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Week 3 of my 4×4: four weeks, four countries. Third stop, Finland! 

• Sunday, 17 May Norway’s Constitution Day! This day celebrates the day Norway passed from Danish to Swedish hands (in 1814). Although Norway hadn’t yet gained full independence—that would come in 1905—they did write and ratify their own constitution. Gratulerer med dagen! This is a huge celebration day for Norwegians. There are parades, sausage eating, people dressed up in national costume (bunad: for guys, for gals). What a day!
• Monday, 18 May did errands around town to prepare for my trip to Finland!
• Tuesday, 19 May flew to Helsinki! Ran into my adopted Rover family in the airport and we were on the same flight! Smooth ride east. Changed time zones. Dropped off our stuff at where I was staying, then constructed a picnic, trying my first of many salmon soups, and got on a sightseeing cruise to explore the Helsinki archipelago. Turns out that, like Stockholm, Helsinki is a group of islands. After docking, went up to the Uspenski Cathedral, the largest Russian Orthodox church in Helsinki. Then walked around, got a drink, and headed to a Georgian restaurant for supper. Great first day in a new city.
• Wednesday, 20 May my housing host had left me free admission to the Architecture and Design Museum so I went out there to check out the exhibits. They were excellent! One on the world of Moomin and how built worlds help us cope with the challenges of our lives and how it’s always important to find places of refuge. The second exhibit was called Craft Punk and was the first solo show for Finnish fashion designer Juha Vehmaanperä. They create knitwear and how they use their clothing and collections to play with contemporary themes and technology as well as “challenge gender norms, consumer culture, and visual expectations.” They were both thought-provoking exhibits. Then another Fulbright friend was joining me in Helsinki so I met up with her at the Oodi Public Library, a library built to celebrate 100 years of Finnish independence (from the Russians). It’s shaped like a boat and is an incredible cultural and social space. Then we went to a restaurant that served traditional Finnish food in a buffet, including salmon soup! It was delicious! Norway definitely has the least interesting food of all the Nordics lol. Not that I’m comparing.
• Thursday, 21 May started our sightseeing at the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum. This is a combination public park and outdoor museum. The museum curators have moved various dwellings from all over Finland to this park. Then there are interpreters dressed in historically accurate costumes who are able to tell visitors about the homes and the history and the land. We learned a lot about Finland! And got to walk around in a beautiful park! And had salmon soup for lunch. We headed back to city center and it was raining, so we looked for an indoor activity, which brought us to Temppeliaukio Church, a church built into the bedrock. It was a really cool-looking church. We learned that a choir from Messiah University (Pennsylvania) and a Finnish choir were performing a free concert that evening, so we took a rest and then came back for the concert. It was beautiful. It was especially moving to hear the Finnish choir.
•  Friday, 22 May was in two additional beautiful buildings in the morning: the National Library of Finland and the Helsinki Cathedral, which are adjacent to each other and share a plaza with the University of Helsinki. When leaving the Cathedral, we saw a naval band start to warm up. Turns out every Friday of the summer, starting Friday, 22 May, this band plays and marches down the main street to celebrate summer. There were other special events happening as well, like a marimekko fashion show to introduce their summer line. Didn’t have salmon soup today, but did enjoy small fried fish, muikku (vendace), a Finnish specialty. Went to the post office and then a cat café! Very sweet cats. Then a rest and then sauna! Finnish sauna! I had been looking forward to this since I booked this trip! Finnish sauna is so hot! But felt so blissed out when we were done. Grabbed dinner at an Armenian restaurant.
• Saturday, 23 May had to pick up a gift for my housing host, so did that. Then headed to the train station to the airport. Flew to Stockholm. Flew to Oslo. Train home. 

What a week! This week is week 3 of my 4×4 and I hit up Helsinki because I have never been to this Nordic capital and wanted to catch them all before I left. (Scandinavia is Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Add Iceland and Finland and you have the Nordics. This year I have been to Stockholm (Sweden) and Oslo (Norway); I have previously been to Reykjavik (Iceland) and Copenhagen (Denmark). It was time for Helsinki (Finland). 

I really enjoyed Helsinki and think it might be my favorite of the Nordic capitals, or at least that’s what I told a couple of the interpreters at the open-air museum. I enjoyed the variety of food, especially its Eastern European influences of pickled vegetables and dill pickles (dill pickles! We do not have dill pickles in Norway! Once I saw (and ordered!) them on a menu at a restaurant in Oslo, and the menu included a note that the pickles would be placed in a discrete spot on our plates so no one would know we ordered dill pickles. I have no idea what that was about.). It was cool to see the ways that Finland has similar values of democracy and equality and universal social services as the other Nordic countries, but how their buildings and even their look have clear Russian influences—they were a duchy of Russia until 1917, after all. And the Finns are edgier than their Scandinavian peers, reminding me of people I encountered in Iceland (um, also home of Björk). They don’t all dress the same or even look the same as each other, and there seems to be a value in having your own look. 

What I also took note of this week was the relationship of the physical space to what that space is used for. I just finished reading The Serviceberry for book club and this attitude was reminiscent of what Kimerer talks about in her short text. It’s the idea that we can be at one with and harmonious with the land, the natural world, and the environment rather than wanting to control it all of the time, to work with our environments rather than against them or in antagonistic relationships with them. I’m also reading Nordic Visions, which is an anthology of science fiction and speculative fiction short stories from the Nordics. There are a fair number that talk about the ways we have destroyed our environments. 

The Moomin exhibit was my first introduction to the idea of space in Finland and our relationship to space. The Moomin universe was created by Finnish author Tove Jansson and the museum exhibit spoke about how her work was heavily influenced by WW2, which, for Finland, was effectively two smaller wars with Russia as they fought for their homeland. Jansson was worried about her physical and psychological safety, and the Moomin stories reflect a kind of fairy tale where the trials the characters must go through reflect those that Jansson and her family and friends were going through as well. The museum exhibit featured contemporary parallels to desires for refuge and safety amidst all kinds of insecurity and anxiety. This all got me thinking about to what extent I have tried to live together with my environments rather than against them and how the environments I have cultivated can serve as safe havens and harbors.

Which also made me think about food, because I am always thinking about food. And food can also create for us a sense of connection to the land. In the open-air museum, we learned that in some parts of Finland, the rye bread that they are famous for could only be made a few months of the year because grinding the wheat into flour took too much energy for a human and so they only made bread when the rivers overflowed after spring rains so that they could use the force of the water flowing down the river to operate the millstone to grind the flour. When the water was plentiful, they made lots of bread to last them for as long as possible. It reminded me of waiting to buy fruit when it’s in season rather than trying to get a strawberry in the winter. The strawberry tastes better and it’s better for the environment that we’re not trying to produce strawberries for twelve months. This also reminded me of what I’ve learned about crackers, which the Swedes invented. It’s too cold in Sweden for yeast to really work—or it was—so they made hard bread, knekkebrød. Thank sweet baby Jesus for delicious Nordic knekkebrød.

There were also two churches I saw this week that were built into the natural environment of Finnish bedrock, the Uspenski Cathedral and the Temppeliaukio Church. The former was built on top of a sizable hill and you could see it from many different parts of the city and from the water. Churches are meant to be noticed and in many places I’ve been, especially in Europe, the church is on the highest point in the town. It makes for a good landmark, and for metaphorical guidance as well. Rather than being constructed on top of the bedrock, the Temppeliaukio Church was constructed into the bedrock. They had added some rocks to build up the sides, but most of the church was underground and cavernous. Like Red Rocks outside of Denver, this created a natural amplification system, so it was pretty unreal to hear the choir sing in this space.

And then there are places we put together to be in conversation with each other. The Helsinki Cathedral, National Library, and two main buildings of University of Helsinki were all in the same plaza. This placement matters. My friend and I went from the National Library to the Cathedral and I noticed that we had the same reaction when we entered both places: we gasped. The spaces took our breath away. We were awestruck. We found ourselves whispering in both places. One is a cathedral to God and another to knowledge found in books. And then the University flanks them both. Book knowledge and knowledge that we create in conversation with divine knowledge and knowledge we learn from means beyond strict observation. 

When I was on the Oxford campus a couple of weeks ago with my brother, one of the most famous buildings on campus reminded me of Gasson Hall, the signature building on the campus of my alma mater. I realized while in Oxford that Oxford reminds me of Boston College because Boston College looks like Oxford. And when I was inside the Finnish National Library this week I was reminded that many government buildings in the United States and universities are modeled after European buildings because they are meant to evoke principles and values of democracy and liberalism and knowledge seeking that the US was founded on. 

And I can’t write this post without talking about the Oodi Library, Helsinki’s central library. First of all it’s shaped like a boat and, like other Nordic countries, boats were an important means of transportation and economic livelihood. The library was built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence from Russia (in 1917 with the downfall of the Bolsheviks). It’s not just a library, or a place to get books. They have made this a community space: a place to gather, to create, to study, to learn. It sits opposite the grand Parliament building which looks like the Parthenon (which is considered the birthplace of democracy), which also looks like the Lincoln Memorial. Coincidence? Anyway, the library. It’s a beautiful, open, inviting, welcoming space. It’s surrounded by a park which includes a playground and basketball courts. There’s a cafe downstairs and another cafe and deck off the third floor. I ask teachers-in-training who I teach in Colorado about space when we go into classrooms, asking them what the space indicates what is done there. Space matters.

And finally, what’s a trip to Finland without sauna. The Finns claim that they created sauna, and a quick google search confirms this. Some differences between Norwegian sauna and Finnish sauna: it is so hot in Finnish sauna. And rather than immediate cold plunge, the Finns (or at least at this one sauna we went to) like to just hang out on the deck of the sauna, lounging in the cold weather. Sauna and cold plunge are extremes of environment, meant to warm you up and open you up and then constrict everything. Some say that it improves circulation. It definitely helps one get through cold and dreary days, and not just in the winter! Definitely makes you feel alive!

While the other Nordic capitals are all beautiful and full of their own history, Helsinki in particular got me thinking about space: how we use it, how it shapes our interactions with it, how we can be more aligned with the natural environments we exist with.