Finnish Traditions

PENKKARIT AND VANHOJEN TANSSIT

 

 

Last Thursday was the Penkkarit celebration in all the cities of Finland. Penkkarit is a yearly tradition for Finnish upper secondary school students. The event is celebrated in their last year of school before the start of the matriculation exams. This celebration consists in a small parade around the city center, the students are dressing up with funny costumes and they are throwing candies to the people.

It was really nice event, I had lot of fun and I got many free candies. What I don´t understand is why is before the exams and not after, when everything is done and you are not  stress about exams.

The next day of Penkkarit celebration, Finnish students do their traditional dance ( Vanhojen tanssit),is a formal prom

for upper secondary schools students during their second year. It is a celebration of when the second-year students become the seniors of the school.

The prom celebration  last approximately one hour, during that time the students are dancing some traditional Finnish dances, that they have learned during the first semester. As you can see from the picture the students look very elegant, the male students wear black suits and the girls long and colorful dresses, the families of the girls can easily spend over one thousand euros in the dresses, hairdressing  and make up. I was very jealous to see those beauiful dresses, we don´t have this kind of event in Spain, but anyway I don´t think that my family could affort to buy me such a expensive type of dress. The most surprisingly part was when the students were dancing "Tango". Tango is a very sensual dance but the Finnish students didn´t know how to dance it properly, they were dancing it very mechanically.