On May 20th we boarded a large tour bus and headed off to Lithuania. There is something about these long drives through rural cottages and fields of yellow rapeseed that puts me right to sleep. Occasionally I would be jolted awake by other students singing, shouting, or Dr. V sighting a stork, but overall the majority of this day was spent at least half-asleep. I was lucky, however, to see the evening landscape: blue sky and yellow land, which reminded us of the Ukrainian flag.
Vilnius, the largest city and capital of Lithuania, is a beautiful city. Its medieval Old Town was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in ‘94. I spent the morning in Vilnius with a surprising amount of free time, something which seemed almost bizarrely relaxing after a trip so packed with one exciting opportunity after the next.
I first went to Vilnius’ shopping district, which was about a 30 minute walk from our hotel and led me through many little alleyways and wonky cobblestone streets. I like to go to alternative fashion stores when I travel, because I feel that it allows me to get a sense for the way local people approach self-expression: what sort of colors or patterns they gravitate towards, what cuts and styles, what fabrics. I noticed that Vilnius thrift stores were full of silk vintage cuts, paisley blouses and an all around 70s style was popular. People of all ages and genders were out shopping, with even old men going in on their own to pick out color-block coats and funky boots. One older lady looked quite proud when she saw me looking at a neon sweater she had chosen, and the few other women around my age were surprisingly friendly (I think we were mutually disappointed that I didn’t speak any Lithuanian). Children ran around the shop, one with a little knit handbag hanging in his teeth, and the stores were small and busy.
After that I wandered around the central square and a large park, which was packed with street musicians blasting conflicting sounds into the mingling crowds. Some played dubstep, others folk music, and some were single musicians (a young boy playing the drums, a woman with an acoustic guitar, a man with an electric keyboard) playing over a karaoke track of mostly classic rock songs. Sometimes these sounds blended into each other and created a rather confusing mesh of noise, but mostly the musicians were spaced well enough that listeners could block out the other musicians and listen to their chosen concert. I even saw what looked like a pop-up karaoke stand on one street corner, with a small line of people waiting their turn to sing.
Another thing I noticed throughout Vilnius were the many, many Ukrainian flags. They were everywhere, in nearly every shop, and you couldn’t walk a block without seeing at least one. Those who didn’t have a flag displayed the Ukrainian colors, using whatever they had to show solidarity with Ukraine. Many statues were decorated with yellow and blue flowers.
In the afternoon Dr. V met with me for a walk to the Bernardine Gardens, a location which I wanted to head towards because it seemed not only a pleasant natural space but also because it was close to a few other significant parts of Vilnius. I surprised even myself by the joy I felt when we reached the gardens, which were fully in bloom. It had been raining off and on all day, which made the grass very lush and the plants deeper in color. Tulips were everywhere, red and even black ones, and the apple blossoms were still fresh and pink. The gardens were full of fountains encircled by flowers. At one edge of the park was a winding river lined by large trees and full of ducks swimming contentedly downstream. After some time spent here it started to rain, which brought out the rich green scents of nature, and matched quite well the softening light of dusk and yellow lamps along the paths.
Soon after exiting the park the rain began to get heavier, and the cobblestone streets and drainage ditches built into the old sidewalks filled up with rainwater. My jacket was entering into “soaked,” territory, and I felt less happy about the cool rainy weather. Eventually we took refuge in the RoseHip Vegan Bistro, which I immediately liked for its virtue of being warm and dry. The food, too, was very tasty and with a plethora of options (bao buns, sweet potato fries, vegan burgers, soups, cakes, ciders). The lighting was warm and low, with trendy neon signs (“The Future is Vegan”) and pillows along window seats. I looked out at the rain with some dread, watching cars splash waves onto the sidewalk that we would soon be out again and walking down. However, the food was very good for our spirits, and we made it to the hotel with minimal grumbling.
As the professor of the Paloheimo Fellows, I want to give my students a broad and varied experience in our travels so that they can come to know aspects of Finland and whenever possible, other places too. Our university serves primarily working- and even poverty-class students who haven’t had the same opportunities that others have and so I am mindful of the fact that this might be the first, or even only, time they will visit someplace in Europe. With that in mind, I do try to incorporate a little visiting to other places. This year is our first back since COVID became a fact of life and now, an endemic illness. It is also a year with a lot of uncertainty brought on by Putin’s aggression and so it was also, as with the first year I directed this class, a good idea to completely merge travel plans with the comparative criminal justice class to keep our whereabouts simple and to have multiple professors on deck in case anything happens. It also means that we have taken a rather extended voyage to the Baltics with this group as they continue their examination of criminal justice, and particularly incarceration systems, in Finland and the Baltics. And so on the morning of May 20, Mary and I packed ourselves into a bus with several dozen students and professors, as well as two Victors who would be joining us. Two of Mikko’s employees at Time Travels, one of the Victors was filling in as our travel guide (really a cat herder if we’re being honest) after Mikko had to juggle a sick family member, and the other was our videographer for this part of the trip. Guide Victor, from Russia, and Picture Victor from Ukraine piled into the bus with us and away we went. Those of us on repeat trips knew Picture Victor quite well as he has traveled with us before and it was good to see him again, particularly since as a Ukrainian, he is surely affected by the terrible things happening in his homeland and it is comforting to know he is safe with us.
Guide Victor is steady, straightforward, and very professional. Mikko had created a WhatsApp group chat for everyone to ensure that we all had the same information and that we could all contact one another instantaneously and Guide Victor has used it to remind us of daily schedules, to suggest freetime activities, and most importantly, to ensure that all of us are in the places we should be at the times we should be there. Guide Victor’s first day with us would be a baptism by fire: he was to herd us into a bus to go to Helsinki harbor at which point we would board the ferry to Tallinn. After the approximate 2 hour ferry ride, he would herd us into a bus which would eventually take us to Vilnius, Lithuania, on the way managing a pit stop in Estonia, a sometimes time-consuming border crossing into Latvia, dinner at a large and strange restaurant complex in Riga’s outskirts, and the nighttime check-in process at our hotel in Vilnius. Whew.
The bus ride to the ferry terminal in Helsinki Harbor down, our group gathered our luggage and began the walk to the terminal, where we congregated in the large waiting area for the distribution of ferry tickets by Guide Victor. As I walked in, I was surprised to see a familiar face: Aki, the head of Huittinen prison, standing to the side of the room with his own luggage. Sometimes it is hard for me to recognize faces of people I have just met when I see them in unexpected contexts, but for some reason, I recognized Aki right away. “Moi!” I exclaimed and walked over toward him. “Are you going to Tallinn? We’re about to get on a boat there so we can head to Lithuania.” He smiled and said, ‘No, I am going with you on this trip.” What I didn’t previously know was that Aki had given a lecture to the students apart from the prison visit he led, and that he had received approval from his superiors to join the group in this part of the class so he, too, could learn directly from what his colleagues in the Baltics do. I introduced myself and we started chatting about ferry rides to Tallinn and strategizing what lunch we would eat once we got onboard. We were fast friends.
Guide Victor distributed tickets and we all joined the mass of others who streamed toward the ticket reading machines that opened up turnstiles allowing passengers to enter the walkway to the ship itself with Aki leading the way for a few of us. We got onto the ship, and awkwardly climbed a flight of stairs so we could get to the seating area of the ferry, where we selected seats and tucked our roller suitcases in the handy spaces between seats. And then we took turns: as one group went off to explore the ship a little and to get some food, another group would watch everyone’s luggage. This process ensured everyone got to experience the ship culture the boat represents, and that everyone got fed as well.
I knew what I wanted to eat: an open-face sandwich with a type of mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, and a mountain of tiny baby shrimp. It’s a simple but delicious sandwich that reminds me of my first time in Finland in 1997, so it is sort of my own ferry-riding ritual. Aki led me and Mary toward the food court and found the spot that had the sandwiches. It took a little bit to get accustomed to learning how the line worked, but soon enough, we were returning to the seating area with our trays and settling down to food and conversation for the short ride over.
The next stage of the trip was exciting as it would bring us through the countryside of the Baltic states, where we would see a sight I love: the multitude of storks that live in the region, dwelling in nests built atop poles near farmhouses. Back in 2015, I learned that people in the countryside traditionally encouraged storks to settle next to their homes for the good luck (fertility magic?) they would bring. And so as the suburbs of Tallinn receded with the countryside, the stork count began. We saw hundreds over the past several days!
The open farmlands and beautiful forests of Estonia eventually gave way to a gas station where we took a pit stop that was right next to the Latvian border crossing. People dressed in military uniform with guns were there, and it felt a little weird walking next to them on our way to the gas station. Guide Victor had told us to have our papers ready in case they chose to board the bus and check each of us but this did not happen, and soon enough, we were cruising through the Latvian countryside until suburbs and a giant sign announced our arrival to Riga, Latvia’s capital. As skyscrapers and a huge communications tower loomed into our view, we arrived to the restaurant: Lido’s. Featuring cafeteria-style service and boasting a number of traditional Latvian dishes, this place is an experience. Families, truckers, couples, and our rag-tag, famished group streamed around the darkly-lit building featuring folk-art decorative motifs, rough timber walls, and workers in variations of Latvian folk dress. It was a little overwhelming at first but eventually, we were fed and back on the road, with Guide Victor informing us that our bus driver had to follow specific regulations about how long and late he could drive. We need to get to Vilnius, people!
Driving through the Baltics, we saw numerous displays of solidarity with Ukraine in the form of the blue and gold flag colors. Building lights, paper flags, real flags, ribbons, stickers, and more announced support for the Neighbor’s neighbor. As all three Baltic states are already NATO members, they have the protection of their fellow members already secured. So storks and Ukraine’s colors filled a mental tally sheet as we rode along. Just after crossing into Lithuania, we saw a giant communications tower with a huge Ukrainian flag fluttering on the top, echoed in the deepening blue of the sunsetting sky with the dazzling yellow of flowered fields below. It was stunning.
And on to Vilnius, where yet another tower, this one slightly resembling Seattle’s Space Needle jutted dramatically into the sky, also festooned with a light display in the colors of Ukraine. This sense of support is so tangible and as the next couple of days would prove, based in the complex shared history Ukraine, the Baltics, and Finland have with some large neighbors who have ruled over various parts of these places over time: Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Germany, and of course, the Neighbor, Russia.
We finally made it to the hotel where Guide Victor told us to remain in the bus as he fetched and distributed our room keys. Unfortunately, the bus driver got out and opened both undercarriage doors, leaving our luggage prone to theft if we didn’t get out and grab our stuff before someone else did. Dismayed at our disobedience, Victor distributed the keys to the mass of tired, excited, overwhelmed students and professors. Our real adventures in the Baltics would begin the next day.
Today we join the larger group, composed of both Finlandia and international students touring prisons, for a visit to the Satakunta Prison in Huittinen, Finland. The drive is very scenic, with many small farms and colorful pasture zipping by our windows. I keep expecting to see a scary, foreboding building pop up out of the countryside, but instead someone points to a large red barn, “There it is.”
We enter through a tall wire gate that is more what I expect of a prison, and the entrance smells strongly of cows. There are many buildings on the property: a house for guards with long commutes, another for families visiting over the weekend, a large building that houses the prisoners (bedrooms, cafeteria, etc.), pavilions, a workshop, and farm buildings. It’s not perfectly quaint, the main prison buildings are a gray brutalist style, but it is much nicer than I would ever expect from a prison. There are pieces of the location, especially the family housing and surrounding pasture, that are sweetly pastoral. Nothing is off-limits or gated, and I see some prisoners sitting on benches, looking out at the scenery.
We are led into a sort of lecture room and meet Aki Saarinen, the director of the prison. He gives us the basic information and history of the Huittinen Unit. It is all men, there are 107 places for prisoners, 92 prisoners currently (1 life sentence), 41 staff members and 19 guards. The prison was first established in 1935 as a temporary place to keep prisoners before transferring them somewhere else, but it grew over time and is now an open prison sitting on 215 hectares of land. An open prison is one in which the prisoners have behaved well and thus earned more privileges, such as going to work or studying outside the prison.
The prison has many amenities: a sauna, laundry, gym, music room, and opportunities for the prisoners to do increasingly meaningful work. All prisoners are encouraged to keep busy with both leisure and work; Aki tells us that it’s when someone is idle in a cell that they begin to get restless and struggle.
For their work, prisoners start folding and sorting army clothes (socks, shirts, etc.), and if they behave well they can ultimately join the workshop, in which the prisoners learn to restore pieces from historic buildings in Turku. As we get the tour of this space (which is well ventilated as is appropriate for an artisan’s room, with high ceilings and good natural light) we’re all very surprised by the box cutters, saws, power tools out in the open. They are stored safely, but not locked up. Aki tells us that prisoners know that if they behave badly, they will go back to folding socks (and maybe even be transferred to a closed prison in which they would lose many of the privileges they have here). I can imagine that this work would feel rewarding; in learning to restore historic buildings one would feel like they were contributing to the maintenance of a beautiful society.
Another interesting thing about the workshop is that there is a thick red line across the floor. Many students (and professors) ask if this is a boundary line, and which side they should stand on. Aki tells us that it’s just a random line, prisoners, guards, and guests can walk wherever they like. At that point we realize that we might be indoctrinated with a certain idea of order—looking for boundary lines and keeping to the appropriate location. Aki says that once one realizes that they have these internalized social norms, they begin to wonder, “What else is there in my mind.” I thought that this was a good way to sum up my personal experience of Finland. I’ve been confronted with many small but significant social norms that I had fully internalized as natural (rather than social). When I see that these norms are not present in Finnish society, it prompts me to wonder “what else [is] in my mind.”
One of the great benefits of overlapping my class with that of my colleague Richard Gee’s is that we have the opportunity each year to actually visit a Finnish prison. Over the years, I have visited two with this class: Vilppula and Huittinen. Both are open prisons for men, which operate on the principle of preparing inmates for rehabilitation to life on the outside. If a prisoner has a job or is studying in an institution on the outside and they are able to get themselves to the location for this activity, they may do so. The goal of the open prison is not to stigmatize inmates, and so they are given the right to privacy and dignity in ways American prisons cannot comprehend, which is too bad because inmates are still humans. At least some of them could redirect themselves with the proper support.
The bus ride to Huittinen would take us through the Finnish countryside and would bring us into full contact for the first time with the entire criminal justice student group, including students from Finlandia, Tampere, Marquette University (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), Sheffield Hallam University (with which we have traveled before), and now Westminster University in London. The bus was full and lively as students chattered in a variety of languages and accents. It was fun to hear.
After the hour-plus bus ride, we arrived. It was windy and sunny and slightly cold outside. Huittinen is a grouping of traditional farm buildings centered by an enclosed residential and administrative unit composed of a few multi-story modern buildings. Unlike Vilppula, there is a fence; at the reception area, a small yard completely fenced in and capped in razor wire is set up for the occasional transport of higher-security prisoners who might need to overnight at Huittinen before being transported to another destination.
We filed into the gated courtyard. Several inmates sat in a covered open-air gazebo, smoking cigarettes and chatting. The slight scent of burning tobacco mixed with the warming springtime earth smell of the fields, the perfumed products of some of the students, and even the faint smell of cow manure. We each were asked to enter the small, traditional yellow, vertically-slatted administrative building and to show our identification documents to a worker who crossed our names from a list. We left the building and once all were checked in, we were led to another building where an upstairs room filled with rows of tables and chairs and decorated with birch logs, origami paper cranes, and Marimekko curtains would serve as a lecture space.
Aki, the head warden of Huittinen, gave a lecture about Huittinen, its history, and its structure, also inviting us to ask questions. Huittinen opened in 1935 with 15 prisoners who lived together in a tiny building still found on the grounds. The building rather resembled a traditional farm shed, or aitta, and I marveled at how far the treatment of inmates had come just in Finland over time. This prison was only supposed to be a temporary facility, but it soon became a permanent institution with additional structures. The original prisoners were tasked with converting a swamp and local lake into farmland, which the prison would later use. During the historically-complex Continuation War of 1941-1944, Huittinen housed political prisoners, which I understand to be Soviet prisoners of war. After the war, it returned to its original purpose. The prison grew in 1960 with the disbandment of the prison in Karvia and in 1975, it was developed into an open prison. Since that time, functional buildings have come and gone, but a model combining work opportunities, rehabilitation, and sentence completion has been consistent.
Employees at the prison include administrators, guards, work leaders, and workers concerned with the rehabilitation of inmates as they work toward release and re-entry into society. Days are structured to accommodate inmates with outside jobs and education while also providing routine to inmates who don’t have outside obligations. There is morning wakeup and headcount, lunch, time for family and free activities, and periods for on-site work and study. Sauna is also incorporated into regular scheduling, as an essential aspect of Finnish society.
After detailing the routine and structure of the prison, we were brought to the canteen for lunch. We ate as a separate group from the prisoners in order to respect their privacy and to not overburden the kitchen all at once. Food is provided by the same kitchen as that which feeds military conscripts in nearby Säkylä. Today, a Thursday, it was traditional pea soup and pannukakku, two foods very familiar to Finnish Americans. In fact, pannukakku is a staple in the Finlandia University cafeteria on Thursdays. After making our way through the line and eating, we were divided into two groups and sent to tour the facility.
At our last visit to Huittinen, we hadn’t had the opportunity to eat or to tour the work areas, and so this was very exciting. First, my group was taken to the reception area, which included the yard fenced in with razor wire. We learned about the admissions process. Particularly interesting here was the fact that prison entry practices are not meant to dehumanize a person like they are designed to do in other countries. We were shown facilities including transfer cells, solitary confinement, the prison library, laundry, free time spaces and more before leaving the building and walking toward the workspaces behind the residential area. First, we entered a facility in which workers could either prepare laundry and helmets for military conscripts or restore old windows and woodwork. This work not only helps other aspects of national work–like keeping the army prepared–but also in reducing costs for repairs at the prison itself and for other buildings across Finland. It also gives workers training in different vocations that they could use upon leaving prison. Prisoners receive pay for their work and they can either deposit their pay into a bank “on the outside” or to an internal banking system that the prison uses, for those who perhaps aren’t ready to get an “outside” account set up.
After this, we stepped back outside into the continuously-warming sun and walked through a timber processing area that sort of reminded me of sawmill work with finely-chipped wood in piles and stacked wood nearby. We went around the corner to something new and exciting: COWS!
The loud lowing of cows and their calves greeted us and the urban-dwellers amongst us were delighted to see the sweet, pretty cows up close. We from the Midwest mentioned our personal experiences with cows as the British students nearly ran toward the cowbarn. Having grown up near cows much of my life, it was nothing new, but there is something nice and relaxing about being around a bunch of baby cows and their mothers, with their reddish brown and Jersey-mottled hides and their large eyes. An inmate was moving materials around, filling troughs, and more. Our guard-turned-guide told us a bit about this space, and then we were free to look around. As the urban-dwellers held out their hands to touch cow muzzles, a few of us asked the inmate about his work. He was from a city and so hadn’t had any experience on a farm before this job. He enjoyed it because it was peaceful–something the guard said many who worked there enjoyed–and because it was a different type of work than he was used to. I asked him and the guard about the work with regard to special functions–such as veterinary needs–and the worker smiled as he said he had gotten to help deliver baby calves: “The first calf we birthed this year, we named Ukraine.” This solidarity with the Neighbor’s neighbor pops up in the most surprising places. We thanked him and moved along, walking down a dirt road past some pastures the cows would soon get to wander as the spring carries on and to the sonnila, or bull barn. The urban students were warned not to put their hands in the pens because bulls have quite a different reaction than cows and calves and as barn swallows flitted in and out of the barn over our heads, a massive black bull walked into the barn from an outdoor enclosure. The difference between him and the cows was immense and soon a few of the Midwesterners were telling bull mishap and fright stories. It was fun.
As we walked back toward the prison to finish out our visit with coffee and bakery, we walked past the tiny original prison of Huittinen, still standing alone in a pasture, built of hewn logs and most likely bearing the dovetail corners that are hallmarks of Finnish traditional farm architecture. The evolution of the place is amazing and I was glad to get to see it firsthand.
In the lecture room, we all took coffee and cheese-and-fruit filled Danishes, asking more questions and discussing our impressions of what we had just seen. Aki showed a great deal of humor and humanity as he talked with us and I got the sense that, though their work is very serious and requires strict boundaries and adherence to regulations and routines, this wasn’t the type of prison where inmates’ dreams for a better future, and a better self, go to die.
With all this in our heads, we left for an evening of relaxation and catch-up before our voyage to the Baltics begins the next morning. I went to a laundromat across town by myself to do our laundry. I actually enjoy laundry as it is a relaxing and solitary activity. At home I binge-watch things on Netflix and Hulu as I wait for loads to finish and as I fold things. At the 24 Pesula in Pispala, I was alone for the most part, so I entertained myself and the security cameras by dancing and singing to songs by Lizzo. Maybe my friends in Finland will see me on a weird blooper show someday. Not the first time I’ve had an odd appearance on Finnish television… While I was there, a person came in with some large rugs to wash in a special rug washing machine and I later got to see the rugs placed into the dryer cabinets that you can find at this particular laundry chain. There is a tradition of rag rug weaving in Finland that is well-known (and still practiced to some extent) among Finnish Americans and there is a common practice of having washable rugs, handmade or store-bought, on the floor in Finnish homes and keeping these rugs clean is very important. As she removed her rugs from the washing machine and headed for the cabinet, I told her I was from the US and was curious about how the dryer cabinets worked and looked since I had only ever seen them with the door closed and so she showed me and then, with some amusement, agreed to my request to take a picture of the cabinet with her rugs placed on the drying racks. Everything is a piece of fieldwork and everything can teach you something when you’re in a different place from home. And now on to the Baltics!
Today we were invited back for another class with the students at Sampo High School, and so again we took the path to the school through a park full of lush summer grass, croaking birds, flower beds, and statues.
The class itself was a more advanced English class, and today they would be practicing via a few articles pertaining to the environment. First they reviewed trees; the words were sorted into vertical columns: Finnish, English, and the students practiced by going first from Finnish to English (i.e. haapa – aspen, koivu – birch) and then the reverse. I thought that this might be a good exercise for me to practice in my own time, too! What was so impressive about this particular aspect of this lesson was the depth of vocabulary the students were learning. I noted words like: incense, poison, resin, ceremony, foul (both foul-tasting and foul-smelling), etc.
To me this lesson seemed very Finnish in that the students were not only learning about English, but also about political and environmental issues in multiple English speaking countries. Hilpi told the students that it is “Important to be able to talk about nature around the world,” which is an idea that I feel showcases the importance Finns give to the natural world. It’s very refreshing to see that valuing nature is baked into Finnish schooling.
For this class I was paired with two girls. One was still quite shy, but the other seemed happy to talk to me. I remember high school being a very anxious time, so I felt painfully aware of how nerve racking these discussions (with a native English speaker, with a stranger, with someone older than you) must be. Thus I very much admired the girls’ bravery! Their lessons were also quite difficult. Each exercise was listened to while the text was displayed in front of the class, and the audio was in multiple accents (Australian, British, Finnish, etc.). The text samples were short articles on the basics of surprisingly complex and varied environmental issues, such as Indigenous land claims. At the end of each article, the students discussed 3-5 comprehension questions, which were quite tricky! These questions were not graded, but instead used as check points for self assessment.
After this we were invited to sit in on another class, this time on both Finnish and Media; this was a sort of combo course in which students studied Finnish while also learning how to create a podcast. I love how classes in Finland operate on multiple levels. Students worked in small groups, researching a topic of their choosing and then presenting it via podcast. The groups were allowed to leave the classroom, either for research or just to get work down while enjoying the nice weather outside, and seemed to be really enjoying their assignment—laughing and talking while working.
During the day, I occasionally have time to talk with Maria, a visiting student teacher from Bilbao, Spain, who is very friendly. We both are amazed by Finnish schools, at how they have been standardized and made truly equal in terms of quality, support, and curriculum, and at the respect teachers show their students. We discuss the various ways we’ve noticed that the Finnish education excels beyond our own home countries’ schools, and Maria says, “I feel a little guilty, because it’s my country. But it’s hard not to compare them.”
After our second trip to the Sampo High School, we say goodbye to everyone and thank them for this great opportunity. It’s bittersweet to leave; I feel enriched by our time here and always wish we could stay longer.
As our time in Tampere was winding toward our next adventures in the Baltics, we took one more visit to Sampo Central High School to observe classes and see how Finnish teens and teachers approach schoolwork. Once again, we met Hilpi and Maria and went straightaway to lunch. Previous students have written about Finnish lunches and I always enjoy taking students for this treat. The meals are always fresh and delicious with options for vegetarians, folks with particular allergies and intolerances, and more. The system is set up to nourish everyone. On this day, we had salmon meatballs, potatoes, and salad, along with the typical Finnish bread and hardtack offerings. It was delicious. Water, milk, and buttermilk are offered to drink. I have always been curious about having a glass of buttermilk to drink–I know it is pretty traditional even to older Finnish Americans–but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. It is nice to have milk at lunch as I drink a lot more of it when I am not traveling. Now that I’m middle-aged, I sometimes think of things like osteoporosis. No brittle bones, thank you!
Today we ate in the faculty dining room, a small room to the side of the cashier stand (where students can buy snacks, bottled drinks, and the like in addition to the free meals they are entitled to). A sliding door can easily be ignored to the untrained eye. In this small room, four round tables with chairs were distributed around a smaller buffet table. Teachers sat with one another, discussing work and life, as we filed in and Hilpi announced us as visitors and briefly told about us. A teacher named Ilari sat with us and as we introduced ourselves, I exclaimed, “Meillä on sama nimi!” (We have the same name). Ilari, though a masculine name in Finnish, is the Finnish variant of Hilarius, from which my name (originally also exclusively gendered as masculine) also derives. Others asked about us and jumping between English and Finnish, I told about Finlandia University, the Copper Country, and our travels. It was fun!
After lunch, we followed Hilpi to her classroom where a few students were waiting to file in and we sat in the back so we could watch the room in its entirety. Today, we would be talking about trees in English. Once again, the students all had online textbooks on their laptops and for a warmup exercise, they matched Finnish tree names to their English counterparts. I must admit, there are always a few tree names that trip me up since I don’t always discuss trees beyond oaks, pines and a few other evergreens, birches, and maples. I was surprised to realize I know the word for willow! After this warmup, listening and group work began.
The listening exercises were particularly interesting as the textbook uses a variety of audio examples representing different accents of spoken English: in this lesson, Australian speakers were particularly emphasized. It made me think of my own language studies. In the US, it is easy to forget that British English is the standard language of instruction in Europe. Often, when speaking English with my Finnish friends, I can pick up a British accent if they have undergone extensive English training. British spelling is the norm here. In the US as well, our Spanish language classes emphasize the language as it is spoken in the Western Hemisphere and especially Mexico, and so it has been interesting to speak with natives of Spain like Maria, as well as Europeans who study Spanish from the Spanish perspective. It certainly makes me think of how to incorporate different Finnish dialects in listening exercises in my classroom.
Mary and I are placed in small groups to once again engage in English language discussion. This time, we discuss the importance (or lack thereof) of forests in our lives. The three female students I sat with were not terribly interested in spending time in the forest, but they also didn’t think it would be good to get rid of forests in their area because they are important to ecology. I told them about how I liked to go to the forest to look for mushrooms and berries and birds, but that too, I am a bit afraid of insects and large wild animals. I told them about the bears, wolves, and mountain lions that live in the forests around my community and they were a little wide-eyed about that.
While we sat with our students, a few female students entered the room late. Having been at a planning meeting for the upcoming Wanhojen Tanssit, they were considered excused and Hilpi told them this. It is refreshing to see students trusted without having to account for their whereabouts. The minor disruption allowed for the students already in the room to burst out into quick private conversations, but after the students were seated, everyone returned to group work without Hilpi having to refocus them–at least not very much. 🙂
As HIlpi’s class came to an end, we acknowledged that this was our farewell till the next visit to Tampere and so we hugged and gave her a gift to pass along to Jaakko (for whom it would have been inconvenient to bring his gift along to his next appointment). Hilpi is always a delight, and I am lucky to have met her.
And then it was off to Hilpi’s colleague Sanna’s Finnish class. Sanna greeted us at the door, and we entered with her. She asked us to introduce ourselves, and we did so in Finnish, describing what we were doing there and why. Sanna then asked in English if the students had any questions for us, and several of them did. One student was curious about the American education system versus the Finnish one. One of the biggest differences that both Mary and I have personally experienced is the way American schools are unevenly funded, making it so that poorer students’ schools have fewer resources than richer students’ schools, maintaining disparity in educational opportunity. That is an unfortunate fact about coming to Finland and seeing things firsthand: students learn about the ways in which they have personally been shortchanged in our own system. It is, however, hopeful that they can use this knowledge to work toward some sort of change in the future.
For this class, students were working on final projects: podcasts about a book they selected as a group to read, review, and discuss. This class featured mostly, if not entirely, students in the media studies track, and so Sanna found it convenient and interesting to use their existing vocational interests in creating a final exam. She said that she preferred this to traditional exams in that it got students interactive, creative, and engaged in several aspects of their roles as students. Mary looked over to me and said, “Are you taking notes, Dr. V.?” As I had my head in the notebook, taking notes, I looked up surprised, not understanding that she was teasing me about possibly being a boring teacher. Though certainly I do some very American things in the classroom, I have been quite inspired by my Finnish colleagues and we do some creative things in my classes already so that we can deviate from the reading/lecture/exam model commonly found in American classes. Mary has experienced this firsthand and so when I realized what she meant, we both laughed.
Some of the student groups had left the room to find comfortable sites for group work, including outside the building–another unthinkable thing in American classrooms. After talking with us for a few minutes, Sanna left the room to visit the other student groups and Mary and I watched the two remaining groups as they worked.
The students seemed to be focused mostly on their projects, with occasional detours for jokes, gossip, and the like. For this session, they were planning what they would say. With precious little time for them to work on these projects, we didn’t ask them to talk with us and take away from their work but when Sanna came back, we went up and talked to her a bit more. The class’s general focus was literature and language, similar to English classes Americans take in high school and the first year or so of college. The books typically assigned for the class included classics from Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, and the like. For this project, however, students selected their own books from a nonfiction category. One group was reading Michelle Obama’s autobiography. Another was reading Historian Jännät Naiset (roughly Thrilling Women of History).
As our time was winding down with Sanna’s class, one of her colleagues walked in. He was going to help the students film the podcasts and so they were touching base on this. He had been hired for the newest track at the high school–skateboarding–and as such, spent time filming students practicing this sport. This was an innovation that I had never considered. Finland does such interesting things in support of students’ educations.
It was morning and once again, we elected to walk. We have not yet taken public transport since coming to Tampere; why start now? As Mary’s step counter has told us, we have taken between 13,000-17,000 steps each day. We will be powerfully strong once we get back to the US. This time we were walking to the Tampere Vocational College or Tredu, close to the Pispala neighborhood. At Tredu, we would reunite with the wonderful Kristiina Teiss, who has been a key representative of her city since our first visit to Finland back in 2015. Kristiina has been important to our understanding of many aspects of life in Tampere including migration, education, and local culture and I was so happy to get to spend a little time with her. Kristiina gave Mary and I an introduction to the broader Finnish education system in general and spoke in-depth about the way that Tredu fits into this picture. Tredu is a special form of post-compulsory education because of the strong emphasis it has on education for migrants, some of whom need help with certain basic skills ranging from language to technology in order to prepare them best for getting ready for working life in Finland.
One new thing that is important to the students at Tredu in particular is the fact that now, the government has made it compulsory for students to attend school through the age of 18 where before, students could stop their education after completing the primary levels at about age 16. From a practical standpoint this means two things: first, that most students are required to complete two years of upper secondary, high school, or technical training. Since these are typically 3-year programs, this will likely really mean that the small number of people who don´t continue education after age 16 might. Most importantly, however, it means that the government must now pay directly for certain educational resources that a student between the ages of 16-18 would have had to purchase out of pocket. This is big. It prevents minors from having to take out loans to cover material expenses for courses which could include expensive educational material and even necessary equipment for studying a certain profession. It is a good move and one that will likely help schools like Tredu.
Perhaps as a reflection of the start of that, Tredu has been growing, which means more students, more classes, and maybe more hours and positions for teachers. While Tredu has always served refugee populations, or at least as long as we have been visiting, now the Ukraine crisis has brought the need for targeted bridging classes to prepare incoming refugees for jobs and education. We got to peek into a class of Ukrainian refugees that had just let out. The students were taking a computer skills class to ensure they had the basic knowledge in this key area. As they exited the room, they politely said, “Anteeksi,” to us and gave farewells to the teachers. They had been in the area for about a month and were already using the language skills they could. Kristiina told us that some refugees were taking classes through Tredu at the same time they took Zoom-based courses at Ukrainian universities at home. It might not be obvious to Americans not accustomed to war at home, but the entire country has not been invaded and there are entire parts of the country where daily living continues untouched by direct attack even while the knowledge that they are, in fact, at war casts a pall over daily life.
About NATO, Kristiina says she sees it from the Estonian perspective. “There is no choice but to join.” The desire of Putin to rebuild a great empire under his rule goes beyond reclaiming Ukraine as an extremely close Slavic culture into Russia. Others have expressed the idea that other former parts of the Soviet—and tsarist—Empire, could be fair game too. This includes Finland and the Baltics, both of which have been parts of the Russian empire off and on over the centuries. In 1939, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union put the Baltics, Finland, and a portion of Poland into the Soviet sphere of, well, rule, while the majority of Poland would go to Nazi Germany. The start of World War II was the trigger, with the Nazis invading Poland and soon after, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were swept into Soviet “protection.” When Finland got the phone call from Russia, requesting that Finland transfer some land close to the city of St. Petersburg, then about 20 kilometers from the border, Finland said no, and Russia soon started the Winter War. It was Finland’s fight in the war, and their legally-navigated loss that allowed them to maintain independence. This is a history lesson that is insufficient and there are plenty of good books out there, but Finns seem to share a general sense of support for the Baltics and other regions formerly incorporated into the Russian and Soviet empires, and this support extends now to Ukraine. All across Finland, the colors of Ukraine have greeted us. People seem to want to see peace and unhindered independence restored.
Of course, there are people who are hesitant to have Finland join NATO as a result. This complex situation has caused Finns to rethink their relationship with their “neighbor.” It will be interesting to see what happens.
After leaving Tredu, we went to the hotel and prepared for lunch and a surprise of some sort with our friends from the League of Finnish-American Societies, Tampere Chapter. Back when I was first planning this class in 2015, I had the good fortune of being connected to Timo Toivonen, an active member of the group, who has helped me and my students to have some truly unforgettable experiences since we have been coming to Tampere. We were to meet Timo, Jaakko Barsk (current chapter chair) and Pipsa Suominen (whom we have previously met) at the Grand Hotel Tammer where our adventure would begin. We decided to wear dresses as I always see Timo wearing a suit and entering the restaurant of the hotel, we were glad we did so. Timo, Pipsa, and Jaakko met us with handshakes and hugs and soon we were ordering a wonderful meal and catching up on the doings of the League and on Finlandia University’s news. Timo’s son Jussi had actually had an exchange year in Hancock, so the Toivonen’s were familiar with Hancock. After a nice hour of conversation, conducted mostly in Finnish, over lunch, Timo had to leave for other appointments and Pipsa and Jaakko escorted us to Milavida, a mansion house museum detailing the story of the Nottbeck family who had it built at the end of the 1800s, but which suffered a series of tragedies that resulted in them leaving the house, but only after their four young children were orphaned after the separate deaths of their parents close in time to one another and their living with the family servants for several years. Pipsa and Jaakko clearly had a great amount of sympathy for these children, left in the charge of maids at the time when having parents is so important. The Nottbeck’s role in the development of Tampere and Milavida’s history as a museum that weathered the the Finnish Civil War and World War II were interesting stories. Its former status as the museum of the Häme province was also something I hadn´t known. With museum studies as part of my broader profile of research interests, this was new information that contributes to my knowledge of museums and to Tampere history.
During our visit to Milavida, we learned we would be visiting the rooftop of the Finlayson factory for a unique view of Tampere from the air. Pipsa announced she was scared of heights and so would not be joining us. We said our goodbyes and continued with Jaakko back to the area nearer the rapids. As Jaakko and I walked, we discussed the underground structures around Tampere that serve as protective shelters. As news outlets have been reporting since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and as some Finns have indicated to us, there is a quiet understanding, ever since the end of Finland’s World War II conflicts with Russia, that preparedness is an important aspect of their daily lives. Certainly, we had noticed on our first walk to visit Hilpi’s class that an underground protective shelter was under the area around Kaleva Church and nearby apartments. I have previously marveled at the vast underground parking structure, the P-Hämppi, that is under the center of Tampere. And now I came to understand that these underground structures had their own double purpose of underground protection. Jaakko told me that there were rules that parking and other structures underground had a rule that they must be able to be emptied from their everyday purposes within 72 hours in order to serve protective functions. The strange, cavern-like appearance of the P-Hämppi now meant something entirely different to me.
Upon arriving to Finlayson,we rode an elevator to the top floor with Jaakko who searched for a particular employee. As Mary and I milled around in the hall, we noticed a closet full of what I bafflingly identified as perhaps being hockey equipment. Orange strappy things with buckles hung on hooks. I didn’t pay it much mind until Jaakko returned with a young man in blond hair and a Finland hockey jersey who bid us to join him in the closet with the hockey equipment. He instructed us to put down our backpacks and unwanted jackets because we would not need them. We were then told to grab one of the pieces of hockey equipment, which turned out to be a rappelling harness, and to put them on. We suddenly regretted wearing dresses. Mary at first seemed quite hesitant and I was also giggling nervously. I asked if we were to climb along the side of the building. “Oh, no,”responded our guide. We just wear these for safety as we walk along the perimeter of the building. OK. I can do this. We received headsets to wear to listen to the guided portion and to use as a microphone for questions and communication. And then we were ready!
We formed our skirts into pants, tucked them into the rappelling suits, buckled ourselves in, and soon, we were heading out to the rooftop. Our guide, Tuomas, explained that we would attach ourselves to leashes of a sort that would keep us secured to the bottom should a stray gust of wind or a bad idea cause us to fall off the side. This would be ok.
Stepping out to the roof really was a new view of this city that I have come to love. Tuomas led us along, periodically stopping at a point matching the recorded narrative offered in the headset where we would listen and ask questions or discuss things with Tuomas before moving on. Seeing Tampere from these heights contributed a lot to the info I have gathered over time from the city tours, history books, and other sources that have told me about the city. At the end of the official tour, Jaakko had to leave for another appointment and so we said a fond farewell and then continued along the non-rappelled part of the roof for photos and discussion. It was a delightful surprise that left me touched, happy, giggly, and informed all at once. I highly recommend it!
Finally, we had a little time before dinner with Hilpi and Heikki. We decided that, since we had been wearing our dresses already all day, we might as well just keep dressed up. At the appointed hour, we walked down the street to the train station where Heikki would pick us up. He was there, ready to go, and soon, we were zipping along to the Petsamo neighborhood where they live and catching up over the past several years apart. Soon, we were at the house, where Hilpi awaited us outdoors. There was some work going on around the house, which would soon be heated by geothermal power (“so that we don’t have to use Putin’s oil”). To be honest, I don’t know much about geothermal power, and so I asked if there was lava involved. The laughter assured me that the oil tank would not soon be filled with volcanic materials. We went inside due to the cold weather and got right to eating in the cozy and smartly-designed kitchen. Hilpi had salmon, potatoes, and salad for us, which we ate happily. Just as at the other houses we have visited, the table was set with Finnish tableware and it was a great opportunity to learn about Finnish homes. Hilpi and Heikki both have excellent senses of humor, and so the joking and laughter went on as we had dessert—an apple tarte with ice cream and coffee—and as Heikki showed us the house. It was nice for Mary to see the inside of a Finnish home and to notice the subtle differences between a Finnish family’s home and that of an American family. Since last time, a remodeling of the living room and sauna had been completed and it was nice to see both.
Soon the evening wound down as we would be joining Hilpi and her colleague Sanna and watching more of the Finnish classroom in action. It was another wonderful day.
This morning Dr. V and I headed to the Tampere Vocational College, Tredu, to visit with Kristiina Teiss. Kristiina is an immediately lovely presence, with a calm manner and soft voice that was a nice contrast to the loud university cafe she brought us to for a quick cup of coffee.
Kristiina gave us a few minutes to wake up and orient ourselves to the university, introducing ourselves (in my case) and catching up (in Dr. V’s case) over breakfast. After that, we headed up to her classroom, a small but bright room well equipped with a modern projector for her presentation. She had prepared a powerpoint for us, going over the basics of the Finnish educational system, how students enter the vocational college, and how the college serves their needs. She was also open to my many questions and slow understanding of the system, which I very much appreciated. She was great at teaching even my most sleep-deprived brain!
Finnish students first go through their basic education, essentially ending in the equivalent of an American high-school degree, from age 7-15. After completing basic education, students can chose to take different paths. Some enter into a 10th year (which is for those who didn’t get good grades, encounter unusual obstacles, need extra support, etc.), but most choose either vocational upper secondary or general upper secondary (somewhat like a trade school vs. college). Kristiina told us that now, since almost all successful job-seekers in Finland have an upper secondary degree, Finland has increased mandatory school attendance from age 15 to 18. An upper secondary degree usually lasts until the age of 19, so this encourages almost all students to stick with schooling until they complete secondary education, and it also means that Finland has to provide funding to students for the majority of their schooling.
Secondary education also serves migrants and refugees to Finland, providing classes in Finnish language and cultural adjustment and education. Dr. V tells me that there is a Finnish attitude that citizens of Finland are Finnish, regardless of how they became citizens of Finland, and that there is thus a shared identity and feeling of ownership, home, and responsibility towards their country. I think it makes sense that students unfamiliar with the culture of Finland would benefit from courses explaining cultural norms and social expectations. It’s nice that this all gets presented so clearly and that incoming asylum seekers and migrants have support in adjusting to what, for some, could otherwise be an unmooring experience.
Tredu especially has a large population of students who are refugees, and it’s clear that the school puts a lot of thought into how to most effectively help these students. Kristiina tells me that she and other teachers have been considering how they can make it clear to refugee and migrant students that they have unique perspectives and bring valuable dimensions to Finnish society. Their native languages and home culture shouldn’t be replaced by Finnish or by a new Finnish identity, but rather the two can intermingle and enrich each other. This is also something that I heard Kaisa considering: finding ways to encourage student’s home countries and their lives in Finland to grow as mutually respected aspects of their personhood.
Our morning with Kristiina was so interesting, we went up to the time she had to leave for another meeting and could have easily kept talking! She was kind enough to send us the powerpoints she made for our talk, but the best resource was her knowledge and ability to share it. As we left the university, the cafe had quieted down a little from what must have been the breakfast rush, but outside it had remained sunny with a mild cooling wind that carried the scent of blooming trees all around the city.
We walked back to our hotel to get ready to meet with the League of Finnish American Societies, Tampere chapter. I was excited for a chance to dress up, and Dr. V and I both wore dresses! I of course kept on my practical walking shoes. Our activity after lunch was a surprise, so I felt a steady anticipation throughout the day. As we approached the restaurant, I saw three well-dressed people standing casually in front of a terraced balcony. Chair Jaakko Barsk, Timo Toivonen, and Pipsa Suominen all greeted us warmly, and I felt very glad that we had decided to dress up!
They took us into a spacious but welcoming restaurant, decorated in an elegant but modern style. There were only three dishes to choose from (and no menus!): fish, meat, vegetarian. One thing that was particularly interesting about the layout of this space was that it was full of people, but not at all noisy. The tables seemed to be spaced with consideration to the conversations that would fill up the room.
Another interesting point in our lunch with Pipsa, Jaakko, and Timo, was that they all spoke primarily in Finnish the entire meal! Dr. V obviously kept up well, and this was great listening practice for me. It was very exciting whenever I was able to follow some sentence or catch words.
After our meal, Timo departed for another meeting, and Pipsa and Jaakko took us to the historic estate of Milavida. This estate had some pieces of 18th century fashion on display, such as an antique Louis Vuitton clothing trunk. The mannequins were dressed in period appropriate clothing; the two male mannequins were in classic suits (I’d imagine both wool), one a slightly more modern cut and accompanied by a female mannequin in the classic Edwardian silhouette, but a casual ensemble of only skirt and blouse. The hair was somewhat disappointing, it seemed to just be a French twist on both women, but I don’t know the limitations of mannequin hair styling so I can’t really complain. The second female mannequin was in a stunning navy and gray wool bustle skirt, vest, jacket, blouse: an appropriately older style that might be what most imagine when they think “Victorian.” The four child mannequins were in two very classic white lace gowns, if I remember correctly the boys were in trousers. I wish I’d gotten the chance to look closer at these garments (and compare them to the many family pictures displayed in an adjacent room) because the detailing on clothing from this era is always amazing!
After Milavida, Jaakko tells us that he’ll be walking with us for our surprise at the Finlayson factory. Pipsa departs, and says that she can’t join us in our next activity because she’s afraid of heights! I assume that this is some kind of roof top seating area in which we can look out at the city, and contentedly follow Jaakko.
We walk through the industrial area of Tampere, which Jaakko tells me is famous for its red brick architecture, and take the elevator up to the top floor of the building. I see a cafe with, indeed, a very impressive view of Tampere from so high up on the factory roof. I’m excited for a cup of coffee in such a great location, and don’t pay much mind to the room full of safety orange harnesses. However, Jaakko does not seem to be directing us towards the scenic cafe. Instead, he and a young man lead us into the room of harnesses. “No,” I say, “You see we’re wearing dresses, right?”
I immediately assume the worst, as the young man tells me, “It will be fine, just step into them,” and I recall my last time in a climbing harness (in which I rappelled 100 ft down the side of a mountain, an activity which was done very much while wearing pants). Dr. V and I reluctantly step into our harnesses, and the guide takes us to an, actually, very safe-looking walkway that goes around the entirety of the factory roof. We are not, as I had feared, going to be strapped to the side of the building. The harness is just an extra safety measure.
Our guide, Tuomas, is very knowledgeable about the city and seems to have been so amused by our initial reluctance that he spends the whole tour smiling (when we finish the tour he calls the customers in line his “next victims”). We get a wonderfully windy tour on the edge of the Finlayson building, and take some great pictures! I also had maybe too much fun trying to photograph the swallows darting around near the walkway.
Stepping off of the platform and back onto the roof is bittersweet; after enough time so high up one feels the urge to step off the platform and run around the roof! Indeed, Tuomas takes our picture by unclipping his harness and jumping up above us onto a spot higher up. It’s funny what being high up in the air for a little too long does to someone’s sense of self-preservation. We finish the tour laughing and rosy, and Jaakko heads off to the rest of his day while Dr. V and I explore the little roof garden next to the cafe.
Lastly for the day’s agenda was a dinner at the home of Hilpi and Heikki Luukkonen. Their house is the product of a family cultivating a comfortable space over many years; with a garden full of trees, flowers, seating, and a stone walkway currently partially dug up as they install geothermal heating. Hilpi tells us that they don’t want Putin’s oil heating their home, and I think that this everyday sort of social responsibility and environmental consciousness is indeed a very Finnish attitude.
Their home is also very welcoming, full of books and tapestries, and the kitchen has a large window looking out at the garden. We sit down at a cozy wooden dining table to eat, and Hilpi serves us the best salmon I’ve ever had in my whole life—and that’s as a kid who grew up with a professional chef for a mom! After our main meal, we’re served cake made with apples from the tree out back, and ice cream. Hilpi and Heikki are a lovely pair, very funny and fascinating to talk to, and our evening rushes by in a satisfying lull of good food and warm conversation.
I would imagine that as soon as we returned to our hotel I fell right asleep, but all I can remember from this evening is the truly wonderful dinner at the Luukkonens’ home. We had a packed schedule today, full of new and exciting experiences, so our dinner was a joyful way to end the day.
Yesterday we traveled from Helsinki to Tampere, chatted on the two-ish hour bus ride, and checked into our next hotel! Today, we wake up in Tampere. The brick and stonework of this city, along with the beautiful blue water almost everywhere one looks, reminds me in some ways of Hancock and Houghton. Dr. V and I decide to walk to the Sampo Central High School and enjoy the morning air.
There’s a light breeze and a distinct smell of spring in Tampere: water, flowers, wind. At one point on our walk we pass through a patch of blue flowers that smells so strongly Dr. V is momentarily convinced that we’re actually smelling perfume, but no! It seems that Tampere just smells really lovely this time of year. I’m especially enjoying the cherry blossoms, and have climbed and crouched in some odd angles in order to get good pictures of all the beautiful trees here. I also love the birch trees; their branches are long and thin, and hang down much like a willow tree.
We soon pass by Ensimmäinen Runo, or the First Poem, a statue inspired by Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala. Terho Sakki, the sculptor, was inspired by the Kalevala’s world egg creation myth:
One egg’s lower half transformed
And became the earth below,
And its upper half transmuted
And became the sky above;
From the yolk the sun was made,
Light of day to shine upon us;
From the white the moon was formed,
Light of night to gleam above us;
All the colored brighter bits
Rose to be the stars of heaven
And the darker crumbs changed into
Clouds and cloudlets in the sky.
Dr. Virtanen and I reach the high school in good time, and enter into another interesting and visually engaging Finnish school. The school was very spacious and modern. The eating area for students was an open room bordered by huge windows and spiral staircases. Hilpi greets us at the doorway with a cheery hello, and leads us to the second floor and down the hallway into her own classroom.
Class begins with a review in English of the previous homework: a general history of cinema. In this lesson, cinema (or human storytelling through pictures) began with prehistoric drawing. English phrases were incorporated into the reading for this lesson, such as “the legend begins.” This combined vocab and culture lesson moved along into early film, television, and finally to the modern era and streaming services. Hilpi gave students answers to this previous lesson while also effectively reviewing that information.
Next the class begins speaking exercises in English. They are given a list of questions for open discussion. These prompts are things like: What artist would you want to paint your portrait? What painting would you want in your living room? What building would you want to live in? The students spend a significant amount of time discussing their opinions on art and music.
Hilpi pairs me with one boy whose English is very advanced, but he seems to feel very nervous speaking with me. I definitely understand this; I’m sure I wouldn’t do very well if I were to try and talk with him about art in Finnish! After some interesting but odd conversation (he tells me that if he could live in any building in the world, he’d want to live in the White House), his usual partner comes in. They are more talkative with each other, but still give somewhat simple answers. Many of the students’ answers are short and uncomplicated, but I get the sense that this is more from shyness than a lack of vocabulary.
Class wrapped up, and after having another healthy Finnish school lunch (with options for vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free students, etc.), we went back to our hotel and got ready for our upcoming bus tour of Tampere!
The bus stopped at the Tampere Cathedral and a few spots around Pispala, including the Pyynikki observation tower. The tower was surrounded by what looked like extensive hiking trails, with a view of the two lakes of Tampere: lake Näsijärvi in the north and lake Pyhäjärvi in the south. The tower is 26 meters or 85 feet high, with both stairs and an elevator to the top. I took the steps up to the observation deck, in large part because Dr. V and I are keeping track of our steps on this trip! We’ve averaged a little over 13k steps per day, or about 7 miles. Most of our group took the elevator, but I did see a few other people climbing the stairs.
It was, honestly, a little difficult to hear our tour guide on a bus full of noisy, excited students. However, I had a lot of fun seeing Tampere, and I’m happy with how our photos from today turned out.
Our first morning in Tampere, and we were starting off with a site visit and then a city tour. We got up and headed for Sampo Central High School (Sammon Keskuslukio, called Samke) to meet Hilpi Luukkonen, my friend who has shown us a glimpse of Finnish upper secondary school since 2016. It was exciting to be back in the classroom. Hilpi is a warm, gregarious Karelian with whom I have shared many laughs and whose generosity has given us many glimpses of Finland. We would sit in on an English class which would focus on art. It was a highly advanced class that would probably translate to a fourth year foreign language class in an American high school.
Mary and I were introduced to a visiting student teacher from Spain, Maria, who had come from Bilbao to work with the high schoolers and gain a view of teaching from the Finnish perspective. This is not all that uncommon and it had only been recently that international visitors and student teachers were welcomed back. Hilpi began as she usually does, by having us introduce ourselves, and I did so in relatively rapid Finnish, which surprised the students. People are often baffled by the fact that there is a place in the US full of Finnish ethnics who hold onto this identity in their own ways. They way I do it is certainly extreme in its own way, but it is a product of being raised by ethnic Finns. After introductions, Mary and I sat in the back of the room and watched as the lessons unfolded. After awhile, we were placed with small groups of students. The high schoolers were uncomfortable, of course, and so it is a negotiation. I sat with three young women as we listened to the electronic textbook talk about van Gogh and then answered comprehension questions. We also did a warm-up activity on our opinions of art. The puritanical approach of Americans—being shocked by art and wanting to shield children from nudity and other subjects deemed too shocking—was not a perspective shared by Finns in general. The students were shy in their discussions as it is intimidating to have a native English-speaking teacher in the midst, but they did well and seemed to enjoy sharing their own time with me in their own way.
Hilpi and her students use online textbooks, which is very convenient because they all can do exercises online and get immediate feedback, they can press a button and listen to the text and/or read it, and there are a number of other interactive features that make the learning easier. In America, you can’t do that because it’s not guaranteed that kids will have laptops to use.
Mary was paired with two painfully shy male students—male students don’t tend to perform as well in the Finnish classroom at this age group, and they tend to be more shy and quiet, and so it was hard for her to engage. She took some photos and then had her own adventures when she went out to use the WC but once Hilpi’s class ended, we met up again in the lunchroom and had a nice discussion as we ate pasta with meat sauce, salad, and Finnish bread. It was quite nice.
Hilpi’s family comes from Karelia and so when talk turned to NATO, Hilpi said that her family had their own feelings about “the neighbor” because their own home had been lost twice to them in the World War II era and her mother had been evacuated to Sweden, becoming a war child. For Hilpi, a sense of real danger did exist for the people closest to the border, and perhaps for everyone in Finland. After all, it was the Finnish border that can be breached first. And it is the residents of Karelia who would face whatever can happen first. Hilpi cited a sense of betrayal to the Finns and President Niinistö in their dealings with Russia. The invasion of Ukraine and threats toward Sweden and Finland are acts of bad faith.
After this, Hilpi had a meeting across town and we had to prepare for a tour of the city with the criminal justice group, so we departed. We walked and talked about what we had seen. Though it wasn’t as clear in Hilpi’s classroom as it had been in Kaisa’s because of the age of the students and the ability to be more sedentary, the focus on open, shared work was there and the difference with the American classroom was still apparent.
After a little downtime, we took off to join the criminal justice students at the university to board the bus for a city tour. It took us past the new Nokia Arena and nearby casino and hotels. The buildings were jumbled together, contrasting sharply with the more evenly-spaced areas of downtown. People in Finnish hockey jerseys and other hockey fan gear sharply outnumbered those in USA gear, which was the match that would take place later that night. Three of Gee’s students, in fact, had scored tickets to the game, which was cool for them.
We wove our way through the hockey traffic, and I pointed out the eastern Orthodox church as we darted down Kaleva street and made it to the tour bus five minutes later. Eventually the criminal justice students came out of the building and we started on our way. Our guide was a lady named Leena who had also lived in the US and Central America for many years before returning to Finland. What I like about going on the tour is the fact that, each year, we typically get a different tour guide and so we get a different story of Tampere and this year was different from the others in its own subtle way. The blocked roads to accommodate the hockey fans and the new traffic systems due to the now-open tram made it a little tricky for Leena, on her first tour since the pandemic-era lockdowns, to help the bus driver navigate, but we did make it around, though later than the hockey fans would have liked.
Leena took us for a tour of the Tampere Cathedral, complete with a guide from the church. Rather annoyingly, I had to ask about the two bullet holes in the ceiling when she didn’t mention it. Finally, she said that she thought the holes were some sort of accident. 😀 Oof. We drove past a series of other spots familiar to me—the Swedish church and city hall, the factory district, Särkänniemi and more. Then, we started up the roads to Pispala ridge.
“I love Pispala” as graffiti on a bench at the park on Pispala Ridge.
I like Pispala. I imagine everyone does. It is a high and narrow ridge—the largest esker in the world—that looks out over both Pyhäjärvi and Näsijärvi. The narrow streets were haphazardly populated over time with hardscrabble houses built by people whose land tenureship was just a few steps off from squatting. Today, the houses are considered a national treasure and especially on the ridgetop with the park and the Civil War monument, the area is a part of Tampere that residents are always keen to show to outsiders.
Of course, with my own leftist heritage, I am always interested in the fact that this was the site where the Red Guard laid down their arms in the Civil War of 1918. Sometimes when I go, there is a memento on the monument, coming as I do around May Day and the anniversary of the end of the Civil War. I have seen red roses and candles. This time the stone was bare of decorations and memorial tokens but I stopped for a second and thought about the violent times people in Finland had amongst themselves back in 1918. It was a true horror. Then I went for photos with the whole group and then got back on the bus for the ride home.
We took one last stop at Pyynikki tower for the customary climb to the top and a donut. Since I have enjoyed both, I decided to remain downstairs, getting a salmiakki ice cream cone and people watching. Our tour bus was turning around—a difficult task—and I noticed after a second, that the poor driver was moving the bus a little in each direction a few feet before popping out and checking his progress and then popping back in to move a few more feet. Realizing this, I asked him in Finnish if I could help and indicated that I would stand in his rearview and motion to stop when he was getting too close. He smiled and accepted the help and after another 8 or so maneuvers, he was able to swing the bus into the proper directions. It was fun.
The students took some time to get back on the bus, but eventually we were taken back downtown and wound up in front of our hotel. It had been another full day.
Digital Storytelling and Culture in Finland 