Suomenlinna

Bronson Bullock, the professor who set up the Atlantis program at NC State, has been living in Sweden for the past few months as part of the international exchange. He wanted to meet up with all of us over in Finland, so on Saturday he took Me, Mark, Alex, Paige, and Maija (who is our coordinator over here) out to Suomenlinna, along with his wife and son. Suomenlinna is an inhabited island fortress with a very interesting history (as I learned from the museum on the island).

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I won't go into the details (you can read about it here if you're interested) but it was built by Sweden, ruled for a century by Russia, and finally became part of Finland when they gained their independence in 1917. Nowadays people live on the island, it's a popular place for picnics in the summer, and you can just wander around and explore the massive fortresses. 

We all met up at the ferry in Market Square in the city. It was a COLD day. I think the high that day was only -2⁰ F and it was windy. The ferry to the island was amazing! The sea was completely frozen so an icebreaker had to come through to clear a path. It was the bumpiest boat ride I've ever been on. You could feel all the ice hitting the sides of the boat. I took a video:



It was crazy.

I took lots of pictures on the island, so to conserve space I'll only put some of the highlights up here. To see them all, check out the photo album:

Suomenlinna

 

 

 

 

 

It was really incredibly amazing. The frozen Baltic Sea was one of the most spectacular things I've even seen. If the rest of my time in Scandinavia turns out to be terrible, it still will have all been worth it for that (although I doubt that's anything I need to worry about).

Right now I'm looking out my window and it's snowing lightly. They are the most perfect looking snowflakes I have ever seen. They are gigantic but still delicate with immaculate snowflake form. They look like they're cut out of paper or in a cartoon. Like the opening scene in Elf.