Lakeland visit

A couple of weeks ago we spent a couple of days in Savonlinna. This time we had bought the tickets to the annual July opera festival with performances in the Olavinlinna Castle and booked the hotel ages ago ensuring a stay at a downtown hotel.

So we could take a most delightful evening stroll on the picturesque lakeside on both nights. First you just have to head to have a look at the castle. And the steam ships at the harbour by the market square are not to be missed, especially if the weather is fine and the evening sun is shining low.

If you are lucky – as you often are even in our July – you won’t be cold when dining at one of the outdoor restaurants. The pike perch we had on the first night at Valo, although mouth-watering, was such a small portion we went for pepper steak and some mud cake at Sarastro on the second night before crossing the pontoon bridge to see Carmen.

If you happen to be in Savonlinna in July on any other day than Monday do pay a visit to my niece’s gorgeous Paloni pop-up shop selling clothing, jewellery, accessories and gift items by dozens of independent designer brands, all handmade in Finland. You’ll be amazed. It is located in a charming old house by the tourist office next door to Café Alegria and feels nothing like a pop-up but a thoroughbred store, which is no wonder. She used to have a store in Helsinki but times are hard and she had to close it down a few months ago. Now she is continuing her great work for individual design and conscious consuming at major (design) events. And of course there is always the online store. Let’s hope we’ll see her in Savonlinna again next July.

Photo by Minna from Paloni.

I didn’t take any photos at Paloni so I’m posting one of hers. (I never publish other people’s photos but this is the exception that proves the rule. I hope you don’t mind, Minna.) Some more beautiful photos on Hunajaista blog here.

Here is what I posted on Savonlinna when we fell in love with the town and the festival last year: Castle on an islet, On a steamship, Proud maiden. By the way, we missed the Master Sculptors of Zimbabwe this season. The Friends Forever International opened the sculpture exhibition on the Riihisaari rock plateau only yesterday.

Proud maiden

There is one more thing I have to tell you about our July visit to Savonlinna (my earlier posts on the trip here and here). On one of the afternoons we split up for a while. He used to sail the seas as a teenager and later did his whole career in marine industry so he went to inspect the museum ships on his own while I walked a bit further away with my camera. We agreed to meet by the Provincial Museum.

On the left, Football Coach by Wonder Luke.

Good Listener by Marian Nyanhongo.

There was a sales exhibition of stone sculptures on display on the Riihisaari rock plateau by the Museum. It was entitled Master Sculptors of Zimbabwe and organized by Friends Forever International. There were some abstract works plus a number of sculptures of both animal and human figures made of volcanic stone. I felt the animal ones had some resemblance to traditional African wood carvings but those representing humans were something new and unique to me. In many of them just part of the stone was polished and the rest had been worked on rather roughly. I was drawn to them, especially to a particular smaller one...

I Now Know by Marian Nyanhongo.

He had strolled through the exhibition on his way to the ships. Being rather thrilled about these works of art, I pointed to him several ones that I adored. Most of them were by Marian Nyanhongo, one of the few Zimbabwean female sculptors. I also mentioned casually that the small lady was the one I loved the most. To my surprise, he had set his eyes on that one, too. Within seconds we came to the conclusion we should buy the Proud Maiden of opal by Sebastian Chifamba.

Behind the Proud Maiden, Dino Head by Square Chikwanda.

While he was retrieving the required amount from the cash machine, the Danish Friends Forever lady on site told me that this art form had started in Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia as it was then called, when lots of people were left unemployed from tobacco fields in the 1960s. This happened because of an international ban to import tobacco from the racist white minority government. As many men were skilled in wood carving and as there were plenty of beautiful colourful stones to use an idea emerged to educate the best talents to become sculptors. Some of them are now internationally renowned artists having their works included in the collections of major museums such as the MoMA in New York.

Blind Chief by Wonder Luke.

I Want To Be A Mother by Marian Nyanhongo, and Thinking Man by Enos Gunja.

There are several organizations devoted to promoting Zimbabwean stone sculpture through sales exhibitions. The organizer of this show Friends Forever International, for example, arranges several exhibitions around Europe annually. They have already been to Helsinki several times in recent years. I understood they will be exhibiting again next July in Savonlinna in connection with the Opera Festival. They also have a permanent show in Berlin.

Caring Mother by Marian Nyanhongo.

Charming Lady by Square Chikwanda.

I wish every success to all the talents engaged in this art form. Let’s hope the sad situation in their country will soon be resolved so that a proper kind of democracy could finally start evolving there.

PS. Should you see something like the below Lovers by Marian Nyanhongo in our garden one day you will know I must have won some cash on a lottery of some sort. Meanwhile, as soon as we have figured out the ideal place for our modest-sized (42cm and 6kg) Proud Maiden I will let you know.

On a steamship

When in Savonlinna (see my previous post here), you need to take a nostalgic steamship cruise to see a glimpse of Lake Saimaa, the labyrinth of 120 lakes and 14,000 islands.

The waterways used to be an important transportation channel for people and goods in our country, the most important of them being Saimaa, the largest continuous lake district in Europe.

A steam tugboat built in 1900.

The first major product was tar for the European wooden ship industry and later timber. Even today, rafts of logs are floated on the lake each summer. We happened to see a tugboat pushing a barge filled with timber.

There is a fleet of historical passenger steamships operating from Savonlinna in the summertime. You can make a cruise of an hour or two or pass the whole day on a trip to one of the several passenger harbours around Saimaa. You can even spend the night in a cabin of a steamship moored at the harbour. The day was most lovely so we decided to devote a couple of hours to admiring the Saimaa Lakeland from the deck of the more than 100-year-old SS Punkaharju.

How would you like this rock island for a lot of your summer cottage? No need to spend time in gardening.

Saimaa is one of the most popular regions for holidaying at a summer cottage in our country. Similarly to so many of our lakes formed by the latest Ice Age, it has both low shorelines and shores and islands of bedrock.

No one had ventured into building on this island, at least as far as we could tell.

The Finnish dream: to live in a town in a house by a lake. Note the sauna on the left.

Needless to say we concentrated on marvelling the scenery. We were lucky to have a local sitting at the same table and explaining about all the sights. A few of the fellow holidaymakers appeared to have their mind more on other things. They succeeded in consuming several pints of beer, harmlessly though, while we only had two cups of coffee with a piece of cake.

The world's only surviving tar steamship Mikko on the left.

Nevertheless, I’m sure everyone was most alert when the ship passed the Olavinlinna castle when returning to town. Then we glided by the museum steamships moored at the Provincial Museum and back to the passenger harbour. 

Next time we could overnight on SS Heinävesi. Or we could come to stay and invest on the below wooden beauty, twice as big as the photo shows. I have this fixation to sight B&B potential most everywhere so I later found out it was on sale. It is located on a boulevard by the lake and has four apartments and five studios. The owners could live in the two top-floor apartments. They could rent the smaller ones and studios to students during semesters and to opera visitors and other travellers during summer. Despite the price tag of €1.2M not such a bad idea for a group of friends or relatives having ties with the region.

Castle on an islet

Tonight marked the season finale of the Savonlinna Opera Festival, an annual event held in the heart of the Saimaa lake region some 330 kilometres northeast of Helsinki. The festival attracts tens of thousands of cultural travellers from around the world to the beautiful lake-surrounded town of Savonlinna during the four weeks it continues offering repeated performances of half a dozen operas plus a number of concerts.

The guided tours start from the courtyard of the Water Gate Bastion with the tall tree in the middle.

We couldn't figure out what it was. A special kind of maple perhaps.

It  is one of the favourite festivals for both opera lovers and the performing artists thanks to its unique setting: a medieval castle on a small island in a stream between two waterways only a few steps from the town centre. What’s more, the light nights add a magic flare to those not used to Nordic summers. The schedule is planned in such a way that you can stay for several days and see a different opera each night.

The King's Hall can be hired for events. It was whitewashed also in the Middle Ages. 

The Ecumenical Chapel in the Chapel Tower, the middle one of the towers,
can be hired for family events.

We have been talking about visiting this festival for years. Many of our friends travel to Savonlinna practically annually, often on an organized trip of one sort or another. We just never managed to go, perhaps partly because we are so used to visiting the west as our ‘reference groups’ – friends and relatives – are mainly from the western parts of the country. This July we finally headed east and enjoyed every moment.

Note the passageway leading towards the Bell Tower. It is built on the wall of the Small Courtyard of the Main Castle.

View from the passageway towards the balcony of the King's Hall...

...and down to the Small Courtyard.

Any kind of recording was forbidden during the show (Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns under the thought-provoking direction of Guy Montavon) but we attended a guided tour the next afternoon to have a closer look at the majestic Olavinlinna, i.e. St Olaf’s Castle.

The present tops of the towers are one of the Russian additions from the 18th century.

The passageway up on the castle wall.

View from an opening in the wall of the passageway down to the Water Gate Bastion...

...and from the Bastion up to the passageway on the wall.

It is the northernmost medieval castle in the world lending its name from Saint Olaf, the patron saint of knights. Saint Olaf was a very popular saint at the time the castle was founded, although his acclaimed merits in the christianization of Norway relied more on sagas of a ‘holy man’ than on the reality of a fierce Viking.

Then we returned to the Chapel Tower...

...and climbed up to a room surrounded by windowed nooks with benches on both sides...

...and a toilet booth with a hole down to the rock and the lake.

Building of the Olavinlinna fortification was started in 1475 by Erik Axelsson Tott, a knight and the then Governor of the Viborg Castle, to protect the strategically important eastern border of Sweden from the Grand Duchy of Moscow. That was a scheme designed to succeed as the location of the castle was most ideal for defense. The stream is so swift it stays unfrozen at all times so it was inaccessible for the enemy even in winter.

Further up we climbed the spiral staircase of stone...

...until we reached the topmost hall with the round openings all around...

...and had this view towards the Great Courtyard and the covered 2200-seat venue of the Savonlinna Opera Festival.

At the end of the 15th century, the castle had five towers two of which have been destroyed. The remaining three have been extended and modified over the centuries. And so has the rest of the castle. Attacks against it were numerous and fierce. Therefore it was constantly under some kind of repair, rebuilding and refortifying.

Then down the stairs and through corridors...

...back to the marvelous tree inside the Water Gate Bastion.

Olavinlinna served its purpose for some 250 years. The first surrender to the Russians occurred only in the early 18th century. After a few years it returned in a peace treaty to Sweden once more and finally in another treaty to Russia in 1743.

You can see a toilet sticking out of the Bell Tower here...

...and a closer look here.

A period of extensive construction and fortification followed. For example, the bastions were built under the Russian rule. However, in 1809 when the whole Finnish area went under Russia as the Grand Duchy of Finland the castle lost its strategic importance.

After that Olavinlinna housed a garrison and for a short period a prison. Since the late 19th century, that is since our Grand Duchy times, the state has taken care of the castle as an antiquity. The latest large-scale restoration was completed in 1975 when the castle had its 500th anniversary.

Finally back to the Small Courtyard with the passageway up on the wall...

...and through the arched entrance hallway to the bridge leading to and from the castle.

I am embarrassed it took me this long to visit the stately Olavinlinna, one of the few proper castles in our remote and sparsely populated country. And I would be most surprised if we didn’t find ourselves crossing that pontoon bridge to the opera venue also next July. There will be six new productions to choose from: Carmen, The Magic Flute, Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, Nabucco, and Kullervo based on the Finnish national epic The Kalevala. How could we not attend?