Turku and the American Voices Seminar

October 17-18 2008, I spent some time in Turku, Finland during the American Voices Seminar at the University of Turku. The Seminar gathers together the current American Fulbright grantees and scholars and asks each person to give a 20 minute presentation on any topic related to the US. There were 16 of us altogether and the presentations took up about 3 hours on both Oct. 17 and 18.

My topic was American fiddling styles and I talked about and played examples of Bluegrass, Appalachian and Acadian fiddling styles. I also explained about my experience playing in a Contradance band in Connecticut and ended with a short piece by Mark O'Connor that demonstrates a blend of fiddling styles with western-classical playing techniques. It was not only great to develop a presentation on something that really interested me, but it was also nice to hear what everyone else came up with for their topics. This was definitely an academic experience.

In between the hours of presentations, I also got a chance to see some of Turku. Turku is on the southwestern coast of Finland and is a good departure point if you want to take a ferry to Stockholm. It is supposedly the oldest city in Finland and was the capital when Finland was under Sweden's rule (from the 13th century up until 1809). Finland is bilingual, with both Finnish and Swedish the official languages. Although the majority of people in Finland have Finnish as their mother tongue, native Swedish speakers comprise 6% of the population. The Swedish-speaking minority lives mainly in the western part of Finland and hence, there are a sizable amount of Swedish-speaking Finns in Turku.

Although much of Turku was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1827, there are still some remnants of old Turku, most notably the Cathedral of Turku and the Turku Castle. I didn't get a chance to see the Castle, but walked by the Cathedral many times.

I also took a pleasant walk along the Aura River. There is a beautiful path alongside it.

It was great to get out of Helsinki for a while to discover a new city. It was also nice to meet up with the other Fulbrighters. This led to lots of story swapping, especially about our numerous fun yet silly mishaps as newcomers to Finland. The camaraderie we've developed has been a real comfort to me while in Finland.