12.02.2006: back on the edge ...

Scandinavians may be famed for their design, but Suomenlinna fortress has definitely never contributed to this reputation. As a piece of defensive architecture, it's rubbish.

The fortress has been standing out there looking all austere and 'guarding' the mouth of Helsinki's South Harbour since the middle of the 18th century. It received its biggest test about fifty years after it was built, when the Russian army decided to have themselves a little siege. To no-one's great surprise, they managed to capture Suomenlinna at roughly the cost of a grazed arm. ("Ow, stop it Vanya! That really stings!"). And it wasn't even a very determined siege – more a sort of combined siege/winter break, really. Russian troops basically camped out on the ice nearby, periodically scaring the locals by bringing in more shiny artillery and reinforcements which everyone knew would probably never be needed. And eventually, as the happy campers had predicted, Suomenlinna's occupants came clean and said "Okay guys, you got us. This place is completely silly and we'll never hold it ... so, er, which bits of southern Finland would you like?"

Without actually planning to or meaning to, I seem to have visited a few dysfunctional military installations in my time. They tend to be a lot more fun than the good ones. But prior to Suomenlinna, I'd definitely never seen a fortress designed by a guy who wasn't even an architect. You have to love that.

"Hey, we need to build a new hospital."
"Yeah, you're absolutely right. So, erm, d'you know any experienced pastry chefs who could throw together some blueprints for us?"

Okay, so it wasn't quite as bad as that. The not-at-all-renowned Augustin Ehrensvärd – who drew up the plans for Suomenlinna – was a munitions expert, so he probably did know a little something about war and stuff. But about construction, he knew precisely jack divided by squat when he received the commission.

Not sure I can explain exactly why it is that I find this so amusing. But in any case, it isn't really the point of visiting places like Suomenlinna. See, along with its entertaining ineffectiveness, the fortress also has location going for it in a big way. Being across the harbour from Helsinki city means you have to take a ferry to get there. Which, in itself, is not a remarkable fact; I've heard they have these ferry things everywhere nowadays. However, Maya and I happened to be in Helsinki in the heart of winter (i.e. this week), which means that the harbour was (and is) frozen.

Yep. Frozen. As in "Hey, where's the water? All I can see is big, chunky, icebergy things and a bit of slush."

The ferry ride through an ice-encrusted sea bored the heck out of most of the passengers. But then, they probably live at similar latitudes, where carving through an ice sheet to get from A to B is as normal as, say, coming face-to-face with a deadly spider while using an outside toilet in Australia. Meanwhile, I felt as though I were on location for the filming of a National Geographic doco. It was so cool!

The whole harbour crossing thing also made me ask myself why I seem to have this obsession with the aesthetics of cold – ice, snow, glaciation and all that palaver. I s'pose it could be because I was born in such a hot country. But then again, there are plenty of people born in hot countries who love the heat, so that's probably not it.

I guess it could be partly to do with my musical tastes. A fairly significant % of my CD collection is made up of works by Scandinavian artists, and much of that music attempts to reflect or represent a natural environment. But I don't know, really. Could be just because ice is, you know, all sparkly and pretty and stuff.

Getting back to Suomenlinna, though: when you step off the ferry, it's difficult to get a clear idea of where you are in relation to the city, the sea, the harbour's entrance etc. The fortress is actually spread over eight islands connected by bridges, which adds to the aesthetic appeal but also to the "right, now where exactly am I supposed to be going?" factor. So you place yourself in the hands of a tour guide and hope that all will become clear. The guide tells you the background of the place and throws in a few historical curiosities and anecdotes, as guides are wont to do. All of which is a long way from being entirely uninteresting. But the thing is, unless you're a military historian, none of it really matters much. The really fun part – at least for me – was that Suomenlinna is one of those places where it feels like you're standing on the edge of the world.

Hmmm. Seems like a good time for a flashback.

I remember being in Norway in 2000 (as if I wouldn't) and visiting a tiny town called Kaupanger, the last stop on a regional bus route that takes you through the patchwork of towns lying north of the Sognefjord (Norway's largest). The Sognefjord splays its tendrilicious arms deep into the Norwegian countryside, and for some way up the fjord small communities huddle around each tributary. Then at a certain point, they just ... stop. Beyond that there are more waterways, stretching even further into the hinterland, but it's just too far from anywhere to inspire settlement.

Standing at the harbour's edge in Kaupanger, you can see the point where the orchards and villages of Fjordland give way to all that unspoiled Nordic nature one occasionally hears about. The shoreline is classically half-moon shaped – sort of a smaller version of Wineglass Bay in Tasmania – so on three sides you're surrounded by hills. They're dotted with little red huts and a quaint wooden stave church, dating to some forgotten era when the Norse Gods were gradually driven out by (zzzzzzzzz ...) European Christianity. Between the shoulders of the harbour, though, you stare out over the water, and there you see the start of an impressive network of fjords that stretches beyond the horizon. The fjells (hills that rise out of the water on either side of a fjord) jut out alternately from left and right, looking as though they could suddenly snap shut and interlock like the spines on a venus fly trap. The strong impression you're left with is that those fjells just keep going on forever; that there are hundreds of them beyond your visual range, followed by ... well, followed by pretty much nothing at all. And at that point you get a flash of insight. Or maybe it's recognition. Doesn't make a bit of difference that Kaupanger happens to be as sleepy and bucolic a village as you could find anywhere. Here, where the land gives way, where dark waters fill the open mouth of a giant with teeth so large they have forests growing on them, you suddenly understand the origin of all those stories about Viking long boats sailing over the Earth's edge and into the void beyond. 'Cause here it is – the boundary they crossed. Just a step over the horizon. The end of ... stuff.

Suomenlinna isn't quite as dramatic as that; I mean, it does get a tad more difficult to imagine an empty void beyond its battlements after the guide points southward and says "Estonia is 45 kilometres that way". But still, standing out there in the grip of winter, with ice transforming the Baltic Sea into an eerie blue-white steppe, you're just a few straggling tourists and leafless trees away from total isolation on a deserted coastline, with an utterness of nothingness laid out in front of you. It's pretty frikkin' awesome.

In case you're thinking that walking around a military installation, looking at guns and battlements and so forth, is about as interesting as watching fish dry: well, let me heartily concur. I'm definitely not the military museum type. I only suggested to Maya that we visit Suomenlinna after seeing a photo of it in a tourist brochure, which made it look more like the ancient pagan forts of rural England than like any modern-era serious defensive type thingie. That is to say, all you could see were a few rocks piled on top of one another and a lot of wild vegetation. As Maya and I experienced them, the islands were so buried in snow and ice that the fortification side of things was very much playing second fiddle to nature. Apparently if you come here in summer it's even more the case, for different reasons. The fortress walls, like everything else on Suomenlinna, become heavily overgrown with wildflowers, lilac and other colourful plant life.

The other thing that happens here in the warmer months (and a downside of visiting in winter, admittedly) is that a slew of seasonal beasties come to settle on Suomenlinna. You get your seabirds nesting on the islands' extremities, your migratory types wheeling in from the south to enjoy the long northern days, your legions of butterflies and squirrels and even the occasional 'soft-footed mammal'. Mind you, this isn't so incredibly unusual for Helsinki; wolves, elk and even lynx have been spotted in the streets of this town. But still, it's part of Suomenlinna's charm. While technically you're here to visit "The Fortress of Finland", what you'll see is more likely to get you in touch with your Inner Attenborough than to bring out your Napoleonic short man complex.

Another nifty thing about Suomenlinna is that you can amuse yourself by imagining what it would be like to live there. Because, in actual fact, people do. While our guide was regaling us with a minutely detailed history of the largest dry dock in the Baltic region (or whatever it was), you'd see locals wandering around the fortress, returning from the mainland with shopping bags full of groceries &/or dragging their littl'uns behind them on plastic sleds. And guess what? They do it all without a cash machine! I mean, okay, I don't have a TV anymore, and some people have commented on how difficult &/or inconvenient that must be. Believe me, it isn't. But truly, my hat comes off to anyone who can survive without an ATM.

The streets here don't have names, so if you asked one of the aforementioned hardy locals where they were going, their answer would be along the lines of "C14". That's a letter (A-H) to indicate which island they're headed for, followed by the building number. No wonder the Russians wanted to take Suomenlinna – such bland, impersonal designations must surely have appealed to a people who raise the impersonal and the bland to a way of life and a national cuisine, respectively. Here, though, they add to the apparent remoteness and austerity of the place. You see the alpha-numerical signs on the sides of residential blocks, most of them sturdy neoclassical buildings that continue the prevailing architectural themes of Helsinki's elegant central neighbourhoods. It's all very frontiery, but not at the expense of style. I like that.

Hmmm ... how to finish this? Well, obviously I found Suomenlinna a very absorbing and appealing place. Sorry I didn't have many amusingly caustic remarks to make about it (other than the "hehe, check out the hilariously ineffective fortress" thing). It was just too likeable.

Perhaps I should give some thought to starting up a retirement fund, so that a few of us could buy up a residential block in a place like Suomenlinna, fill it with cats and rocking chairs, and relocate there to grow frail(er) and wither(er)ed in our twilight years. If you're gonna spend the 'winter of your life' somewhere, might as well do it in a place that does winter with a vengeance, I say :)

Moi Moi!
(bye bye)

Anthony.