Carpenters' work

Bear, apple of the forest, honey-paws with arched back . . .
Golden cuckoo of the forest, lovely shaggy-haired one . . .
Väinämöinen addresses the Bear.
The Kalevala

What are the consequences and materiality of a culture and tradition of wood use? The filigree and decoration as well as the practical construction and materials and tools?

I don't really expect to see the bear in the forest, but it seems worth a trip to Karelia in the east, the entire width of the country away. Where city road signs read St. Petersburg; not quite in Russia, but in Finnish Karelia: the rest of Karelia was ceded to the then USSR after the 1939-40 Winter War that raged here, with Finland a small republic torn between large militaristic neighbouring dictatorshps.

Väinämöinen was not known as a particularly peaceful man, starting fights with everyone he met, including epic battles with the Mistress of North Farm.
My first sights on walking by Lake Saimaa into town are of tanks: one German-, one Russian-made, both bought in the last century's war for the Finnish Army. The reality of crude machine brutalism designed to kill and maim is always a surprise.
The Swedish name of Lappeenranta, Vilmanstrand, translates as Wild Man's Shore, though might not refer to Väinämöinen or the Apple of the Forest.

The Kalevala stories were collected largely in Karelia by Elias Lönnrot. That music, poetry and song, playing itself to me is reason enough to visit Lappeenranta in Finnish Karelia.

Linnoitus, the fortress on the hill overlooking the harbour is another surprise. Through three hundred years, passing through the hands of Swedes, Russians and Finns in wars with names like The Great Wrath and used as a prison during the 20th century, today the elegant barracks have been converted to warm comfortable modern museums: South Karelia Art Museum, South Karelia Museum. Here is the oldest Orthodox church in Finland, smack opposite the Cavalry Museum.

It's cold here and I've been walking all morning. The fortress has also a cafe; though that is to underestimate the effect it has on a cold man entering. In a room full of antique sofas and tables is the largest selection on a side buffet table of berry pies, chocolate cakes and Karelian pies possible; in the largest possible helpings. A bear would sit and quietly eat through it with me; these cakes are probably the closest I'll get to honey-paws.

But it's at Linnoitus, a strange place for delicacy, that finely preserved wooden buildings display that materiality of culture I'm in search of.
The construction and decoration of the buildings demonstrates a deep knowledge of and love for wood. The diagonal quartered door panels - when they could be plainly horizontal or perpendicular - show not only an eye for the way wood grows, but make use of shorter planks than other styles of door panelling. The filigreed planking at wall tops also protects beam ends. The low, wind-resistant solid length of the architecture itself reflects huge fallen trees.

It's not fanciful to find faint traces of the songs of Kalevala in carpenters' work. Songs, people and buildings grew alongside and within Finnish forests - here Karelian - where old honey-paws walks to this day. Through yesterday's wars and the consumerism that sits below in the town, here is a continuity, a culture still cherished, but above all lived through and in.

Väinämöinen sang to a birch tree before cutting it for a new harp:

Do not weep green tree!
Do not keep crying, leafy sapling! Do not lament, white girdled one!
You will get abundant good fortune, get a pleasanter new life.

and then after cutting:

There is the body of the harp, the frame of the eternal source of joy.

Väinämöinen is referring to the music the harp brings; but also to the joy of the labour of carpentry, of the skill of working and love of wood, of the knowledge of trees and the forest and its dwellers.

I know carpenters who select wood with equal care and who are aware that they work part of a once living organism taken from a living woodland. It's the old way. Found here in Lappeenranta.

With only one daylight short visit here the big lake beckons. Lake Saimaa is difficult to walk round, even though I start by walking down Lönnrotinkatu - Lönnrot Street. I catch a bus for Saimaa Canal, the waterway between Saimaa and Vyborg, now part of Russia, always Karelia.

Woodland shores of the lake are encroached by urban life; a long motorway bridge arcing high leads to Taipalsaari, one of the largest islands. But here, walking along by water is old Karelia still: an old wooden barn, with wooden scaffolding up the southern side. It's being re-thatched. The farmhouse stands neaby as does the sauna. For all I know it's called North Farm.

I shamble to my night's rest the other side of Lappeenranta, by the shore of Saimaa, in the dusk, cold, hungry and content. I knew I wouldn't find the bear, but I found his dwelling place; and somehow, "the splendid fellow himself" found me.