It’s after 10pm and the sky has only just lost the high blue of the day. Sitting by the Baltic Sea, toes in the water, I gaze at distant, tree-covered islands as gentle waves lap over the long, flat rocks. I follow a rough, winding path back to my cabin, through woods so quiet you can hear the pine needles fall.
I’m in Santalahti woods, near Kotka on the south-east coast of Finland, on the trail of Finnish author, novelist, painter and illustrator Tove Jansson (1914-2001). Best known as creator of the Moomins, and for her love of island living, Jansson also wrote for adults. Last year, her first novel, The Summer Book, was made into a film starring Glenn Close and directed by Charlie McDowell. One film critic has described it as “an ode to Finnish archipelago nature”.
The Summer Book is a series of 22 vignettes on island summer living, featuring a young girl, Sophia, and her grandmother. I first read the slim volume in the early days of the Covid lockdown.
During that uncertain, fearful time, and every year since, reading it has been a balm, a reminder to slow down and pay attention. I’ve come to Finland to explore Finnish summer living, fill my lungs with archipelago air and try to find a little of the stillness and wonder that Jansson’s writing gives me.
In Finland, summer is to be savoured. The south of the country receives just six hours of daylight a day in winter, and in the far north the sun remains below the horizon in December. It’s this darkness that makes Finns revere and celebrate summer. Schoolchildren get a 10-week summer holiday, and most Finns take July off work. Summer is mostly spent in one of the half a million summer cottages, known as mökki, usually by a lake or on one of the tens of thousands of islands scattered along the coastline.
Amenities vary, but there’s a deep affection for traditional rustic cabins: off-grid, without electricity or running water, and definitely no wifi. Cottage living, or mökkielämä, is focused on slow living in harmony with nature: time in the woods, in the sea, picking berries, and relaxing in the sauna.
I begin my journey on Pellinki, in the Porvoo archipelago, about an hour east of Helsinki. This part of Finland is bilingual. (Like 80% of Pellinki residents, Tove Jansson was a Swedish speaker; in Swedish the island is called Pellinge). It’s a quick hop across the water on a free ferry into a different, slower pace of life. Through the woods I spy dozens of cute red and yellow painted cabins, each by a stretch of water.
Tove spent many childhood summers on Pellinki, and she drew her first Moomin cartoon here – on the wall of an outhouse – as a teenager. To generate extra income, island families would rent their homes for the summer, moving into an outbuilding. Tove’s family rented the home of the boat-building Gustafsson family. Abbe Gustafsson, the same age as Tove, became a lifelong friend and the children turned their daily chore of milk collection into an elaborate challenge: there were trees to be navigated in one direction, streams to jump over and “evil” cracked rocks to sprint past.
This childhood game was the inspiration for The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My, which has been adapted into the puzzle-solving outdoor Island Riddles trail. Clues are in rhyme, and I try a few, filtering water to make the next clue rise to the surface in a small well, and hunting for a red umbrella in the trees. “You just have to play like a child and use your imagination,” Erika Englund, a local who devised the trail, tells me.
From the woods you can see the small island of Bredskär, where the Jansson family built a house in 1947. Craving further solitude, Tove built a cabin on the even tinier island of Klovharun in 1964, where she spent 28 summers with her life partner, graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä. The couple lived a very simple life here, with the island, each other, and their vast imaginations for company.
The landscapes of Pellinki, Bredskär and Klovharun are easily recognisable throughout Tove’s work in all mediums. The sea and the weather play a central role: storms rage, belongings are lost and found in the sea, and life is lived with respect for the elements.
Porvoo is the nearest town to Pellinki and a stopping point on the way to the archipelago. The old town is one of the best preserved in Finland, built after a catastrophic fire in 1760. I wander through the winding streets, admiring the colourful wooden homes and learning about the town’s history as a salt trading port, with Birgitta Palmqvist from Porvoo Tours.
I stay at the handsome art nouveau-style Runo hotel in the town centre. The building has been a bank and the town library, and now has 56 minimal, Finnish-style rooms, changing art displays and an award-winning breakfast.
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On the outskirts of Porvoo I visit Kannonnokka, where a sauna has been partly built into rock deep in the woods. Sauna culture is essential to Finns: in 2020, Unesco recognised Finnish sauna culture as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and there are an estimated 3.3 million saunas in a country of 5.6 million people (though everyone I speak to gives a higher number). Even in the tiny cabin on Klovharun there was a sauna in the cellar (more important than running water). Kannonnokka sauna is kept at 60C for longer, laidback sessions, with dips in the cold plunge pool and gently warm whirlpool bath. Afterwards, the young couple who run the venue cook delicious pancakes over the fire.
As a young artist, Tove painted murals for local buildings in towns along the Finnish coast. In Kotka, 50 miles east of Porvoo, a huge fairytale mural remains on show in the town’s youth work department. It’s a delight, with layers of stories, hidden Moomin characters and gemstone embellishments.
In Hamina, a neighbouring town, panoramic fantasy scenes decorate the walls of the town hall: mermaids flirt with cadets under water and shipwrecked treasure fills Hamina harbour. In Kotka, I visit Maritime Centre Vellamo, where Courage, Freedom, Love! A Moomin Adventure launched this year (it runs until March 2027) to mark 80 years since the first Moomin book was published.
Children can play inside a replica Moomin house, clamber on the rocks surrounded by an animated sea, and dress up in a little theatre. Also on display is Tove and Tuulikki’s boat, Victoria, built for the couple by Abbe Gustafsson.
From Kotka I catch a free ferry to Kaunissaari (90 minutes). The island’s name translates to “beautiful island” – fitting, given its pine forests, long white beaches and pretty marina. The harbour is a cluster of red wooden cottages with wildflower gardens, and boat sheds with spooled fishing nets outside. There’s a fascinating island museum, packed to the rafters with memorabilia from centuries of hardy island living. I follow winding paths through the trees to find a long, sandy beach, which I have all to myself. I can’t resist a swim – even without a sauna to plunge into. I warm up at Kaunissaaren Maja restaurant, where the simple salmon soup recipe has not changed in 70 years.
Near Kotka I stay in my own little summer cottage. The amenities are basic: a kitchen diner and one bedroom, but of course a sauna. I set it to heat then spend an hour walking through the woods and around the bay, watching the sunset. The long daylight hours are perfect for happihyppely, a Finnish concept translated literally as “oxygen hopping”: taking a short walk for fresh air and exercise. Back at my cabin I jump between the heat of the sauna and dips in the icy Baltic Sea. I exhale, with the night, the light and the summer stretching out in front of me. I can see why Tove Jansson loved this coastline: all I need for a dreamy summer is right here.
The trip was provided by Visit Finland. Runo Hotel in Porvoo has doubles from €171 B&B. Self-catering cabins at Santalahti resort start from €89 (sleep two); sauna cottages from €198 (sleeps up to four)