To the west of Helsinki, in the ancient village of Fiskars, artisans and craft workers use the season to prepare their wares for summer tourists. The company has been restoring the town and establishing an artists colony. You can meet the craftspeople and admire and acquire their finished work in the summer. But in the spring, you can see them at work - feel the heat of the glassblower's furnace, smell the moist earthy clay of pottery being spun, watch sawdust dance on sunbeams as it settles in a carpenter's workshop. Back in Helsinki, evidence mounts that spring is displacing winter.
Days get longer and longer every day.
The difference between daylight time from one day to the next is so clear you notice it without a watch. That means more time to contemplate the streams of sunlight showing off the 14 miles of copper tubing that adorns the dome of Temppeliaukio Church, which is known as the Church in the Rock because it is hewn into a solid bank of granite. The dazzling stainless steel monument in Sibelius Park points the direction for stems and stalks to grow. The abstract sculpture, featuring 600 cylinders that resemble organ pipes and birch trunks, honors the national composer Jean Sibelius. Like the songbirds and the sunshine and the sea's deep blue, the number of people emerging from winter confinement increases each day.