«Our Scandinavian August» (the notes of an adventure seeker)

What can be better, than a fascinating journey during summer vacation? Keeping this obvious truth, the students with their teachers from Tver and Voronezh decided to make a trip to Scandinavia. And it is no wonder, because the majority of them are geographers.

Our vehicle is a bus that will help us to cover more than 5000 km. It’s almost overcrowded – you will barely find empty sits. 49 people including 2 bus drivers compose this funny company. The group leader is Alexandr Zherenkov that has a great experience in such journeys – he has been traveling to Scandinavia since 2000. Tver is a starting point, and we had left the city before noon.

The first serious object on our route is the Iversky monastery, conveniently located on one of the islands of the Valday Lake. We couldn’t just pass this site through without a stop.

The monastery was founded by the patriarch Nickon. He often passed this place through, and one day he had a vision of St. Philippe (former archbishop, that was killed by Ivan Groznyy in 1567) when sleeping. In the dream Philippe persuaded Nickon to build a monastery on one of the islands of the Lake. The works began in 1653. It was being built during 3 years. In 1656 the copy of the famous icon of Iversk Our Lady from the Afon monastery was placed in the Assumption Cathedral.

There was a fire in 1704, which led to the long reconstruction.

It must be said, that in the ancient times the monastery had great authority. It possessed land and peasants. According to the church economy book 7113 peasants belonged to the monastery in 1764.

In 1848 the population of Valday city was suffering from cholera. Brothers of the monastery decide to make a walk around the city with the icon of Iversk Our Lady. And, oh miracle! – it helped to save the people. Such walk with the icon has been a tradition since then and takes place every year in the beginning of August.

In Soviet times the monastery faced huge problems. It lost the lands. Then new authority chased the brothers out of the island. The monastery was a hospital during the WWII, after that it became a workshop. Later on the Iversky monastery got a function of a summer campsite.

After 1991 the monastery life appeared again on the Valday Lake. The brothers came back. The buildings of the monastery have been being restored since 1990’s. And our group found many workers (amount them there were some brothers) trying to put their part in the common deal, which is blessed by God. Even restoration has not been finished yet, we were impressed by the magnificent scenery of the Lake, by the inner decoration of the Assumption Cathedral, by the remaining of the ancient icons…

But now we have to move further. Our bus follows the federal road E95 (Moscow – St.-Petersburg). I was impressed by the conditions of this line near Novgorod – the quality of the surface was terrible. It seemed roadworks never stop.

In the late evening we reached “northern capital”. There was too little time to stay in this city even for a few minutes. 3 hours later we were approaching to the Finnish border.

We entered Finland at night. Everyone found that roads became better, and surrounding was much cleaner comparing with that on the other side of the border. The landscapes in the country of thousand lakes (as it is often called) are similar to those in Russian Karelia. The reason is common geologic foundation – Fennoscandian shield. This is a Precambrian nuclear mass around which younger sedimentary rocks have been deposited. The deposits are of glacial origin. Over 10000 years have passed since the last ice shit melted on this territory. That led to the appearance of the glacial forms of relief and the abundant hydrographical network: lots of rivers and lakes.

We arrived in Imatra early in the morning. The sun has just risen up. The object of our interest is a dam on the Vuoksa River. There is an HPS with little power. But it provides the city with electricity. The river has steep rocky banks. When the reservoir of water is opened the stream rushes down the riverbed. This place with a good scenery attracted Russian Czars with their families, where they used to spend a vacation.

The time to go has come. Now our bus is keeping north direction. Joensuu is about 200 km from us. But the group for some reason refused to visit this city with its famous university and we just passed it through.

The bus arrived to the Loma-Koli campsite afternoon. We got accommodation in cosy cabins. But the major benefit of this place is its allocation – on the shore of the lake Pielinen. We found it’s nice for swimming. To sum it up the weather was lovely there. The group was happy about this.

It was our first night of sleeping in cabins, which seemed so cosy after a night in the bus.

This day we were going to visit 2 interesting sights – Suomen Kivikeskus and the Koli National park. First we went to Nunnanlahti. It is famous for its Finnish Stone Centre (the Finnish name is already mentioned above). We found a huge quarry for extraction of soapstone there. The origin of this rare rock is explained by the metamorphisation and recrystalisation of minerals at the deep under the high pressure and temperature which took place around 2 billion years ago and was lasting millions of years. The resulted substance is good for making of fireplaces, architect elements, different kitchen items due to its qualities: the soapstone is formidable and light, and nicely keeps the warm.

Nowadays the exploration of this resource is the prerogative of the «Tulikivi Oyj». This company has been operating in the industry with a break of 20 years (1960-1980) since the 1900’s. Our group was shown a film about the «Tulikivi», its history and modernity in a special building of the company. Then we were kept to the plant, where huge pieces of soapstone are cut by means of laser and workers form it for the further distribution to customers. My main impression was a kind of cafe where local workers could have lunch, dinner for a reasonable price. I did not remind about the safety which is necessary either for the workteam or for visitors. It would be nice to see such kind of company with high social responsibilities in Russia, but rather it will be an exception...

Suomen Kivikeskus includes also geological museum. We bought the tickets and did not regret. The collections of minerals and rocks were relatively rich. Besides I saw the film on geological issue about Finland.

After such an exciting excursion we had a visit to the Koli National Park ahead. This place is located on the western shore of Lake Pielinen. Perhaps the major feature of the park is Koli’s hills, the remnants of the Karelidie mountain chain, which was pushed up 2 billion years ago. But after ancient earthquakes and quaternary ice erosion the hills were seriously destructed. Nowadays the highest point is Ukko-Koli raised to 347 m above sea level there. Our group made a trip following ecological trail through the hills. We “reached” Ukko-Koli and, of course, took many photos there. Wonderful scenery of the glacial landscape surrounded us.

The group visited the information centre of the park, where landscape exhibition of the Northern Karelia was guided by a nice Finnish girl. We got it with an obligatory film.

Finally we came down to the bus, stopped at the bottom of the hills, and left this magnificent place.

Today it is the last night in the cabins of the Loma-Koli camping, which impressed me by its hospitality and simplicity.