I was in Finland’s second-oldest town, Porvoo, whose Finnish name came from local phonetic attempts to say its Swedish name, Borjå. Most Finnish places I visited along Finland’s southern coast have populations of Swedish speakers. Porvoo has a wonderful district of cobbled lanes and red, wooden houses that today receives growing numbers of visitors but a part of which, up the hill, in the 1960s and 70s was often referred to as the “Shanghai of the Nordic Countries,” for, apparently, the inherent danger to life and limb contained therein. Today, all is tranquil, except if you’re a snail. One restaurant, Timbaali, even has a rout of snails crossing its awning. There is no surprise as to the specialty of the house and the city.

Porvoo is best known for being the site where in 1809 Russian tsar Alexander I gave the then Russian province of Finland a healthy dollop of autonomy. This is known as the Diet of Porvoo (please excuse my “dollop” pun), and it was the beginning of what would become full independence, which, little known, was finally given to the country by Vladimir Lenin. The Communist leader was grateful to Finland for harboring him and allowing him to escape when he was a wanted man in the decade before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. I even found a statue of him, hidden in an obscure corner of Finland’s oldest town, Turku, known to Swedes as Åbo. Or perhaps the Finns declared independence when they saw the winds of change in Russia. The truth is probably six of one, half-dozen of the other, as is usually the case.

Porvoo is just along the road from the Finnish capital, Helsinki. Take a boat from its colorful harbor (where one or two small boats still come in every morning with fresh fish for sale) on a 20-minute trip past small islands, some hosting a single house, to Suomenlinna, the city’s island-fortress. It’s pleasant to walk around its hummocks, beaches, ponds, battlements and, even, a beached submarine. This UNESCO World Heritage site has, I was surprised to learn, a resident population of almost 900, as made evident by the existence of a supermarket just before the local ferry pier. The most-visited spot, but also the area where you can most easily escape all other people—the fortifications of the King’s Gate—reveals an inscription that reads “Eftervärld, stå här på egen botten och lita icke på främmande hjälp,” which is Swedish, meaning “Progeny, stand here on your own foundation and do not rely on foreign help.” This was a quote from Count Augustin Ehrensvärd, who was commissioned to build the fort when Finland was part of Sweden.

Back in the center of Helsinki I pottered around various neighborhoods, promontories and islands. One spit of land, Katajanokka Skatudden, very close to the central harbor, I liked tremendously, and the next time I go, I will have to visit and eat at a restaurant tucked at the base of a circular building away from the stares of tourists. It was called Welloma, and if you climb up the steps beside it and then turn on the streets above it, you can get an excellent view of the Russian Orthodox Church of Uspenski. Twenty-first century joys include a new boutique hotel, The Haven, which sits right in front of a charming indoor market and yards from the harbor.

There also is an attractive, thin park between the shopping streets of Pohjoiseplanadi and Eteläesplanadi where free concerts (Finnish tango when I was there) take place amid street performers. Ice cream is for sale, but beware: The gulls here have learned to swoop down on cones and fly off with ice cream. It sounds unlikely, but it is very true. Vendors tell you to cup the ice cream with one hand, while obviously holding the cone in the other. This being part of the Nordic region, but not part of Scandinavia, as any Finn will be eager to tell you, the threat from gulls might just be the most threatening danger here.

(By the way, Finnish tango is an odd phenomenon, its adherents showing none of the Latin fire that is part and parcel of its older Argentine cousin. I have only seen the Finnish approximation on TV, but it seems that the dancers do not look at each other. They do, I’ve been told, touch each other, but there is no crossing of feet as is displayed prominently in Buenos Aires.)

Farther along the coast, toward Sweden, is the city of Turku, the oldest settlement in Finland. This small city will share the honors with Tallinn, Estonia, of being one of the two Cultural Capitals of Europe in 2011, and while it is pleasant, I think it will find it hard to compete against the medieval atmosphere of the Estonian capital. That said, it’s a delightful place.

One project they have for 2011 is street art, and much of it can be seen now. One delightful “living sculpture” was a riverside tree in which were hanging cell phones. A board beneath it has the names and current populations of threatened Northern European birds, and by calling a series of toll-free numbers, visitors can hear the calls of the chosen bird coming out of the phone in the tree. I was not convinced when I first looked at it, but after selecting the Ortolan bunting and then the White-backed woodpecker I saw the cleverness of it: So often are cell phones intrusive annoyances, here is a chance to use modern technology to underline the threat to quiet, peaceful creatures that have long been here but may not be forever. It was a chance to relax, step back and breathe deeply. Or at least that is how I viewed it.

Another worthwhile spot is the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art (its café is excellent), named after a famous local sculptor. It sits next to the River Aura, which the city focuses around. I also found a statue of an athlete, Paavo Nurmi, the original Flying Finn, and the imposing Turku Cathedral that still bears one or two scars from a huge fire that partially destroyed it in 1827.

On the other side of the equation from those gentle bird calls, I took a boat from Turku to the island of Ruissalo, which yearly hosts the Ruisrock rock festival, the second longest-running rock festival in Europe, so the people who greeted me chirpily explained when I arrived. The line-up of bands on the day I was there was notable for it being the last ever show by local heroes, The Crash, whose songs are catchy but a little poppy for my tastes, although they did do a version of The Smiths’ 'There is a Light that Never Goes Out', which was excellent. I also managed to see The Gaslight Anthem, which hails from New Brunswick, N.J., and the Soul Captain Band, Finland’s most famous, and probably only, reggae band.

Old and new, fresh and traditional, southern Finland has a little for everyone. I say, do it all.