Finland trip, summer 2024

I recently traveled to Finland and Estonia with two of my teen boys. It was an incredible trip and there was so much that we delighted in taking in. We ate delicious smoked salmon, creamy yogurts, sweet summer strawberries, reindeer meat, and piirakkas (a rye dough patty filled with rice pudding which was surprisingly often used as bread and eaten with meat and cheese on top). We really liked the freshness of the bread and cheese there as well. We traveled by train, bus, electric scooter, and ferry, and even took a sleeper train car from Helsinki to Oulu (9 hour trip) one night. We sampled the candy (no thank you on the salmiakki) and the different pullas and pastry treats. We walked through the cities, state churches, and historic fortresses and heard about the history from local guides. We swam in the lakes and biked the flower-lined streets. We went to Suviseurat (summer services) and were blown away at the sheer magnitude of 80,000+ people coming to one location to hear God’s word.

I opted not to bring my big girl camera, and documented our trip with iphone pictures. In Finland, the cultural expectation is that you do not post images of people on the web without that person’s permission (or so I was told by someone in my mother’s generation). Seeing as how Finland is absolutely beautiful in the summer with all its lakes and forests, it was not difficult to find images to post to instagram. Quite the contrary actually. 

But that wasn’t what made our trip so special. The best part about Finland was the people. The people were so warm and welcoming and they invited us into their homes with hugs and hospitality. We got to see how they decorated their houses, how they lived, and what they ate. We got to meet countless relatives and see where my grandfather grew up. It was the most incredible gift. And if you ask my boys what the best part of Finland was, they would say it was the saunas. Every summer cottage we visited, and some of the homes, had a sauna on the lake (fun fact: there are more saunas in Finland than cars)! If you have never jumped into the lake after taking steam, I would highly recommend you find a way to give it a try. It is the most invigorating feeling! Do it several times!

One of the most memorable and meaningful events of our trip was when we visited my great uncle, the last living sibling of my grandfather, at his summer cottage. At 93 years old, he lives alone there in the summertime without running water or electricity. He fishes from his dock and chops the wood to heat his sauna. When he was showing us his “sleeping box” (aka cabin), he pointed out his Finnish flag flying from the eaves. In Finland, you don’t see a lot of flags; they are only flown on holidays and special occasions. I asked him if he was flying it for Juhannus, the midsummer holiday that had just passed a few days prior. He replied that no, he was flying it “for family that visits from America”. 

Some goodbyes are really, really hard and filled with lots of heartfelt hugs and enthusiastic waving as you depart. That was one of them.