Oma maa mansikka, muu maa mustikka

For a class I had this morning, I had to write a story on how a saying of my choosing came to be. I picked a finnish saying to make it more interesting and wrote the story in a few minutes before leaving to class. Anyways, here it is for your enjoyment ;)

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There once lived an old man and his old wife. His wife had big dreams – she wanted to travel the world – see places she’d only read or heard about! The old man, on the other hand, loved everything familiar. As a child, he had been torn away from his home soil of Finland, where he had spent his childhood, and been forced to move with his parents to Bulgaria. The initial shock of the move had been great, as he loved his home country dearly – and still does – but after time passed, he began to grow fond of the cottage in which he had spent the rest of his life. He dreamed daily of returning to his home land, but he feared change, and so he never did. He had met his wife on a much dreaded trip to the city – she thought the city was exciting and adventurous; he loathed it – and they married a year later. Decades had passed, and their personalities clashed just as much now as they had from the start (she was still convinced that she could change him; he was stubborn as a mule).



The cottage the old couple lived in was surrounded by wild blueberry bushes. The wife adored these bushes and spent hours in the summer gathering the berries and baking blueberry pies. The old man hated blueberries. He much preferred strawberries. He was particularly fond of the strawberry bush he possessed, and he carefully tended it year-long. It was the only possession of his left over from his childhood in Finland. He loved to close his eyes as he tended the strawberry bush and reminisce about the warm summer days spent at the cabin in his home country – swimming in the glorious lake, freedom blowing through his hair. Then he would open his eyes and see the lacklustre cottage he lived in, or his wife.


There was a language barrier between the couple – he spoke but little Bulgarian, she spoke no Finnish – but they remained united by their love (though they both secretly loathed each other). She was bothered by a particular phrase the old man used. “Oma maa mansikka, muu maa mustikka,” he would say as she suggested travel plans of any kind. She hated when he used this phrase! The old man knew she did not speak any Finnish, yet he said it to her all the time.


Well, dear readers, let me explain what the old wife could not understand, and which you, I presume, do not either. The literal translation of the phrase goes like this: Own land strawberry, other land blueberry. In a sense, it is like saying “Home Sweet Home.” Other places and other things may have been sweet to his wife, but what was familiar, to the old man, was sweeter still.