Sorry for the blurry image, but I just had to share this and ask…

Last week, me and a group of friends went on a trip to Lapland from Estonia. We had an absolute blast rafting down the Ivalojoki river and exploring the beautiful surroundings. Now, on our second night by the river, we camped near some local cabins meant for hikers and rafters. Everything was cozy and nice—until we found the toilet.

It had two seats, side by side. No divider, no privacy. Just two holes next to each other like it was totally normal to drop a deuce while making eye contact with your buddy. We laughed it off and figured it was just some quirky local solution. Fine.

Fast forward a few days – we're heading back to Helsinki to catch the ferry and stop before Jyväskylä to camp by a lake for our final night. What do we find? Another toilet. But this time with three holes. In a row. At that point we started to wonder: Is this a thing??

Now that I'm back, I can’t stop thinking about it. Is communal pooping some kind of social tradition in Finland, like sauna? Are there even bigger group toilets out there with 4, 5, or more seats? Do you finns actually use them together or is it just efficient design?

Out of all the things to experience on a trip to Finland, I really didn’t expect to leave with more questions about your toilet culture than your nature or history.

Anyone got the backstory on this??

by muituk

8 comments

  4. I remember we had a toilet like this when I was in girl scouts and all of us (20-30 people) went to camp on this island over a weekend. It was very awkward getting my period during the trip.

  5. Co-op shitting, the next best sport at the mökki after Saunaklonkku.

  6. You’ll find some quirks in the old parts of finland, these sort of forest finns weren’t too ashamed of their skin. I would imagine that families were the ones that built them the most, but communal areas like camps would somewhat likely also have them. Children could have maybe needed help with learning how to do it independently as early as possible, so visual demonstration could have helped.

  7. I do not have concrete information, but I imagine that the reason for having 3 separate holes is because the “basket” below needs to be manually emptied. As these were in the middle of nowhere, I guess that these get emptied relatively rarely. Thus, to avoid overfilling, there are three “baskets” that travellers can fill.

  8. Ancient lore tells that there some V8-configurations on military training grounds. Four in a row, two rows, back-to-back. One can truly feel the power.

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