The menuetti (minuet) and the polska are elegant 3/4 dances that came to Finland in the 18th century and live on as treasured folk traditions, especially on the west coast.
The minuet was the dance of European courts in the 1700s. Through Sweden, which then ruled Finland, it reached Finnish manors and towns, and from there the countryside. While it disappeared almost everywhere else in Europe, in Finland — above all in Ostrobothnia — the menuetti survived as a folk dance, still danced at weddings with fiddle music. The polska, a turning couple dance in 3/4 time shared across the Nordic countries, arrived around the same time. Together they show how dances of the elite were adopted, simplified and made their own by Finnish villagers.
