Some of what I learned in Scandinavia.

I learned that Stockholm is an elegant, civilized city. That a lot of places are closed on Monday. That it being light late into the evening might mean that you don’t realize that the restaurants are closed and you might end up with a bag of salted cashews as your first Swedish supper.

That picking your hotel purely on the basis of the wallpaper in the photograph on the website can sometimes be a brilliant idea. That running into a friend at the Warner Brothers prop house can lead to meeting her and doing a Stockholm river cruise with pear ice lollies. That beds in Scandinavia are designed differently with a solid base and just a thin mattress that flops on top with a thin duvet that sits neatly on top. Neat being the key. That even though Cardamon buns are crying out to be eaten, there’s always next time. Men, young and middle-aged are often wearing very sharp suits. And Women, middle-aged and old pull out their white trousers and denim jackets when the sun comes out. That lovely hair seems to come with the territory. That “ Tak” is such a great word to use for “thank you.” And Sweden is a totally cashless country. Since 2014, no cash is used. Except for in some grocery stores to help the older people who had trouble with this new concept. That ferries, even crossing the Baltic Sea, are an excuse for drinking at 9 o’clock in the morning and the best place, probably only on ferries crossing the Baltic Sea, is the spa where you can sit in the sauna and watch the scenery through the window. That alcohol is obviously cheaper in Sweden than in Finland because the majority of people disembarking were pulling carts piled high with cartons of beer and liquor. And “ Turku” is the oldest city in Finland. And there was a fire in 1827. And a lot of it burned down. But with one day you can sit in the cathedral with high vaulted ceilings and hear the organist practicing for a recital.

And spend a few hours at a preserved section of the old city that escaped the fire and where these original wooden houses still house the tools and living spaces of the craftsmen of the last few centuries.

And on top of that you can visit the old market hall and have a bowl of creamy salmon soup for your lunch

and still visit a museum where they have excavated the streets of the ancient city and see dog and pig skeletons where they lay, marvel at the thickness of the walls and even light a candle where the convent used to be for your friend’s friend who needs to be remembered. You can regret not wearing your swimming costume when you wander down to the swimming platform at one of the many lakes at Kirkkonnumi and discover it is a mild 20 degrees. And listen to the birch trees muttering in the wind.

And you can arrive in Helsinki for the longest day of the year. Where it is truly daylight at midnight and daybreak at 3 in the morning. No wonder no one goes to bed early. And bicycles are surely the best way to discover a new city. Especially when they allocate a strip of every sidewalk or pavement to let bicycles travel inbetween traffic and pedestrians. It would have been to good to know that when they say “ Midsommer” is the biggest holiday of their calendar, they also mean that the ENTIRE city, will close down for three days. I am thrilled for them. Those Finns spend 11 months and 27 days waiting for these three days when they all leave the town and go to the country. And they close the museums and the theatres and the shops and even most of the churches. The streets are empty. If there was tumbleweed in Scandinavia it would be rolling down the streets. It was probably busier during Covid.

But “Hei.” ( that’s Finnish for hey), It meant I could whizz around anywhere on my bike. But I also saw the unwillingness of local people, away from the areas of ‘service” to engage or smile when passing or acknowledge your presence. And I learned from a very bright young Australian woman married to a Finn that in her apartment building where she has lived for 5 years and had two children she knows none of her neighbours. That seemingly friends come from shared education at school or college and after that you can whistle. That she works for a company that brings in trained staff from abroad and that they factor into the expenses of relocation the inevitable repatriation on their departure which is normally less than a year. She herself, in the first year of her second child with all the social services she is allowed, realizes she cannot last more than another year without any kind of social life or indeed friendship. Hmm . That was a new one for me. But Scandinavia still calls and I haven’t been to Norway or Denmark yet. I have to get in a few more “ Tak”’s before I am done. There are all those open sandwiches on Rye. And Cardamon buns. All that wood. Walls, furniture. The epitome of streamlined. Even the toilets at the airport. And I’m not joking. But you know that.

Midsummer Nights Dream…..Hmmm?

I have this thing about Midsummer. I think it started with fairies at the bottom of the garden. And I’m going to leave that where it lands. But I look to certain things in our universe to give us a chance to get it right or do things better or just learn to listen. Midsummer, for me, is one of those. The longest day of the year. Before the next day where the sun has started it’s retreat. Shakespeare knew all about it. Naughty Puck, Proud Titania and Noble Oberon to name a few. He had everyone running round in circles. And I know I have written about this before, but there is this scene from Thomas Hardy’s “ The Woodlanders” when the young women of the village go down to the pond on Midsummers Eve and if the moon is shining they will see behind them the face of the one they shall marry. I have made friends come down to the beach in Santa Monica with me and chuck wishes into the waves. I have thrown back garden parties. I have tried to get people who like me to get as excited about Midsummer as I am. And I have failed. So this year I came to the home of a whole nation of people who dress up and dance on this night in June. Bigger than Christmas for them. Well , truly, Christmas is a lot to do with Santa Claus apparently living in Lapland and it being jolly cold.

I wish I could report that there was magical dust in the air and cheeky laughter at every turn. BUT…. I had advance notice that I couldn’t just come and join in. I was told to bypass Norway. Sweden was great in you went to the Dalarna area but it didn’t make sense if you didn’t know people and had somewhere to stay. I landed on Finland , because I came here last year in August and was going to meet up with new-ish friends who had a relative who now lived here and there was a midsummer festival on an island for which she had purchased tickets. I tucked my Peaseblossom spirit inside my belt and got ready to find my tribe.

It is now Midsummers Day. I have spent the day in the city of Helsinki where everybody has left for this special holiday and where EVERYTHING is closed. The museums. The churches. The theatres. The shops. I had a bike. I bicycled around. Up and down empty street. I found a boat of foreigners that took me around the archipelago that surrounds Helsinki and I saw many, many Finnish people on their boats or on little beaches. Fishing, Kayaking. Even swimming in the not warm Baltic Sea….anything to not to have to share their city with losers like me. At this festival, there was meant to be a maypole. I saw a tall pole lying on the ground. I didn’t see any brightly coloured ribbons anywhere and I am not sure it ever left it’s prone position. There was meant to be a bonfire. Very traditional at Midsummer. It was cancelled. Apparently it’s been cancelled for at east the last seven years because of fears that it would start a fire. There was going to be dancing. It ended up with a varied group of about twenty people in national dress carrying Finnish flags and then doing folk dancing of the “ you swing me around and then we cross hands and I swing you” variety.

There was food. Long lines for pancakes with a bucketload of jam and cream on them. Bratwurst in buns. Ice cream and deep-fried tiny baby fish.

There were people with flower crowns in their hair. There were some people playing fiddles. But I have a feeling Titania and Oberon would have had a peek and whistled away sharpish on their fairy wings.

So I am no closer to my long yearned for moment of magical flight. But I continue to believe. And there is always next year.

Chekhov’s Back Yard

Sitting on the porch of a tiny little cabin in a rural area of southern Finland. It is currently those days in June, The days of the midnight sun. So when I couldn’t sleep last night and looked out of my window at close to midnight, it was still light. Now it is 10.30 in the morning and I sit, with my second mug of tea, in the warm sunshine and under blue skies grazed with the odd linear cloud and the sounds around me are huge. Loud enough to be motorway nearby, or an airplane approaching a runway overhead, but it is neither of those things. It is leaves on trees. There is an occasional bird fighting for a moment in the sun and a bee whistling by. But, truly, it is just leaves shimmering away, high in the air, swaying around in the wind. There are apple trees in clusters in front of me. A grape vine being trained over a black trellis. An odd pine.

But the orchestral dance is being performed by the silver birches. That are left and right, behind and in front of me. Fifty foot up into the air. And I am reminded that I am in a country whose closest neighbour is Russia. Which I am sure must weigh very heavily on them at the moment. Because for a hundred years they were Russian after Sweden had taken hold the previous two centuries. Sweden is the second official language in Finland. And for many of the areas, except in the east, all road signs are in two languages. Swedish first, Finnish second. Circling back to Russia, the sounds remind of lines from those Chekhov plays that I read, saw, performed in. Dear modest birches, I like them more than any other tree. I love living here. And the wind, the wind! The bare birches and cherry-trees, unable to endure its rude caresses, bowed low down to the ground and wailed: "God, for what sin hast Thou bound us to the earth and will not let us go free?” if mankind is happy a thousand years from now I will have been a little bit responsible for their happiness. When I plant a little birch tree and then see it budding into young green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride ....... And I remember a production of the Cherry Orchard, that surely had Ian McKellen in it , where the set was just an army of silver birches, that the characters used to hide and weave and eventually some chose to escape from. div class="separator" style="clear: both;">