11:45 p.m. in Oulu
11:45 p.m. in Oulu is when the women begin to find the children dropping to sleep amidst the moss and meadowsweet, traces of soot around their mouths from the makkara they grilled on metal prongs over the firepit earlier. The men and older boys are in the gelid Oulu River, cooling off between bouts in the sauna, their bodies unseeable but the murmur of their voices drifting up from the water. The women and older girls are sitting around the fire on the lawn above, their faces still rosy from their own turn in the sauna’s blistering löyly. They carry the slumbering children inside the house and drape them across beds and sofas.
The sky has become a bruised pink-blue-purple. It is late June in Oulu in northern Finland, and Midsummer, the longest day of the year, has only just passed. In my husband’s hometown, sixty miles south of the Arctic Circle, the longest day of the year is long. The sun will set slightly after midnight. Two hours later, it will rise again.
Returning to their chairs by the fire, the women pour more white wine. The drawn-out light-bathed days of summer are precious, every drop to be savored. Talk is languid, meandering. The Finnish language is as enigmatic as its summer sky, and I only understand some of what is said. It doesn’t matter. I was born and raised far, far away from this world, in New York City, but love has woven me into the daisy chain of the lives of these women, these men, these children. Love, and elastic nights like this one, bind a spell around us, removing our boundaries.
A lingering child climbs onto a mother’s lap and promptly becomes as heavy in sleep as the sack of new potatoes bought at the Oulu market hall this morning. The mother balances her wine glass on the lawn and hefts her body standing, child in her arms. Not so many years ago, that might have been me, a recent bride, a recent mother. Now, the daughters my husband and I brought into this world are old enough to sit among the women. Just like our garland of an extended family, time expands and contracts, links in our chain lost and new ones added.
But June nights in Oulu remain constant: the warm unclothed companionship of us women in the sauna, the bracing feel of sliding into the fast Oulu River, the delicate scent of the fire on our clothes as we draw them back on, the whispering sounds of the swaying tree branches and hungry mosquitos, the insouciant sun that will rise and fall at its own pace, long after we will. For now, I am a small part of the story, and these nights a part of mine.
The sky is turning a deep plum now, the tall pines with their heavy green boughs and silvery-skinned birches developing into a study in darkening chiaroscuro. The men and older boys begin to re-appear, finding places around the firepit. One more glass of wine, maybe two, and soon the light will be gone.
About the Author
Anne Korkeakivi is the award-winning author of the novels Shining Sea and An Unexpected Guest. Her short fiction and non-fiction have been published by The Atlantic, The Missouri Review, The Yale Review, TIME, The New York Times, AD, Travel & Leisure, and LitHub, among many other periodicals in the US, UK, Finland, and online, and chosen for inclusion in the Best Women’s Travel Writing anthology. A multi-generation New Yorker currently living in Switzerland, she can be found on Instagram, Bluesky, and www.annekorkeakivi.com
Illustration by Jane Demarest.
Edited by Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha.
