From Helsinki you can easily take a boat to visit Saint Petersburg or one of the Baltic countries. I visited Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.
Tallinn is located only 80 kilometre south of Helsinki, at the other side of the Gulf of Finland. Its old town is in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The first traces of human settlement found in Tallinn's city centre by archeologists are about 5000 years old. In 1050 the first fortress was built, and in 1285 the city became the northernmost member of the Hanseatic League – a mercantile and military alliance of German-dominated cities in Northern Europe.
Tallinn's harbor
After a 2.5 hours cruise through the frozen sea, I arrived in the All-linn, the lower part of the historic town. After lunch, I visited St. Olaf’s Church. At the time the church was built, it was the tallest building in Europe. A legend about its builder makes the church even more compelling: a mysterious stranger promised to build the church for free if the town’s citizens could guess his name before the church was completed; if they failed, they would pay him 10.000 units of gold for his work. Unfortunately for the man, a town spy overheard his wife calming their baby with a promise of their father Olaf’s return. When it was revealed that the citizens knew Olaf’s name, just as Olaf was putting the finishing touches on the church steeple, he immediately fell to his death.
The ancient city wall.
Then I visited Town Hall Square. This is the heart of the Lower Town. Besides the Town Hall, the square is home to Gothic buildings. During summer, this is a venue for festivals or concerts like Tallinn Old Town Days, but when I visited it was freezing cold over there. Fortunately there were several nice bars on the square.
Town Hall Square.
After a drink, I walked to Toompea (or Cathedral Hill) which crowns Tallinn’s old town with a castle, churches, palaces, and government buildings. This area was once a separate town (Dom zu Reval), the residence of the Chivalry of Estonia, Roman Catholic bishops of Tallinn (until 1561) and Lutheran superintendents of Estonia, occupying an easily defensible site overlooking the surrounding districts. Many buildings are newer than in the Lower Town due to a fire that consumed the medieval buildings. There are many viewing platforms on the ancient city wall.
A nice view on the Lower Town and the modern city.
Helsinki (or Helsingfors in Swedish) is the capital and largest city of Finland. It has about 600.000 inhabitants (which is comparable with e.g. Antwerp in Belgium).
It was founded by the Swedish king Gustav I in 1550. King Gustav I wanted to have a competitor to Reval (now Tallinn), a nearby Hanseatic League city which dominated local trade at the time. Later Sweden took over Reval, so they lost their interest in Helsingfors.
A map of the Hanseatic League in the 15th century. (source: Wikipedia)
Russian money and the talent of the German architect Carl Ludwig Engel were used to build several government buildings and a cathedral. From 1850 most wooden worker houses were replaced by stone houses. In 1900 the city looked totally different. In half a century, it transformed from a small harbor to a real capital.
Four huge statues stand guard at the entrance of the railway station.
The central railway station (Rautatieasema) is the most central location of the city. It's a striking building of rose granite with a 48 meter high green bell tower. From there, it is only a few hundred meters to Kiasma, the museum of contemporary art. There was an impressive exhibitions of the work of Jouko Lehtola (a Finnish photographer) and the Romanian visual artist Dan Perjovschi.
From there I walked through the Esplanadi, the shopping street with a nice park in the middle. At the end of Esplanadi, I had a nice view on the cathedral.
Helsinki cathedral was originally built from 1830-1852 as a tribute to the Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.
On the square in front of the cathedral, you can see the statue of Tsar Alexander II. At his feet there are four sculptures that tell the story of this square: Lex (Law) looks towards the government building, Lux (Light) looks to the Sun, Labor looks at the university and Pax (Peace) looks at the cathedral.
Then I took the tram to Sibelius park. This park contains the Sibelius monument, which is dedicated to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957).
Sibelius monument in the snow.
Another touristic attraction of the city is the Temppeliaukio Church, also known as the Church of the Rock. The interior is excavated and built directly out of solid rock and is bathed in natural light which enters through the glazed dome. The church is used frequently as a concert venue due to its excellent acoustics. The acoustic quality is created by the rough, virtually unworked rock surfaces.
On March 16, Ivan, Dharma and I flew back to Helsinki. There we met Kate again. We ate together and enjoyed the nice weather. My first day in Finland with positive temperatures!
It was time to say goodbye to most people of our group.
Alain and I stayed one extra day, so we walked through the city of Rovaniemi and visited Arktikum for the second time, much slower and extensive this time. We got some good ideas for the exhibition space at public observatory Urania! ;-) We visited also the Pilke Science Centre, an exhibition about the northern forests, but it was not really worth the visit...
I'm moving the auroras in the Pilke Science Centre (courtesy of Alain).
The Solar Influence Data Analysis Centre in Brussels announced that a C2.0 CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) would reach the Earth on March 15 in the evening. Unfortunately the CME was faster than initially predicted, so it impacted the Earth's magnetosphere already in the morning. Apart from that it was also cloudy. So we decided to wait until 11 PM, but conditions were still bad. Alain called me later that night to tell me that the sky cleared out, but I stayed in my bed. Bad decision!
The full-day ESA programme started at 9 o'clock with a guided tour of Arktikum, a museum dedicated to the arctic scientific research, e.g. climate change and the history and culture of the Sami people in Lapland. After the tour, we listened to a series of interesting talks about the ESA's Space Situational Awareness programme for Space Weather (to which I contribute as a IT specialist at the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy), the Gaia spacecraft that will do accurate parallax (distance) measurements of millions of stars, ... But the most impressive talk came from NASA astronaut Don Pettit. He stayed last year for six months in the International Space Station (ISS) together with the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers. They made more than 500.000 pictures! One of the nicest is "Walking on Air". Young readers of this blog will also remember the video in which Don Pettit announces "Angry Birds in Space".
By noon a bus brought us to a theme park dedicated to Santa Claus. Alain (a friend that I know from public observatory Urania who was also invited) and I visited the friendly man who even spoke some Dutch. After a visit to the souvenir shop and a hearty meal (this time no reindeer, because they were flown away ...) we drove to the Arctic Research Centre in Sodankylä, about 150 kilometers to the north.
Here again we followed some explanations, this time about the field of research at the Arctic Research Centre. We also had an interesting presentation on another ESA programme, namely the monitoring of space debris. It is a big problem in space, especially after a anti-satellite missile test conducted by China in 2007. A Fengyun weather satellite was destroyed, resulting in a cloud of 150.000 debris particles. Now there is a debate going on between specialists if the so-called Kessler point is already passed or not. If so, then by the number of collisions among debris will continue to grow, even if we would no longer launch new satellites. Anyway, space agencies such as ESA will have to find methods to reduce the amount of space debris drastically.
Then we visited one of the EISCAT radars. These radars are used for the study of the magnetosphere and the ionosphere, to unravel the interaction between the Sun and our planet. The movable dish in Sodankylä has a diameter of 32 meters. Very impressive!
After a typical Lappish buffet, we prepared ourselves for the big moment. First we got an explanation about the northern lights in the Aurora House, and then we went outside. It was really cold (about -30°C!) and the observation site was not ideal (the only light, from Sodankylä, was exactly in the north). But nevertheless we saw some (weak) aurora and an incredible starry sky. A nice ending of a great day!
With this short list of Finnish words, you should be able to talk about Life, the Universe & Everything. ;-)
northern light: revontulet
Revontulet comes from revon (“fox's”) and tulet (“fires”). There is a Finnish folk story, that a fox in the north is running on the snow, and it is sweeping its tail so that sparks fly off into the sky. In addition the Finnish have about 20 different folk stories about the origin of the northern lights. One claims that there is so much fish in the Arctic Sea that the sun light is reflected back into the air from the backs of the fishes.
The answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything sounds like Vastaus elämään, maailmankaikkeuteen ja kaikkeen muuhun sellaiseen in Finnish. But you could also say 42... (If you have no idea about what I am talking: read the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy of Douglas Adams!) By the way, mustikka means blueberry, not to be mistaken in French for "moustique", pronounced nearly the same, meaning 'mosquito'... (Thanks to Cyril to point it out!)
In restaurant Zetor, I met already three other group members. On March 13, we took the bus together to the airport (which is located in Vantaa, a big city north of Helsinki). In the airport we met two other people, including Jari who is the organiser of the ESA seminar in Rovaniemi.
Rovaniemi from the air.
Rovaniemi is the administrative capital of Finland's most northern province, Lapland. It is located 5 km south of the arctic circle. You can reach it from Helsinki by plane or by train. And it is the official home of Santa Claus!
In the evening we went to eat in restaurant Nili, a typical Lappish restaurant. I have to admit that I ate poor Rudolph... I recommend you go there!
Part of our group in restaurant Nili
After the nice dinner, the bravest went outside to see the aurora from the river. It was the very first time that I saw it!
The first night in Rovaniemi we saw the northern light!
(Photo courtesy of Remco)
The republic of Finland (Suomi in Finnish) is one of the 27 member states of the European Union. It was part of Sweden from the 12th until the 19th century, which explains why (besides Finnish) also Swedish is an official language (spoken by 5% of the population). In the north (Lapland) people speak also Sami.
Finnish is a Finnic language. Another well-known Finnic language is Estonian (and not Hungarian!). It is very unintelligible when you speak only Germanic and Romance languages... I found also a humoristic blog post about the Finnish language: http://linguistlist.org/blog/2013/04/finnish-origins-traced-back-to-klingon/
Its neighbour countries are Russia (in the east), Sweden (in the north) and Norway (more northerly).
It is a relatively young country: it became independent from Soviet Russia in 1917 (the October Revolution). After the second World War, it kept neutrality: it refused to ally with the Western countries or its communistic neighbour, the Soviet Union.
A map of Finland (source: Wikipedia)
Finland is more than 11 times bigger than Belgium. The number of inhabitants is about 5.5 million (Belgium: 11 million). This means that there are only 16 inhabitants/km² (Belgium: 355 inhabitants/km²). Most of the people live in the south of the country. According to Wikipedia, it is the most sparsely populated country in the European Union.
I had to wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning to catch my flight to Helsinki. It snowed about 10cm in Belgium, which is extremely rare for March. On March, 6 the maximum temperature was 19,5°C. The day before it started freezing again. The last time this happened in the second half of March was in 1925!
It was a tense morning. First I had to reach the airport. Fortunately the train was right on time! At the airport I was not so lucky: my flight was delayed by 45 minutes. On the other hand: it is also exciting to see that your plane is being deiced while you are already inside...
The distance Brussels-Helsinki is about 1600 km. The Finnair flight does this distance in 2h30m.
In the afternoon I was invited by Cyril to visit the Finnish Meteorological Institute (or Ilmatieteen Laitos in Finnish). The main building is located in Helsinki, but they have four other premises. In total 680 people work at this institute, in research areas as Climate Change, Air Quality, Artic Research, ... Cyril works in the space research group. He investigates aurora, not only at Earth, but also at other planets in our solar system. A very interesting topic!
The weather radar at the FMI.
Afterwards I visited the Academic Bookstore (Akateeminen Kirjakauppa) at the Pohjoisesplanadi. This store is built by the famous Finnish architect Alver Aalto. It is probably the biggest bookstore in Scandinavia and the most cozy one for sure (with a nice bar at the top floor)! A must for book-lovers all over the world.
In the evening the first meeting with the other social media followers was planned in restaurant Zetor. A stricking fact is that the menu indicates which dishes have low lactose and are gluten-free. It seems that a lot of Finnish people have congenital lactase deficiency. That is a genetic disorder that makes it impossible to digest milk products. I ate the grilled salmon, and I can really recommend it!
After my lunch, I read in an online newspaper that there was that morning about 1600 km of traffic jams in Belgium. This is as much as the distance Brussels-Helsinki! Very impressive if you know that the largest distance between to borders is less than 300 km.
Space weather refers to the environmental conditions in Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere due to the Sun and the solar wind that can influence the functioning and reliability of spaceborne and ground-based systems and services or endanger property or human health.
What does it mean?
The Earth has a magnetic field, which can be shown with a compass. Outside the Earth, the magnetic field has the shape of a bullet, called the magnetosphere.
The shape of Earth's magnetosphere. (Image courtesy of ESA/NASA)
This shape is influenced by the magnetic field lines of the Sun and the solar wind (a stream of charged particles, mainly protons, expelled by the Sun). This makes the Sun the most important source of space weather. Other sources are the radiation belts (discovered by Van Allen in 1958) and cosmic particles.
As long as we stay on the ground, the magnetic field of the Earth protects us sufficiently against the radiation caused by these charged particles. But not so for astronauts in space or our modern technology, even on the ground.
Some of the effects are:
Spacecraft anomalies (e.g. unexpected reboots)
GPS signal disruption
Ground induced currents (GIC) in electrical transmission lines, pipelines, ...
In 1859, a large solar storm (known as the Carrington event) caused a shutdown of the telegraph systems between Europe and North America.
But the most well-known effect of space weather is the aurora or northern lights.
...the European Space Agency (ESA) invited ten social media followers to take part in a day-long space weather science seminar in Rovaniemi, Finland. The event would include an evening of aurora viewing. So I clicked on the link hoping for the best but expecting nothing.
The message from ESA on Facebook
But a few days later (February 22) I received the following email from the ESOC (European Space Operations Centre, near Darmstadt) communications department:
Dear Stijn,
Thank you very much for registering for ESA's Space Weather Seminar, Rovaniemi, Finland, 14 March 2013.
On behalf of the Communication team at ESA, we are pleased to confirm your invitation and we look forward to seeing you in Finland!
You should plan your travel to arrive in Rovaniemi on 13 March and depart 15 March; our programme on 14 March will last the entire day.
From that moment on time was flying! I had to organise my trip to Finland in two weeks. There was already a plan to visit a friend, Cyril, who works since a few months at the Finish Meteorological Institute (FMI) in Helsinki. So maybe I could combine a visit of Helsinki with this space weather seminar in Rovaniemi?
I always keep a personal logbook of the travels to foreign countries. This time it was a special journey: I was one of ten ESA's social media followers that was invited to attend the Space Weather Seminar on March, 14 2013 in Rovaniemi, Finland. So I decided to publish my logbook on this blog.
At the end, I visited not only Rovaniemi (on the arctic circle) and Sodankylä, but also Helsinki and Tallinn (the capital of Estonia) during my one week (March 12-19) stay. It was a very beautiful journey in the on the most northern regions of Europe!
A view over Lapland from the airplane.
Information wants to be free: the texts on this blog can be reused for non-commercial purposes. The pictures are not always mine, so please ask permission before reusing them! Please let me know if you find errors. English is not my mother tongue, but I hope that my English is better than your Dutch... ;-)
