News

It's a puzzlement. Consider a Finnish province where the official language is Swedish, where the residents flinch when you inadvertently refer to them as Finns, and where tourists from Sweden -- just a two-hour ferry ride away -- often think they're still within their country's borders.

An archipelago of 6,500 islands, the Aland Islands first piqued my curiosity in 1999, when my husband and I made a brief stop during a month-long driving tour of Scandinavia.

When we returned this year with children in tow, I resolved to wrap my head around this baffling region that the Finns also call Ahvenanmaa.

What I discovered was a place of contradictions and unexpected combinations: ancient monuments to history amid verdant nature, a modern city with old-fashioned it-takes-a-village values, and envy-inducing affluence remarkable for a place so small you can drive from one end of the main island to the other end in less than an hour.

And there are those Aland pancakes -- essentially slabs of solid rice pudding served with whipped cream and plum jam.

Like the rest of Finland, Aland belonged to Sweden until it was ceded to Russia after the Swedo-Russian war in 1809. Aland later tried to reunite with Sweden, but its strategic location in the Baltic Sea was seen as crucial to Finland's security.

So in 1921, the League of Nations (now the United Nations) gave Finland sovereignty over Aland, with a proviso that it respect Aland's Swedish culture and maintain it as a demilitarized zone.

Today, Aland is Finland's spoiled little child: rich, self-governing and exempt from the military service compulsory for all other Finnish men aged 18 to 60. It also has its own stamp and is unilingually Swedish; even documents from the Finnish government must be sent in Swedish.

"I guess some Finns are jealous of us," one of our hosts, Petra Svahnstrom, tells us. "They say we enjoy all the benefits of being part of Finland, without all the responsibilities."

But the paradox of the Aland Islands is that the same political status that spoils it also allows it to remain a largely unspoiled environment.

Travelling over one of the main highways in Aland -- which spans all of 50 kilometres from north to south, and 45 kilometres east to west -- I am struck by the lushness of the land. On either side of the pink granite road are stretches of meadows and trees in the dark hunter green that colours most Nordic forests.

"I spy with my superhuman eye a deer!" my five-year-old son yells from the back seat.

"Two deer!" his twin sister corrects him as she points to a pair of roe deer running side by side in the middle of a tall meadow.

We are driving north toward Saltvik, for a hiking expedition that promises a lot of nature and a bit of history. The trail, which gradually climbs to about 100 metres above sea level, follows the path taken by Stone Age seal hunters who settled in the valley between Orrdalsklint and Langbergen more than 5,000 years ago.

We come upon a reconstructed settlement that features mud-covered sealskin huts, animal bones and hollowed-out canoes. My daughter crawls inside the hut and emerges with her face all scrunched up.

"It stinks in there," she says. "You should go in and have a sniff, Mom."

What gets both kids really excited, however, is the windfall of raspberry and blueberry patches along the trail. By the time we sit down for a picnic lunch of egg and roe cream sandwiches, they are stuffed and sticky.

That same day, we drive a few kilometres east to the municipality of Sund to see Kastelholm, a 14th-century medieval castle where the Swedish king Erik XIV was held prisoner by his brother.

In fact, the locals insist that, if you look closely enough at the small window in the prison tower, you'll see the imprints of Erik's fingers. Erik XIV was later transferred to another prison, where he was poisoned to death.

Thankfully, there's nothing so ghastly about modern-day Aland, the region's most populated island. In the city centre of Mariehamm, the cobblestone pedestrian avenue is lined with pretty shops in houses painted old-Europe yellow and terracotta. There are no skyscrapers in this downtown core, in fact no buildings over four storeys high can be built in the town centre.

Small as it is, though, Aland lacks none of the amenities most people expect to see in a modern city. It has a liquor store, a bright and spacious library with high-speed Internet, a slick space of an art museum, a hospital, and numerous hotels and inns. And, like Sweden and the rest of Finland, Aland has touches everywhere of modern architecture and industrial design.

But the past is never that far away either. In Eckero, a 15-minute drive away from the city centre, we sit in a wooden café overlooking an old fishing harbour that still bears traces of the Middle Ages.

A few steps from the café is the Aland Hunting and Fishing Museum, where scenes and pictures from seal hunts a hundred years ago tell stories about a brutally harsh existence. (Oddly, the museum's collection also includes a stuffed musk ox from Canada.)

In the evening, I leave my husband and kids at the hotel to join my host Petra for a midnight play at the Aland Museum. She has her bicycle with her and, as we walk past the bars and restaurants in Mariehamm, I notice that many of the women who are out tonight are also travelling on two wheels.

I ask Petra if that might not be unsafe.

"Oh, it's very safe here," she assures me. Turns out Aland has volunteers who patrol the streets at night to make sure the island's teenaged citizens are safe. On many occasions, they have even delivered drunk teens home to their parents.

Perhaps Aland isn't spoiled after all -- it's just well-cared for.

Pack your bags

GETTING THERE

To get to Aland, book a ferry passage with Viking Line (vikingline.fi) or Silja Line (silja.com/fi), which leave several times daily from Stockholm or Kapellskar in Sweden, or from Helsinki and Turku in Finland. You can also fly into Aland with Finnair (finnair.fi).

WHERE TO STAY

Hotel Arkipelag: Strandgatan 31, Mariehamn; 358 (18) 24 020; hotellarkipelag.com. A Best Western property near the water with 86 rooms and suites. Doubles start at $200.

Hotel Pommern: Norragatan 8-10, Mariehamn; 358 (18) 15 555; hotellpommern.aland.fi. A family hotel with kitchenettes and pull-down Murphy beds starting at $150 a night for doubles.

WHAT TO DO

Kastelholm Castle: Kungsgardsallen 5, Kastelholm; 358 (18) 32 150. Admission is $7 to roam through the semi-built ruins of this 14th-century castle.

Hunting and Fishing Museum: Karingsund, Eckero; 358 (18) 38 299. Explore exhibits on seal hunting and fishing for $6 admission.

MORE INFORMATION

Aland Tourist Board: 358 (18) 240 00; http://www.visitaland.com.