Building a sledge on Valentines Day

 Hyvää Ystävänpäivää / Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day from Finland! The Finns actually celebrate the 14th of February differently than Americans do--here it's called Ystävänpäivää, or Friendship Day. It's common for friends to give each other flowers and candy, but not romantic partners. Finland has only celebrated this holiday since the 1980s, and I really like how they do it.

Given the nature of Finnish valentines day, it was the perfect day to spend with my friends working on a project for the next "holiday" in Finland: Laskiainen, or Fat Tuesday. Here it's typical on Fat Tuesday to play in the snow in anticipation of the coming spring and to eat pea soup and buns filled with jam or almond paste.

The universities put a fun spin on it though. Together all of the students unions are organizing Fastlaskiainen, where teams race handmade sleds. But here's the catch--each team has 7 people and everyone has to fit on the sled!


One of my Finnish friends helped us register the two teams of EPS students--"Team Cindy" and "Sledge-Pussies". Don't ask. We spent the day thrift shopping, brainstorming, and hammering until finally we had what resembled something on which we could slide down a snowy hill.

Trying to fit the bed in the car

Our basic concept? A wood bed frame with cross country skis nailed to the bottom. We also added those turquoise circular plastic sleds for backup.

It might not be a perfect design, but it will be fun to see how well it works on Tuesday when we race! While building, we all joked about how it's a good thing that the city gave us Finnish identification numbers when we registered our residence here--if anyone needs medical treatment it'll be much easier to get with a registered identity! Not that we are hoping to need medical treatment from racing our sleds . . .

All in all, it was the perfect way to spend Ystävänpäivää: with my friends. :)