When my brother and I were children, we loved playing hot and cold. One of us would hide some small object, and the other would become the hunter, searching, guessing, listening for clues. The closer the hunter came, the louder and more excited the cries would be: “hotter… hotter…” until at last came the triumphant…
Category: Finland
Bedtime Story
When I was a little girl, about six years old, living in Helsinki, one of my mother’s dearest friends came to our home for supper. Her name was Eila. She lived nearby and had known our family since before I was born. She belonged to that rare kind of friendship that seems to outlast the…
Timeless Treasures
When I was a little girl living in Finland, I had a friend who was woven deeply into the fabric of my childhood. Her name was Tiina. We lived only a few hundred metres from each other, and we were in the same class at school. Hardly a day seemed to pass without us together….
Wood-smoke and Cinnamon
Finland is beautiful in every season, but autumn has always felt the most personal to me. There is something about it that reaches past the eyes and settles deep in the heart. Summer does not simply end there. It seems to gather all its remaining beauty and leave in one final, breathtaking blaze. The forests…
Treasured Simplicity
Some places do not simply hold memories. They hold parts of us. That is how Finland feels to me. Not only as the country of my birth, but as a place where something deep within me still recognises itself. Even after all these years, even after a lifetime lived elsewhere, there are moments there that…
Everyday Moments
I have lived in Australia for most of my life now. As the years pass, I think we all grow used to the world around us. What once may have felt striking or new slowly becomes familiar, and familiarity has a quiet way of softening our attention. The everyday settles around us so completely that…
Blue and White
I was eleven when my family left Finland and migrated to Australia. At that age, I could not possibly grasp the full weight of what was happening. To me, the biggest wonder was that I was about to fly on an aeroplane for the very first time. There was excitement in that, the kind only…
Time Travelling
I caught myself daydreaming today, though it felt like much more than that. In my mind, I had travelled back to the happy days of my childhood, back to my grandma’s house, back to everything that felt safe and warm and deeply loved. The Finnish word mummi has never simply meant grandmother to me. In…
Christmas 1939
Written by Jaana M. H. JokinenTold by my father, Matti Samuli30th November 1939, Helsinki, Finland “All aboard!” The conductor’s booming cry drew my mother to her feet. “The train is leaving, let’s go!” I clapped my hands in delight. I could hardly contain my excitement. Though I was barely four years old, I had already…
Dancing Lights in the Sky
I come from the country of the midnight sun, from a land of crystal-blue lakes and endless forests, where the air feels so clean it seems to wash over not only the skin, but the soul. I come from a place where wild berries and mushrooms grow freely, where reindeer move quietly through the landscape,…
Apples of Gold 