Helsinki is known as “the white city of the north.” Like Stockholm, it is built on an archipelago and it must be built on the same kind of granite base, given that our city tour took us to the Rock Church. The walls of this circular church are rock. I’m not sure how the center opening came to be. The ceiling over the sanctuary is a circular skylight.
The rock wall behind the altar goes all the way around the circular church. The white upper part of the photo is the skylight ceiling. Of course, it’s a Lutheran church.
We also visited the Jean Sibelius monument. Sibelius was a famous Finnish composer, best known for Finlandia. It’s not the national anthem of Finland, but it’s important to the Finns. I think it must be like America the Beautiful for us.
In the picture below, note the Asian woman. There are large groups of Asian tourists everywhere we go and they all take lots of pictures. They immediately go to the center front of the site and then take a carefully posed picture of seemingly every possible combination of people in their groups. Afterwards, they remain in place while they check each other’s pictures. When a group finishes, there’s already another Asian group in its place, repeating the process. This makes it nearly impossible for anyone else to take a picture of the site without including unknown Asians. There are many derogatory comments from non-Asian tourists about this.
A sculpture of Sibelius, complete with Asian tourist.
The other part of the Sibelius monument. Very Scandinavian.
Paavo Nurmi, “the flying Finn,” is remembered in a Helsinki statue. He won nine gold and three silver medals in his twelve events in the 1920, 1924, and 1928 Olympics, and he set 22 world records.
Nurmi always practiced running naked, so the statue portrays him that way.
As we were leaving, Helsinki, we saw our (possibly) Finnish name on a store window.
Schroder–just like they pronounce our name in Missouri.