Finland

Often asked about my favorite places to go, and moreover, favorite places to eat, I find myself talking about Helsinki. Younger and more innovative than trend-driven neighbors Copenhagen and Stockholm, Helsinki’s established and rising culinary stars are making a special kind of magic. It’s something to do with marrying influences from both East and West, and certainly reflective of its natural proximity to both sea and forest. There’s a fresh and hyper-local feel to modern menus in the capital, evocative of the country’s ancient foraging culture and reverence for nature; but there’s far more to it than picking mushrooms and berries. So many natural wine dens, bistros and bakeries are saved in my Instagram, it’s overwhelming.

Moomins are synonymous with Finnish life, like saunas, porridge and mökki (summer cottages) culture. The large-snouted white fairytale creatures feature in the Moomin books, which are published in nearly sixty languages. Moomin World, a theme park 100 miles from Helsinki, crawls with tourists come summer — some feat, in a country with roughly twenty-one inhabitants per square kilometer. Moomin merch is ubiquitous too; fans are cult-like in their collection of rare mugs and first editions. Every day, Tove Jansson’s iconography is inked into skin. And it’d got under mine, in a way. In my twenties, a boyfriend’s collection of paraphernalia from a Finnish former partner quelled any curiosity about Jansson’s imaginary oafs (and Finland).

“For the bravest in the group. Exit Flow from the back.” “We’ve found it. It is insane.” “This is the best thing I’ve ever done.” The WhatsApp messages came through thick and fast. Then, a video of pitch darkness, rising steam just visible, festoon lights swaying in the wind. The unmistakable trill of “Bohemian Rhapsody” bleated out by drunken strangers. Separated on the last night of “The Flow,” Helsinki’s biggest music and arts festival, I’d lost my comrades to Sompasauna, a twenty-four-hour lakeside guerilla sauna-cum-DIY community space where anyone is welcome, and (almost) anything goes. For the uninitiated (me), getting naked and jumping in freezing waters seems a bizarre end to an urban music festival.

Bear viewing in Finland can be a cloak-and-dagger affair. We were told to meet our guide, Pekka Veteläinen, at 5:45 on a Monday afternoon — not at a landmark, but at a set of GPS coordinates deep in the woods, fifty minutes outside a town called Kuusamo, just one kilometer short of the Russian border on logging road number 8691. Here are some of the instructions we received. Wear dark clothing. Take ready-made food with you. Bring cash because credit cards don’t work in this wilderness. We had an early dinner at a “wild food” certified restaurant in the Karelian town of Kuusamo — it’s Finland’s seventy-fifth biggest town, a distinction that means the place still has more reindeer than people.