Adrift off the Finnish coast, this small island comes alive each summer and offers a fascinating glimpse at how Finns once lived. It's late September and a handful of trees sprouting wild berries are the last signs of life on Maakalla , a lonely island cast 18km off Finland's western coast in Bothnian Bay. When winter comes in a few days' time, they will be buried under a veil of white snow.
But right now, the sky is the spent blue of a retreating summer, glinting off the roofs of the empty wooden cabins that dot the 20-hectare island. "I believe we're the only ones here," whispers Martta Tervonen, my guide for the day. With a playlist of crashing waves on loop, Tervonen and I stroll across the island's stony pathways.
"You know, when the island was discovered [by fishermen and seal hunters in the 15th Century], it was only 9mm above the water's surface," explains Matti Hautala, the boat captain who ferried us here from Keskuskari harbour on the mainland. Everything around me was once submerged under water, but each year since the weight of Ice Age glaciers that once covered this area melted more than 10,000 years ago, the land holding Bothnian Bay continues to slowly rise – a phenomenon known as glacio-isostatic uplift . Today, the island is more than 5m above sea level.
One sweep of my surroundings and I quickly realise there is nothing conventional about Maakalla. There are no shops, restaurants, cars, roads, guesthouses or – for the most part – even people here, jus.
