Makkara

Finland is an outdoorsy country. Pretty much everyone has, at some point in their life, camped, fished, skied, gone trekking, picked berries, built a fire, punched an elk, etc.

What you soon realise though, is that the main objective for any outdoor activity in Finland, is to get to a place, often a laavu, where you can cook and eat sausages (Makkara).

The Finnish sausage is a bit of a sorry beast. Most people seem to peel of the plasticky skin, often burnt anyway, and then cover the sawdust meat inside with mustard. Those that know me will confirm that I am almost completely devoid of national pride, but the Finnish sausage is a poor imitation of its German or British equivalents.

Makkara

British Sausage

The countryside here is full of laavus, traditional shelters once used by the farmers when they went out to cut the hay meadows. Nowadays pretty much every ski day or trekking day is designed around a visit to the laavu where desperate skiers/trekkers hurry to the fireplace to get their burnt sausage fix.

They really are makkara addicts. This year I joined a kayak club and on the beginners' course they explained how the kayak has a little storage space just perfect for storing a barbecue for your sausages. Having passed the course, we adventured off to a nearby island only to find it full of people who'd come over for the day in their yachts. We watched them land, walk to the barbecue spot, cook their sausages then get back on their boats and sail away again.

So passionate are the Finns about cooking sausages al fresco that they have even invented telescopic barbecue forks which fit neatly into your backpack/ski pants.

Sometimes it feels a bit like the Pokemon craze where going out is actually an unintended consequence of getting to a place where you can wave your phone at imaginary Japanese characters/ cook sausages. At least it gets him out of the house.

Man overboard!

On the weekend I heard a great story about a man who jumped overboard from a Tallink ferry, swam to a nearby island and survived for two weeks stealing crackers from a restaurant that was closed for the winter.

The man himself told the police that he had regretted his act immediately [presumably seconds after he hit the icy water. Ed.] and had swum to the nearest island. - ERR news.

That nearest island was Pihlajasaari which, as you can see from the map, is barely 1km from shore. It's a busy tourist island in summer but in April he was lucky he didn't freeze to death in the sea.

Here are my top 4 scenarios for why he jumped.

1. The Abort. "What? This ferry goes to Estonia! Abort!" Like when you realise you've got on an escalator that takes you to the wrong floor. You can either ride it out, slowly go all the way down then find the escalator that takes you slowly back up, or you can turn round and charge back to the beginning, leaping at the end to get back to non stationary land.
2. The Did I Leave The Oven On? Maybe you did. Maybe you didn't but there'll be no peace till you've checked. Now over the side with you scatterbrain!

1. The No Ferries To Pihlajasaari in April Eh? "Well I'll show you. Tally-ho."
2. The Stop The World, I'm Getting Off. "Five euros for a coffee! In a paper cup! I wake up at 6 to get on a stinky ferry, travel 2 hours to a job I don't even like then two hours back to a wife who complains I don't do enough around the house. Well no more my friend! I'm going to live on an island and listen to The Stone Roses. See you later suckers!"

Hitching in Lyngenfjord

The old man stopped to give us a lift. He opened the back of his estate car and helped put our heavy packs in without asking where we were going. He'd been down to Nordkjosbotn to get some dog food and now was heading back to his home near Nordmannvik, about a 3 hour round trip.

He told us that there didn't used to be a road on this bit of the fjord. This was where the Sea-laps (Sea Sami) lived and fished; there was no road to them, only boats.

Then the road was built and later the tunnels to protect the roads from the landslides falling from the sheer slopes in the winter.

He remembered a time when there were lots of people who spoke Kven, something similar to Finnish but different. There were some words that sounded familiar to him but it was hard to understand.

He'd heard that once, more than a thousand Brits had come over, by boat, to work in the mines. That was a long time ago.

Many of the first tourists here were Germans. Many soldiers had been here, during the war, and fallen in love with the place; they came back to visit with their new families.

Now there are lots of Japanese tourists. They come to see the northern lights. Most nights there are half a dozen coaches parked in Skibotn. Most of them stay in Tromsø.

They're building a new tunnel too. Then the trip to get dog-food will only take two-and-a-half hours

Porkkalanniemi. Back in the USSR.

After the second world war The Soviet Union demanded the use of the Porkkalanniemi peninsula as a naval base. This small area juts out into the Gulf of Finland and gave control of all naval access to St Petersburg.

Despite being deep within Finnish territory, access to the area was controlled by the Soviet military. Trains however, running along the south coast could still pass through although the windows were boarded up and photography was prohibited.

The area was finally returned to Finnish control eleven years later in 1956.

Harju OK?

The Alps were formed when Africa smashed into Europe and ruffled the continent up like a carpet on a shiny floor. The Andes are the result of the Nazca plate burrowing under the South American continent like a badger.

Unfortunately Finland escaped the exciting game of continental plate spinning and has largely been formed by huge Glaciers planing it flat every time there's an ice age. This means Finland is flat. Very flat. However, there is one exciting geological fillip to make this country a bit more interesting, the noble Esker.

Esker, or Harju in Finnish, are these cool ridges that pop up all over the country. Sometimes they look like railway embankments. They can run for kilometres and rise high above the surrounding countryside providing great views to the, often flat, lands on either side.

So, you may ask, if glaciers raked the rest of the country flat, how did Eskers form? Good question.

At the glacial maximum glaciers, normally moving like a slow frozen river, slow down and stop. Generally the glaciers around this part of the world stop when they get down to Germany, presumably retreating quicky from the weirdos playing dreadful oompah music.

Water however is a tireless beast and continues to try to move through the glacier. As it does it begins to form tunnels which get bigger and bigger. Anyone who's tried to put glacier ice in their whisky knows that the water is full of sediment and this sediment gets left behind in the tunnels. Sometimes the tunnels are huge and they fill with huge amounts of sediment. Eventually the glacier melts away and Finland is revealed but the sediment remains, still in the shape of the tunnel that housed it for so long. And that snake-like pile of sediment will eventually get covered in grass and trees and become the beautiful Eskers that we know and love.

Paradise esker

Canadian Esker

Esker heaven

One final point. The Finnish word for esker is Harju and it sounds like Are you which gifts us a great opportunity for top comedy. i.e. Harju you sure? Harju OK? Harju happy? Harju getting annoyed? Harju re-evaluating our friendship? Harju going? Harju coming back? Harju still there?

Bielsa

A comment I wrote about Marcelo Bielsa.

And herein lies the Bielsa conundrum.

He takes his team to the limit, maybe psychologically, certainly physically, and it shows. He makes the average good and the good better, but like extracting hydrogen from water, exciting as it seems the end result is a net loss.

That's not to say that it's been a waste. The modern game is all abouts Bielsa's technique. However, other coaches realise they have to reign it in a bit in order to get through a season alive.

Wonderful exciting coach. Would love to see him in the Premier league.

Jaakko was a rolling stone

Many a stone has made it into the history books. For example, the one that Sisyphus pushed repeatedly up a hill only for it to roll back down again.

OK. So that was more of a rock. But what about the Rolling Stones who are in many ways like the punishment handed down to King Sisyphus. They're even beginning to look like they've been pushed up and down hills for eternity.

Then there was 'Like a Rolling Stone', basically the original version of Pulp's Common People, but a never-ending version with Bob refusing to stop screaming "AAAAAAHH" before launching into yet another verse.

Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (Live... by toma-uno

So, what have we learned? Stones are generally bad news.

Finland also has a famous stone, that which Jaakko throws into the lake every 25th of July. Jaakko? Who he? Well, Jaakko was some poor bugger who on his name day* threw a stone into the lake and then got blamed by everyone for the subsequent decrease in water temperature.

Jaakko and his mates

Essentially Jaakko and his rock were blamed because people were either not ready or not willing see that it is infact the tilt in the earth's axis that will inevitably cause the changing of the seasons and the onset of winter. Much easier to draw a specious connection between Jaakko and the end of summer.

If only Jaakko had had this diagram

Lisa explains specious reasoning

More excellent logical thinking. 

Incidentally, today the water temperature is hotter than yesterday.

*Every day in Finland is dedicated to a name. Today it's Martta so you should high-five all of the Marttas you know