27 | June | 2024 | Tales from the Hutt

Monday, 03-June-2024

Quite soon after disembarking from the ferry, I got ambushed by a docent.

Realistically, I shouldn’t have been that surprised to be ambushed right after landing on a fortress island… so lesson learned, I guess?

Regardless, I was ambushed and hit with a full barrage of information – details about the island, a walkthrough of the map and trails, and a quick run through of the various museums available on the island – The main museum being the Military Museum, including two building and one submarine!

I honestly hadn’t planned on visiting any museums while exploring Suomenlinna, but as I wandered and explored and got a feel for the actual size of the island… I realized it wasn’t nearly as expansive as I’d expected, and that I’d have quite a bit more spare time than I’d thought. Which meant a museum (and its associated placards, of course!) could fit nicely into my timetable…

As I wandered, I found myself passing the museum as I followed the hiking trail. I veered left, and stopped on in to check it out!

The museum was really interesting, with beautiful artwork from front-line illustrators sent to help capture what life was like on the front, for the people back home. That’s not what set the museum apart for me, though… Because, to be clear, this museum was a first, in my life. What set it as a first? In this perspective, the Germans were the good guys.

Yep.

Part of Finland’s history that I hadn’t ever really recognized, if I’d ever been taught it in the first place – Finland was allied with Germany during WWII, to protect itself from the Soviet Union.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The Finns know the score – these exhibits talked about how supplies from Germany saved the day, and many dioramas showed German equipment… but none of the placards or displays were anything close to what I’d call “Pro-Nazi”. Finland was allied with Nazi Germany, yes, but (from what I could tell in my very cursory research) they were allied in a strictly military sense. No Finnish Jews were sent to camps back in Germany, and when Germany’s military officially pulled out of Finland, many units simply left the German Army to rejoin the Finnish army in holding back the Soviet Union.

An interesting viewpoint, completely new to me. One of the many reasons I really enjoy visiting museums!

Moving on, literally in my case, from the indoor museum… I trotted off into Suomenlinna to find the other major attraction of the Military Museum – the Vesikko! A landed submarine!

I was a bit apprehensive, stepping into the Vesikko, as the last time I walked into a submarine I’d gotten quite a bit of unexpected claustrophobia… but I was a brave boy, and stayed steadfast in the face of my fear… and, hey! Turns out I don’t have claustrophobia in Submarines anymore!

At least when they’re beached on land, maybe?

I won’t be performing any experiments to see which types of Submarines trigger anxiety, but for now I was happy to find out that I could easily explore the Vesikko at my own pace as a lovely rest before heading further into the bastion’s defenses.

A day on Suomenlinna – Island and Fortress of Helsinki!

Monday, 03-June-2024

When I first talked to folks in Scandinavia about how I’d be visiting Helsinki, I believe the first place they recommended I visit was Suomenlinna. It came up so often, and so emphatically that it almost seemed a little weird, to be honest… but I dutifully looked it up, figured out how to make it happen, and set it as my second priority right after my traditional art museum adventure!

So.

What is Suomenlinna?

It’s an island! An Island in Helsinki Harbor, specifically eight islands all connected by bridges, that was turned into a massive bastion fortress to protect the city starting in 1748. From my explorations, though, I quickly realized that it was much more than a big island castle… there were schools, churches, houses and roads… it’s more of a miniature city, with people currently living there full time as far as I could tell.

I did have to take a ferry to get to it, a voyage I was a bit apprehensive for, but thankfully it was a short ride… and one that let me stand on the bow of the ferry, a spot that always reduces any motion sickness for me since I can see the horizon and feel the ocean spray on my face. And it was a 10min trip, so not nearly as bad as the multi-hour train ride that so ravaged my poor inner ear just a week or so prior.

After I stepped off the ferry and onto solid land, I quickly grabbed some lunch from a a nearby sit-down restaurant, and then started my explorations. The whole island was really neat – basically an open-air museum with beautiful nature areas, ruins, and my absolute favorite thing in the world… Informational Placards!

I wandered, read up on the history (they had so many extra cannons that the used them to make a fence for the church!), played around on the remaining (decommissioned) artillery pieces, and even found a nice quiet corner to read my book for a bit in the shade.

I fulfilled the old adage of “do something that scares you every day” by exploring a super dark cave under the battlements, and got something around 12 miles of walking under my shoes for the day. Please note – These pictures of that scary cave are WAY brighter than it looked. I literally used my camera almost as nightvision, taking pictures with the dark-vision filter every so often to supplement the meager light that my flashlight could shine. It was fun, and scary, and fun.

(As a funny aside – Suomenlinna has the second-most armored bathrooms I’ve ever seen. They used to be powder storage, from what I could tell, for the artillery positions nearby… and so are buried under multiple feet of rock and soil. The most armored bathrooms, in my memory, were those North of Mt. St. Helens, which for some reason resembled nuclear fallout shelters far more than bathrooms)

The ferry ride back home was, thankfully, just as easy as the ride out had been. Simple, lovely salt spray, and good views of some of the other smaller islands that weren’t quite close enough to add into the fortress chain.

Definitely a good day out of the city.