To the Finnish Line: lammas

that means sheep.

There's a chicken-wire pen at the edge of the development. Lovely view of the lake. A little lean-to for the lambs to huddle under when it rains. All summer, the people in the neighborhood bring the lambs stale bread and the little kids learn all about how wonderful (stinky) farmyards are and the precise sound that a sheep makes. Finnish sheep do not have any noticeable accent in comparison with American ones.

I was told that we would have a lamb party. Here I was, naively thinking that this was just a strange celebration of sheep. Perhaps we would make a circle around their pen and sing them Finnish lullabies, or see how the Mäkinen family down the street taught the black one how to tap dance. I mean, the Finns are a bit funny about animals and nature and all that, it wasn't all too implausible.

Then on Thursday I was invited to the lamb party preparations. I peeled a mountain of cabbage leaves and chopped onions til I cried, along with six other middle-aged women who seemed impervious to the onions. And then I said something really stupid - "The lambs don't like loud music, though, do they?"

They all turned to look at me. "It doesn't matter much, since we're eating them..."

Oh.

Note the ski goggles.

cute, hey?

What followed was a massive block party. They buried the meat and let the fire on top of it burn for a day or so, then the whole neighborhood got together and they lifted it out with great ceremony. There were approximately fifty small blonde children milling about (they had been told that the lambs had gone away for the winter and would come back next year). Fresh blueberry pies and little pine-cone-lamb table decorations and heaps of rye bread. Trays and trays of lamb. Boxes and boxes of wine. It was a veritable ancestral Viking feast.

Somehow I doubt the Vikings had karaoke though. As the evening wore on, kids on the microphone were replaced by teenagers on the microphone were replaced by rather drunk adults all over the microphone. This was pretty entertaining, but also sort of shameful - because even inebriated people and five-year-olds can sing in Finnish. I cannot. Yet.