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Via
Karelia – A Tourist Route in Eastern Finland
www.viakarelia.fi
One route, two roads
and many reasons
Via Karelia is an tourist route
in eastern Finland. As a matter of fact it is
formed of two different parts; to begin with “Runon
ja Rajan tie”, in English the Road of Poem
and Border and, secondly, “Karjalan kirkkotie”
like the Karelian Pilgrim Route.
The name of the road of Poem
and Border indicates for the first to the Finnish
national epic, the Kalevala and numerous other
collections of folk poetry. Kalevala was collected
in the northern part of Finnish and Russian Karelia
in the 19th century and published for the first
time 1835. It had an tremendous impact on Finnish
intellectuals in the late 19th century, e.g. artist
Axel Gallen-Kallela and composer Jean Sibelius.
Secondly, Karelia had become
a battlefield between Eastern and Western Christendom
by the 12th century at the latest. For the first
time in 1323 it was divided between Sweden and
Novgorod. Over the centuries, the political border
dividing Karelia has shifted this way and that
a total of nine times. The last change to date
was confirmed in the Treaty of Paris in 1947,
when the new frontier has been drawn up between
Finland and the Soviet Union at the end of the
Continuation War in autumn 1944. The name has
grounds indeed!
The Road of Poem and Border
will take you through Finland from the Gulf of
Finland in the South all the way to Lapland in
the North following the eastern frontier. Finnish
lake scenery Saimaa, the largest lake region in
Europe, and small towns are typical in the southern
part of Via Karelia. Afterwards, the scenery is
dominated be tree-covered hills and wilderness.
Influences of Orthodox religion and battle fields
of Winter War 1939-40 are present on this route.
The total length is more than 1,000 km.
The Karelian Pilgrim Route
starts in the Monastery of Valamo situated near
by a small village of Heinävesi and ends
in most eastern corner of Finland, where it joins
to the Road of Poem and Border. Typical for the
Karelian Pilgrim Route are the wooden orthodox
churches and chapels called ‘tsasouna’.
The churches are build in the 18th and 19th centuries
and some are rich decorated and colourfully painted
by the local joiners.
The Monastery of Valamo is
the only monk monastery in Finland. The chronicles
record that it was founded on the island of Valamo
in Lake Ladoga in the 10th century. No consensus
or certainty exists in this matter, but most people
regard it as more probable that the monastery
was founded around the mid-12th century.
The war led to evacuation of the monastery in
1940, but it was able to resume its normal life
at its present site in later the same year. One
of the most value-able treasures of Valamo Monastery
is the miracle-working icon of the Mother of God
of Konevitsa.
Local Delicacies
Finland is the country of
dark bread. Traditions and cultural influence
from eastern and western neighbours have it’s
influence. In the western regions, bread was baked
rarely and the stored bread was eaten little by
little as the loaves dried out and hardened. In
eastern Finland, on the other hand, people baked
more frequently, about once a week and that’s
why Karelia is the country of pastries, pasties
and pies.
A classic food is the Karelian pasty, whose crust
is made of water, salt and rye flour. The dough
is rolled thin and filled with rice or barley
porridge or mashed potatoes. The skills needed
for making these pasties are respected and difficult
to acquire. The rolling, especially, is something
that not everyone is able to master. The result
must be thin and crisp.
The best Karelian pasties
are found in the market places in small towns
along Via Karelia. The pasty is best hot from
oven, served with “egg butter”, also
with hard boiled eggs, chopped finely and mixed
with softened butter. The pasty was originally
an important and handy portable lunch and excursion
food.
Further in the North along the route you will
find a nice speciality, bread cheese. In olden
days, milk was preserved for winter in the form
of cheese. It was drawn and formed into round,
bread-like slab, which were toasted in the fire
before serving. There, as well in Lapland, bread
cheese is eaten crumbled into coffee or, which
is more common, as a delicious dessert, hot from
oven and sweetened with cloudberries.
Lapland, all of Lapland, lives from reindeer meat;
smoked roast reindeer, reindeer stew, reindeer
tongue, reindeer chops, reindeer meat soup….When
you add salmon and cloudberries, you have made
it!
Reindeer meat is wonderful. It has a slightly
gamy taste, is rich in nutrient but not too fatty.
It’s easy to digest and can be served in
various ways. The reindeer tastes so good because
it eats good food itself. One of the simplest,
tastiest and most famous reindeer dishes is reindeer
stew. The meet is cut into slivers while still
frozen, put into a pot with a bit of water, and
shimmered until tender. The stew is served with
mashes potatoes, seasoned with butter and onions,
and with lingonberry purée.
So, there is many reasons to travel along Via
Karelia, the most exotic branch of Via Baltica
Nordica and, I’m sure, food is the most
tasteful.
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