Fascinating Finland

Many of you know that we usually gravitate towards warm climates, but this spring we did the opposite. We headed to far northern Europe for a trip that combined birds, mammals, fishing, culture, design and food. If you’re interested in any of these, you’ll enjoy Finland! Along with the beautiful places and the unique art and culture, the wildlife was really interesting too. Overall, we saw 152 species of birds, of which 33 were lifers (we’d never seen them before).

The flights to Helsinki depart from JFK Airport in New York. So we had an ideal opportunity to visit our friends Paul and Michele Weirich in their home in Connecticut. This was our first trip since they moved from Missouri. We had a great time catching up, birding and hiking, visiting the Yale campus and enjoying delicious meals with them, their daughter Corinne and her husband Nick.

The image below highlights a few interesting things about Finland that we didn’t know before planning this trip. It helps explain why Finland is such a unique country compared to its European (and even Scandinavian) neighbors.

The language is indeed unusual. Finnish does not use prepositions, so modifiers are just attached to a word, making it longer and longer. Two examples are below. The sign on the left tells you this is a ‘private road’. On the right is the artwork in the stairwell at Helsinki’s beautiful new Oodi library. It lists the answers received to an online survey asking “who should the library be designed for?”. One of the longest words, in the middle, means ‘the people who’ve written their ideas on whiteboards’. 

Here’s Where We Went

The map shows Helsinki with a red star, at the south end of the country. The green stars and arrows show the path of our birding trip. The blue star and arrow show where we went for the fishing expedition.

Helsinki: Daughter of the Baltic

We arrived first in Helsinki, and returned there between the various segments of our trip. As you can see on the map above, Helsinki is located on the Baltic Sea. It’s a beautiful city and we really loved getting to know it, but particularly in early May, it was chilly.

Our home base in Helsinki was the lovely Hotel Lilla Roberts, in the Design District (named when Helsinki was designated World Design Capital in 2012). We could easily walk to many parks, museums and restaurants from here. We had a great city tour led by Karin Niiniharju-Järvinen, which introduced us to the many interesting historical and cultural sights in the city. Growing up in the Bay Area with so much modern and ‘Scandinavian’ design, Karen was happy to discover many of her long-time favorites were in fact Finnish and their stories were featured in the Design Museum. And architects and planners will be familiar with Alvar Aalto, whose story (along with his wife’s) is told in this museum. We visited several of his most famous buildings in Helsinki.

Finland Birding

Most of the time on this trip was a Field Guides birding tour. It was led by Jay Vandergaast, a friend we’ve known a long time and an excellent birder and guide. The local guide, Arto Keskinen, also did a great job and helped explain some of the unusual aspects of Finland. There were nine other participants, two of whom we’d traveled with on other trips. It was a very congenial group.

Our trip began with the Laajalahti Reserve in Espoo, a suburb of Helsinki. We then went to Lake Saimaa. With over 1,600 square miles of surface area, it is the largest lake in Finland and the 4th largest in Western Europe. It’s home to an endemic Saimaa Ringed Seal, which we saw during our boat trip. Terry celebrated his birthday here –his first foreign birthday since he was in college. And he got his birthday wish of seeing his 6,600th life bird species that day.

Our next two stops, in Rantasalmi and Joensuu, were in the central part of the country near the Russian border. Birding brought unusual species as well as huge numbers of migrating Barnacle Geese.

A very unique experience in Finland are the mammal hides. At Erä-eero Hide, our group entered the hide at 4 p.m. and could not leave until 8 a.m. the next morning.

The owner, Eero Kortelainen, hides pieces of fish and meat up in trees, under rocks and elsewhere along the lake shore. The goal is to stay awake all night to see the mammals come to eat. It was amazing to see a Wolverine, then two Brown (i.e., Grizzly) Bear, and finally a Gray Wolf in the course of the night.

From Joensuu, we drove north and west to the Gulf of Bothnia, the northern extension of the Baltic Sea. Oulu and Liminka National Park (right on the shore), were cold and windy. But the forest near Siikajoki held some unique and charming birds. We continued north and east to Kuusamo, again near the Russian border. We visited a second mammal hide here, though we did not have to spend the night this time.

The birding trip ended above the Arctic Circle. We stayed in Ivalo and visited Urho Kekkosen National Park. Here you can experience boreal habitats, including old-growth spruce forests (extremely rare in Europe!) and the Kiilopää Fell, a rugged, glacial-carved high elevation forest and grassland.

From Ivalo, we flew south to Helsinki and said good-bye to our birding companions. We spent one night back at our Hotel Lilla Roberts, then began the next adventure.

Fishing for the Iconic Northern Pike

Terry grew up with family vacations in Canada fishing for Northern Pike, Terry’s favorite sports fish. In Finland, it is dubbed the “crocodile of the north,” and embedded in folk legends as a god of the underworld.  It strikes savagely, goes into feeding frenzies (Terry caught the same fish on a lure twice within 5 minutes) and puts up a marvelous fight. After the catch, Terry releases every one except those for the dinner table – which were delicious!

We took the efficient, comfortable and fast VR train from Helsinki to Mikkeli, where we were met by our host Pasi Romo of Rock and Lake Tours. After a stop at the huge local grocery store, we headed to Lake Soukkio and our charming cottage. In true Finnish tradition, it had not one but two saunas!

We spent four days fishing on Lake Rahajärvi and Lake Kyyvesi with our fishing guide Tero. He had the most high-tech fishing boat and gear we’ve ever seen! Despite this, the fishing was somewhat slow. Terry was successful in catching two of these fighters (6.5 and 11.2 pounds, respectively) on a lure he used in Canada 20 years earlier. Karen caught her first pike, a smaller one (about 3 pounds).

Along with the fishing, we enjoyed visiting parks and farms with Pasi’s wife Sanna and explored the natural areas around our cabin. We had the place to ourselves, and enjoyed cooking, relaxing and using the sauna!

Back to Helsinki

After fishing, we returned to Mikkeli and caught the VR train back to Helsinki. It had warmed up a lot since we spent time there in mid-May. So we were happy to have a few more days to enjoy this charming city. We were also able to meet with people involved with sustainability and biodiversity initiatives.

On our last night, we had a classic Helsinki experience. We took a small ferry to Särkää Island, one of many that are part of Helsinki. The Ravintola (restaurant) Särkäänlinna celebrated its 100^th anniversary in 2024! The first course of our meal was the Finnish classic Salmon Soup. We’d had it elsewhere too, but this was the best one.

Finland joins the long list of countries we intended to visit once, but then find so much of interest that we’d love to return. We’ll see what happens!