The deepest core of Finnishness can be found under our feet at Midsummer.
I think that I have found the deep core of Finnishness. Neither perseverance, nor forests, nor lakes, nor rugged engineer-likeness, nor even a lack of speech separate Finns from other nations. The distinguishing factor of Finnishness can be found under everyone’s feet in midsummer. The core, base and foundation of our entire nationality are terraces – really big terraces.
No other country has terraces as great as Finland.
A typical activity for a Finn, written in his DNA, is to build a terrace and the following year to extend the terrace until the entire plot is one terrace.
The most intelligent have realized that at least in southern Finland, there is enough heat for a good month a year. Every possible place where the sun hits or even reflects should be covered with a terrace.
If you used to recognize a summer Finn by sandals and socks, today sandals have changed to terraces, but socks are still worn. What’s more wonderful than walking around in your own yard with socks on.
I am noticed that a Finn – especially a Finnish man – is one particularly weak moment. That moment is at the morning coffee table, when a Finnish man sees an ad of a hardware store, where terrace boards are on offer. So I mean that they are once again on offer, as they were last year and the year before that.
But that doesn’t matter, because 300 square meters of boarded-up yard is not much, especially if you compare the amount of square meters with what is found on the neighbor’s lot.
Building a terrace is straightforward. Small foundations are enough. Then we make the frame. Boarding on top of the frame. Hifi fans choose a hidden fastening. It doesn’t hurt that the planking is screwed directly from the top.
The best thing about the job is that making a terrace is relatively quick and it’s hard to make a mistake. Building a terrace is easier than assembling an Ikea shelf, but it makes you feel upright. I did all this, and all by myself.
The experience of one’s own uprightness reaches almost religious proportions when the body is immersed in a warm liquid at the end of the terrace work. At best, a baby purchased with installments that is nicer than the neighbor’s is like a chance after birth to return to the atmosphere of the womb, to sincere satisfaction.
All of this. All by myself.
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Somehow strangely, everything big tells its owner only and only about its smallness.
Terraces create conditions, potential. Potential creates a psychological sense of security.
Someone wants to get big muscles because they can’t know when they have to lift something heavy or tame a threatening situation. I myself once acquired a powerful BMW, because the violent acceleration on the freeway ramp relaxes my central nervous system. Also, you never know what kind of overtaking situation you might get into with your car within the framework of Finnish road legislation. It is good to have an internet connection of 1000 megabytes, the size of a TV wall.
But somehow, strangely, everything big tells its owner only and only about its smallness. It leads me to think that maybe even then, maybe I could expand that terrace a little more, because the car also just changed to a more efficient one…
My life during that time I have built and renovated all kinds of things. I know that making things with your hands creates satisfaction. When you do it yourself, an emotional bond is created with what you have achieved. When screwing terrace boards, a Finn deepens his relationship with his ideal environment.
If for a Finn, nature means planted and man-made economic forests and intensively produced fields, then a natural yard circle is impregnated or heat-treated wood. A composite board will also work.
Lord Chesterfield (1694–1773) said that dirt is matter in the wrong place. A boarded terrace is unbeatable in terms of price-quality ratio compared to a concrete, tiled or asphalted yard, when the purpose is to keep matter Absent from the wrong places.
Ticks, butterflies, flowers, bees and the neighbor come to the plot only by invitation.
If the plot is large, then large fields should be kept as lawns. A well-kept lawn creates a sense of control for its owner, but at the same time, the lawn constantly communicates that this too could have a terrace.
Then, when the conditional has changed to the present, i.e. the terrace has been put in place of the lawn, you can repeat out loud (with socks on, of course), how convenient it is when you no longer have to mow the lawn in this place, trip over a hole, a stump or a stone.
You can wear socks, in your own yard.
Home dreams is a short trip to the nightmare, where the terrace has become too small for summer parties, midsummer or crab parties. It would be extremely embarrassing if a neighbor saw how a party guest had to frolic on the grass instead of on the terrace with socks on.
However, the nightmare will never come true, thanks to the decision-makers, thanks to the building legislation, thanks to the resilience of Finns. Fortunately, Finland is the promised land of terraces.
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