By Brian Boone

Flowers, candy, and a paper heart with “I love you” written on it? Those wooing ways aren’t any less weird than other dating and courtship rituals from around the world and across time.

• In 19^th century rural Austria, unmarried men and women would attend a dance. At the beginning of the evening, the women would store an apple slice under their arm. After many hours of dancing with the men, and after that apple slice soaked up a bunch of sweat, each lady would present her slice to the man whose company she most enjoyed. To show that feeling is mutual, he’d eat the apple slice. 

• The ever austere Puritans who settled in New England valued practicality over ornamentation, and they made something of a compromise with a wedding ring tradition. When a man proposed marriage to a woman, he’d give her a thimble. She’d use that as protection during the engagement period, which she’d be expected to spend sewing things needed for her new home. After the wedding, someone would carve off most of the thimble to fashion it into a ring. 

• Up until about the 18^th century in Finland, the fathers of women of marrying age would announce that to the community by placing an empty knife’s sheath on her outer garments. A man who wished to marry her would fashion or purchase a knife and then place it in the sheath. If the young lady kept that knife stowed away, that meant her answer was “yes”; if she returned it, that was a “no.”

• There’s a very old practice in Fiji that requires men to prove their worth to the father of the woman they want to marry. They have to swim into the ocean and procure for their future father-in-law a tabua, or a whale’s tooth, however they see fit. 

• In the 17th century Wales, a tradition called love spoons began. Men would lovingly carve and craft spoons made of wood to give the lady they were wooing, a gift both beautiful and practical. If she agreed to be courted, she would go ahead and use the spoon in daily tasks.

• It’s an old custom in Germany for men in want of a wife to plant a tree sapling in the front yard of the woman to whom he wishes to propose. On May 1, he places a young birch, adorned with ribbons and a paper heart bearing the girl’s name. He does this anonymously, and if the woman can guess who planted the birch, and if she wants to get married, she finds him and gives him a kiss — by June 1.