Midsummer in Finland

Finland has been amazing. I have spent so much time being introduced to family members, making new friends, and eating, eating, eating. As you’ll see from the food blog, I have not gone hungry. In fact, I have become gluttonous. When Robin had me try to water ski behind Janken’s and Birgitta’s boat, I snapped the rope three times. I think it’s time to start a diet or leave the company of family looking to fatten me up.

I attempted to meet my family from the States (Mom, Chelsea, Grandpa, and Grandma) in Stockholm. We were going to catch the same flight over to Vaasa and meet our Finnish family there. Unfortunately, my family’s plane from the States was late and they missed the flight altogether. I sat on the plane looking around with no one to be seen. I asked the flight attendant if she could check the passenger list to see if they were booked for the same flight or if we had had a miscommunication. But as I exited the plane in Finland, another flight attendant stood holding a sign “MICSISKI NICOLAS.” She filled me in on my family’s connection trouble and told me that I should go inside to work it out.

Again, I breezed by the luggage carousel to meet Stina, Janken, Birgitta, and Marita. They weren’t sure if I would recognize them (which, of course, I did) and were more than a little confused as to why my family was not with me. I told Stina that they had missed the flight and that they were still in Stockholm. She didn’t believe me; she said, “You are joking. Where is Sue? She is pulling a practical joke on us.”

We talked with the airline employees in Vaasa and they were not very optimistic about the others getting another flight. It was the Wednesday before the holiday weekend (Midsummer) and everything was very full. We didn’t know how we could get a hold of them because they didn’t have cell phones (U.S. cell phones don’t work outside of the U.S.). I asked if I could get online but the only place that they had a connection was with the computer behind the counter. The employee let me behind the counter and I quickly signed onto Gmail to find Chelsea signed on as well!

We chatted online for about 15 minutes arranging details and waiting to see if they could get a flight. In the end, Chelsea booked new tickets online for the next flight and as they approached the gate the airline had overbooked the plane by… four tickets. They looked the other way as they boarded and arrived only five hours late.

We spent the first few days meeting lots and lots of people. I have seen most of my relatives from Finland in pictures. My mom traveled to Finland when she was 18 years old with her Aunt Elta. Just three years ago, Mom and Dad returned to Finland and met everyone again. Now, for the first time, Grandma Bev, Grandpa Dale, Chelsea, and I were meeting our distant relatives.

We visited the house where our great, great grandmother was born and met our relatives that still live there. The house actually has a cannon hole in the attic from when the Russians attacked from across the river. Also in the house were a desk and an organ that my great, great grandfather gave as payment for their boat tickets to America. Martha even cranked out a tune on the old organ for us.













Then we visited Janken and Birgetta’s house (which is where my mom stayed when she came the first time). Next to their house is Bengt’s leather factory. The factory has been in the family for many generations and takes rough hides of sheep from Brazil or reindeer from Finland and refines their quality. The end product is very high-end leather used for many things, such as leather gloves. Bengt showed us the whole factory and how all of the machines work.

On Friday, Midsummer started. Most people have the day off and spend it getting ready for the big feast and after meal drinking. We went out to Stina and Tage’s summer cottage, which is about 15 minutes from their house. Their cottage is actually a complex of three cottages, one outhouse, and a sauna. It was right on the water, although I’m not sure if it was connected to the sea.













At about three or four in the afternoon, Stina had a banquet size table packed with food, waiting for us—the traditional Midsummer spread, plus some. You can see the pictures on my food post but some highlights were the ‘new’ potatoes (presumably because they are so fresh), lox, herring, and schnapps. The sun was strong—as was the schnapps—which made the meal and conversation all the better.

Afterward a couple hours of eating and talking, we moved to the fire ring to escape the “crunk.” Apparently, “crunk” means mosquitoes in Kronoby-Swedish but it still sounded odd coming out of, two-year old, Saga’s mouth.

Around the fire we had an interesting conversation about the Swedish minority in Finland. I saw a lot of correlations between Swedes, as a minority, and Muslims, as a minority. Both are concerned about preserving their rights as minorities in a majority country. Both emphasized speaking their native language; both talked about the education of their youth. It’s difficult to draw sweeping generalizations about minority groups, and believe me I was not working over Midsummer, but it was refreshing to hear the same issues I have been discussing with Muslim minorities around the world in another context.

Chelsea and I had our first Swedish sauna experience at about one in the morning. We spend so much time in the sauna sitting and talking that I overheated (and sweat a lot!). We ran out of the sauna and jumped off the dock into the lake. The cool water felt so good; my whole body felt refreshed. Then we went back in the sauna for more. I believe we went back and forth from the sauna to the lake four times. Each time working up a thorough sweat before leaping up and running down the dock.

Grandpa Dale had me read an article about traveling in a foreign affairs journal. It discussed the increase in number of people traveling and traveling far. It had lots of statistics about who and where and how far but concluded by saying that people need to be comfortable at home before they should go looking to be at home in other places. I’m not sure how I feel about this (as I think many people travel and find themselves, or define themselves more clearly) but it posed the question: why travel?

As I struggled to explain to myself why I was traveling (besides the obvious “because of research” or “because of my scholarship”), the cliché answers—which the article points out—came to mind. Travel writers and study abroad folk, alike, have written endless taglines about how humans really are all alike. But do we have to travel ourselves to confirm it? Why not trust the novelists and journalists—I mean, their stories will probably turn out more beautiful than any travel journal (or blog) we can turn out.

For me, the swapping of stories and habits that happens in any cross cultural or travel experience is not about confirming the universality of humanity but a genuine exchange between two people. True, this can happen with your best friend or safe in your hometown (and it should) but there was a point for me when that wasn’t enough anymore and I had to explore, I had to travel.

Hopefully, this will be flushed out more in future blogs but for now my Finland experience was exactly why I travel. We talked; we exchanged experiences, and we made friendships. There doesn’t have to be a higher meaning for that to be worthwhile.

I invite readers to share why you travel in the comments section of this blog.



More pictures:









































































Janken and Birgetta's house










Janken and Birgetta's summer cottage












Me breaking the ski rope











Success!










Robin wake boarding










Floating sauna

































Leather from the factory





















The Leather Factory