This Researcher’s Choice presents objects from a summer cottage from Hyvinkää that opened at the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum. Come and immerse yourself in the layers of time in a summer cottage built in the 1950s!
The 41-square-metre timber-framed summer cottage, designed by architect Erkki Koiso-Kanttila, was built on land owned by the Finnish Association of Architects (SAFA) during the summer of 1953 using hand tools. Koiso-Kanttila designed the summer cottage in Vähä-Kiljava, Hyvinkää, for his family of seven. As with Koiso-Kanttila’s other buildings, his wife, the ethnologist Maijaliisa Koiso-Kanttila, had a significant influence on the colour scheme of the cottage.
Everyday life at the cottage was closely connected with the surrounding natural environment. In the 1950s, the family’s five sons would build dens in the surrounding area, climb trees and catch butterflies. The surroundings also provided food through berry-picking, mushroom-picking and fishing in nearby waters. Maijaliisa was mainly responsible for cooking. She cooked the roach and whitefish caught by the children in the cottage stove and every day set the following day’s lunch viili, a traditional Finnish cultured milk, to ferment. Electricity was installed in the cottage in the 1980s, expanding the cooking facilities with the arrival of an electric cooker, refrigerator and electric pump.
In addition to fishing, crayfishing was an important part of summer holidays at the Vähä-Kiljava cottage. Erkki Koiso-Kanttila taught the children to catch crayfish from a young age. Crayfishing usually took place in the evenings or at night in nearby Lake Vihtilampi or Lake Vihtijärvi. It was an exciting, exhilarating activity which, at best, yielded such a large catch that it could be shared with the whole cottage area: As early as the 1950s, the cottage community in Vähä-Kiljava used to hold joint crayfish parties in August, for which the children of the Koiso-Kanttila family often provided the crayfish.
The cottage community and its members’ shared events were a central part of summer life at the cottage. In addition to the crayfish parties, there were annual Midsummer celebrations featuring activities for both adults and children. The cottagers also met up for shared sauna sessions.
In the 1950s, there were many children in the area. There were always friends in the courtyard of Kasino, the communal building of the cottage area, for games of kick the can and other games. On rainy days, people might gather in the fireplace room at Kasino to play board games. Books were another source of joy on rainy days, and many books from different decades can be found among the summer cottage objects.
The cottage was last in active use in the summer of 2023, when a large group of family members who had enjoyed spending time there over the years said their goodbyes to it. Being selected for Seurasaari made it possible to preserve the cottage in a situation where the plot of land on which it stood had to be returned to SAFA.
Ever since it was built, the summer cottage now located on Seurasaari has played a key role both as a place of rest for adults and as an adventure ground for children. Erkki and Maijaliisa Koiso-Kanttila’s original vision remains strong in the cottage even in the 2020s, as the cottage’s amenities were updated sparingly while maintaining its condition over the years. The summer cottage objects featured in this Researcher’s Choice also tell us about these aspects.
Venla Hakola
Photos: Ilari Järvinen, The Finnish Heritage Agency
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