This is how we picked wild strawberries as kids:
http://pilt.toidutare.ee/pilt/06.2012/4249/originaal.jpg?t=1...
or
http://www.eesti.ca/pics/2010/07/28943_4.jpg
Coincidence? I don't think so!
http://pilt.toidutare.ee/pilt/06.2012/4249/originaal.jpg?t=1...
or
http://www.eesti.ca/pics/2010/07/28943_4.jpg
Coincidence? I don't think so!
BTW, the berries in the pictures are indeed wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca), which are quite different from garden strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa). The wild ones are very aromatic, although (being wild) less consistent in taste. It's considered a different fruit across here (even if it is not really a fruit but an "aggregate accessory fruit").
Also in Swedish, it has a completely different name (garden strawberry is "jordgubb" while the wild one is "smultron").
Garden strawberries in Scandinavia and Baltics (Sweden, Estonia, Finland) are also quite different from the garden strawberries that come from France or Spain or anywhere in the USA. In my mouth, the difference between an American garden strawberry and a Scandinavian one is about as big as the difference between an apple and an orange. (Taste, structure). I guess it mostly comes from the plant variants used, and how much light the plant gets in a day during the growing season.
Finally, Estonian for "strawberry pie" (maasikapirukas) is Finnish for "earth-swine devilish" so perhaps there's something to that thing about earth, after all.
The pirukas part might come from baltic - pyragas and/or slavic - pirog.
In fact, it seems that Fenno-Ugric words for strawberry also refer to earth, just like Germanic. Finnish "mansikka" and Estonian "maasika" both start like "maa, manner, mansi, mantu". So it appears the meaning has been translated long, long ago, it's not borrowed as a word that sounds the same.
(For those who don't know, Fenno-Ugric languages like Finnish, Estonian or Hungarian are of a completely different origin than Indo-European languages which include Germanic, Romanic and Slavic languages. English and Russian are close relatives and Hindi is their cousin, while Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are a strange family to them. And then there is the European orphan, Basque language.)
Were any other berries gathered thusly? If not, I'm not sure why they were so quick to disregard.
It also seems highly compatible with them being wild originally, and still being called strawberries. You probably wouldn't get them like that on a farm.