A ferry waited at the docks outside the market hall.

We jogged the last hundred meters, stopped long enough to buy transit passes from a ticket machine, and boarded moments before departure.

The harbor appeared frozen.

A narrow channel of dark water cut through the ice toward the islands. The ferry followed it like a train on rails.

Most passengers stayed inside.

I stepped onto the outer deck.

The wind shoved at me from every direction.

The boat rolled beneath my feet.

My camera swung against my chest.

By the time we reached the islands, I was cold enough to reconsider my commitment to photography.

~

The wind greeted us again when we disembarked. It came straight across the sea, uninterrupted by buildings, trees, or terrain.

We followed the main path inland simply to escape it.

Suomenlinna turned out to be less an island than a collection of rocks connected by bridges and earthworks.

Snow covered the paths.

Colorful wooden houses lined the Main Street.

Elsewhere, we found old stone walls, tunnels, and cannons overlooking the water.

Everything looked important.

Almost nothing explained itself.

We wandered from one closed attraction to the next.

The church was closed.

The museums were closed.

We kept walking.

Behind the church, Dani spotted people exercising dogs in a park.

Farther on, we crossed a bridge where slabs of ice squeezed through a narrow channel.

The surface looked frozen until we stopped and watched. Then the ice began to move, twisting and grinding past itself in slow motion.

We followed trails through old fortifications toward the King’s Gate on the far side of the island.

Cannons overlooked the sea.

The wind returned.

The moment we climbed above the protective embankments, the cold hit with full force.

We lasted less than a minute before retreating.

At the King’s Gate itself, the path turned slick with ice.

Dani stopped well short of the edge.

I crept a little closer for photographs, though not nearly as close as she thought I did.

Then we turned around.

~

By now we had spent hours exploring Suomenlinna.

Then we found the museum.

Everyone seemed to recommend the film.

We hoped it would explain the fortress.

The theater handed out wireless headsets.

Mine didn’t work.

Neither did the second.

The third finally produced sound moments after the movie started.

For the next half hour, the film hurried through centuries of wars, occupations, construction projects, and political realignments.

Sweden built the fortress.

Russia took it.

Finland inherited it. Armies arrived.

Armies departed.

Cannons were installed, replaced, forgotten.

The movie answered many questions.

It also raised new ones.

When we stepped back outside, the ice was still moving through the channel.