Sixty Degrees North (24 page)

I have swum in the sea in Shetland on many occasions, though mostly when I was young and stupid. That was
cold. It was always cold, even on the warmest day. The Gulf Stream may keep the North Atlantic milder than it might otherwise be, but knee-deep in the waves, goose-pimpled and shivering, you would be hard-pressed to notice. But the difference between that cold and the cold of Ekenäs harbour was probably several degrees. And though I'd come to experience the sauna for myself, the idea of plunging into that ice-edged water, either before or after the heat, did not fill me with excitement. It was an experience that could surely be pleasurable only in hindsight: as something I
had
done, not as something I was
about
to do. And certainly not something I was in the process of doing.

The swimming, I'd been told, was optional, which was a relief. But beyond that, I really didn't know what I was supposed to do. There must be rules and protocols for a sauna, I thought. There are always rules and protocols for such culturally significant activities. I had assumed there would be other people whose lead I could follow, to avoid any serious lapses in social etiquette. But the only other guest was just leaving the changing room as I arrived, and so I was on my own. I'd read somewhere that most saunas do not permit the wearing of trunks, and so I'd not brought any. In fact, trunks had been pretty low on my list of things to pack for Finland in January, so I had none to wear even if I'd wanted to. Public nakedness is not something I have engaged in often, but in this case I was willing to do as is done, and so I stripped, opened the door to the shower room, and then went in to the sauna.

The room itself was just two metres deep and about the same wide, with wood panelling all over, and three slatted steps rising up from the entranceway. There were two windows on one side, and a metal heater was in the corner beside the door. On the top step, where I gingerly sat down, was a pail with an inch or two of water and a wooden ladle inside. I scooped a spoonful out and flung it onto the hot
rocks. The stove screamed in protest. The temperature rose quickly in response, and steam curdled the air. An unfamiliar smell, sweet and tangy, filled the room: the smell of hot wood oils.

I sat back against the wall and looked out of the windows at the ice-covered sea. I was sweating from every pore, and my breath felt laboured on account of the steam. It was relaxing, but not entirely. One could rest, but not sleep. Again I wished for guidance: how long was I supposed to stay in the sauna? Was there something else I ought to be doing, other than just sitting? Was now the moment I should be throwing myself into the sea? I could hear people next door, in the women's sauna – there was laughter, and even the occasional shriek – but I could hardly pop in to ask for their advice. So instead I compromised and took a cold shower. It seemed suitable and not too cowardly an option. Open-mouthed and shaking hard, I stood beneath the flow of water for a moment that felt like an hour, my whole body trying to resist the ache of it. Then I rushed back into the sauna again, sweat bristling on my wet skin.

This ritual of intense heat and intense cold is considered a bringer of health, good for both mind and body. It has been part of the culture of this region for over a thousand years, and its importance is perhaps reflected in the fact that
sauna
is the only Finnish word to have found its way into common English usage. Today most Finns have one in their home, and many enjoy them at their workplace too. People socialise here; they have business meetings; and sometimes they just come to sit alone.

A sauna is an ideal place in which to be
omissa oloissaan
, or undisturbed in one's thoughts. Quiet contemplation is something of a national pastime here, instilled from childhood. ‘One has to discover everything for oneself,' says Too-ticky, in Tove Jansson's
Moominland Midwinter
, ‘and get over it all alone.' Silence and introspection are not just
socially acceptable in Finland, they are considered positive and healthy. They are traits often misinterpreted by those from more talkative cultures as shyness or even bad manners.

Saunas mimic the Nordic climate – the heat of summer contrasted with the cold of winter – and when enjoyed at this time of year they hint at a kind of defiance or protest. To step into a little wooden room at eighty degrees celsius is to declare that even now, in darkest winter, we can be not just warm but roasting hot. We can make the sweat drip from our brows, then leap like maniacs into icy water. It is both an embrace of the season and a fist shaken in its face. It is a celebration of the north and an escape from its realities. The actress and writer Lady Constance Malleson went further. For her the sauna was ‘an apotheosis of all experience: Purgatory and paradise; earth and fire; fire and water; sin and forgiveness.' It is also a great leveller, and appeals therefore to the spirit of Nordic egalitarianism. ‘All men are created equal,' goes an old saying. ‘But nowhere more so than in the sauna.'

After repeating this dash from cold shower to hot room twice more, I decided that I'd had enough. It was strangely exhausting, and I felt the need, then, to lie down. As I stood drying and dressing in the changing room, two men came in. They were in their sixties – one perhaps a little older. Both stripped down to trunks quickly, opened the door without a hesitation and went outside. I heard them splash into the sea, and a moment later they returned, dripping but not shivering, took their trunks off and went past me into the steam and heat next door. For a moment I considered turning round and joining them, as though I could shed my awkwardness by sharing others' ease. But I decided not to intrude on the silence of friends, and so I headed back out into the cold.

From the centre of town I trudged ankle-deep down the tree-lined streets until, at the end of Östra Strandgatan, the trees took over. A woman and her little dog went ahead of me into the forest and I followed, treading carefully down the path. When she stopped to allow a procession of school-children to pet the dog I overtook and continued beneath the branches, their giggles and chatter rippling into silence behind me. This was the first of the town's nature parks – Hagen – with the islands of Ramsholmen and Högholmen, accessible by footbridge, lying beyond. The forest was mostly deciduous, so bare of leaves, but a map in my pocket identified some of the species: oak, wych elm, common hazel, horse chestnut, small-leaved lime, black alder, common ash, rowan, bird cherry. Away from the old town, with its colourful buildings, this place seemed altogether monochrome. Dark trunks against the white ground, beneath a bruised, grey sky. Even the birds – magpies, hooded crows and a flock of noisy jackdaws – added no colour.

I walked along the trail, through Hagen, then Ramsholmen, without purpose or hurry. The path was well maintained and trodden, though I could neither see nor hear anyone else around me. As I moved further from the town, the only sounds remaining were the patter and thud of snow clumps falling from branches to the ground, and the occasional bluster of birds somewhere above. Despite the absence of leaves, the canopy was dense enough to make it hard to see much at all, just now and then a flash of frozen sea emerging to my right. When I crossed the second footbridge, to Högholmen, the path faded, but still the snow was compacted by the footprints of previous walkers, and I continued to the island's end, where I could look out across the grey ice to the archipelago beyond.

In Finland, familiarity with nature is not just approved of, it is positively encouraged, and the state itself takes an active role in this encouragement. The path on which I had
walked was well tended, despite the season, and street-lights had continued for much of the way, so even darkness couldn't interfere with a stroll in the forest. There were bird boxes everywhere, and benches, too, where one could stop and think and rest. The right to roam is enshrined in law in this country, as it is in the other Nordic nations. It is called, here, ‘Everyman's right', and gives permission for any person to walk, ski, cycle, swim or camp on private land, no matter who owns it. Food such as berries and mushrooms can be gathered on that land, and boating and fishing are also allowed. The restriction of these rights by landowners is strictly prohibited. Indeed, the legal emphasis is not on the public to respect the sanctity of ownership, but on those with land to respect other people's right to use it. This means that, while land can still be bought and sold, it is a limited and non-exclusive kind of possession. The public, always, maintains a sense of ownership and of connection to places around them.

The emphasis on access and on the importance of the countryside in Finnish culture harks back to the rural nationalism of the nineteenth century. But it has become, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a deep attachment to nature that finds its most notable expression in the profusion of summer-houses dotted around this country. Around a quarter of Finnish families own a second home or a cottage outside the town, and most have regular access to one. Often these are located on an island or beside a lake, and while many have no electricity or running water, nearly all are equipped with a sauna. This region alone has about five thousand of these cottages.

There is an old stereotype that says Finnish people, given the choice, will live as far apart from one another as possible, and perhaps there is a grain of truth in that. Perhaps the desire to remain close to nature necessitates a certain geographical distance from one's neighbours. But there seems
to me something extraordinarily healthy in the attachment to place that is so prevalent here. There seems, moreover, something quite remarkable in this longing not for what is elsewhere but for what is nearby. It is an uncommon kind of placefulness that is surely the opposite of isolation.

On my way back towards town I stopped on the bridge between Högholmen and Ramsholmen. I took ham and rolls out of my bag and put together some crude sandwiches. I stamped my feet on the wooden planks to try and compensate for my gloveless state. As I stood eating, an old man in a bright green coat appeared from behind me. He must have been close by during my walk around Högholmen, though I never saw nor heard him once.

The man stopped beside me and gazed out over the frozen water. His face was soft and wrinkled, and a little sad, topped by grey, sagging eyebrows. His dark-rimmed spectacles seemed to hang precariously at the end of his nose, and yet, at the same time, they pinched his nostrils so tightly that his breathing must have been restricted.

‘I've been looking for an eagle,' he said.

‘A sea eagle?' I asked.

‘Yes, a big one.' He extended his arms and flapped slowly, in demonstration of what a big sea eagle might look like in flight.

‘I didn't see it today,' he explained, solemnly. ‘But some days it is here.'

We stood together in silence for a moment, both looking in the same direction.

‘Well,' he said, glancing up at the sky, ‘it is fine now. But for how long?'

I smiled and nodded, recognising both subject and sentiment.

‘What is coming tomorrow?' he added, turning away to go, then paused a second longer and shook his head, sadly. ‘I don't know.'

Returning to Shetland from Prague in my mid-twenties was not the joyous homecoming I might quietly have hoped that it would be. It was difficult and tentative, and for a short time I questioned whether my decision had been sound at all. By then, my mother had moved away from Lerwick and away from the house in which I'd spent my teenage years, the house overlooking the harbour. Much had changed since then, and much was new to me. I had returned to Shetland because, finally, it had come to feel like home, but in those first few months a great deal again was unfamiliar.

Not long after coming back I got a job as a reporter for
The Shetland Times
, and a little flat in Lerwick, a few lanes away from where I'd been brought up. I settled in to a life that I felt I had chosen, and, as I walked through the town again, those buildings and those streets, those lines and those spaces, seemed as though they were etched inside of me.