Road trip to the castle of Häme

 

We've hit some rainy weather and it is fall all of a sudden. Cozy time, one would say. We, however, had EB visiting, so we've been out and about in all weathers. With raincoats and umbrellas. 

Last Saturday we rented a car and drove north from Helsinki. Our ultimate destination was Hämeen linna, a medieval castle about an hour (or a little more) from Helsinki. On the way we stopped at the composer Jean Sibelius' home, Ainola, in Järvenpää.  

We thought Ainola was lovely

 I had never been in Ainola. There's a whole community of Artists from the late 19th to early 20th century who lived near the lake Tuusulanjärvi. Jean Sibelius was obviously one of them, but in his house you can see paintings made by the painters Pekka Halonen and Eero Järnefelt, neighbors and friends, and other reminders of the great people who lived thereabouts: poet J.H. Erkko, writer Juhani Aho and painter Venny Soldan-Brofeldt. 

The morning was still pretty nice weather-wise.  

My phone was stolen for photos

 We took small roads up to Hämeenlinna (the city, named after the castle but spelled as a compound word) after Ainola. When in town we stopped to eat in a Nepalese restaurant. Let me tell you, if you are vegetarian, a Nepalese restaurant is normally a good bet for delicious food in Finland. Nepalese restaurants landed in Finland before Indian ones, and they have spread wide. There's always good paneer-food and koftas and whatnot. IT loves fresh Nepalese cheese (same as North Indian cheese.) So it's also a good place to get our teenager to eat well. 

It started raining while we ate and it was hard to find the parking lot to the castle. But the structure itself was absolutely worth the tour. In Finland, only the Turku castle is larger. 

Sometime midway through the 13th century, the great Swedish earl, Birger Jarl, led a "crusade" against the wild people of Häme and won. Big parts of Finland became part of the Swedish kingdom (and Christian, although that seems not to have been the most important point.) According to the Swedish "Erik's Chronicle", Birger Jarl also started building a castle, although it isn't altogether certain that this castle was Hämeen linna. If someone wants to dig into Medieval Swedish, the whole chronicle is here. 

Birger Jarl

 

First actual mention of the castle in written sources is found in 1308, so by then it was at least functional. The castle was fortified wider and wider through the centuries, until the 20th century got bored with the fortifications. The castle prisons had been used since the Middle Ages, but in 1837 the whole castle was transformed into a prison. It has been open to the public as a museum since 1979. 

PW testing out armor

One thing about museums and castles these days bugs me: the QR-codes you have to use to get information. It makes me feel like I didn't actually have to go to the museum at all. Now that I'm here, do I really have to go online to get the information I'm interested in? Also, my phone has now run out of battery, since I've used the map to get here... 

 We did a little side trip to Iittala to see their store and an Iittala village that was mostly dead in September. Nice glass, but we didn't buy any. We also stopped at Linnatuuli, an iconic break place which stretches over the Tampere road, only to find out that there was some sort of renovation going on and all the restaurants were closed. 

Everyone, go to Hämeen linna. But if you are planning to stop at Linnatuuli, make sure the renovation is finished before you go.