TRAVEL : Blissed-out in the Baltic

"DAVID from England, come and drink some chai." This was Goa 1983, and the speaker was a Finnish hippy sitting outside a palm-thatched hut with fellow travellers stretched around him in narcotic bliss. From such beginnings grew a love affair with an entirely different place: a most un-hippy-like environment which has nevertheless managed to bliss me out every time I make the long trip north east.

It's not particularly the people (although I still see my hippy friend), and it's certainly not the food, the nightclubs or the cultural events. It's more a sense of space, the vast expanses of lakeland, the deep forests, and most of all, the endless islands which dot the coastline from the north west the Russian border.

These islands are the country's greatest treasure. Finland is a place where land and water are divided in Jackson Pollock manner. Splashes of water have been strewn across the mainland and 7,000 islands make a spectacular counter-statement out to sea.

My first view of Finnish land was standing on the deck of a cruise ship, watching the sun dip fractionally beneath the horizon, gold and blue ripples bobbing round this archipelago. On that first trip, Helsinki seemed a grey, expensive, dull city. The inland villages were sleepy and uncouth. But the islands...

It was here that I had my first wood-fired sauna, taking birch twigs (as instructed) and whipping them across my body and legs. "I know you English find this a strange custom," said Annika Tapineinen, my host, giving herself a good thwack on the buttocks, "but it's not so masochistic as it looks. The smell is nice, and it's good for the circulation." Your skin turns a tender pink, and the air becomes scented as the leaves are gently bruised.

After half an hour of perspiration, I burst out of the sauna, ran steaming down the garden path on to the jetty, and plunged headlong into the clear Baltic. Nothing quite compares to the feeling of complete refreshment that this brings. Extremes of heat and cold, shrouded intimacy and then tingling freedom are combined in one simple manoeuvre, and your skin feels as soft, cleansed and revitalised as the day you lost your virginity.

I was staying on an island summer house with Annika's aunt and uncle, Heikka and Anna. They come here every year from Helsinki for three months, travelling 30 kilometres from the capital before taking a small motor boat and chuntering across the bay to Bjorkholm ("birch tree island"). During the day we read, played chess, took saunas or sailed around neighbouring islands.

By night, the Tapineinens either entertained or took the launch over to see old friends nearby, drinking beers or schnapps or - on special occasions - expensive imported wine. It is a sweet way to conduct your social life: island-hopping by day or night. The sea is your high street, the jetty is your front drive. City life is only an hour away, but it could be in another continent.

Finns used to live on the islands full-time. Today, on some islands, like Note in the Aland archipelago, there are 300 people in summer but barely nine in the winter. Marianne Novitsky is a Finnish writer who has a house there. "You have not seen Fin-land at its best until you have been on an island," she says. "Note has cliffs and sandy bays, with tall trees. It's like a Pacific island."

Last summer I went to visit more of the islands. It was still wonderfully warm in late August. The sea was still comfortable for swimming, and there were beach parties and traditional festivals. I spent one evening on an island to the west of Helsinki with local people gathered for a party; they had cooked sausage, herring and reindeer (a delicacy) and a band of musicians struck up a waltz. Finns are fond of old ballroom styles, and have their own versions of the polka, the tango, the minuet. There I met Ior Bock, a Finnish historian whose grandparents were islanders, and made a living hunting seals and selling the oil for lamps. "Then when electricity came, they moved to the town," he said.

Ior also took me to the seven islands that lie just outside Helsinki's harbour. Known as Sveaborhg, they are full of 18th-century fortifications built by the Swedish general Ehrensvard to protect the city from Russian and northern European attack. We sat on a grassy bank and watched the ships come and go. "In the 19th century this was called the Gibraltar of the north," said Ior. "But you British didn't like to hear such a thing, so in the Crimean War you came to bombard it with your ships."

The origin of Finnish islands goes back to the last ice age, when tons of glacial moraine were dumped into the Baltic by retreating glaciers. They still bear the smooth curves of glacially-scraped rock, "so it is comfortable to lie down," said Ior.

The sea is perfectly clear, even at the harbour, where you might expect pollution. Finns feel very close to nature, and have to be prepared for long frozen winters. Even then, island life has its compensations. "Last winter was really special," said Heikki Kiiski, a Finnish musician who has a house up the coast towards Sweden. "It was down to minus 25 degrees, and there were roads forming all across the ice to the islands. For some weeks there was warm sun on the horizon, so you could spend an afternoon fishing and playing on the kick-scooter." This is a sort of scooter on skis, which you push along wearing spiked shoes.

Islanders fish through holes in the ice; they also catch and eat many varieties of bird, and elks, which have swum many miles from Sweden. "Good, but not so nice as reindeer," said Kiiski. It is only in October and March, as the ice is forming or thawing, that islanders have no access to the mainland without icebreakers. Few have running water, so supplies come by tanker. "When we were young," said Ior Bock, "there was never enough water to wash after the sauna, so we would rub down with snow."

To go in winter would be another kind of journey altogether, but one to relish. Finland's islands are so arresting that the dark and cold would only add to their bizarre allure. !

TRAVEL NOTES

GETTING THERE: STA (0171-937 9921) flies direct to Helsinki for £199 return. ITC Ltd (0171-631 0841) has flights to Helsinki via Amsterdam for £236 return.

ORGANISED TOURS: ScanMeridian (0171-431 5393) offers The Finnish Experience, a 17-day trip including eight days in Finland and three in the Aland Islands; price starts from £564.

FURTHER INFORMATION: There are regular boat services around the Aland Island archipelago; information on getting around and accommodation from the Finnish Tourist Board, 66 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RF (0171-839 4048).