9 Things You Will Find in Every Finnish Kitchen

Finnish kitchens come in all shapes and sizes but look hard enough and a pattern emerges. There are things you will find in virtually every one of them: some practical to the point of genius, some baffling if you grew up elsewhere and some so Finnish in spirit that they tell you more about the culture than any guidebook will

1. The dish drying cupboard

The astiankuivauskaappi, a cupboard above the sink with a slatted base where washed dishes are placed to air dry directly over the draining board, was invented in Finland in 1945 and remains one of those innovations so obviously correct that its absence elsewhere is genuinely puzzling. You wash, you stack and the water drips into the sink below. No tea towels. No drying. No pile of dishes on a rack taking up half the counter.

It is hard to explain why this is not universal. British friends, upon encountering one for the first time, stare at it the way you would look at a particularly elegant solution to a problem you had forgotten was a problem. Then they go home and continue drying their dishes with a tea towel, because that is what you do.

2. The plastic bag collection

Plastic bags are not free in Finland and this has produced in the Finnish kitchen a very particular kind of order. The bags are kept. They are folded. They are stored in a drawer or sometimes in another bag. Three or four bags should cover the week. Check the top drawer.

This is not hoarding. It is resource consciousness expressed in small practical acts. The same instinct produces the lifehack culture, the Niksipirkka tradition of inventive reuse that Finnish magazines have been publishing since 1974. Finns save old tights to use as garden ties. They use newspaper to clean windows. They repurpose glass jars with a thoroughness that would be admirable if it were not quite so total.

3. Cardamom

Finnish baking runs on cardamom. Pulla, the soft plaited cardamom bun that is the smell of Finnish domesticity, requires it. So do many biscuits and cakes and pastries. The cardamom in a Finnish kitchen is not a rarely consulted spice at the back of the cupboard. It is a staple, restocked regularly and taken seriously.

The flavour is floral, warm and faintly medicinal. Not what you would expect to be at the centre of a culture’s baking identity if you had come from a culinary tradition organised around vanilla or chocolate. But cardamom is to Finnish baking what butter is to French pastry: not optional and almost always present in larger quantities than seems reasonable.

4. Something from Marimekko

It might be a mug. It might be an oven glove or a tablecloth or a set of napkins. It will be patterned: bold, graphic, primary colours, Unikko poppies if you are traditional, something more restrained if you are the kind of Finn who finds Unikko slightly obvious. Marimekko has been making Finnish kitchens look like Finnish kitchens since 1951 and the relationship shows no sign of cooling.

The non Marimekko contingent tends toward Arabia or Iittala, ceramic and glassware brands with the same design philosophy and the same quiet confidence that a cup should be beautiful. Finnish kitchens are, as a rule, well designed. The aesthetics are not an accident.

5. Something from Ikea

Yes, Ikea is Swedish. Finns know this. They go to Ikea anyway. The Helsinki store in Vantaa is one of the largest in the Nordic region and the KALLAX, the BILLY and the POSANG are as present in Finnish homes as in any other. Utensils, pans, dish towels and storage boxes: Ikea, quietly, without comment.

6. Rye bread

Finnish rye bread is nothing like the light slightly sweet rye loaves you get elsewhere. It is dense, dark, sour and substantial. It is eaten at breakfast with butter and cheese. It is eaten as a side to soup. It is eaten because it has been eaten and will continue to be eaten, because this is what bread is. White bread exists in Finland. It is not considered bread in the same way.

Ruisleipa has a lower glycaemic index than wheat bread, keeps longer and contains more fibre. Finns did not adopt it for health reasons; they adopted it because rye grows in Finnish conditions and wheat does not and the taste followed from the necessity. That it turned out to be good for you is the kind of thing Finland tends not to make a fuss about.

7. Fiskars scissors

The orange handled Fiskars scissors, made in Finland since 1967 and the first ergonomic scissors ever produced, occupy a particular place in Finnish domestic life. They are in the kitchen drawer and if not the kitchen drawer then the one you would check next. They have been there for years. They work perfectly. They will continue to work perfectly. You do not think about them until you need them and then they are there.

8. A Finnish brand you have never heard of

Every Finnish kitchen contains at least one product, whether a coffee brand or a mustard or a pickled herring in a particular jar, from a company that is entirely unknown outside Finland and considered entirely unremarkable inside it. Finns buy Finnish, it’s seeming an instinctive Finnish personality trait. Not as a statement but as a default. The products tend to be good, priced reasonably and packaged without fuss. No one is particularly exercised about any of this.

9. A Moomin mug

Or a Moomin plate or a Moomin tea towel or a small Moomin figure on the windowsill. Tove Jansson’s creation has been part of Finnish visual culture since 1945 and Arabia has been producing Moomin ceramics since 1990. They are collected with the quiet seriousness that Finns apply to most things they care about. The character on your mug says something if you know how to read it. Snorkmaiden suggests a particular personality. Little My means something else entirely.

If you do not know the characters yet, you will. Finland has time.