TAPIOLA

Region: Keweenaw Peninsula

A trip to this tidy four-corners in an area of Finnish and French farms feels like a time trip to the early 1950s and the country was still country, characterized here by dairying and other working family farms. Tapiola's center consists of the school (now a senior center), an Apostolic church, the Feed Mill restaurant in the onetime cooperative store, and Karvakko's general store and gas station. "If we don't have it, you don't need it!" used to be their motto, Kathy Timonen informs us, adding that the store is "now offering great sub sandwiches!" Karvakko's and the Feed Mill are real community services in a small rural place 15 minutes from anywhere—enough to bring neighbors together.
Tapiola was settled by Finns in the early 1890s and named "Tapiola," which means "home of the forest king," local people say. That was long before 1925 when the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius finished his masterpiece, the tone poem Tapiola, which was his last major symphonic work. It used music to depict “the forest essence of the Finnish god of the forests, Tapio. So says the Inkpot Sibelius Nutcase reviewer at www.inkpot.com/classical/sibtapiola.html , the delightful Flying Inkpot web site of music reviews that started with a group of Singapore graduate students and music-lovers in 1996. Visit that page for a wonderful appreciation of Sibelius's affinity with nature and the northland's forests from a music lover in the tropics of urban Asia, search for Flying Inkpot Sibelius.

Sibelius Nutcase, whoever that may be, includes Sibelius's introduction to Tapiola, with the suggestion that it is "to be read with a foreboding James Earl Jones voice." Imagine that it's 1895 and you have just carved out your Finnish farm from the forests of southern Houghton County. Then recite it:

"Wide-spread they stand, the Northland's dusky forest

Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams.

Within them dwells the Forest's mighty God

And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets."

Return to Keweenaw Peninsula

PLACES AROUND TAPIOLA TO

Eat Sleep Camp