Finnish Forest Quotes

The forest will answer you in the way you call to it.

Silloin susi, jonka kanssa Aalo oli juossut, yhtäkkiä muutti muotoansa. Metsän halki kulki elävä ja väkevä henkäys, niinkuin jättikeuhkot olisivat henkäisseet, ja koko korpi vavahti näkymättäin askelten astunnasta, ja suuret siivet, joitten leveyttä ei kenkään kuolevainen vielä ole mitannut, kätkivät korven salatumpaan pimentoon kuin on aarnikuusien katve. Sillä tämä susi oli Diabolus sylvarum elikkä Metsän Henki, vaikka hän nyt vasta oikian hahmonsa edestoi.

Each February/March the entire country takes a "ski week". The schools shut down, parents take off work, dogs go to the in-laws, and Finland's middle and upper classes go on holiday. But not all at once. They can't have the entire country gandala-ing up to Lapland at one time (AVALANCHES!). So the country takes turns. The best region goes first: Southern Finland. Then the second best: Central Finland. Then the reindeer herders and forest people take a week off from unemployment and go last: Northern Finland.

The symbol of the Finnish summer is a cosy cottage perched on a blue lake, with a little rowboat, a fishing pier and perhaps its own swimming beach. The simplest rustic cabins have outside loos and water drawn from a well, while the most modern designer bungalows have every creature comfort. Whether you’re looking for a wilderness escape – picturesque Karelia offers some of Finland's most deeply forested corners – or somewhere for a big family party, you’re bound to find the perfect place from the thousands of rental cottages on offer.

Finland does have some nature-oriented day cares—and they are not just about drawing trees and having the children read Emerson. “They spend their whole day outdoors,” says Lehtimäki. “Even when it’s winter—it can be minus twenty-five [Celsius] and so cold.” Parents are advised to dress their children in many layers, according to Finnish news coverage of one such day care. It also suggests that the three- to five-year-olds are made to run around if they complain: “If children feel cold, the adults activate them.” During fall and spring, they have “tent weeks” when they sleep outside in the forest.

In Finnish, henki designates at the same time “soul,” “breath,” and “life” and is understood as the vital force necessary for movement of the body.17 This entity disappears at our death, and when a person is close to death, the door or window is opened so that it can leave. For the same reason, in France there was the custom in many places of raising a shingle from the roof in the house where someone died. When an evil person died, the henki would leave in the form of a tempestuous wind.a The henki can leave a person’s body at times other than death. In such instances it exits from the mouth in the form of a small animal—a mouse, a butterfly, or a fly, as the forest-dwelling Finnish of Varmland believed. The henki possesses many traits of the Norse hugr, but the hugr is also related to another soul called vaimas in Finland. In the north of this country the inhabitants use this term for a quiver, such as an involuntary tremble or an eyelid that flutters suddenly, phenomena that the Carelians name elohiiri, “vital mouse,” or ihohiiri, “mouse of the skin,” the mouse being the spirit that can move throughout the whole body.