The Carnival of Lights at Linnanmäki and the Amazing Amos Rex

It's that time of the year again when the trees shed their glorious autumn leaves and everything turns grey, dark, and dismal. Fortunately Linnanmäki amusement park had its annual Carnival of Light again this year. We didn't go on any rides this year (because of The Babe), but the cotton candy popcorn and hot chocolate and the gloriously creepy haunted carnival ambiance were enough for me.  Here are a few pics if you missed the festivities.

This was The Babe's favourite. She kept pointing and going "Ka" which is her word for "duck" (ankka in Finnish).

I love this old carousel!

The ferris wheel in the distance

Teacups!

We also visited Amos Rex, the new museum in Helsinki city center. The exhibition by TeamLab, a Tokyo-based interdisciplinary art collective, is just mind-blowing. My favourite was an installation that had a sort of tropical fantasy world that was constantly on the move, and it was interactive, so when you touched the wall, flowers blossomed, and you could create your own fantasy animal that then became part of the installation. The Babe had the best time chasing after them.  It's running until January 6 if anyone wants to check it out. 

Into the Woods

Autumn is my favourite time for enjoying nature: nice, cool weather and minimal bugs, not to mention all the leaves turning gorgeous colours. Here are a few snaps from last week's walk near Porvoo. (The trail leaves near Haikko manor and is only about 2.5 km long if anyone wants to give it a go.)

A beautiful lake

Here's a painting Albert Edelfelt did at the lake

Lingonberry leaves just turning

I'm not sure what this is called in English, but in Finnish it's karhunsammal, bear's moss, because it's a nice, soft place for a bear to take a nap on.

Are you looking at the trees or are they looking at you?

Ferns carpet the forest floor

Ant metropolis

Fairy tree

Do you dare venture off the beaten path?

Happy One-hundredth, Finland!

Finland is one hundred years old today! Here are some pics from celebrations here in Turku.

Giants and Uncertain Atmospheres at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum

Gas Giant by Jacob Hashimoto 

The Wäinö Aaltonen Art Museum is having a really good year. Their exhibitions tend to go for the more "out there" stuff, some of which is amazing and some just going for the shock value; the shock value stuff tends to leave me cold, but art is subjective, of course. Fortunately, the current exhibition, Jacob Hashimoto's Giants and Uncertain Atmospheres, soars right into the "amazing" category.

Hashimoto's work is colourful, fun, and inspired by science fiction and video games, so it's right up my alley. He uses a lot of kites in his work, like the installation pictured above. A photo can't do it justice. You need to experience the scale of it to really get a feel for how beautiful it is. 

Super-Robots and Celestial Mechanics

I liked the mix of Japanese minimalism and playfulness. Kids would love this exhibition. Some of the pieces reminded me of fractals and vintage video games, and I loved the use of science fiction elements, like references to wormholes and spaceships.

   This one has the feel of '50s science fiction cover art.

The Air Smelled of Subversion and Boundaries, All Glitter with Bright, Sourceless Light

This piece showcases Hashimoto's interesting technique. Are the shadows cast by the piece part of the piece, or just coincidental? Could one construct a story based on the visual representation here? And don't you love that title? 

The exhibition is open until September 24th, if you want to check it out. 

A Surprising Side of Wäinö Aaltonen

Finland is celebrating its 100th year of independence this year, and the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum in Turku is joining in with an exhibition of Wäinö Aaltonen's work. When I think of Aaltonen, what comes to mind are his sculptures, like these gilded figures that once stood in the Finnish Parliament. Apparently they were deemed too ostentatious and replaced with bronze casts at some point, but the originals are returning to the parliament house this year as part of the celebration. But that's not all there is to Aaltonen, and this exhibition is a great opportunity to see some of his more experimental work. 

This one is titled Beholder from the Depth. Pretty Lovecraftian, no?

Atlantis II. I love that dreamy, fairy-tale blue. 

This piece was hard to photograph, but that dark bit is actually missing. The piece is titled Shadow on the Face.  It's super creepy in person, because if you approach from the left, it looks like a perfectly normal sculpture, and then you suddenly see that gash on her face. Unsettling. 

The exhibition is running until May 7th if you want to check it out. 

Heikki Willamo's Mythical Voyage

In the caves of the mind

Salo Art Museum is holding an exhibition of Heikki Willamo's nature photography from Feb 4th to May 5th this year. The exhibition is titled "A Mythical Voyage," and in addition to the photographs includes a soundscape made especially for the exhibition by musician Kie Von Herzen and the short nature film Eläimen kuva (The Animal Image) by Perttu Saksa. 

Willamo is a well-known Finnish nature photographer, and the exhibition celebrates his long career and his deep relationship with nature. We were lucky enough to visit the museum when the artist himself was present and doing a special introduction tour of the exhibit. He told us he was inspired by the ancient cave paintings of South-Western Europe, Finland, and Norway, which made him think about the way our ancestors related to nature and how we relate to it today. He wanted to do pieces that continued the tradition of imaging nature, that would place him as one link in the chain beginning from Ancient Man and continuing into the future.

 In the photographs the Icelandic horse stands in for the wild horse, for example, but the mythical quality comes right through. All the photographs are in black and white, which adds to the effect, especially with the blurry photographs alluding to the ancient Finnish belief of metsänpeitto, a way of getting lost into the magical woods so that only a shaman can save you. Ordinary mortals could pass right by and only see a rock or a tree stump, leaving you wandering the woods for all time.

As a writer, I found the images intriguing. They aren't just nature photographs: they tell a story. I also liked the strange and enthralling mood of the exhibition, especially the smoky, slightly distorted images in the metsänpeitto room. If you're writing about Finnish mythology, this exhibition will inspire you for sure. You can almost hear the ancient shamanic rhyming spells in the background. 

Dare you step into metsänpeitto, lose yourself in the woods?

Regrettably it looks like the museum website is only available in Finnish, but if you're in the neighbourhood, do check the exhibition out; the powerful images speak for themselves. Not in Finland? You can see some of the pieces on Willamo's website.

Penguins and Pinecones

Have a Christmas party and want to bring something other than cookies? Here are a few cute things you can try. The penguins are olives stuffed with cream cheese and a slice of carrot on the bottom with a tiny slice cut out for the beak. 

These are cream cheese with almonds layered on top so they look like pine cones. You're supposed to decorate these with fresh rosemary, but I couldn't find any. 

I messed around with the recipes a bit, but you can find instructions here:

Pine cone cheese ball

Penguin appetizers

Svartå Manor

I visited Svartå manor (Mustion linna in Finnish) a few weeks ago. It's about a one-and-a-half hour drive from Turku, and even closer to Helsinki. The manor was one of the grandest stately homes in Finland, but is now open to the public as a museum. Built between 1783 and 1792, its architecture is a mix of Rococo and Neoclassical styles, while the interior is mostly Gustavian. It's surrounded by beautiful gardens complete with fake ruins and a tiny castle built when the romantic Neo-Gothic craze swept over Europe.      

You can take a tour of the manor and hear all the fascinating anecdotes about the illuminaries that stayed there over the years, including Tzars Alexander I and Alexander II of Russia, King Gustav III of Sweden, and Sibelius.

The real glory days of Svartå manor happened in the early 1900s during the reign of Hjalmar Linder, a business magnate who was the richest man in Finland in his time. He held extravagant balls, took his friends on luxurious hunting trips to Russia, and owned the second car in Finland, having outbid the King of Belgium for it.  In addition to this, he was a compassionate and modern employer, instituting an eight hour workday, setting up a system to pay for the workers' medical costs, and letting the workers stay at housing he built near the ironworks for free. 

But then came World War I. Linder escaped to Sweden for the duration of the Finnish Civil War in 1918. When he returned, he found his property intact, but many of his workers had been taken to prison camps for the Reds, and their families begged him to help. He visited the camps and was appalled at the conditions and the mass executions, so he wrote a piece to a major newspaper, the Hufvudstadsbladet, in protest. He wrote it in good faith, thinking he'd be taken seriously and that he could help end the madness, but it turned out differently. He started receiving death threats and his friends abandoned him. In the end he was forced to sell his property and go into voluntary exile. He tried to continue his business ventures abroad, but lost his great fortune over three years, because the world is a cruel place for do-gooders and idealists. Ruined and penniless, he took his own life in Marseilles in 1921. 

As with all old houses, Svartå manor also has ghost stories associated with it. Some say Hjalmar Linder haunts his old house, and there's two ghostly ladies there too, the White Lady and the Grey Lady. The White Lady is though to be a woman who stayed at Svartå manor for a time. She had some kind of nervous disorder and had to be locked into a small room on the second floor at times. One of these times she had some kind of stroke and was found dead in the room, hence the haunting. Some even claim that King Gustav III haunts the manor. 

I highly recommend the tour, because the guide was very knowledgeable and a good entertainer, too.

There's even a tragic love affair associated with Svartå manor:  Finnish military leader and statesman Carl Gustav Mannerheim fell in love with Hjalmar Linder's half-sister Kitty, who turned him down"because he wasn't exciting enough." Mannerheim was also twenty years her senior, so it might have had something to do with that...  He did send her a picture of himself as a young man, and you can see it at the manor. Kitty did value Mannerheim's friendship a lot, in spite of what happened. Apparently she took flowers to his grave every year. Kitty's story doesn't end well, though. She never married and lost her fortune over the years. She died in Helsinki, a bitter old woman living off the kindness of friends. 

Here are some of the fake ruins from the garden and the tiny faux-medieval castle.

Nowadays the manor is once again owned by the Linder family, and they've set up a hotel and an award-winning restaurant, Linnankrouvi (Slottskrogen in Swedish), there. 

The rooms are located in historical buildings. We sprang for the suite, Merlin's Tower. (C'mon, how could you pass up the opportunity to sleep in Merlin's tower?)

As nice as the room was, I recommend getting one of the normal rooms. I don't know if it was the proximity to the river or if the building's suffered water damage over the years, but there was a noticeable smell of rot in the room. 

Even if you don't stay at the hotel, do to try the restaurant. Trust me, you need to. It's very popular, so pre-booking is advised. The food is amazing, and the space is open to the garden, so it's very atmospheric. 

That's the cocktail I had. 

Look at that dessert! Just beautiful. And the best part was that those staying at the hotel got to have breakfast at the restaurant. One of the best breakfasts I've ever had. 

On the way back we stopped at Fiskars village for some Finnish design and chocolate cake. It's less than a half hour from Svartå Manor, and they host lots of interesting events there. Even if you don't like shopping that much, PetriS Chocolate Room makes fantastic salted caramel chocolates to take home with you.

Bengtskär Lighthouse and The Rosala Viking Centre

                              

First day of summer vacation, yay! Hubby and I celebrated with a day trip to Bengtskär Lighthouse. We booked this tour from Kasnäs.

                               

The lighthouse has been open to the public since the nineties, and it's one of the few lighthouses where you get to see the lantern room. 

                                 

                                             The building is built of local stone. It's beautiful.

                                    

                                                     We climbed all the way to the top. 

                                   250 steps and two ladders, but the view is totally worth it. 

                                    

                              The antique lens is still there, but nowadays they use electric lights instead.

There were lots of these guys about ("sea duck" is the translation I found (haahka)?). They  blend in so well that I nearly stepped on a few even though I was looking out for them. 

                       People have carved their names into the stone. I wonder who they were?

Oh, and there was an abandoned  wartime bunker there, too. And I went in! Pretty creepy, but cool.  It looked like something out of a horror FPS. 

                               

                               The tour also included a stopover at the Rosala Viking Centre. 

                               

                       It was actually pretty cool, especially the jatulintarha, an ancient maze. 

                                

We had lunch in the great hall. It would be an amazing place for a larp! They also do Viking feasts there, and the guests get to dress up. 

                                     

                                                       That's my vegetable soup and mead. 

                                      

                                       

The great thing about Rosala is that it's not a museum: you can actually touch stuff! This place would be really fun for kids. The guide actually said they do trips for school groups and summer camp type stuff, too.

                                    

These glasses at the gift shop were gorgeous, but as we were going on to Bengtskär, I didn't want to lug them around. I hope I'll find them at the Turku medieval fair in July. I definitely need a couple of these.

                                     

                                Yes, these are fake weapons. Yes, I played with them. Wouldn't you?

All in all, a great day out. If you're coming up for Worldcon next year and want to see a bit more of Finland while you're here, this is a fun option for a day trip. You can even stay overnight in the lighthouse. They've turned the lighthouse keepers' rooms into a hotel! Rosala also offers accommodation, Viking style.

Both would make great locations for a writers' retreat, too.