If ever a country looked like its name, Finland does. Long and slender, it curves upwards like the serrated fin of some exotic Baltic Sea fish. It tends to be the less well-known country of the northern trio: Norway, Sweden and Finland, something which became evident on the Finnair flight from Dublin to Helsinki.
When we played an impromptu game of "name 10 famous Finns", to our shame, we got stuck at only three: the composer Sibelius, the architect, Alvar Aalto, and the Olympic athlete Paavo Nurmi. Worse, we forgot to include the most famous Finn of all: that rotund gentleman with a red coat and luxuriant white beard, who goes by the surname of Claus.
Like the island of Ireland, Finland has a population of five million. Unlike the Irish, about 85 per cent of Finns have a sauna in their homes. In fact, most people have two saunas; one in their home base and one in their de rigueur holiday chalet, which are usually located on one of Finland's several thousand lakes. In fact, there are 187,888 lakes and 179,584 islands in Finland.
Lappeenranta is a small lakeside rural town, 25 minutes flying time from Helsinki. Its chief attraction to tourists is that, from Lappeenranta, you can hop on a boat that will bring you across the Russian border to the town of Vyborg. But before we did that, we went to a lakeside chalet on the edge of the town for that famous Finnish sauna experience.
These chalets usually have two separate sauna rooms, so that you have the choice of stripping off together as a family or using the single-sex option. The Lappeenranta sauna was fired by wood, and tended by Eeva-Liisa Tarvainen, our Finnish guide, who poured copious amounts of water on it at intervals.
This had the effect of steaming up the sauna room so much that it was like being in a Kerry sea-fog, although a blissfully hot fog. The toxins came coursing down my skin with such force that I was driven out of the sauna to cool off in the lake. Then back for more, like some sort of happily confused human yoyo, vacillating between extremes in temperatures.
In the winter, you run out and roll around in the snow. If you are very enthusiastic and have exceptional endurance, you spurn the snow-rolling for a swim in the frozen lake, a section of which will have been cut out to allow fishing.
From Lappeenranta, it's a five-hour boat journey to Vyborg in Russia (visas not required). Vyborg was part of Finland until 1944, and Eeva-Liisa told us that many Finns make the journey there to revisit their birthplace. Sure enough, one elderly woman stood and wept silently on the deck as the town came into view under a canopy of torrential rain.
We went to one of Vyborg's oldest cafes for chai, the Cafe Pantsarlax, which is located in an old gunpowder magazine. It could have been any era in the chapel-like building, literally crammed to the rafters with people of all ages drinking sweet milky tea and nibbling on flourescent-pink and yellow buns.
Although we didn't know it at the time, we visited Russia on the day the rouble started its terrible downward slide, something which made the goods on sale at the market even more poignant in retrospect. Women with expressions of resignation stood huddled behind rows of glass jars of homepickled gherkis, cabbage, beetroot, cauliflower and garlic.
This is a society of thrift, where clothes get mended rather than thrown away: there were entire stalls selling nothing but spools of thread, buttons, needles, and packets of pins. There were also pyramids of very beautiful china cups, painted with blue and gold peacocks, red butterflies, silver flowers, and green churches. I bought four of them, which are the current pride of the kitchen, but it's impossible to look at them now without wondering how the dignified elderly woman who sold them to me has been faring since.
From Lappeenranta, we caught the train back to Helsinki; a peaceful meandering journey through the landscape of a million trees and the distinctive red roofs of rural Finnish houses. After watching forest unreel past the windows for several hours, it wasn't difficult to see why the paper-pulp industry is so huge in Finland: 25 per cent of all the world's paper comes from here.
Helsinki is a city whose location gives it the dimensions of a magic carpet. From the harbour, you can catch a ferry to Tallinn in Estonia, or to Stockholm in Sweden, or Gdansk in Poland. St Petersburg is eight hours distance by train, and Moscow 15 hours, from Helsinki's fabulous cathedral of a railway station.
Journey north from here at the right time of year, and if you're patient and lucky, you'll see the elusive aurora borealis, the luminous streamers of the Northern Lights. Even the utilitarian in Helsinki has an element of romance to it. Tramlines eel across the city streets. At the harbour are the ice-breakers, those enormous ships that go out in winter to break the frozen sea. The ice can sometimes be up to five metres thick.
THE city itself is a revelation. Turn any corner and you'll see stunning examples of old and modern architecture. The 19th century Taj Mahal-like white cathedral sits at the top of a steep flight of steps in Senate Square, its copper domes scattered with gold stars.
Then there's Alvar Aalto's white marblefaced Finlandia Hall; the new glass-brick and steel Opera House; and the brand-new Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kiasma. The Kiasma opened earlier this year, and it looks like an arcane combination of Noah's Ark, a cello, and a barn.
Even the hotel we were staying in, the Sokos Vaakuna, is a design classic. Opened to coincide with Helsinki's 1952 Olympics, the hotel's white, red, and green foyer is so simple and uncluttered that it still looks modern, almost half a century later. As well as being furnished with gorgeous red-winged high-backed armchairs, each bedroom also has an original piece of artwork.
Helsinki's top tourist attraction is a church. It's not some huge baroque pile of a church, nor one soaked in centuries of history. The Temppeliaukio Church is only 30 years old and it's relatively small, but it must be one of the most astonishing places of worship anywhere in the world.
Aerial views depict something between a stone ring-fort and a UFO. The round church is carved out of rock, and has a glass and copper lid of a roof. Within, the atmosphere manages to be both medieval and modern; part hidden meditative cave with rivulets of water running off the back wall, part futuristic spaceship with a 22 km copper spiral on the dome roof.
There's plenty of museums and galleries to visit in Helsinki, some of them happily offbeat, like the Worker Housing Museum, the Burger House and the Tram Museum. The internationally famous Stockmann's is one of the largest department stores in Europe, from whence other members of the party came staggering back to the hotel with Aalto glass vases and leather bags.
And on the flight back to Dublin, we were reminded of a fifth famous Finnish personage - Rudolph. He was on the menu. And folks, he tasted great.