The Finnish talk that really matters

As I look through the window and see a fresh layer of snow sitting on the bare branches of the trees, the ground, and the neighbour’s roof, I need to remind myself that it’s already April. Right. This is spring in Finland.

I’ve been a digital nomad for quite some time. In fact, when I decided on changing my lifestyle, being a digital nomad was not as common as it is today. What I like the most about changing location is that I can choose the weather.

I like snow. I like snowy winters. However, at this time of the year, I was expecting to enjoy a rather nice Finnish spring with some sunshine, comfortable temperature, and lots of flowers everywhere.

It must be climate change. There was a time when I was telling everybody that spring and summer were perfect in Finland. Never too hot. Always bright days thanks to the Midnight Sun. And that means daylight almost 24 hours a day in the south and no darkness at all in the northern part of the country. The nights are truly magical and nature is at its best.

Eighty percent of Finland is forested area, an area comparably larger than England.

A few years ago, I spent a fantastic summer in Finland. A friend invited me to her summer cottage to spend a traditional Finnish summer. In other words, we were going to do what Finns do in the summer when everybody leaves the cities to go to the forest.

After a 4.5-hour train ride from Helsinki to Joensuu, my friend and her husband were waiting for me at the train station for a 30-minute drive to Eno, North East of Helsinki. First, on a short pit-stop, we got all the food and ice-cream my friend and I were planning to eat over the next eight days.

My friend’s husband went back to Helsinki the next day, leaving us isolated in the company of only the animals of the forest, the little birds that woke us up every morning, and the many hours of bright daylight and wonderful time sharing thoughts and memories.

Plenty of activities, long talks, and enough stories for writing a book kept us busy. Considering that the trip had originally been planned for working on our respective writings, we did pretty well finding exciting excursions on a daily basis.

Breakfast in the front yard was followed by a short walk to the well to bring water like in the old days for doing the dishes and for the sauna. Yes, going to sauna was part of every evening.

Then, the day immediately metamorphosed into an adventurous day trip to Suppuravaara, a hill, to pick blueberries. This hill was the place where my friend used to go with her mother and sisters when she was a child.

After berry picking, we walked to Suppuralampi, a small lake where we had a fishing competition with the local seagulls — they got all of the fish, leaving none for our dinner!

One day, on the way back to the cottage, we went to explore the spooky riihi, a barn where in the past, people from the village kept the corpses for some weeks before they could bury them. The bodies were especially kept there during the winter when burials were rather difficult.

We also made a bonfire with old branches — the result of our backyard cleaning activity. When the fire became a little smaller we used it to cook the mandatory barbecue after some gardening work.

How can I forget the day we followed the ant trails to see giant anthills bigger than myself! With some ants still running on our shoes, we then picked daisies and other wild flowers on the way back to the house.

These experiences taught me how my friend’s life was like when she was a child and how life in Finland was during the Winter War, something that was experienced by some of her relatives.

She was a great storyteller. Everything we did was accompanied by one of her stories and all of them started with her saying “when I was a child …”, so I immediately knew it was story time.

Each of her childhood stories not only gave a special flavour to the unique experiences but also gave me good food for thought — something still alive in my memory despite several years having gone by.

It was fascinating to hear the stories about her life as a little girl and the challenges that living far from the city represented for her, and especially for her mother, who had lost her husband. Having to bring up her children alone in the countryside without the amenities of urban life was certainly not an easy affair.

That week in the countryside, experiencing the simplicity and hardship of how life was many years ago, taught me more than the simple experience of spending some days in a summer cottage.

I learnt about some chapters of Finnish history through my friend’s pleasant storytelling. I understood more about where the appreciation and understanding of nature and silence come from; and most importantly, I learnt more about my friend.

It was one of the best summers in my life.