Sunday, October 21, 2018

The Sound of Silence - the wilds of Finland

  


Finland in October. I’ll be honest—I was hoping for snow. Maybe not in Helsinki itself, but certainly out in the wilds of Karelia where I spent the second half of my brief trip. Alas, it was mild, even by UK standards, and there were only a couple of days when gloves were a necessity, never mind full polar explorer wear.


Finland is known as the land of a thousand lakes, and for good reason. In fact, there are just shy of 188,000 lakes, so flying into Helsinki it was like looking down onto an intricate paper doily. I expected fir trees—nearly 70 per cent of the country is forest, after all—but not the amazing amount of silver birch, with their startling pale bark and their leaves turning shades of yellow and copper and gold.

And the silence.

The silence had a quality all its own.

Helsinki was as busy and bustling as you’d expect any major city to be. It’s easy to forget, when you’re there, that for a country that is in area the eighth largest in Europe, it has only around 5.5 million people. (To put that into perspective for me, there are over 8 million people in London alone, and 66 million in the UK.)


Out in Karelia, to the east, I was less than a hundred miles from the border with Russia. It felt remote, perhaps because I was intentionally without a car, although there was a canoe and a rowing boat at my disposal.

The small wood cabin where I was staying was incredibly well insulated, which made it very warm—and quiet—inside. But even outside there was little to be heard. Across the whole of Finland, there are only 17 people per square kilometre. I doubt I saw more than half a dozen in the time I was there, and that includes the pair fishing on the lake outside my window.


Normally, I like quiet. I’ve spent time in the middle of the Jordanian desert, and at sea where you’re days away from the nearest land and at night the stars go all the way down to the horizon in every direction. But I confess I found the isolation on this trip a little unsettling as far as getting on with writing was concerned.


Perhaps it was the woods that surrounded the cabin, or the still water of the lake, reminded me too much of all those Scandi-Noir thrillers and I kept expecting the Worst to Happen. Or perhaps I’m too used to pet-sitting on these foreign trips, so was unsettled by not having something with four legs and fur to divert my attention.


Either way, it was a fascinating exploration of another culture, and one which will, no doubt, find its way into a book in the near future…


This week’s Word of the Week is adumbration, which is to give only the main facts about something, a broad outline, particularly something that will happen in the future. From the Latin adumbratus, sketched or shadowed in outline. It can also mean to overshadow something or partially conceal it.

Events
I have been invited to take part in Noir @ The Bar London ‘Chilled To The Marrow’, which takes place on Monday, October 22 from 7:00–10:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:00 p.m.) at The Urban Bar, 176 Whitechapel Road, E1 1BJ. The line-up is Susi HollidayWilliam ShawMark HillDerek FarrellJay StringerJA MarleyAlex CaanBarbara NadelZoë SharpLiz (Elizabeth) MundyCaroline (Caz) FrearFelicia Yap, and a Wildcard chosen on the night. It’s hosted by Nikki East. There will be the usual book giveaways for the audience, and also a raffle in aid of medical expenses for Evie, daughter of crime author Duane Swierczynski.


12 comments:

  1. I was at Oulu in December. There was snow, lots of snow. You just need to stick around!

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    1. Ah, further north and later into the winter is always a safe bet, Michael. And I was already missing the cats. One or other of them has been keeping me pinned down since I got back!

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  2. Way to tease us with that snippet from your new work. Talk about a porch-hanger!

    And all this time, I though adumbration was the damage your body took, like being dragged along a black-topped road, while listening to a dumb person. As in, "God! What an adumbration I got last night listening to President Trump's latest spewage."

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    1. Thanks, EvKa. Before I looked it up, I thought adumbration meant riding a motorcycle without wearing leathers...

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  3. Zoë, your description of the lakes was downright eerie (no, EvKa, not Erie), and I could feel your unease all the way down here (due south of you as the frozen crow flies) on my rapidly emptying and chilling Aegean island. We have no birches here, and few on my NJ farm, but had many in a place I once had in western Massachusetts.

    Come to think of it, MA is where I learned to be measured in my enthusiasm for those beautiful trees ("When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees / I like to think some boy's been swinging them," Robert Frost--as if I had to say) lest some misguided soul brand me a "Bircher." Back to you EvKa.

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    1. Thanks, Jeff. You know that scene they always have in those old movies where one cop turns to another in the car and says, "Boy, it sure is quiet tonight." And his buddy says, "Yeah, too quiet..."

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  4. Sounds an amazing trip. Did you book this through an agency? Is there a website with details on the location, please? Asking for a friend...;)

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    1. Hi Lesley. No agency used, just AirBnB for the accommodation. The place in Karelia came up as being near Mikkeli. It even had a sauna!

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  5. Amazing, Zoe. I got a chill reading this. I share your admiration of birches. In my neck of the woods, in the Hudson Valley, they are challenged and sometimes succumb to some mysterious disease, no doubt a result of those allegedly fictional global changes. I like to think that every time a birch dies, an angel is adding a year in hell for the deniers. I wish the angel would land a punch on their stupid noses.

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    1. Well, the trees far outnumber the people in Finland, Annamaria. I sometimes wondered, though, was it my imagination or -- when I turned round suddenly -- had those trees moved just a little closer ...

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  6. Your description of Finland reminds me - of all places - of Botswana, which is nearly double the size with less than half the population. You can drive for hours and not see anyone. The difference is that Finland has cold silence and Botswana hot!

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    1. Hot silence was the feeling I got in the desert in the Middle East, Stan. You've made me want to visit Botswana, though, just to experience it for myself.

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