Over the past four weeks the sea ice has melted, the snow has come and gone and a hovercraft operating the Helsinki-Tallinn route has appeared in the harbour, which is a sure sign of spring. I hardly dared climb the ramparts when I arrived because the ice was treacherous and I didn't feel like taking an…

Suomenlinna continued its slow dance with spring last week. One day it would snow and the next it would melt, finally culminating in a (mostly) glorious Easter weekend. The islands got a bit busier with visitors and local children participated in a particularly Finnish Easter tradition, which I blogged…

There are signs of spring this week, as the island goes through its freeze/thaw cycle. On Monday local people began to appear with rakes, gathering up the gravel that had coated frozen pavements and roads. There were curious "dances" performed by facing pairs of tractor-like machines: one would move the gravel…

I arrived with a mission to complete. This is the broad sweep of it: go to Helsinki; live for a month on an island sea fortress in a studio…