Day 6 – Goodbye to Finland

Korpo to Kökar, 4km

After a lazy morning exploring Korpo “town” (essentially, the church), I said goodbye to Finland and sailed away on the 3:30pm ferry to my next archipelago island, Kökar in Åland. Åland is a real country, appearing immediately below Afghanistan on any internet drop down list. Or is it? I can’t be sure. Officially, Åland is an autonomous and demilitarized region of Finland but the history is confusing and littered with invasions. After years of wanting to be Swedish, in 1921 the League of Nations ruled that Finland would retain sovereignty but Åland would have political autonomy. Naturally the 650,000 population speak Swedish and everyone is happy.

While Finland switched sides during WW2, Åland’s neutrality, like Sweden, fostered a close trading relationship with Nazi Germany and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, the Allies. In 1995 Åland joined the EU with Finland, but only after they spent the afternoon negotiating the Åland Protocol which secured duty free sales of alcohol on their ferries to Finland and Sweden. This was warmly embraced by the other member states.

My pilgrimage along the St Olav Waterway will now continue through the archipelago of the Åland Islands for the next few days until I sail to Stockholm on Wednesday.

You’ll be relieved to hear that I had a good breakfast this morning. There was nothing edible in the inn but I found a real bakery in Korpo and bought a pastry topped with strawberries. The owner said her day starts at 2am baking bread and then she runs the shop until it closes at 1pm. But she is 65 and the business is for sale so you know what that means. A coffee from the village store for one euro set me up for my exploration of the church.

It’s another stone built church. Inside, the visitor’s book was signed yesterday by the couple from Berlin whom I met on Tuesday. The Bavarian camping pilgrim appeared and we had a little chat. She’s struggling to sleep due to the cold. Later I saw her sleeping on the ferry and she was having some doubts about going all the way to Trondheim, as I would, had it been my plan.

The ferry ride to Åland is quite a long sea crossing, two and a half hours, so it wasn’t until 6pm that i arrived and set off on today’s walk on Kökar. A steady rain was falling while I walked the 4km to the campsite which is my home for the next two nights. It’s a lovely spot, right on the sea and I’m sure it will be beautiful when the wind dies down and the rain stops.