Satakunta

Today's WHS was Old Rauma, the old town of Rauma where we were staying. Thankfully it was only about 15 minutes walk from our apartment which was nice. It's on the list as a great example of traditional Nordic wooden architecture that has survived the centuries, though much of what remains is from the 19th century. Fires were a continual problem since wooden houses and cold climates with open fireplaces are a dangerous combination, and the town did burn down a couple of times.

But there's still a lot left and it was nice and impressive.

Finished up the site by early afternoon and decided to tackle the other nearby site in the late afternoon - Bronze Age burial cairns! These were literally just mounds of stones, because I guess that's what burial cairns are. But they were several thousand years old, and one of the oldest above-ground remnants still remaining in the Nordic countries. It's interesting since we basically know nothing about the people who lived here, so it's just guesswork based on stuff like burial mounds. We wandered around the forest in the sun for a while doing our filming, then headed home. Last night in Finland!

I also discovered while looking for the apartment building's bins that we had an air raid shelter in the basement! There was a sign pointing down the stairs (we were on the ground floor) which my phone translated as "raid shelter" and I was like, nahh can't be. I went down the stairs and yep - there was a huge metal door about six inches thick! It reminds you how close the Soviet Union really was, and how vulnerable Finland felt.Read more