Magic and Myth in the Finnish Air by Tim Bird

Karelia, the region of sprawling forests and lakes traversed by Finland’s eastern border with Russia, has the feeling of a true frontier. Few European landscapes are as wild and thinly-peopled, and few share such a powerful sense of being on a cultural and geographical cusp. Bears and elk lumber through its woodland, patrolling it with an instinctive disregard for man-made borders, while swans skim the surface of its glittering lakes. The extremes of the seasons shape its moods, from the lush riot of summer to the smothering blanket of winter. The magical, secret silence of Karelia’s nature, and the mythologies inspired by it, provide the canvas for much of Jean Sibelius’s best-known music. Nowhere is the link between music and its inspirational setting more powerful.

This border has shifted over the centuries, moulded by the ebb and flow of the Russian and Swedish empires. Much of Karelia, the part now administered by Russia, was swallowed up by the Soviet Union after World War Two, a price that the Finns grudgingly conceded for their independence. The myths and legends of Karelian – or more specifically, Finno-Ugric - culture were collected into a single work, The Kalevala, in the early 19th century by Elias Lönnrot. This work gained significance as a national epic, an expression of Finnish nationalism as the century progressed and as the country’s aspirations to claim independence from the Russian empire, of which it was then a Grand Duchy, intensified.

The melancholy of this landscape, the rhythms of nature and its mythology are echoed throughout Sibelius’s music. His cycle of the four Legends is comprised of direct references to the Kalevela, including Tapiola, the land of Tapio, the god of the forest, and The Swan of Tuonela, which swims along the waters surrounding the land of the dead. The elements of this Finnish folk religion date back thousands of years to the arrival of the first Finno-Ugric settlers from the east. The forests, lakes and rivers that provided the context for these beliefs, however, have always been very real.

Finnish Karelia is these days dotted with pleasant, surprisingly easy-going towns. A regional centre for travellers, and a hub of the Saimaa lake system, is Savonlinna, whose 15th century castle, Olavinlinna, is the setting for the annual Opera Festival, a prestigious highlight of Europe’s opera calendar. The romantic castle is set on a craggy island, with the stage erected in a fabulously dramatic courtyard, one of the most thrilling operatic backdrops in the world.

The pine-covered Punkaharju ridge is a half-hour drive or leisurely lakeland steamboat voyage from Savonlinna, and the Retretti arts centre is built near its crest and in caverns burrowed into its slopes. Retretti has a subterranean auditorium hosting recitals during the Opera Festival as well as uniquely atmospheric exhibition space in its warren of caves. Also nearby is Lusto, the Finnish Forest Museum, housed in a handsome waterside timber construction and illustrating every aspect of Finland’s most plentiful natural resource, from ancient tools to modern sculpture.

Travel north of the Savonlinna district, following the “grain” of Saimaa’s lake pattern, and you come to Kuopio, another centre for lake traffic, with its quayside harbour for the summer steamboats and endless views from the restaurant at the summit of its observation tower on the Puijo ridge. Like most of Finland’s provincial towns, Kuopio comes to life in summer, hosting an annual Dance Festival each June, one of a co-ordinated program of festivals held across the country in a feverish national frenzy to exploit the long days of summer to the full. Kuopio also boasts an Orthodox Church Museum, displaying icons, textiles and other treasures brought from churches in the part of Karelia annexed by the Soviet Union after World War Two. Midway between Savonlinna and Kuopio, near Heinävesi, is the Orthodox Monastery of Valamo, the only one left in Finland, where you can sample the simple life by staying overnight in the hostel, and even stay for longer spells, working for your keep with the monks.

Head back east towards the Russian border, all 1,269 kilometres of it, and you have all of the dense forests and rugged valleys of northern Karelia to explore, including the majestic panorama across Lake Pielinen from the ridge top at Koli. This is also the finest example of the pattern of lakeland divided by granite ridges, a common theme in the Finnish landscape, etched as it was by retreating oceans of ice. This pattern gives way to a more random patchwork of hills and lakes as you pass through the Kuusamo district on the southern fringe of Lapland. Kuusamo is an excellent base for fishermen, who head for the rapids tumbling through the nearby gorges, as well as trekkers, who follow well-marked trails across exciting, untamed terrain.

In the far north, its southern limits crossed by the Arctic Circle, is Finnish Lapland proper. On crisp, clear Lapland nights the skies come alive with shifting shafts and curtains of coloured light, as the natural magic of the aurora borealis - the Northern Lights – casts its own spectacular spell. This is also where a myth more modern and commercial than any Kalevala legend, yet just as potent, has taken root.

Every Christmas dozens of special flights arrive at the airport of Rovaniemi, the provincial capital, full of children from all over the world intent on one thing only: a visit to Santa’s grotto. Local commerce has come up with a discreet solution to presenting the Christmas theme by building an underground Santapark, complete with magic sleigh rides and multimedia shows, a couple of kilometres from the Arctic Circle itself. In the depths of winter here the snow piles up in creamy drifts and the temperature outdoors can fall well below –30ºC, while in summer the heat from the never-setting sun settles drowsily over the Lapland fells, Finland’s highest and wildest terrain. But down in Santaland it’s Christmas all through the year. To complete the seasonal atmosphere, there is a special Santa Claus village on the Arctic Circle itself, complete with a post office handling tens of thousands of children’s gift requests every year.

The claimed sources of the myth of Santa Claus are many and various, and one of the most obscure makes Santa a Lapp Shaman, a kind of Nordic witch-doctor. Shamanism, whose practitioners made use of deer-skin drums to induce visionary trances, or sought insights with the aid of hallucinatory mushrooms, was a central aspect of pre-Christian Lapp life. This paganism and every other aspect of life in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, including the reindeer-herding which is the main source of livelihood for the several thousand remaining Lapps, or Sami, who still inhabit Finnish Lapland, are presented at the Arktikum museum, the glass facade of which extends towards the riverside in the town of Rovaniemi.

In winter the Finns flock to the ski slopes and trails of Lapland to the north of Rovaniemi, to resorts such as Saariselkä and Pallas. In summer, they retreat to their lakeside cabins across the whole length of the country. If there is one modern myth that can be dismissed, it is that Finns are a silent race, and the abundance of space at their disposal encourages them to splash and shout in loud abandon from their sauna jetties. And not only in summer: in winter they run from the hot chamber and jump steaming into holes in the ice or roll naked in the snow. It sounds perverse, but it’s surprisingly invigorating.

Finland’s five million people make the most of their vast and unspoilt rural playground, yet many of them have taken to the urban life with cool sophistication. There are two big cities of note, apart from the area of the capital Helsinki. Tampere in south-central Finland was founded on the rapids where the two giant lakes of Pyhäjärvi and Näsijärvi meet, providing perfect conditions for the city’s textile mills. The picturesque Pyynnikki ridge, its slopes clustered with rows of wooden houses, affords views across both lakes. The city boasts some less rustic architecture, too: the plan of its main library is designed to resemble the shape of a wood grouse, while the white-and-blue-tiled Tampere-talo concert and congress hall is Finland’s top provincial venue.

Turku, another bustling, easy-going city, is in the south-western corner of the country, close to the spectacular archipelago of the Åland Islands, and was Finland’s original capital up to the early 19th century in the days when the country was governed from Sweden. Turku’s centre is dominated by its university, the oldest in Finland, and the 15th century Cathedral, both close to the River Aura that meets the sea at Turku’s harbour. The city also has a number of absorbing museums, including the Luostarinmäki handicrafts museum housed in a collection of authentic old wooden houses, and the Aboa Vetus/Ars Nova museum, which contains archeological remains discovered on the site of the original art museum dating back to the 15th century.

Helsinki, the Finnish capital, comes into its element in the summer, when the Esplanadi park leading down to the South Harbour is lined with outdoor cafes, the tanned vendors in the seaside Market Square do a brisk business in vegetables, fruit and berries, and the ferries to the Suomenlinna island fortress in the harbour entrance are loaded with tourists.

The city has been adding to its already impressive catalogue of theatres and museums, confirming Finland’s reputation for fine architecture in the process. The Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art is a wondrous silvery, space-age creation; Alvar Aalto’s Finlandia Hall is dressed in sparkling marble above the Töölö bay; and an impressive trio of landmarks is completed by the dignified modernity of the new snow-white Opera House. Closer to the harbour, the Neo-Classical 19th century centre radiates from the gleaming Cathedral and the Senate Square. The quirky rustic details of the National Romantic style, an art nouveau variant which was a focus for Finnish artistic national feeling at the start of the 20th century, are another element of Helsinki’s architectural picture. The best examples decorate the granite facades of the National Theatre and the National Museum.