Literature
Of war and war’s alarms
About this time for several decades past I set out to spend a month or so in Lapland. Lapland is a not well defined region that spans Norway to the north, a part of Sweden [more…]
Finland
20th Century
Mystery Album, Part Twenty
My own (reprinted) 1887 Bradshaw’s Guide shows an eclectic array of east coast shipping services connecting ourselves with continental Europe before the days of the noisy and inconvenient aeroplane. Goole to Dunkirk for 15 shillings [more…]
20th Century
Mystery Album, Part Nineteen
Having visited Helsinki Central Station, nearby shopping streets and the cathedral, our mystery family will have made their way back to the ferry at Satama, pausing to have their photograph taken beside the distinctive dockside [more…]
20th Century
Mystery Album, Part Eighteen
From Helsinki Central Station, a five-minute walk takes one past the Ateneum and along Ateneuminkuja and Yliopistonatu to Senate Square, at the north end of which and up some steps sits Helsinki Cathedral. Billed as [more…]
20th Century
Mystery Album, Part Seventeen
Last time on Mystery Album we decided Helsinki Central Station showed the world a particular kind of Art Deco that stamped on some of the movement’s expectations. Purists half agree, preferring it transitionary from Art [more…]
20th Century
A Barren Shore, Part Two
An even greater slab of armour plate than the one we had stumbled across decades before, stood upright blankly showing its wounds, punched through and scored by shot, rusty red, the memorial to those Finns [more…]
20th Century
A Barren Shore, Part One
This is a personal memoir of several visits to the far north and going realisation of what had always been before my eyes, unseen and recognised. I am not an historian and certainly not of [more…]