When foreigners in Finland are asked what they appreciate most in Finland, Finnish nature is often at or near the top of the list. In this blog post, we’ll introduce an easy way to enjoy it during the winter.
Everyman’s rights
In Finland, nature is really close even if you are living in the heart of one of the largest Finnish cities. In Helsinki, for example, the large Central Park area that extends from Töölö in the south to river Vantaa in the north provides excellent opportunities to roam in Finnish forests of different kinds.
What allows to you enjoy the Finnish nature is the so-called “everyman’s rights” or the right to roam. In the Nordic countries, Baltic countries, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Austria this freedom to roam is based on an ancient tradition. It means the general public’s right to access public or privately owned land, lakes, and rivers for recreation.
These rights allow you to
- move in nature by foot, biking, or skiing. You can do this as long as you stay off cultivated fields and far enough from people’s yards;
- swim, row, and boat on lakes and the sea;
- go camping in the woods; and
- pick wildflowers, berries, and mushrooms.
What you are not allowed to do is to
- litter;
- fell or hurt trees;
- cause disturbance to animals during their breeding season;
- drive a motorized vehicle in the woods;
- hunt or fish without appropriate permits;
- start a campfire without the explicit permission of the landowner; or
- collect moss, lichen, dirt or branches.
Remember, you must stay off people’s yards. If you can stare into the eyes of someone standing in their own yard, you are probably too close to their property!
Want to learn more about the nature around you? The “Your Neighborhood Nature in Finland” online course is a fun way to do just that. Get the course from our online store.
Enjoying Finnish nature during the winter
In the summer, enjoying the Finnish nature comes naturally. Nice weather invites you to take a walk in the park or a dip in a lake. Enjoying the outside during the winter, however, can be challenging irrespective of one’s native origin. The darkness is just not that appealing.
When the winter was starting, or better yet when we thought the winter was starting we published a blog post about winter sports in Finland. In it, we encouraged you to get ready for the wintery outdoor activities. Skiing, skating, downhill skiing, and sledding are the ways to enjoy a normal Finnish winter. This year the winter has been anything but normal. Southern parts of the country have seen rarely any snow. Outside skating rinks have been impossible to maintain.
What is one to do then? Apart from traveling to Lapland, that is.
Neighborhood birdwatching
What you can do, and this you can do just by staying in your own neighborhood, is to participate in BirdLifeFinland’s weekend birdwatching event this coming weekend. BirdLifeFinland organizes this low-threshold birdwatching event every year on the last week of January.
The purpose of the event is to get everyone excited about the nature that exists around them in their own neighborhood. They encourage you to pay attention to the birds visiting feeding stations or just our yards in general. What you are supposed to do is to
- dedicate an hour for birdwatching either on Saturday or Sunday;
- note which birds you see;
- count how many birds of each species there are;
- let BirdLifeFinland know how many of what birds you saw.
They will open a webform on their webpages here for the counts. You are only supposed to this for that one hour on either day. They’ll have a raffle for all those that submitted their observations.
If you have kids, you can really have fun with this and make your own competition out of it.
But I don’t know any birds!
Even if you don’t recognize any Finnish birds yet, your kids might. If you have school-aged children, chances are they have been birdwatching this week. Many schools around Finland have been taking part in this birdwatching challenge this week.
Last year over 23 000 people submitted their observations covering nearly 16 000 locations around the country.
If all of you are equally unfamiliar with Finnish birds, BirdLifeFinland helps you with that. They have a handy little guide that shows you the most common birds you’ll see in Finnish nature during the winter. The bird names in the guide are in Finnish, Swedish, and Latin. The Latin name helps you google the bird’s name in your native language. This same webpage also has a video helping you recognize the most common birds by sound.
More about the Finnish nature
If you would like to learn more about Finnish nature in a convenient and fast way, our neighborhood nature course will do the job.
We have organized our tour of Finnish nature around the four seasons. We focus on the nature around you, and on the things you or your child run into during your daily commutes to and from work or school. This is not a wilderness or a survival guide. It’s a course that makes you look at your daily surroundings differently.
In addition to talking about plant and animal species, we talk a lot about how to enjoy Finnish nature during each particular season. A large part of that enjoyment is all the good things there are to harvest in Finnish woods. The course thus includes a recipe booklet also organized around seasons.
Have fun birdwatching this weekend!
Learn more about Finnish nature and all the things it can offer you. The course includes a 30-page recipe booklet to help you enjoy the offerings. Get our “Your Neighborhood Nature in Finland” online course from our online store.
The mission of Finnwards is to help internationals thrive in their life abroad. We provide coaching, consulting, and training services that help them do just that. Check out our Services for Businesses and Organizations or our Expat Inspiration Catalog for more information! While we serve internationals and their employers all over the world, our specialty is Finland. With our help, internationals can build a uniquely Finnish life for themselves and their family. In addition to the coaching, consulting and training services, we also offer a wide selection of self-guided online courses about Finland. Contact us and let us help you or your employees succeed in their professional and private lives abroad and in Finland.
- Most common jobs for foreigners in Finland - August 29, 2024
- Skills recognition and learning at work in Finland - April 18, 2024
- It pays off to study – a glance at expected career lengths in Finland - April 4, 2024
