There is a certain reverence juxtaposed with the silly paper hats, comical bibs and fluttering streamers hanging from the chandeliers at the crayfish party. I helped set up the tablescape (read: Johanna handed me a box of supplies and her father graciously had mercy on my bleak knowledge of how to operate curling streamers). The box she gave me was layered with evidence of parties of the past. Each memento was accompanied by a nostalgic narrative that offered me another piece of the cultural puzzle behind the practice of crayfish parties. 

We set the table up family-style with children at one end, adults at the other. There were whimsical paper crayfish placecards which we attached with clothespins to the stems of champagne flutes. The children also had placecards, even though two of them couldn’t read. 

A large part of consuming the crayfish is the ceremony behind cracking it open with a dedicated apparatus. Johanna took the lid off of a compact satin box and gingerly removed a piece of such cutlery, pausing before she turned it towards me to display a small inscription. This was the silver one she was given when she was a child, she told me. I responded as one does when someone exhibits an heirloom. There was other such paraphernalia wrapped in tissue and I left her to lay them out at the place settings while I finished battling the paper streamers. 

In the kitchen, there were two stout white buckets of murky water with red rounded backs breaching the surface. The crayfish had been sourced from a local fisherman (there were two along this chain of islands and arguments in favour of either lay with which sea creature you were desirous of consuming). She pulled two porcelain platters from a cupboard and demonstrated how to lay the crayfish out. While we did this, working side by side, she explained how they were prepared by being boiled with sea salt and dill. Finnish people eat a lot of dill. 

There was a sack of dill flowers on the kitchen island and she passed it over to me telling me that you decorate the platters with it. I pushed dill blossoms into the crevices between the crayfish and, for the biggest crayfish sitting on top of the mound, I shoved the largest sprig of flowers into his claw like a bouquet. Looking at them stacked on the platter, festooned with florets and shimmering with the slick sheen of their broth, I felt a little sorry for the crayfish. Their unseeing eyes reminded me of the gleam of the fried snapper’s glazed eyeball staring up from a plate in Anguilla.

We carried the platters out to the table and aligned them along the middle. They marched in a strict row joined by a silver charger with a fat slab of smoked salmon and new potatoes for the children whose palates were not yet welcoming of crayfish. Nestled in the corner of the room was an additional bedecked table which housed two toasters and an array of bread choices. The anti-carb tentacles of the USA have not wrapped their suction cups around Finland and I love that. 

Everyone was there now, their boats hitched like obedient horses at the small wooden dock. The group was an intimate collection of Johanna’s paternal family drawn by the summer months to the archipelago. Clothed in red and white, the adults on the deck sipping flutes of champagne, the children laughing in the nearby forest, everyone asking me the same question – how are you enjoying your Finnish summer?

We found our places at the table and I discovered that Johanna had clipped my name card between her two sisters’, and hers at the other end. In front of me was my schnapps glass and to my right was the silver heirloom crayfish knife. Nestled under the rim of my plate on the other side was a small leatherbound book not unlike a hymnal. A schnapps song book which – as the name implies– is a book of songs sung while drinking schnapps. One might ask how serious this party is if it involves a lyrical guide. One would be correct. 

No sooner had we picked up our crayfish knives than a velvety tenor voice broke out in a jaunty melody. Presently everyone (except me, of course) picked up the tune and all along the table people were raising their schnapps glasses and locking eyes with the twinkle of the first schnapps song. The rule had already been told to me: when someone starts singing, you have to drink. As such, when the verse came to an end and everyone brought their glass to their lips, I did the same. The difference would be that, while my Finnish companions took in a miniscule amount of their glass’ contents, I downed mine. 

The schnapps was homemade by Johanna’s father, its handwritten label curled in inky script around the bottle’s neck and the herbs, picked from the island, floated like preserved specimens at its base. It felt warm as it spread through my chest, a heady taste of sweetness in its wake. My glass was refilled by Johanna’s sister who (giggling at my newb mistake) explained that I had a long night ahead of me and, were I to keep that pace of consumption, I would not make it to the end. Note to self: just because it’s the size of a shot glass doesn’t mean it is.

It could have been the visceral glow of the schnapps mingled with the champagne that seemed to regenerate in its flute, but the low slung sun felt especially majestic that night as it flirted with the depth of the Baltic Sea. There were tales of past parties, humorous accounts, and at some point her uncle launched into a history of a remarkable ancestor. Someone lit candles. A guitar appeared and the schnapps songs morphed into a full on concerto. The ritual of the crayfish party and the gathering of a group singing for a celebration that did not involve a holiday or a birthday (albeit it was Johanna’s name day) was new to me. It was then, everyone’s arms raised, their schnapps glasses high (the children with seltzer in their Moomin mugs) that I heard my son’s voice ring out in Swedish, familiar at this point with the schnapps song.