Suomenliina - Island fortress

On the weekend I had a visitor from Germania so I took off my unemployed-immigrant hat, put on my Official Tour Guide hat and headed out on the town. Of the many very typical things we did, sauna flagellation included, perhaps the nicest was to take the 20 min. ferry over to Suomenliinea, The Island Fortress.

Sauna fun

IMPORTANT NOTE HERE. When you go to Suomenliina you'll need to buy a ticket for the ferry. Make sure you do this with plenty of time to spare because the SINGLE ticket machine inevitably has a huge queue of people unfamiliar with said machine and if you're not careful you'll end up having to make a last minute dash/jump for the boat as it sails away from the quay.

Once on board head to the back of the boat to watch Helsinki sail away (sure as the sun goes round the earth) and get great views of the Cathedral and Giant cruise ships readying for their journey to Sweden.

HISTORY TIME. Suomenliina importance is a result of its geographical position. Perhaps this map will help.

Helpful map

Back in the olden times Finland (the green bit) was part of the Swedish empire. King Ryvita II decided that the island would be a useful place to defend his lovely pink land from the scary Russians to the east under Tzar Nicolas The Bear Wrestler, so he set about building a fortress there. At this time the island was incorrectly know as Sveaborg.

However, the fortress did little to resist the Russians and surrendered during the Russo-Swedish war. Russia, happy with their vacations, decided to stay (and annex the rest of Finland while they were at it) and things would stay like that for the next 110 years. 

In 1918 the Finns decided that it was revolution time (click here now) so they kicked out the Russians from island and mainland and installed a single ticket machine on the docks to ferry tourists to the newly named Suomenliina. Hooray. 

TODAY. The island is really lovely. It's a sort of mix of GOT (the bits in King's Landing) and LOTR*. Old ruins, windy cobbly streets, little tunnels, caves in grassy knolls, huge Russian cannons and everywhere the sea. As well as all that there aren't any cars and the best thing is that you can touch and climb on or pose next to pretty much everything. A brilliant day out. Go there. 

Here are lots of photos. 

*If you put GOT and LOTR together and say them out loud it's a word in Irish.  

Bog life

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After finishing the following article I was accused of being Anglocentric and presuming that everyone understood what a bog was. I cannot apologise enough. Here's a quick explanation for those less-familiar with wetland classification. 

Swamp - Essentially a very slow moving river that looks like a lake with trees in it.
Bog - An ex-lake that became clogged with dead plant matter and now is full of peat. No trees here. 
Marsh - A wetland at the edge of a lake or river characterised by grasses and reeds. 

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You know that moment when you're in a pub and some loudmouths on the table next to you are arguing about what the defining bio-geographical characteristic of Finland is? They'll probably be harping on about Europe's most densely forested country or The Land of a Thousand Lakes. Well next time that happens have a big swig of your Babycham, get your metaphorical cat out and throw it among the pigeons because what people often overlook about Finland are the bogs. It's all about the bogs.

Last weekend Girlf., Dog and I were lucky enough to join the local branch of the Suomen Luonnonsuojeluliitto (the Finnish National Trust) for a day trip out to Torronsuo, Finland's deepest bog, a title that Dog seemed determined to verify by regularly hopping off the special wooden walkways and sinking down into the mud. It's also a good place for birding although by the time we visited most had already naffed off to warmer bogs, in fact in the distance we could see a cloud of thousands of birds disappearing into the distance. Apparantely I heard a hippiäinen, Finland's smallest bird but he too proved elusive.

Hippiäinen. The sweetest bird ever. 

It's estimated that up to 1/3 of Finland was originally covered by bog though much has now been drained to grow more trees but the boggy impact on Finnish culture is not to be underestimated. Here are some boggy facts.

1. Many intelligent people think that Finland's name in Finnish, Suomi, comes from the Finnish word for bog, Suo. Factastic!
2. Much like the (perhaps apocryphal) fact about Eskimo vocabulary for snow, Finland has an amazing bog vocabulary

• Aapa - A concave bog
• Kermi - The elevated parts of the bog
• Kulju - The lower, wetter parts of the bog
• Rimpi - The eye of Sauron the bog

Finallly. Finland is the home of the great bog sports such as:

Suolentiksen - Bog volleyball, which despite the ingredients (mud, volleyball, Finnish people) is not nearly as sexy as you might think.

  

Suopotkupallo - Bog football, which is essentially the same as playing on any school field in the UK between October and March as Brian Glover wonderfully demostrates here

 

Finally, Suojuoksu - Bog running which is not at all demonstrated by this clip but I just really liked it.

There were also rumours that in winter the snowed-over bogs make for great cross-country skiing. Please, please Accuweather, God of snow, let that happen.

Next week, mushrooms.

Photo time. Forests and Mushrooms.

Good morning Skivers. The month of Syyskuu, autumn moon, has vamoosed and Lokakuu, mud moon, is nigh. Those trees that aren't always green are turning gold and red and the others are full of squirrels dashing around frantically with nuts in their mouths.

We too have been out in the forests trying to add to our larder, mostly without success. However, just as we tell kids that winning isn't everything and climbing a mountain isn't really about getting to the summit, foraging isn't really about finding things you can eat. Despite our empty baskets we've been lucky enough to visit two amazing places near Helsinki: Talosaari and Sipoonkorppi. Though mushroom were thin on the ground the forests themselves were amazing.

Talosaari is more woodland than forest but still with moments suddenly dark and spookily quiet and underfoot springing like a sponge cake. There we met some Ray Mears wannabes who showed us lots of other green things you can fill your basket with when the mushrooms aren't biting and we made a nice salad of dandelion, ladies mantle and ground elder. Dog also learned that you can eat berries.

Lovely people in Talosaari

Lady's mantle

Ground Elder

Dog eating blueberries

Sipoonkorppi is perhaps even more spectacular, the forest trail runs through night-dark steep-sided gorges down and up almost vertical wooden staircase and over single plank bridges.

 Spooky forest

 Spooky trees

After years of the heights and expanses of the Andes, the intensity of the Finnish forests is really exciting. Visibility is less than 50 metres and words are hushed, everything seems both living and rotting, millions of tiny organisms turning everything into squishy floor and millions of other organisms bursting roots and leaves. Great stuff.

Can't wait to see a bear.