Finnish SISU and MÖKKI

There is something about Finns swimming in cold lake water: I think they have a skin of a seal with a good amount of fat protecting them from freezing to death :) The Finnish kids might get the famous Finnish SISU (= courage, will and determination) with breast milk, but I think it's refined in cold lake water :)

lake Hankavesi

When you ask Finns what makes them special, then they might answer you, it's SISU. As a German-born  Roman Schatz has written in his book From Finland With Love "sisu is spending your entire summer in the forest in pouring rain, loving every second of it". 

There are hundreds of summer cottages (FIN: mökki) in Ähtäri area. People come here for summer from as far as Helsinki. Roman Schatz describes this migration in the above mentioned book in a very shrewd way: "The  only real traffic jams known in Finland occur around midsummer, during the mass exodus when thousands of people leave their homes and disappear to the countryside". In the countryside you enjoy silence, sauna, swimming in the lake (because every mökki is by the lake or at least within a walking distance to the river), fishing, picking berries and mushrooms. The towns are left for tourists who roam about the empty streets and wonder where all the people have gone. 

Ähtäri zoo camping ground cottages

When in town you miss seeing stars in the sky because the town illuminates the sky too much, then amongst the Finnish forests you miss seeing stars in the sky as well -- the sky is just too light. The sun doesn't really set during the night. The magical midsummer nights!

Neither mosquitoes nor black flies (FIN: mäkärät) stop Finns from living amongst the woods for the summer. Mökki is the place to be during summer holiday!

A true example of Finnish SISU: tree growing on a rock