Winter in Fairbanks

Today I'm thankful for down jackets and mittens. Click here: January 27, 2006

Koli National Park

Then back to Finland and onto a train that took us to eastern Finland, quite near the border with Mother Russia to visit with some friends. We had many interesting discussions on the fate of wilderness and indigenous peoples. Two of our friends living there are particularly interested in these topics; through a program called "Snowchange", which our friend started, they’ve traveled and lived with indigenous groups in remote areas of the arctic and interviewed elders about their observations of climate change. Essentially, they are trying to increase dialogue between the scientific community and local people living on the land as they have for thousands of years. If you’re interested in learning more, click here.

We made a stop at Koli National Park, the so-called “National Landscape of Finland”. Numerous poets and artists have been inspired by Koli, especially during the nationalist movement of Finland in the 19th century and early 20th century (Finland gained independence from Russia in 1917). Images of Koli have played an important role in forming the identity of the Finnish people, much in the same way as the western frontier has influenced America’s self image. Unfortunately, we were unable to take any good photos when we were there because the weather was overcast.

Dunkles hefeweizen

After the exciting trip to the top of Pyynikinharju, it was time for some bier und brezelen. Inari, her sister Anu, and myself visited our friend Rolland who lives in Mannheim, Germany. From the tourist’s point of view, Mannheim leaves something to be desired. It was destroyed during WWII and quickly re-built with cheap supplies, so that it lost much of the character it once had. But it is maybe the more realistic Germany (when compared to popular tourist destinations), and that made it quite interesting, especially with a local guide who was excited to show us around and answer my millions of questions about Nazism, WWII, the re-unification of Germany, the German economy, and the philosophy of beer. I’ve come to the realization that I really do enjoy learning history (previously I thought it was boring), but not the history that you learn in textbooks.

Besides being in Mannheim we also spent one day in Worms, an old Jewish center on the River Rhein that has the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, and two days in Heidelberg, a popular tourist spot that was not bombed during WWII because some important American was fond of the city. I’m pretty sure I was there 10 years ago with my family, but I didn’t realize that until Rolland bought a bratwurst from what I think is the same vender that I bought one from 10 years ago (I didn’t remember the person, just the place). Heidelberg has many things to keep a visitor busy, including castle and monastery ruins, a lovely old town, the philosopher’s walk, a fairy tale park, and a Nazi theater. Our guide book said that the fairy tale park is a delight for kids, in which case I’m still a kid!

The highest moraine ridge in the world

Inari’s sister lives near Pyynikinharju, which is a 200 km long moraine that was deposited by the retreating Fenno-Scandian ice sheet during the last ice age; at approximately 100 m high it is (supposedly) the highest moraine ridge in the world. A moraine is a pile of poorly sorted, angular rocks deposited by a glacier along its margin or at its terminus; they usually form when rocks that fall onto the glacier are transported downglacier and are left near the terminus as the ice melts and becomes stagnant, though in some cases moraines form when a glacier pushes sediments like a bulldozer.

I was unable to confirm whether Pyynikinharju is the highest moraine ridge in the world for a few reasons:

1. Nobody really cares.
2. There seems to be some confusion in the geologic nomenclature. The Finnish word “harju” means ridge, but is often translated as esker, which it certainly is not, though both eskers and moraines are ridges. An esker is a long, sinuous ridge of sand and till deposited in a subglacial water channel. Also, the Finnish use the word “moreeni” to mean till, which is just a relatively thin layer of subglacial sediment – till is abundant in the northern plains of North America.
3. I don’t understand enough Finnish to read through all the Finnish web pages discussing Pyynikinharju.

At any rate, it’s a beautiful place with great views of the city of Tampere and the two large lakes that surround it. So far it’s my favorite city in Finland.

The Cave

My Grandma and I started an electronic book club about a year ago, that is, if a "club" can consist of just two people. Anyway, it's not particularly exclusive and anybody, even if you're a nobody or just somebody, can "join". The rule of the club is that any books we read must have been written by somebody who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but the book need not be the author's most famous or even written prior to receiving the prize. Other than that, anything goes. We've made it through the following books so far:

1. Quo Vadis by Henryk Sientkiewicz
2. A Personal Matter by Oe Kenzaburo
3. Beloved by Toni Morrison
4. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
5. Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
6. The Cave by José Saramago

Each book has been special for its own reasons, but some have been more special than others. We've already visited ancient Rome, modern Japan, slavery, the Spanish Civil War, Cairo, and the "Center". Sometimes we've visited topics we would've preferred not to have visited, but maybe we're better off for having done so.

We most recently finished The Cave, a story about an elderly potter, his daughter and son-in-law, and a dog called Found. The story itself isn't so important, its the poetic and insightful writing that makes this book a fun read. Paragraphs often surpassed three or four pages, some sentences were up to a page long and full of commas. Dialogue was not seperated in the usual style, but rather by commas and capital letters. This made it difficult to follow at times, until you realized that it didn't matter who said the words, only that they were said. Saramago is really a poet, but maybe he realized that he would have a better chance of making a living by writing stories. This story is really a poem, disguised by a plot. Read it for the word play, but stay and enjoy the symbolism, for which there is a lot: the circularity of life, self-discovery, individuality, the dangers of mass marketing, Plato's cave, and pottery (believe me, there is a common thread through these things).

So, what's next?

Finnish New Year

New Year’s Eve is the only time of year that a permit is not required to shoot off fireworks in Finland. Of course, some people get a little bit antsy and start firing them off as much as two or three days before New Year’s Eve. Come December 31, everybody is shooting them off – all night long. The result is spectacular, and a little bit crazy. I suspect it’s a little bit like being in a war zone: step outside your house and you are immediately surrounded by explosions, you never know when or from which direction the next one will come. My favorite “fireworks” were the emergency flares; normally it is illegal to fire these unless there is an emergency, except, of course, on New Year’s Eve. The flares look like bright red jellyfish slowly floating through the sky.