Jenkka is a brisk Finnish adaptation of the schottische, danced by couples in a hop-step pattern around the room — a fixture of village dance halls and folk festivals.
The jenkka developed in Finland as a local variant of the schottische, a partnered dance that spread across 19th-century Europe, and became one of the most enduring social dances in Finnish folk tradition. Couples move counterclockwise around the floor using a repeating hop-step-close pattern, with the music's steady, moderate tempo making it accessible to dancers of all ages at village dances. It remains a staple at Finnish folk dance evenings, weddings and midsummer festivities, often played by accordion-led folk bands, and later inspired the faster novelty variant letkajenkka, which became an international dance craze in the 1960s. The original jenkka, less flashy but more deeply rooted, continues to represent the everyday social dancing culture of rural Finland.
