heilini ikävöitsee

first things first:

i've just returned from Ivalo (40km south) where i spent one sweet hour in the best store of my life. it's name translates to something like "Shoe and Costume", but it's basically a giant deadstock department store of vintage Finnish clothing from the 50-80s, including an entire wall of shoes for all seasons, hats, and any other pieces of clothing one might think of. the first 30 seconds after i walked in, i remember thinking something like, " everything in my life [of shopping] so far, all those emotional-rollercoaster thriftstore excursions, the rare thrill of actually finding something perfect..........has all been leading up to this moment." the sweet old lady who owned the store smiled and welcomed me, i turned, took a breath, ready to dive in, visions of treasure dancing in my head, until...

... i looked at the price tags. um!!! no one wonder there was so much there....no normal human, especially not in that town of 600 people, could afford what this little old lady was asking for these, admittedly, mint condition vintage clothes. i have a feeling she might be one of these types i've encounted before who run seemingly shoddy bookstores/used-something stores. the minute you walk in you get this excited feeling, like "i know i am surrounded by wonderful, rare things, and all i have to do is look around and put them in a nice pile and pay (almost nothing) for them". but, the moment you are ready to ring up your pile of cool stuff, you realize that the asking price is so unreasonable that it seems the seller doesn't really want to sell it in the first place!

anyway, i caved and bought one dress for 25 euros ($33). it's unworn, the tags were still attached (made in Oulu) and it fits like a glove. also, it's getting warmer now and i'm sick of wearing the same 4 t-shirts/2 pairs of pants forever.

ps: dear dollar, please stop losing ground against the euro, thanks.





ok!

onto the photos from the past week here in Inari:


one of my hitchhike rides up North (see entry below). this is Jassi with his father after his dad made us lunch and before we looked at family pictures.


on highway 4 heading North


Mari, student at the Sami school



giving me the tour of where they prepare the various animal skins for leathermaking and such.


more animals in various states of preparation


Mari lives in a little cabin 2km outside of town


sitting by the fireplace





Kaisa bringing water from the well to wash the lunch dishes


4km walk


beautiful day


drinking straight from the river...you can do that here


Pielpajärvi


Wilderness


Church




ringing the bell!


Mari carving a stick to cook bread over the fire with. sauna suggestively smoking in the background


sauna!


lake near the sauna where one could splash. still quite frozen


sunset/sunrise? it was around 12 am


Kaisa being amazed by the loveliness of the forest. we heard/saw two trumpet swans courting upon a perfectly still lake


and a little red fox run screaming through the woods

other stuff...


met up with Suvi at the pub while waiting to go to dinner with Mari


another guest of Suvi's had just arrived and we were introduced: Lorenz from Germany. here he is singing a song with some Norweigan guys


the Norweigan guys


one exceptionally fair day, Lorenz, Suvi, Pessi and i went down to river for a walk after dinner


Suvi and her son, Pessi


we also made a fire and some tea


a cloudy end of the day


Great Finnish Music of the Week

i've been listening a lot to some new sounds courtesy of Aki, after he showed me this dvd of a performance by this guy and his string band in a gold prospecting camp a year or two ago by the Lemmijoki river. the album is by J. Karjalainen/Lännen-Jukka and it's called Amerikansuomalaisa Lauluja/Finnish-American Folk Songs. it's really bare-bones banjo picking and solo singing in Finnish by J. Karjalainen, performing the songs of his mentor Lännen-Jukka and it's amazing. from the liner notes:

Lännen-Jukka left for America as a young man in 1920. He started out working an assortment of jobs in New York. After that he worked on the railroads and did some mining in the southern mountains, in Virginia and North-Carolina. Most of the time he travelled on the “road of freedom”, i.e. he engaged in the demanding profession of the hobo. He hopped freight trains and rode them across the continent, walked through countless pairs of shoes on endless stretches of road, hoboed with his banjo under his arm and the rest of his belongings in a cloth sack. He went “all over the place”. But wherever he went, there was music, singing and playing. Lännen-Jukka committed a wealth of American styles from hillbilly to blues to his musician’s memory, learned to play the 5-string banjo and even had the ingenuity to combine it all with the old-time songs he knew from back in the old country. He came back to Finland in the early 1930s, just in time for the depression.

apparently, he also met and hung out with Charley Patton and Willie Brown, and there's a track on the album called "Minä, Vili ja Charlie (Me Willie And Charlie)"




well, i'm to bed. tomorrow is the beginning of three days of events here in Inari. the Reindeer Conference, of Sami herders from all over Sapmi (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia) will take place tomorrow at the school. Friday and Saturday is the Midnight Sun Sami Music Festival, also featuring artists from all over Sapmi, and fashion shows and such featuring the work of the handicraft students...should be a lot of action for this little village. ok, good "night"