Following the Cool: Observations from Helsinki in the Summer of 2026

The Real Reason We Chose Helsinki ~ Are We Part of a New Wave? ~ 

Speaking of Tourists ~ The North Knows ~ Public Space as a Measure of a Society ~

A City That Doesn't Need to Perform ~What Helsinki Taught Us About Travel ~

Photos

  

   

Top: Left and center Suomenlinna. Right: Temppeliaukio Church (Temppeliaukion kirkko), Helsinki.

Bottom: Left: Helsingin päärautatieasema - Lyhdynkantajat - the Lantern Bearers at the main train station. Center left: View of Helsinki Cathedral. Center right and right: Facades in Helsinki.

While we were walking Helsinki's waterfronts in light jackets, much of southern Europe was enduring another summer of extreme heat. June 2026 was the hottest June ever recorded in Western Europe, and the heat continued into July, driving wildfires in France and the Iberian Peninsula. 

We hadn't come to Finland as climate refugees, at least not consciously. We came because Helsinki had also attracted our intention as interesting, yes cooler, but also because we like museums, coffee, public spaces, and cities near water. Yet by the end of the trip, a question kept resurfacing: Were we simply tourists in Helsinki, or were we following a larger movement north?

 
In this travel post, we won’t tell you where to get salmon soup or list museums you must see. We’d like to take this opportunity to use Helsinki as a lens for thinking about how climate may already be reshaping where people choose to spend their summers. And to talk about things that we noticed in Helsinki.

The Real Reason We Chose Helsinki

We admit it, the original attraction was practical as much as cultural. Helsinki was appealing because it offered something increasingly rare in late July: moderate temperatures. In our planning notes from months before the trip, Helsinki was explicitly chosen as a "cooler weather target" compared to Italy.

We arrived in Helsinki on a Saturday in July. For us arriving in a city with gray skies and cool weather felt like a feature rather than a disappointment. At the Sibelius Monument north of downtown Helsinki, in our travel notes, we wrote: "Gray and cool, and we love it."

Besides the weather, we would come to love our 5 days in Helsinki for more than cool weather. The city has a lot to recommend, like walkability, great transit, nice people, great museums, and tons of food options.

Are We Part of a New Wave?

So is our trip an escape north, looking for cooler temperatures? Is this the wave of the future? Answer: likely yes.

For years, Mediterranean Europe was the obvious summer destination and still very much is (c.f. the post Escape to Isolatos: Notes on Curated Remoteness)

Increasingly, northern cities may be becoming summer destinations not despite their climate but because of it. Helsinki felt full of a different type of traveler, perhaps skewing older, more families, and people moving at a slower pace. You specifically noticed a different tourist profile than what you often encounter farther south. This wasn’t the average tourist we encountered in Porto Venere in 2021 or Elba in 2019. No one was furiously protecting a rented deck chair and dutifully rotating every 20 minutes to even out a tan.

No, these tourists were dressed smartly in light jackets and scarves.

Speaking of Tourists

We stayed at the Lapland Hotel - a Finnish hotel chain with 20 hotels. Of these, 14 are located in the region of Lapland, five city hotels further south like the one in Helsinki. The hotel is all reindeer antlers, Sámi music (pleasing, slightly droning and rhythmic), carefully placed lighting, and natural color palettes, curated signifiers — a kind of thematic shorthand meant to evoke Lapland quickly and comfortably for visitors who may never go there. Or maybe we will? 

The hotel experience was pleasing and relaxing but still there was the subtle context of "the unknown north" as a horizon for travelers. Lapland as a global brand: aurora borealis, reindeer, Sámi culture, wilderness minimalism. Was our Helsinki hotel a gateway product — a sampler?

The staff at the Lapland were super nice, and the breakfast buffet was the best we've had. Smoked salmon with pickled spruce tips in the morning? Hell, yes. A special oat porridge produced daily by the hotel, Finnish squeaky cheese, and spruce yogurt with lingonberry. 

On a gray Sunday (love it!), we walked from the Kiasma to the Old Market Hall (Vanha kauppahalli). As we approached the hall, we couldn't help noticing a few large cruise ships anchored in the harbor. Argh! Even here? Yes.

Two days later, on a trip to Suomenlinna on a ferry, we would pass by these behemoths, strangely silent as all the tourists were injected into the city. Near the Helsinki Cathedral (Helsingin tuomiokirkko) and the Sibelius Monument, we would see some of these tourists hustled on and off buses with earbuds in their ears listening to some quick history of this or that.

The North Knows

The north knows what winter is, but now it may need to prepare for summer and tourists.

We noticed in Helsinki:

• Buildings are engineered around snow and ice. Just look at those metal, steep roof pitches, and snow guards!
• Downspouts with ice-management systems. What are those curious electrical wire loops doing in that drainpipe?
• Public infrastructure that seemed quietly adapted to climate reality. Extensive underground passageways and facilities...okay some are designed to double as bunkers but still cool idea.

What seemed almost futuristic at first glance isn’t. Helsinki is a city visibly shaped by environmental conditions. Climate is not an abstraction there; it is built into everyday life.

Also, a strange thing we learned the water surrounding Helsinki though being seawater is less salty than ordinary ocean water.  We noticed this walking around Lapinlahti, a shallow enclosed inner bay, where common reed, Phragmites australis, grew in the water. Odd we thought. Isn't there too much salt in the water? 

The Baltic Sea is a brackish sea, meaning a mixture of salt water and fresh water. It receives enormous amounts of freshwater from rivers, rainfall and runoff, while relatively little salty Atlantic water enters through the narrow Danish straits. Around Helsinki, coastal salinity is typically only about 4.8–5.5 parts per thousand, compared with roughly 35 parts per thousand in the open ocean.

In fact, the common reed can grow well in brackish and moderately salty water, but not so well in ocean water.

Public Space as a Measure of a Society

A second major theme of our trip was public space and what that says about a city/place/culture. We approached Helsinki with "hungry" eyes. We are on vacation after all and are much more attuned to differences. And the Nordic countries (more correct than using Scandinavian for referring to Finland) don’t disappoint in terms of ingenuity and efficiency in “doing things” that is obvious after arriving from Italy. No shade on Italy.

Some observations:

• Integrated walking paths and green spaces thought out with pedestrians and bikers in mind. 
• The seamless movement between city, shoreline, and nature.
• A clean city.
• Efficient transit that requires little thought on how to purchase a ticket and use.
• Family-friendly and one might argue people-friendly details everywhere: benches, bathrooms, and space to maneuver.

The argument is less that Helsinki is perfect. It's that many of its public spaces seemed designed around people, trust and inclusion, not defensiveness, hostility, or exclusion.

A case in point is Helsinki’s Central Library called Oodi, the Finnish word for “ode.” It opened in December 2018 on Kansalaistori—Citizens’ Square—directly opposite Finland’s Parliament. That position is intentional: Oodi presents access to information, culture, technology and public space as part of democratic life, not simply as a municipal book-lending service. Almost all of the building is devoted to public use.

The library has three levels.

• The glass-walled ground floor functions almost like a continuation of the square outside. It is open, busy and easy to walk through, with several entrances and relatively few psychological barriers. Architecturally, the building seems to lift itself up and invite people underneath it.
• The middle floor is the enclosed, darker, and more intimate part of the building. It contains meeting rooms, workspaces, gaming rooms, music and recording studios, photography and video facilities, a communal kitchen and an extensive urban workshop. Equipment includes sewing machines, 3D printers, a laser cutter, electronics workstations, large-format printing and other creative tools. This floor expresses one of Oodi’s central ideas: knowledge is not only something you read—it is something you produce, practice and share. A person can record music, edit a video, sew something, hold a meeting, play a game or learn a technical skill without needing to own the equipment privately. We were blown away when we saw this floor!
• The top floor returns to the recognizable idea of a library, but in an unusually open form. Known as Book Heaven, it is a bright, gently undulating landscape of bookshelves, reading areas, children’s spaces, trees and informal seating. Its glass perimeter offers broad views across Töölönlahti and toward Parliament, while the Citizens’ Balcony extends the reading room outdoors during the warmer months.

When we pulled open the doors of the library, we felt a positive vibration: happy people, moving and meeting with each other. Oodi feels democratic because it treats knowledge, technology, comfort, and creative space as public goods rather than privileges. People can read, work, meet, make things, or simply spend time there without being expected to buy anything. Its openness suggests that every citizen has an equal claim to the building. It feels less like an institution serving the public and more like a place the public collectively owns.

By contrast, we only have to think of our beloved Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai in the upper city of Bergamo. Entering, you pass many checkpoints before you even come near a book. In Oodi you could walk up and read any book you want.

A City That Doesn't Need to Perform

One thing that emerges from your notes is how often the city surprised us by not trying too hard.

Examples:

• Oodi as we mentioned above. We mistook it for a second (and only a second) as yet another shopping mall from the outside but how wrong we were.
• Kiasma, a contemporary art museum located on Mannerheimintie in Helsinki, Finland. Its name kiasma, Finnish for chiasma, alludes to the basic conceptual idea of its architect, Steven Holl. The collection and curation were top notch.
• A long meandering walk (like many you could take) to Temppeliaukio Church (sunk in the ground), to the curious Sibelius monument, a coffee stop at Cafetoria Café & Shop, and back to city center, hugging the Seurasaarenselkä open sea inlet and Lapinlahti bay. Along the walk back, we passed Hietaranta Beach, a proper beach, just minutes from the city center.
• Great coffee experiences at Cafetoria, Rams Roasters (visited twice), Andante, and begrudingly Kaffa Roastery (if indifferent baristas don’t bother you).
• Helsinki's architecture moving between neoclassical grandeur, National Romantic stonework, Nordic modernism, and bold contemporary design. What unites it is a distinctly Finnish restraint: buildings tend to value light, natural materials, human scale, and usefulness over spectacle.
• A visit to Suomenlinna, windswept views of the Baltic and a chance to tour the Sukellusvene Vesikko (submarine).
• EMMA – a hidden gem of a museum just a short metro ride away from downtown. The Futuro house, Collection Kakkonen, and the extensive Bryk & Wirkkala Visible Storage.

Let’s take our EMMA visit as an example. EMMA impressed us partly because it did not seem to be performing for visitors or trying too hard to announce its importance. It was simply there: confident, spacious, and deeply integrated into the cultural life around it (the Espoo area). That restraint felt Finnish to us, especially compared with museums that rely on spectacle, branding, or architectural drama to attract attention. Yet EMMA has plenty of drama once you enter, beginning with the vast former printing house and the visible logic of its industrial past. The building gives the art room to breathe, while its history adds another layer to the experience rather than competing with it. The collection itself felt thoughtful and wide-ranging, with enough surprise to keep the museum from seeming overly curated or self-conscious. What stayed with us was the combination of modesty and substance: an extraordinary museum that never seemed to insist that we find it extraordinary.

What Helsinki Taught Us About Travel

We left Helsinki wondering whether we would return in the future, perhaps in autumn or spring. We also left wondering whether our travel habits are quietly changing. For years we chased a tolerable amount of warmth with access to azure-colored water and swimming possibilities.

Now we seem to be chasing something different, perhaps moderation. Helsinki may not have provided an answer, but it sharpened the question. If summers in southern Europe continue to become hotter and more fire-prone, perhaps the future summer itinerary for many travelers will not point toward the Mediterranean. Perhaps it will point toward the Baltic, the Nordics, and places that once seemed too cool to consider.

And if that shift happens, what does it mean for the people who already live there? This question was raised partially in a beautiful exhibit at Kiasma We Who Remain - Sámi Art in Focus.

Exhibition description: The Sápmi region, which today spans four countries, existed long before the emergence of Nordic nation-states or national ideologies. The exhibition invites viewers to explore Sámi identity as expressed by the Sámi themselves. The exhibition highlights the complexities of Sámi experience, showing how Sámi identity endures and remains vibrant despite externally imposed pressures.

The Sámi exhibit highlights the pressures that a more "northerly" world could place on northern communities that already have struggled through past exploitation.

The exhibit’s broader question is what does a changing climate, changing habits, and ever more tourists worldwide mean for places like Helsinki? Is it a future where tourists arrive in Helsinki not for snow, but for shade?

Photos

  

Coffee experiences in Helsinki at Ram Roasters, Cafetoria (try the Brookies), Andante.

  

Left: Collection  Kakkonen at EMMA- Annikki Hovisaari (1918 - 2004) - five vases. Futuro house at EMMA. A barnacle goose.

  

EMMA - Antti Laitinen Chiming Forest, EMMA - Bryk & Wirkkala Visible Storage, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art EMMA - Espoon modernin taiteen museo.
 

  
Helsinki facades and roofs.

  

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Nykytaiteen museo Kiasma), Osmo Valtonen (1929  - 2002, Finland) - Circulograph (1983), Siri Baggerman (1978 The Netherlands - Sápmi) - The Drone (2021).

  

Temppeliaukio Church (Temppeliaukion kirkko), Amos Rex, Sibelius Monument - Helsinki.

  

Left and center: Helsinki Central Library Oodi (Helsingin keskustakirjasto Oodi). Right: Marina Abramović (b. 1946) - Counting the Rice - Räkna ris (2005) at EMMA.