Kuksa (coffee cup)

Our kuksa cup is one of a kind with a lifetime warranty. 

So what is a kuksa and what’s so special about it? It is a wooden cup that has almost sacred status among traditional hikers, bushcrafters, fell-goers and so on. Many claim that it actually originates here from Finland but I think it would be safer to say that it has Nordic origins. The saying goes something like this way, that every self-respecting outdoorsman should craft their kuksa by themselves and that the only acceptable material for kuksa would be birch burl.

During my earliest outdoor years I slowly grew to kinda embrace this legend about self crafted kuksas, but this doesn’t mean that I position myself above others as some kind of “real outdoorsman”. I don’t mean to disrespect anyone who decides to go with their plastic cup, an enamel mug, a ready-made kuksa, or whatnot. I see this more like my own personal maturity rite as an outdoor adventurer and less like “the only real way” of doing outdoorsy things. There just isn’t one right way of enjoying outdoors and it also applies to kuksa, no matter what that old bearded outdoor crank or some internet warrior tells you about the only right way of blah blah.

But this text isn’t about the deepest depths of the philosophy of kuksa or outdoors itself. Instead this is a short story of how a not-so-handcraftsman (read: me) made his first own kuksa to give his adventures a little more feel on a personal level.