Turku

Turku castleTurku is a city in southwestern Finland that serves as the gateway to and from Sweden. The Swedes and Russians alternately ruled Finland for many years, and their influences remain strong in the fortifications, the architecture, the language, and probably hundreds of other ways within Finnish culture.I had not visited the castle for many years, and found delightful changes. The exhibits have expanded enormously, you can see much more of the castle, and the whole place is getting better and better at demonstrating Finnish roots and culture. The one huge annoyance was that in such a massive museum, English is scant at best. Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of the country, and if the caretakers of the castle want to serve the visitors more fully, they'll have written explanations not only in these languages but also in English, the language of tourism. I don't mean to be snobbish about my language by saying that, simply practical.

Our guide for the tour part of our visit, however, spoke excellent English and was entertaining and humorous. (There she is, to the left, during a thoughtful moment.)

In Turku there is a wonderful "Handicraft Village" museum preserved despite the fires that regularly swept medieval towns over the years. On any given day you can stop by and poke around in the houses, seeing various craftspeople at work. Husband insisted on going into every single one that had a door open. In these small rooms people lived, often a whole family in one single room with the stove in the corner. You'd want to live that way if you had a long, cold dark winter to get through. Here you see the "cupboard-style" bed with the curtain across the entry to it. I would have loved one of those when I was a kid! No bed-making!

The other artifacts of life were scattered around as though the inhabitants of these homes had just left for a moment--spinning wheels, cooking utensils, linens for the beds and tables and windows, a chamber pot in the corner, tools of their trade in a corner or a room all of their own.

The artisans have carefully studied the old ways in which people did things hundreds of years ago, and recreate those as you watch.

They are so authentic that they use no artificial light, rather doing their work near windows so as to be able to see. We enjoyed watching the potter as she worked on molding her jugs. (As you can see, the wearing of glasses is not banned for the artists.)

It's really nice to see how handwork is still highly valued in Finland. It would be unheard of--for the most part--for people in the U.S. to value as highly the American hand arts: cross-stitching, hand printed or embroidered linens, etc. The only place I've seen us tend that way is at Williamsburg, Virginia, and that's a long, long way from Washington state.

Both of these museums (the castle and the handwork village) are fun places to visit, but I must end with my very favorite place in town--the cathedral.
I used to go visit the cathedral nearly every time I went to town, just to sit and think quietly for a while and savor my blessings at living for a year in Europe where an edifice like this was a mere bus ride away. The outside of the cathedral is more like a fortress than a cathedral: solid, massive, with none of the lacy decorations that you find on gothic style cathedrals in France, for example. It says to you, "This church will be here forever and it's not moving a centimeter. This church reminds you that God is much bigger than you are, and there really are some things that won't shift in your life." It's rather comforting.

The inside has the gothic arches with side chapels. Most of those are typical things that you'd see in churches anywhere in Europe: stained glass windows, the tombs of royal people, pictures of ships that remind us to pray for family members who work on boats. But one of these is my favorite because it's so unusual, way in the back right hand side of the cathedral. It's a chapel rich with color, with gold stars on a brilliant blue ceiling. I hope heaven is full of colors like this. I do believe that there will be no tombs in the chapels there.