Discover Finland through its favourite foods
I often think the Finnish year can be described in pastries – one for every month. Korvapuusti (cinnamon buns) may never run out, but other specialities come and go with a bang. More than in other countries, I feel, pastries respect a particular calendar, marking important milestones throughout the year. This is a story I’d like to tell.
And so, here's the first episode of my “Finnish traditional pastry calendar”, starting with something that isn't really a pastry at all...
Rye bread January?
January is the only month I can't associate with a traditional pastry. My sources say “it’s because in January, we’re too busy trying not to drink”. Rye bread seemed the perfect fit to this dry month.
Rye bread, or ruisleipä, is perhaps the nation’s favourite food. My flatmate used to eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and often for a midnight snack. It goes with butter, open-top sandwiches, salmon soup, and with the ubiquitous pickle or cucumber. It comes in multiple shapes and sizes, and varies from chewy to cracker-dry.
Finnish rye bread
The story of Finnish rye bread is one of a country that long defined itself as a land of great distances, long winters and inhospitable lands. A poor country, where peasant culture endured for centuries, and people lived on small, often isolated, farms.
Rye could thrive over the short summer months. More importantly, ruisleipä could be stored for many months, which was vital for surviving the long and freezing winter months.
From rye to wrists
Today, this age-old reliance on rye bread is expressed by sayings such as Ruista ranteeseen! (from rye to wrists – rye gives you strength) and Leipä miehen tiellä pitää (a man keeps bread all long his way).
Variations from East to West
Each region has its specific ruisleipä. In Åland, for example, saaristolaisleipä (archipelago bread) is filled with rye, malt and syrup to make it sweet. It goes exceptionally well with salty fish.
Baking methods varied from East to West. In eastern Finland, households used the same stove for heating and preparing food. Bread could be made quite easily, and fresh loaves were baked almost every week.
In the West, heating and baking were done on different fire sources, and it was more economical to bake large batches at a time, every few months. Here, the dough was shaped into a disk with a hole in the middle, like a large, dark, flat doughnut. This makes it ruisreikäleipä (rye hole-bread). Such a great word! Modern recipes suggest creating the hole with a shot glass…
After baking, all the lovely holey ruisreikäleivät were strung above the chimney, on a rope or on poles, and left to hang in long rows from the rafters. This was as much a practical storage technique as a means of survival: as they floated close to the fire, the loaves could dry and harden, and stay edible for months.
Despite this, food could become lacking, and in times of famine, rye had to be supplemented with rather daunting-sounding ingredients such as flour made from hay or pine tree bark (pettuleipä).
A symbol of the nation
In the 19th century, ruisreikäleipä in particular became synonymous with Finland. In a bid to define and develop a sense of common identity after centuries of foreign rule, intellectuals, artists, ethnographers and nationalists scoured the countryside in search of traditional life and folklore.
Humble, resilient rural life became a representation of Finland, and a way of rallying the population around a shared history and sense of self. Rye bread, with a hole in it, became an image of Finland as a whole.
A foreign point of view
Over the centuries, foreign travellers in Finland recalled their encounters with rye bread, generally without much passion.
Passing through Kokkola in the 1930s, the socialite and travel writer V. C. Buckley said the market square was filled with stalls sporting white awnings, where women sold loaves of rye bread baked in the shape of a motor tyre – and just as tough.
Author Bernard Newman concurred, stating: “I had tried to eat this rye bread, but failed – army biscuits are comparatively soft”.
In 1897, Mrs Alec Tweedie described her experience on a farm in slightly more detail, giving a glimpse of the toils of country life:
“ [A woman] made black bread in a huge tub, the dough being so heavy and solid that [she] could not turn it over at all, and only managed to knead it by doubling her fists and regularly plunging them to the bottom with all her strength. Her sunburnt arms disappeared far above her elbow, and judging by the way the meal stuck to her she found the bread-making process very hard work…”
Despite her often patronising views, Tweedie recognised the importance of what she called the “dark bread of the natives”.
To me, the value of this passage is it’s contemporary description of the rural life that Finnish artists were trying to capture and portray in a more sympathetic way.
Country life and Finland’s national artist
In the 1880s, the famous artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela travelled to central Finland. Near Keuruu, he painted the interior of the farm on which he stayed, and the occupations of his hosts. By the chimney, a man is mending a pair of worn-out boots; in the background, a woman is spinning at the wheel; from the beams, rows of ruisreikäleipä are waiting to be eaten.
An urban ticket to rye
Fast-forward to the 20th century and Finnish independence (1917). As the country started to change and modernise, men and women flocked to Helsinki from the vast countryside, especially after 1945. With all these mouths to feed, rye bread needed to go urban!
The working-class cooperative Elanto opened shops that sprang up like mushrooms. At the time, it was forbidden to sell bread, dairy and meat on the same premises. And so Elanto built individual dairies, bakeries and butchers' shops side by side, all around the city. Wonderfully contrived archive pictures show the interiors of these corner-stores. On the shelves, you can usually spot piles of different ruisleipä.
“Rye bread is like granite”
For a split second, my mind went blank. In this quote, could my friend actually be referring to its texture?
No. With those few choice words, she meant, of course, that like the granite bedrock we are standing on, ruisleipä is a true symbol of Finnishness. I think this beautiful simile says it all.
Marikit Taylor
*The quotes are taken from Tony Lurcock's excellent triology, "British travellers in Finland" (CB Editions).
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