Beautiful fishes

 Baltic Herring Fest has been a thing since 1743, yet I have rarely visited. I guess there's a reason for it. Herring is not my favorite food. But it's somehow comforting that something so traditional yet unfashionable as herring is still being celebrated, almost 300 years later. 

Sometimes buying fish is not so ethical. Say, farmed salmon, which is very popular, is a huge burden on the environment. This year, the Herring Fest featured less popular lake fish that abound in Finland and that is, if responsibly caught, much better for the environment. I tasted canned fish meant for cooking and baking in stead of tuna. Delicious. 

The Apple man. He let us taste the apples

 

I managed to get PW to come with me, although he really doesn't eat any fish. We still bought a surprising amount of stuff, since fish isn't the only thing sold: apples, archipelago bread, buckthorn jelly. 

This is archipelago bread, one 
of the best I've had. 

 The Baltic Herring Fest happens in the fall, when the fishers from the Finnish Archipelago come with their boats to sell cured and pickled fish to city-dwellers. At least that's the theory, and a lot of the sales people did indeed come from the archipelago. We saw Åland's flag everywhere. (If you don't know what Åland is, here's the Wikipedia article.) The apple seller spoke a wonderful archipelago Swedish (he knew Finnish too.) There was a guy from Åland selling his own hot sauce. Turned out he grew the chilies himself and developed the recipes himself, which is why he could put his face in the bottles. 

Chili sauce at the tent avenue - note the flag

  An archipelago item I had not yet tasted but was curious about was potato waffles. They are made from grated potato and onion, then fried in a waffle iron. It's a fairly new item - I had read about it somewhere but hadn't tasted. What did I think? The roe was a bit too salty for me, I couldn't taste much else. I should have taken the one with cured salmon. But the potato was crunchy, which I liked. 

Eating my potato waffle with sour cream, roe and red onion

 

Traditionally the salespeople are in boats by the market square and you can buy their stuff directly from the boats. This Herring Fest had also an avenue with tents for those who couldn't or wouldn't come by boat. And the extra fun thing was three larger wooden ships - one of those had a little restaurant where you could eat salmon soup.  

Bigger boats

 In the 1700's this Herring Fest was actually very helpful - city dwellers could get their salted herring for the winter, and the fishermen got a huge clientele. These days there are competitions for the Spiced Fish of the year and the Herring Surprise. The jury tastes all the herring foods to choose their favorites - but I'd rather stick to other products. Yet there were loads of people, even on a weekday, so that was nice. 

Having an outside event in October means at least 50% chance of rain, so everything was rainproof, all the sales people had proper plastic roofs. It can also be cold, so they were prepared with clothes. As were the visitors, even the tourists from East Asia. In fact, there was some drizzle, but only little. The cloudy sky felt like it belonged there, above the bustling Market Square of Helsinki. 

Back of a boat with herring products