“We’re just moving air with our arms”, Karoliina Laitinen reassures us as she leads us in a mindfulness exercise in a Finnish pine forest. She clicks on a Bluetooth speaker, we sway our limbs to the music as instructed, now make a turn and oh… she has us dancing.
It’s the sort of mischief our group of novice forest bathers should have expected from an ex-ballerina, especially one who with her light step, perpetual smile and penchant for welcome hugs has something of the fairy about her.
Despite edging Finland’s third largest city Tampere, our surroundings certainly have a Midsummer Night’s Dream quality. There are large moss-covered boulders and more varieties of mushrooms than I’ve seen in my life. I stop frequently to peer at storybook red-and-white toadstools or bright yellow cups with frilled edges.
“My Instagram now is full of people mushroom picking,” says Tuomas Paloniemi who works for Visit Tampere. He tells me five common mushroom varieties are edible then plucks and passes me vitamin C-packed rowanberries.
Barefoot bliss
We break for another flavour first, spruce needle tea. But Karoliina, whose experience company Villipihlaja (Wild Rowan) encourages connection with nature, is determined to further nudge our boundaries. I’m soon bouncing behind her, barefoot through a carpet of moss. Its sponge-like surface releases water between my toes with every step.
My immersion in the seemingly otherworldly forest feels a fitting prelude to the city’s star man-made attraction the Moomin Museum. Finland’s best-loved export, the Moomins are nature-loving, hippo-like trolls who celebrate their 80th birthday this year. The first illustrated book of their adventures was created by Tove Jansson to comfort children during World War Two. Decades later they spawned a global animation series.
The museum is based on the author’s back catalogue so nostalgic adults can be wowed, as I was, by hundreds of her original ink drawings and watercolours, some with correction fluid. Children will enjoy touchscreen interactions, climbing inside a giant book, and crafts in a prettily lit workshop.
Charming for everyone are a 2.5-metre-high lighthouse-topped Moominhouse and intricate dioramas depicting scenes from the stories. Jansson’s partner, artist Tuulikki Pietila, created these, incorporating flea market trinkets collected during their travels.
On a free tour (in English on Sundays) I learn the pair spent their summers living freely on a remote island and later became the first same-sex couple to attend a reception at the Presidential Palace. Despite the Moomin books’ warmth and humour, their later themes reflected Jansson’s personal preoccupations, from midlife crisis to grief.
Industrial chic
Tampere is a post-industrial city, once dubbed Finland’s Manchester, but it’s attractively set around two lakes. In fact, there’s nature in the very architecture. Tampere Cathedral is a beautiful example of Nordic National Romantic style. Plant and bird motifs are carved into its external walls and pulpit; briars and berries climb its columns; and in a wraparound fresco a leafy garland represents life’s journey.
The city is a natural twin with Helsinki (1.5 hours by train) and is easily explored on foot and by tram. The cultural district, a festival hotspot, spreads around the former Finlayson cotton factory and the hydroelectricity generating river rapids. In its Tallipiha Stable Yards area I browse boutiques selling handicrafts and homemade chocolates.
Several galleries are among the wider city’s attractions. The lakeside Sara Hilden Art Museum hosted the first public sculpture exhibition by Hollywood actor Brad Pitt.
Our forest experience had ended in a public campfire area with its own stocked woodshed and log-splitting block. Alfresco chef outfit Pine Dining had rustled up creamy fish soup, venison and marinated tofu cooked over flames beside a lake.
In the city centre I find the forest influence lingers, with stalls selling cloudberries and chanterelle mushrooms. There’s more feasting fare in Tampere Market Hall where, among more than 30 food stalls and cafes, we’re offered haggis-like sausages with lingonberry sauce and slabs of rye bread topped with fish, dill and sour cream.
Drink, sweat and dip
It’s at a cafe-restaurant, lake view Saunaravintola Kuuma, that I experience Tampere’s other claim to fame beyond the Moomin archive. The city is Finland’s sauna capital and I’ve been promised a post-burger steam session. I’m startled to see people with rolled-up towels slipping behind a curtain right beside the bar but soon I’m making the same surprising segue.
I don my swimsuit and join expert Alexander Lembke on the sauna benches. As he ladles water on the heated rocks to boost the temperature, he tells me many Finns enjoy this cultural ritual at least weekly. There are smoke, dark and even floating saunas to try, naked or clothed. Ours is a typically sociable kind. Running with sweat, people chat like they’re still in the bar next door.
My experience will not be complete though, I’m told, until I’ve plunged into the lake. “I’ll just watch,” I say but my skin’s so hot and the burst through the door to the restaurant terrace so swift that I continue down a metal ladder. I hit the icy water, gasp, then giggle. I’m not sure if it’s a bit of Moomin magic or a woodland fairy’s spell but Tampere has expanded my comfort zone.
Book it: Regent Holidays offers a four-night Helsinki-Tampere twin-centre from £945pp based on two sharing (single occupancy from £1,335) between 1 September and 15 October. It includes flights, train transfers and B&B in Solos Sokos hotels; regent-holidays.co.uk
