Ep. 7: Very Finnish midsummer tales

There are many things that were alien to me when I moved to Finland. One of those was the concept of Flag Days. For those in Finland who take these for granted, in much of the world that I have lived in, there are no specific rules around when the national flag is flown. Yes, many rules about how and where, but not often "when." In Finland, specific days are designated Flag Days, and only on those days, the Finnish blue cross on a white field goes up across the country's many flagpoles, which are otherwise empty. They celebrate days of remembrance, national importance, and of course, religious events, like Christmas.

At the end of this week, there is a special three-day event when you can see the Finnish national flag across every town, city, and hamlet, and most importantly, the summer cottage, or mökki, as they are known in Finnish. It is Midsummer, otherwise known as Juhannus in Finnish and Midsommar in Swedish.

Midsummer in Finland is truly a day of white nights. Across the Arctic Circle, past Rovaniemi to the Arctic Ocean, the sun is at its highest, the day at its longest. If you have never witnessed the quality of that light, I hope everyone listening will one day. Purely and simply, it is otherworldly.

Another thing that happens in this Finnish start to the summer is the opening of the summer cottage season. From the very tip to the southern archipelago, summer cottages are occupied. As generations change, remote summer cottages are handed down within a family; however, they can be quite expensive and hard to maintain. Despite being at the heart of Finnish culture, not all cottages continue their existence, and you can see that more with changing times, changing cultures, and changing climates.

This episode is in two parts. The first part is the story "The Cottage on the Shores of Yli-Kitka," a story I wrote, read in both Finnish and English. In the second part, there is a piece about my experiences from Midsummer in the west coast Finnish Archipelago some years ago.

But first, I want to bring you a piece of poetic prose that I wrote about the mökki season. I will give more detail after the piece. Crazy as this may sound, even though my Finnish is terrible, I imagined this piece in Finnish. So I want you to hear the Finnish version first, as read by Kaj Mäkelä, translated by Suvi Salmilampi and Kaj Mäkelä.

Read the short story: The cottage on the shores of Yli-Kitka (English) / Mökki Yli-Kitkan rannalla (Finnish)

Read: Midsummer in Finland’s Archipelago

Unlike many of my pieces this was written on a Friday evening, fixed up within a week and published here within 10 days. I was extremely lucky that my insanely talented writing group happened to be meeting in that time and were able to give solid and creative feedback. So this week I would like to give thanks to Liz, Paul, Julius, Baiba and Viktor for the feedback and for driving me to better myself. Much of their suggestions made it in just in time. Some of the suggestions will have to wait for a future version!

The sounds of the Kuikka: Kuikka / Black-Throated Loon / Arctic Diver by YleArkisto -- https://freesound.org/s/242110/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca