cards and board games by the fireplace.
When the day turns into night, it’s time to heat up the sauna. I prefer a very hot sauna, heated up to 80 Celsius, and between taking löyly, meaning taking the heat in a sauna, it’s refreshing to cool off in the cold seawater.
Another lovely sauna tradition is to whip yourself in the sauna with vihta, a kind of whip made of birch branches. It relaxes muscles and works wonders for circulation. Plus the scent of birch might be my favourite scent ever.
After relaxed days at the cottage, I feel recharged and my creative mind is full of new ideas — the cottage life always does its magic.
When your cottage is on an island, the visit to the grocery store looks like this.
Chanterelles and new potatoes with salted butter and dill are my favourite Finnish summer food.
Finnish summer tastes like handpicked wild raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. I like to enjoy them with the best ever crepes made by my mamma.
Babies growing bigger.
Together <3
Text & photos by Hertta Hiltunen. Portrait by Helena Järvinen.
