We were poised on the brink of a divorce – even if it meant dissolving 33 years of marriage and all its trappings; bringing into the world three wonderful daughters, piecing together careers, building a home, adopting beloved pets (four now gone before) and an endless procession of life experience (including, unfortunately, a lot of marital conflict).
One of the persistent lights in all the darkness was the ‘hut plan’ – a place to escape (separately or together) the capital area of Helsinki, to find an old property in need of love and attention and a focus for our energy – a homestead if you will.
There had been several abortive attempts in the past. One a miserable little cottage/allotment on Finland’s West Coast that didn’t match the description on the tin at all. Another, slightly better property but lacking a connection to municipal water, compromised for space and well beyond the three-hour pain point for travel to and from. And then another, in the same area, a 40s built house in a semi-rural set up with some very strange residue from the past, weird art on the walls, a pile of scrap metal paraphernalia and some uncomfortably inquisitive, if not overly intrusive neighbors inviting themselves to the showing.
All fails.
When my mother-in-law died, now some years ago, we took on her dream of escape – a well appointed apartment on the East Coast of Spain, which we acquired. But that was her dream, and a four-hour flight one way for a two-week holiday was a poor substitute for the kind of escape we had imagined. Instead, we opted to sell in a rising market, also with the idea lurking in the background that climate change will ultimately render the Mediterranean uncomfortably arid and inhospitable.
World fail.
Fate took a hand in early June when a small notice appeared on a national website which stands as a marketplace for everything under the sun, from cars, abandoned houseplants and appliances to old properties. My wife flagged it and sent me the link, and despite my initial skepticism, I agreed to accompany her on the journey up country to a place that had been waiting for us to arrive for more than a century.
The 15 km approach from the main highway, which is a combination of paved and unpaved road, wound its way through meadow bright with yellow dandelions, well maintained farm properties and imposing stands of conifers lining the road. Unlike in Britain, the concept of a village in Finland may be closer to a loose association of houses spread out over 50 hectares or more. From an outsider’s perspective, it could be better described as a collection of loosely connected properties than a village as one might imagine it. The ties are invisible but nevertheless strong. There are younger people, some with children, still actively engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry (some working the same plot of land for centuries and generations), others entering or in their retirement living on in the place of their birth and then others like us, coming from outside.
The school set on higher ground can be accessed by three drives through its yard. On one corner stands a small community hall and sauna building combined painted in a traditional red ochre, to the left is a one-bedroom cottage (formerly the residence of the school’s cook), to its right is a large woodshed and winter storage building (formerly the outhouse for the school before connection to water and sewerage) and before the woodshed stands the school itself.
Built using a traditional Finnish log construction 1905 at the time when Finland was still under Russian rule, the village school became the enduring focus for one of Finland’s greatest and wisest aspirations, education. You might take public education for granted now, but that singular gift to a remote village, and the arrival of the first teacher who stayed to do her job for over thirty years brought literacy, numeracy and possibilities to the children of that community that extended far beyond its boundaries. Like schools today, there were meetings for the community, including an alcohol abstention group, a knitting society, parish meetings and so forth.
The school served generations of village children until its closure in 2000 when the school-aged were transferred to the neighboring school in the nearby larger community. The school itself had since served as a gathering point for all and sundry, and a place to hold local parish meetings. During the Neste rally which roars through the village each year, it’s also a place to B&B and sell festival food. We’ll probably do the same. The old teacher’s quarters on one side of the school was rented out in the same manner as the cook’s cottage to ensure a revenue stream to help maintain the building. Both renters left within a month or two of us buying the property, but interestingly both decided to stay living in the village.
There’s a wonderful stillness to the area, which is almost intoxicating. When I was there recently, the temperature dropped to -18 Celsius and both day and night were illuminated by winter sunlight and a bright disk of a full moon that cast shadows on the snow. The air was full of tiny ice particles which coated the branches of the birch trees around and reflected the rays of both sun and moon.
Having stood so long at the heart of the village, the building holds a special place in the community. Despite its age, it has been well-preserved, never allowed to go cold and brought up to speed with plumbing, heating, electricity, and of course, care. That care now continues in our hands and well, it’s a pretty large job. Curiosity in the community abounds about our intentions for the building as well as about us as outsiders, but there is an acceptance too.
Nothing stays the same.
While the property is entirely livable now, some structural work is required to upgrade bathrooms on the school side and the teacher’s residence is screaming out for fresh paint on pretty much all surfaces – something I am presently working on with my old dog Pablo coming with me to keep me company.
I see the project extending for a decade and if you think about it, the school is in no hurry. It’s been standing there a while and will hopefully be standing (with new awestruck residents) another hundred from now. But that’s another story. I’ll keep you posted as the project runs and might well incorporate some images in Instagram. You’ve got a few years, right?
