How Finland makes simplicity the ultimate luxury

Amid southern Finland’s forests, lakes and islands, a quieter kind of luxury unfolds – one where design and sustainability live in harmony with the natural world

In 1963 on the western shoreline of secluded Lake Kaitlampi in southern Finland, 45 minutes northwest of Helsinki, Eino Ala-Outinen did what a lot of Finns do: he built himself a simple log cabin. It had one main room with a kitchen, dining and bedroom all together, a brick fireplace and of course a sauna – all just metres from the lake, which freezes over in winter. Today, eight wooden summer cottages make up Hawkhill Cottage Resort, whose core message is to reflect and celebrate what it is to be Finnish, to protect and have a deep respect for nature, and to never take any of it for granted. Ala-Outinen’s grandchildren and their family still use that first summer cottage to this day.

Surrounding Hawkhill’s tiny enclave is the pine, spruce and birch-filled expanse of Nuuksio National Park, filled with untouched forests, lakes, streams and impressive granite outcrops of geologic bedrock – glacial remnants from the last Ice Age. The snow here is knee-high in winter. There are deer, elk, lynx and bears, an endless array of thick mosses and lichens, and in the summer an abundance of lingonberries and blueberries grow.

There are also large tracts of Finland’s ancient, mystical peatlands – its precious bogs. Up to a third of Finland was once classed as peatland: sunken wetlands rich in biodiversity and very effective carbon sinks. After WWII logging here went into overdrive and bogs were drained for tree planting. But bogs were never designed to grow trees, and much-needed reclamations are now common, a process that mostly involves the removal of introduced floral species so that the ground can be returned to its natural state.

Hawkhill has been working to reclaim their very own bog in collaboration with Metsähallitus, a state-owned entity responsible for managing Finland’s national parks.

While you’re here

When exploring the region west of Helsinki, allow a day for Fiskars Village near the town of Raseborg. Founded in 1649 as a centre for an emerging ironworks industry, today its main thoroughfare echoes its commercial past and ranks as one of the finest historic streets in Finland. Artisans have been encouraged to move in and reinvigorate the town, and Fiskars now has a deserved reputation as the centre of modern Finnish art and design.

A meeting with nature

Southern Finland is blessed with raw and ravishing swathes of nature, and has in abundance what much of Europe – and the rest of us – are seeking: silence, space and clean air to breathe. Visit and you might learn how to turn pine cones into ‘cone animals’ by adding twigs to make arms and legs, or discover how to tap a birch tree by eeking out a four-centimetre-deep hole in the bark and watch as the water – which the tree draws up from the ground through its roots and is purer than any bottled water you’ll find – fills your container. You might get lost in Finland’s endless tracts of forest if you ever wander off a trail, but you’ll never die of thirst – millions of water-laden birch will see to that.

Locals are eager to chat with me wherever I go. I meet a fisherman who can’t stop talking about cod, and a farmer who spends an hour telling me how she’s trying to buy adjacent land from the church because she wants more space so she can buy more Icelandic horses.

The forests, however, are only half the story. If you get this far south, you need to keep going because where the land ends, a seemingly endless collection of archipelagos totalling more than 180,000 islands and islets stretching along the Gulf of Finland, begins.

Into the wild

One of these is the Barösund Archipelago, a watery realm of heavily forested islands filled with the usual pine, spruce and birch, and occasional stands of oak. Large, 300-year-old iron rings can still be seen embedded in its granite coastline, once used to guide large ships through its narrow passages in windy conditions during the Age of Sail. Older still Viking-era myths and legends abound. The Vikings never conquered Finland, but the straits around Barösund were a crucial trade route to riches in the east.

Tomas Backman has been taking guests on his covered boat, the Mirella, through these waters for four years. In winter, the sea ice here can be so thick on the outer islands – where there’s less boat traffic to break it up – that people drive their cars right over the ice to their island homes. “I take more elderly people to their homes now,” he tells me. “Their children don’t like the idea of them driving on ice.”

If you stay at The Baro, you’ll hear every birdsong and breeze – thanks to a strict 19-decibel limit on in-room noise like air conditioning, creating an unusually deep connection with the natural surroundings.

When entrepreneur Jussi Paavoseppä decided to create a hotel in Barösund overlooking Hycklesund Bay, he did it in a way that left nature all-but untouched, assembling his bespoke, charred pine-clad accommodation pods off-site and bringing all 18 of them in on tray trucks. His resultant masterpiece, the raised stilt retreat The Barö, sits above the earth allowing lichens and other ground covers to thrive. If you stay here, you’ll hear every birdsong and breeze – thanks to a strict 19-decibel limit on in-room noise like air conditioning, creating an unusually deep connection with the natural surroundings.

Good to know

Isolation sometimes means there just isn’t much choice when it comes to dining. Fortunately at The Barö, you don’t need to go anywhere. Its bespoke restaurant, The Berg, has a centrally placed kitchen so you can watch the chefs at work, and a hyper-local menu ingredients can offer up to a seven-course menu.

That’s what southern Finland does. It reminds you that nature isn’t there to be taken advantage of – it’s there to be a partner in life’s journey. And if we can learn to embrace it again, we’ll be all the better for it.

Journey notes

Finnair offers daily non-stop flights from Singapore to Helsinki.

finnair.com

Melbourne-based tour company 50 Degrees North specialises in designing bespoke itineraries throughout the Nordic region.

fiftydegreesnorth.com