Get a True Taste of Finland on a Foraging Tour

Finnish culture is deeply entwined with nature and the country's “Everyman’s Rights” enshrines the people’s freedom to fish and forage the countryside and even on privately owned land and at city parks. You can throw together a hearty, nourishing salad from leafy superfoods during a stroll along Helsinki’s city streets — once you know what to look for.

Biologist, author, and herbal, berry, and mushroom expert Anna Nyman has many favorite spots to bring visitors. Seurasaari island, 15 minutes east of Helsinki's city center, is less than a mile long with a fertile landscape of more than 300 edible plants and berries before trumpet chanterelles and penny bun mushrooms erupt in the fall. 

Crossing the bridge on an excursion with Nyman, passing terns nesting on lichen-mottled rocks and motionless fishers, we land on a succulent carpet of the perennial isomaksaruoho, "big liver grass." Known by a colorful range of folksy English monikers — livelong, frog's stomach, and witch's moneybags — it tastes a little like pea sprouts.

“You can eat this raw in salads and sandwiches; like aloe vera, it’s good for digestion,” Nyman explains, passing around trowels and paper bags that’ll help keep our haul fresh.

Fireweed’s spear-like stalks, colloquially called “wild asparagus,” are delicious raw or cooked with local garlic mustard, one the world’s oldest spices, or strongly flavored wild sage, which Nyman says that Finnish people used to brew like hops and grow as a tax levy.

Nearby, we pick wild chive and iron-rich stinging nettles — great to roll to eat on the go; chop for pesto; or dry, crush, or blanche to use in soups, salads, or smoothies.

“According to Finnish folklore, the nettle may help urinary pain, since it eliminates uric acid from the body and strengthens blood, lowers blood sugar, increases oxygen flow, and balances blood pressure,” she says.

Nyman, formerly an environmental epigenetics researcher, began leading foraging tours 10 years ago. She felt called to share her knowledge of the flavors and nutritional properties of wild herbs with others, and because she wanted to escape the “heaviness” of indoor lab environments to spend more time in nature.

From April to October, she runs outdoor tours, hunting for wild herbs until August and mushrooms in autumn. When snow blankets the land, Nyman offers a “Magical Herbs and DIY Cosmetics” workshop, teaching the significance of lavender and chamomile in Finnish folklore while formulating lotions, lip balms, bath salts, and clay masks that soothe and protect skin during the harsh Nordic winter.

“Using herbs has been an important part of our culture, but it's being forgotten — these things are not taught at elementary schools or even universities. Foraging food is the best mindfulness practice I know and effective at healing you on all levels,” she says. 

Finland has a slew of destination-worthy restaurants — it's no coincidence that Michelin launched its Nordic Countries Guide here the past two years — and it’s common for chefs to source from trusted farmers, growers, and foragers, or develop their menus around products their team has collected, hunted, or fished.

At Grön, an intimate 18-seat restaurant in Helsinki’s Kamppi district, seasonal tasting menus reflect the natural flow of nature in the wild and on its farm. Dishes might showcase wild-harvested products like lobster tail, white asparagus, and sliced sea buckthorn alongside grilled Lapland rack of lamb with pine nuts, spring garlic, and cabbage mille feuille with wild chive.

In the more casual kitchen at Skörd, cooks Anton and Jon rustle up six-course dinners showcasing the best domestic seasonal game, wild fish, and plants, acidifying, drying and pickling any surplus for winter.

If you want to prep a meal from Sami Tallberg’s acclaimed Wild Herb Cookbook but are pressed for time, you’ll find seasonal, wild-harvested berries and mushrooms in Helsinki Market Square and Hakaniemen Kauppahalli, Helsinki’s light, airy 1914 market hall, recently restored to its original aesthetic. Ruohonjuuri sells local, organic food, cosmetics and self-care products; Yrttipaja and Arctic Warriors stock wild herbs and berries.

And it’s absolutely worth making the time to explore Helsinki’s myriad islands and central park, uncovering Finland’s rich history and cultural tradition of holistic wellbeing, basket in hand. Uutela neighborhood encompasses farmland, nature preserves, and a World War I artillery bunker. Windswept esker Kallahdenniemi is framed by sandy beaches.

On Seurasaari island, you can wander an open air museum of Finland’s rural past — clusters of traditional regional wooden homesteads patrolled by friendly docents in voluminous peasant dresses scattered along forest paths.

Nutrient-dense yarrow, one of Nyman’s favorite ingredients for salads and spice mixes, grows abundantly here, as does common sorrel, recognizable by its tall stems, red flowers, and tart, Granny Smith-apple zing.

Nyman picks and passes around caraway and meadowsweet, breaking the stems so I can smell the striking aroma of cucumber and watermelon. Incongruously, its white flowers smell like a hospital ward; Nyman explains that each contains salycylic acid, which belongs to the same family as aspirin. 

“Most people that come foraging with me are surprised that there are so many different edible herbs and flavors in the wild, all around us — we’re walking on food and medicine all the time.”

In a Disney movie moment, a fluffy great tit, optimistic that Nyman is passing around nuts or seeds, flutters down and perches on her hand before swooping back, disappointed, to its roost. 

Nyman does have refreshments for us, however. Framed by bear boxes — traditional larders on stilts to protect food stores from roaming grizzlies — she rummages in her backpack and produces a flask of refreshing spruce tip juice combined with honey, lemon, and soda, which she passes around with homemade nettle and mushroom quiche and savory cookies as we soak up the sun.

I might never buy groceries again.