Travelogue: Helsinki, Finland; Part 2
Root 36 - A church, deception, and an awkward sauna invitation.
Intro/outro sound is Prime Light Harp Melody 165 BPM.mp3 by snikpohneb — https://freesound.org/s/173463/ — License: Attribution 3.0
Here’s the first post about the lighter side of my trip to Helsinki.
One of the first things my then-husband and I did in Helsinki was go visit Suomenlinna. He was really into history—particularly military history—so what interested him most were the ships and the cannons. I was less interested in those things, and more interested in admiring the angles of the star fort with the beautiful greenery that had sprouted atop it, as well as the story about the defaced church.
Suomenlinna had had three masters. First, the Swedish built the star fort on it. Then the Russians took it over when they conquered Finland. The Russians built a beautiful Orthodox church in a green space on the island. After Finland won their independence in 1917, they’d had enough of being ruled over. For some reason they left many Russian-looking buildings in downtown Helsinki, while that church on Suomenlinna bore the brunt of their wrath. Without Russia to enforce Orthodoxy, austere Protestantism dominated. They wrecked the visage of the ostentatious church with its onion domes, tearing down the towers and transforming the building into a plain, slight thing. I was fascinated by this story. My then-husband was fascinated by the dry dock. To each their own.
The next day, WorldCon 2017 began. By far, the best part of WorldCon was hanging out with nerds from around the world after the main events were over. My then-husband and I sat in a circle of 20-40 people each night, playing Werewolf late into the evening.
It’s here that I developed the idea that Americans are more sensitive to the way others pronounce things than British people are. This opinion was formed based on exactly one experience, and so I am willing to be wrong on this point. But here’s my anecdote.
Two of the people playing were a Norwegian man named Jan and a British man. Jan had introduced himself to the group, pronouncing his name the way I might say the word “yawn.” The British man kept pronouncing his name like the first syllable of the word “January.” At one point, someone pointedly asked Jan, “You’re name’s pronounced yawn, right?” Jan confirmed this, but the British man continued mispronouncing his name the whole night.
I also developed the sense that Finns knew their English was better than they claimed it was. One of the people playing was a Finnish woman named Elisa. I noticed that whenever she drew an innocent villager card, she was very vocal in trying to help theorize who the werewolves were. Whenever she drew a werewolf card, she grew silent. Once I’d figured out the pattern, I accused her of being a werewolf in a game where she was being quiet. She protested that her English wasn’t very good, and it was self-consciousness which kept her from speaking up more. I called her bluff, and urged the group to vote to hang her. She was blushing like Finns do so easily, and looked like she might be about to cry. I thought that either I was very clever, or very cruel. Then she revealed her card. Werewolf.
Thankfully, Elisa didn’t hold my cleverness against me. She hung out with me after the majority of the group had dispersed each night.
It was while hanging out with her, and a handful of other folks from different places, that two older people approached us.
“We’re going to filk in the sauna,” they announced. “No clothes allowed, only bring your singing voice!”
Of course I’d read that enjoying the sauna, even naked and co-ed, was a regular occurrence in Finland. That didn’t mean I wanted to do it. And the two inviting us were definitely old enough to be the parents of anyone in our group.
As one, we all angled ourselves slightly toward Elisa. We looked to our native Finn for guidance. Though Elisa did seem to be more extraverted than most Finns, still she wasn’t so outspoken as to assume group leadership. There was an awkward moment before she realized we were waiting for her to make the decision for us. She thanked the people for the invitation, but politely declined. The tension present in the group as a whole released. I think to a one we were thinking some variation on “thank God!”
After we were out of earshot of the two, many in our group giggled in nervous relief. Elisa let us know that, while naked co-ed sauna attendance did happen, it wasn’t super common cross-generationally. Additionally, clothed sauna-ing was also popular—they didn’t all sauna naked. Lastly, no one need feel pressure to sauna in a situation where they felt uncomfortable. Any of us could have said no.
I detected that she’d thought it unfair to make her have to answer for the group. But you’re our native Finn! I’d thought. I had not yet fully integrated the idea that it was insensitive to single out one person to speak for a people.
When Elisa found out that my then-husband and I were planning to travel to Stockholm a few days after the convention ended, and that I hadn’t decided how we were getting there yet, she was the one who suggested taking the “all-night party boat.” There was a ferry that went from Helsinki to Stockholm every night, and there were multiple bars scattered around the ship where people drank and danced into the wee hours. She told me that all the college students in Helsinki went on the all-night party boat at some point or other during summer break. I got online and booked two last-minute tickets, glad I’d had such a laissez-faire attitude about figuring out the connective tissue of our travel plans.