(Finland)—Slightly jetlagged, in that nice manner of letting everything sweep over you and offering very little in a struggle against it, I was sitting on a lawn at a manor house called Haikko (www.haikko.fi), some 40 kilometres outside of Helsinki. It dates back to 1362, when it was home to Dominican priests who were part of the Russian monastery of Vyborg, but equally interesting was that the home’s latest renovation was funded by a lottery win, even though the latest owners would never be classed amongst the poor. Just down the road is the country’s second-oldest town, Porvoo, whose Finnish name comes from the local phonetic attempt to say its Swedish name of Borjå. Most of the Finnish places I visited have populations of Swedish speakers. Finnish, itself, is a far more difficult language to learn.
Porvoo has a wonderful district of cobbled lanes and red, wooden houses that today receives growing numbers of visitors but a part of which, up the hill, in the 1960s and 70s was often referred to as the “Shanghai of the Nordic Countries,” for its inherent dangers to life and limb from its inhabitants, apparently. It is noted for its snail restaurants. Timbaali (www.timbaali.com) even has a rout of snails crossing its awning.
Helsinki must be notable in that it is the only place I can ever remember going to in which I wanted to go shopping. I detest shopping, but in the village of Fiskars, famous for its orange-handled scissors, I visited its design museum and saw several shirts made by equally well-known Finnish company, Marimekko (www.marimekko.fi). In case anyone thinks I am softening, going to visit the shop was a last-minute decision I took after realizing I had 20 minutes following a visit to the Suomenlinna island-fortress (www.suomenlinna.fi) and not a stop I had to make before discovering that island’s hummocks, beaches, ponds, battlements and, even, a beached submarine. This UNESCO World Heritage site (no, not Marimekko) has, I was surprised to learn, a resident population of almost 900, as made evident by the existence of a supermarket just before the local ferry pier. Also, somewhere else on the island and not seen by my curious eyes is a työsiirtola, an open prison for very low-risk prisoners.
The most-visited spot, but also the area where you can most easily escape all other people, the fortifications of the King’s Gate, reveals an inscription that reads “Eftervärld, stå här på egen botn och lita icke på främmande hjälp,” which is Swedish, not Finnish, and means “Progeny, stand here on your own foundation and do not rely on foreign help.”
This was a quote from Count Augustin Ehrensvärd, who was commissioned to build the fort when Finland was part of Sweden. The city of Turku, the oldest settlement in Finland, also unveiled some interesting history. This small city will share the honours with Tallinn, Estonia, of being one of the two Cultural Capitals of Europe in 2011, and while it is pleasant, I think it will find it hard to compete against the medieval atmosphere of the Estonian capital, but let’s hope they work together.
One of my favourite Turku finds was a bust of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It was tucked away beside a red-brick building and was not on any official tourism pamphlet that I read, but it turns out that he stayed in a house here (of which it is now outside of) when in 1907 he fled Russia. In those years, Finland was part of Russia. He must have been grateful, as one of the first acts he administered when the Soviet Union was formed in 1917 was to give Finland full independence. On the other side of the equation, I took a boat from Turku to the island of Ruissalo, which yearly hosts the Ruisrock rock festival (www.ruisrock.fi). It’s been a while since I had been to one (Reading in the early 1990s, Glastonbury a little before that).
The Sunday line-up of bands was notable for being the last show by local heroes, The Crash (www.thecrash.com), whose songs are catchy but a little poppy for my tastes. They did a version of The Smiths’ There is a Light that Never Goes Out, which was excellent. I also managed to see The Gaslight Anthem (www.gaslightanthem.com), who hail from New Brunswick, N.J., which is the main campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (www.rutgers.edu), where I studied for my Master’s degree, and the Soul Captain Band, Finland’s most famous, and probably only, reggae band.
Also in Turku was a musical tree, an oak to which was tied a dozen mobile phones. A list of birds and their relevant mobile-phone numbers were listed below, and if you call one, you hear the sound the bird makes trill through the air. I rather liked it, the idea that using your personal phone can lead to a moment not of noise and meaningless chatter but one of quiet and contemplation.
Back in Helsinki I pottered around various neighborhoods, promontories and islands. One spit of land, Katajanokka Skatudden, very close to the central harbour (see photo above), I liked tremendously, and the next time I go, I will have to visit and eat at a restaurant tucked at the base of a circular building away from the stares of tourists. It was called Welloma (www.wellamo.fi), and if you climb up the steps beside it and then turn on the streets above it, you can get an excellent view of the Russian Orthodox Church of Uspenski.