Finnish Fooddities #3: Everyman's Right

Jokapäiväistä Leipää (Daily Bread) has plenty of visitors from foreign countries as well, even though it's mainly written in Finnish. Most of these visits are probably made by Finns abroad, but I want to give something for potential Nonfinns :)

This is a third post in series called Finnish Fooddities and it is about Finnish food oddities. Hopefully you'll enjoy it! Check out the first and second posts too!

Here in Finland we have this thing called Everyman's Right, which means freedom to roam and gather in the wilderness. Collect things like wild berries, mushrooms and "use" nature in the limits of Everyman's Right. The basic limit is not to harm nature or peace in the neighbourhood.

I normally use my Everyman's Right on times like these, autumn is the season for berries and mushrooms. So it is free to pick up for example porcini from our forests and plenty of people do that. And then those free porcinis can be found dried from a hall in Italy for a decent price of several hundred euros per kilo. And not only in Italy, that same free stuff is sold in our stores with heavy price on it, even though anyone of us could go to the forest and get something to eat for free.

Kuva: mountainamoeba

Very much same kind of Everyman's Rights are enjoyed at least in Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Scotland. Limits of course vary, most countries demand landowners permission and actually you'll need that even in Finland for some things, foraging spruce sprouts for example. Permission is also needed, if open fire is needed in cookery. Hunting and fishing is licenced activity, unless it's ice fishing or done with rod.

Foraging naturally is pretty much different kind of thing to do compared to mineral search.

During the summer and autumn there are plenty of things to eat in our forests, good and clean stuff. It's naturally important to know what one can and can't do in the forests and what sort of things to collect. Recently few people collected Amanita virosa also known as European destroying angel and at least one has passed away because of it. Caution is recommended.

So this time the Finnish Fooddity is about freedom to roam. We have it, many of us practise it and some even benefit financially from it. I think it's a beautiful thing to have and hopefully it doesn't get ruined by abuse.

What do you think about Everyman's Right? Is it practised in your country? If it is, do you practise it?