Metsään mieleni [Into the forest]
Toim. [Ed.by ] Yrjö Sepänmaa,
Liisa Heikkilä-Palo, Virpi Kaukio
Helsinki: Maahenki Oy. 300p., ill.
ISBN 952-5328-21-x
€ 58, hardback

Leivo, Mauri
Nuuksio - Miljoonan ihmisen erämaa
[Nuuksio - a wilderness for a million people]
Helsinki: Tammi, 2003, 231p., ill.
ISBN 951-31-2669-2
€ 55.40, hardback

It can be said without exaggeration that the forest has saved the Finns hundreds of times, in both war and peace. Nevertheless, Finland had not always treated its forests with respect. But whom one loves one also hates. Sometimes even cruelly.
     The Finns' love for the forest is at the same time both a great truth and an obvious myth. The two are possible simultaneously, for the forest is within reach of every Finn, whether he wants it or not. And according to studies, Finns do not fear the forest, but consider it a safe and peaceful refuge, even a friend.
     In Finland, the forest has always been a place to flee both the tax-man and the enemy. Today the forest is used to escape from work pressures and stress, generally safely to a summer cottage or to pick berries. This attitude differs from the relationship many central European peoples have with their forests, and the differences are also reflected in the art and folk tales of different countries. Where the forest threatens central Europeans with its darkness and cold, it protects Finns. This was literally true in the Second World War, for example, in which the Finnish defensive victory over an overwhelming enemy was to a large extent based on knowledge and exploitation of the forest. The forest gave rise to the fame of the Finnish soldier skilled in forest fighting, a terrifying adversary who emerged from the forest as if from nowhere and, after the attack, disappeared back into the forest like a ghost.
     Almost 70 per cent of the land area is still forest, and almost everyone can reach it from their own front door in a matter of minutes. Even the capital, seen from the Helsinki Olympic tower, looks like a great forest, with the exception of the promontory on which the centre of the city is built.
     Animals, too, seem to believe this. Elks often wander on to the streets of Helsinki, and, for the first time in a hundred years, it is possible once again to bump into a bear in the woods that surround the capital area. The nearest protected areas, in which getting lost is easy even for experienced walkers, can be found just half an hour's car journey away from the central railway station.




A rare encounter in Nuuksio: the elk's only enemy in Southern Finland is man.
Photograph by Asko Hämäläinen


     Access to Finland's forests is available to everyone, independent of their owner. Unlike in Central Europe or, for example, the United States, Finland has no trespass law, with the result that anyone can walk and even camp in anyone's forest. The gathering of natural products, such as berries and mushrooms, is also free to everyone, and there is hardly anyone who wishes to change these ancient rights.
     This is an enormous privilege in a country with 20 million hectares of forest - that is, more than four hectares of 'free' forest per inhabitant.
     But that is where unanimity on the subject of forests ends in Finland. For some Finns, forests are simply indifferent fields of trees, for other shrines almost like churches. Conflicts between ecologists, the forestry industry, politicians, naturalists and artists about the correct use of Finland's forests are continual and sometimes impassioned. In addition, every one of the approximately half-million summer cottage-owners in Finland has his or her own opinions on the forest. Add 300,000 hunters and the hundreds of thousands of private individuals who own most of the forests, an unanimity on the 'correct forest' is not very easy to find.
     Between four and seven per cent, depending on the method of calculation, of Finnish forests are protected, most of them in northern Finland. Southern Finland, where most of the population is concentrated, has only one per cent. Nevertheless - or perhaps because of this - books on forests, nature and the wilderness sell well in Finland, even astonishingly well in comparison to the population.
     The strange and splendid phenomenon of Finnish nature and culture books has, in recent years, been very much in the hands of the Union for Rural Education, itself closely connected with the agricultural and forestry industry, and its publishing house, Maahenki, which has dared to breach the traditional barriers between books on culture, science and nature. In the seminars of the Union for Rural Education and Maahenki's books attempts have been made to combine, for example, the history of land use, scientific articles, art, photographs, old stories and beliefs, vigorous opinion and pamphleteering articles and, for example, poetry. Maahenki's series of books about the aesthetics of the forest and waterways have been instant cult books. They cannot, however, with the best will in the world be called easy, although each book's unusually well and stylishly chosen illustrations offer the reader respite and much-needed pause.




An island of trees: a forest in Ilomantsi,
photographed by Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo


     Metsään mieleni ('Into the forest') is to a large extent based on contributions to the Union for Rural Education's seminars, which are not necessarily the best material for a book. But mixing such material with art is certainly fresh. It is good, for example, to remind even us Finns that the Kalevala is the 'world's greatest forest epic'; the cosmos of the Kalevala is situated in the vast, virginal Boreal forests where its human world is built. The golden age of Finnish art, the turn of the 20th century, also overflowed with forest landscapes from Koli and East Karelia, as did Sibelius's symphonies. Ancient original religions were forest religions.
     I myself was given pause for thought by Seppo Knuuttila's piece about the experience of getting lost in a forest. In Finland going to the forest and surviving there has, almost to this day, been, particularly for boys, a kind of initiation rite, a leap into adulthood and manhood. Thus getting lost is not to be feared, and it has sometimes even been sought out as a demonstration of manhood. The 'wanton' hero of the Kalevala, Lemminkäinen, bravely sets out to hunt for the Demon's elk in the kingdom of Tapio, lord of the forests:

I go from men forestward
from fellows to outdoor work
along Tapiola's roads
and through Tapio's houses.

(The Kalevala, Canto I;
translated by Keith Bosley, 1989)

For women, relations with the forest and getting lost have been different; more than boys, girls were frightened by the trolls and monsters of the forest, and they were encouraged to look at the forest only from the edge or from the road, from a safe distance. Thus the genders' ways of thinking about the forest and are different, perhaps for just these historical reasons: the womanly sphere traditionally ended at the edge of the forest - precisely where the manly one began.
     One can easily test one's own relationship with the forest in the Helsinki area, at least, by going to the nearest national park, Nuuksio, just half an hour's car journey from the centre. Before setting out, however, it is worth casting an eye over the nature photographer Mauri Leivo's Nuuksio - miljoonan ihmisen erämaa ('Nuuksio - wilderness for a million people'), about this most popular nature destination in southern Finland, whose landscapes are in places worthy of comparison with those of Lapland.
     Nuuksio is in total, depending on how it is calculated, an area of lakes and forests of between 10,000 and 20,000 hectares, on the borders of Espoo, Vihti and Vantaa, to the west of Helsinki. Around 3,500 hectares are now designated a national park, and this is to rise to at least 5,000 hectares. Although the park is also linked to the capital's leisure areas, one can easily spend days wandering in Nuuksio without seeing more than a few people. Nevertheless, it is visited by 150,000 each year, and the entire Nuuksio lake-plain receives as many as a million visitors. A great forest can accommodate many wanderers.
     And there is plenty to see in Nuuksio. Dozens of lakes and ponds, the increasingly wild forests of the national park, mansions and cultural landscapes and, of course, animals. With a dose of good luck, one can encounter even a bear or a grouse, or catch a glimpse of the increasingly rare flying squirrel, whose best sighting place in Finland and the whole of western Europe Nuuksio is.
The best thing about Leivo's book, however, is not the description of the current state of Nuuksio, but the entrancing tales about the geology and history of the area and about the current restoration projects.
     According to current theories, Nuuksio derivies its name from the Sámi word njukca or whooper swan, now Finland's national bird. The whooper swan was saved from extinction in Finland at the end of the 20th century and now, after a break of one hundred years, is nesting once again in the Nuuksio wilderness. The Sámi who gave Nuuksio its name, on the other hand, have been driven north a thousand kilometres to Lapland.
     Perhaps the return of the whooper swan to Nuuksio says something about an increase in respect for natural forest, and not only in Finland. In any case, the area was saved from building at the last moment. It has not, however, been possible to shield it from aircraft noise: the planes that take off from Helsinki-Vantaa airport fly straight across Nuuksio.
     Few western European capitals, however, have the opportunity to offer the kind of nature experiences to both inhabitants and tourists that Helsinki does. If it is not possible to seek personal experience of Nuuksio, it is worth starting with Leivo's book. Here, too, it is possible to lose oneself for hours.

Translated by Hildi Hawkins