Into the woods...Mekrijärvi

There’s a beautiful and magical place near Ilomantsi, Finland – about 20 miles from the Russian border – called Mekrijärvi Tutkimusasema, or ‘research station’.  Mekrijärvi is the lake on whose shore it is located. It belongs to the University of Eastern Finland, and you have to be affiliated with the university to book a stay there. We took the first-year English majors there for a trip that was partly “compulsory fun”, partly an advising retreat.

Not all of our majors came on the trip, but I’m guessing around 38 of them did. There were five of us faculty members along and seven or eight tutors – older students who do peer advising. This kind of teacher/student ratio is typical for teaching as well. The plan was for equal parts work and play, including the feared sauna visit mentioned in a previous post. My job was to put together a song booklet and to lead a sing-along. I was told I had no other duties for the trip. I kept offering more help, but I really was allowed to simply have fun, eat, walk, chat with colleagues and sleep.

We left campus at noon on Friday by bus. The road took us through – you’ve guessed it – miles and miles of forest with the occasional lake. I love this scenery and don’t think I will ever tire of it. Though I’ve heard more than one story of non-Finnish visitors coming who after an hour of forest driving say “OK, I’ve seen enough trees.” It’s a six-hour tree-lined drive from Helsinki to Joensuu. Imagine what it’s like going into Northern Finland. This trip, however, only took about an hour.

Pulling into the Mekrijärvi research station was surreal. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I wasn’t anticipating the otherworldly lake views, the historic buildings, the exquisite light or the peace – things which you don’t normally associate with a ‘research station’. There was no traffic noise, no airplanes, nothing but birds and voices and the wind in the trees. We lined up to get our rooms and then unpacked before coffee was served.

After coffee, a few of us took a walk around. The light shifted as clouds rolled in, then brightened as they moved on. The sun glittering on the lake and the rowboats lined up on the shore almost tempted me to get in and row out to a tiny island in the middle of the lake -- after all, singing wouldn’t begin until late – but I stayed on dry land, besides a stroll down the pier. At five we had dinner, and then “compulsory fun” began at six thirty.

Compulsory fun began as a quiz. Students were read a list of events from the tutors’ and teachers’ lives and asked to guess who belonged to what. My secret was the time I had breakfast with Princess Christina of Sweden. I didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing that one group of students thought I was the one who had slept in a burning tent. After this quiz there was an activity to teach each other everyone’s names. To reinforce this activity, the group was divided into four teams. Two teams sat on either side of a sheet, designated one person to sit at the front of the group, and then the sheet would be pulled away. The person who said the name of the other person last had to go join the victorious team. After this game, it was time for sauna. As it turns out, none of the teachers went to the sauna – instead we went back to our suite of rooms and sat in the kitchen drinking. The saunas looked wonderful, but hopefully I’ll get to go back to Mekrijärvi another time when I’m braver.

We then had “iltapala”, or ‘little night food’, and then it was my turn to ‘work’. I passed out songbooks to the students, who sat dutifully in a circle. I asked them to look through the songs and pick one they wanted to sing. One brave soul wanted to start with Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, which I imagined we would have to warm up to. Some sang in Finnish, but by the end of the song, everyone’s voices seemed to be swelling in strong unison in English. We progressed through some Beatles, Gordon Lightfoot, some Australian songs, ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’, ‘Freight Train’ and many others. And then, someone asked if we could sing ‘Hallelujah’ again.

I know it’s a small statistical sample, but it really seems like Finnish students love to sing. After my unpracticed fingers couldn’t deal with the steel strings any longer, they continued to sing other songs they knew. I tried to lead them in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and they quickly took over on their own. Adele, Karelian folk songs, musicals, Michael Jackson followed. One young man even got up and sang a solo. Finally our department chair Greg had to close down the operation at midnight. It’s possible the students went elsewhere and continued singing, or drinking, or both.

In the morning, the fog changed the lighting once again. It felt more unreal than before, and I was fully prepared to see an elf or fairy wandering along. It’s no wonder that this part of Finland is famous for its runesingers – there is plenty of inspiration here. After breakfast, we walked to a farm that had belonged to the most famous of them, Simana Sissonen. As seems to be the custom here, the farm wasn’t just one building, but two farm houses, a granary (aitta) which doubled as a summer sleeping building (its lack of windows would have made it particularly dark for the nights when there was no sunset), a sauna, and a few other buildings.

 

If you haven’t read the Kalevala, Finland’s national folk epic, this area probably won’t make much sense to you, nor will the reverence people have for their runesingers. Karelia is well known for these artists, and a statue of Larin Paraske, one of the most renowned, sits in a prominent position on a stairway landing in the UEF library. It's tempting to make a connection between the runesingers of Karelia and the eager-to-sing Finnish students.

As we returned to Joensuu, the weather got grayer and wetter. I got on my bike, smashed my belongings in my basket and covered them with the flimsy plastic poncho I got last summer on my bus tour of Budapest, and pedaled home in the rain.

I’m going to put Mekrijärvi on my list of places to revisit for a longer stay.