Photo: ICPonline
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A message in a bottle launched off the Finnish coast in 1997 has reached its sender nearly three decades later.
The letter, handwritten in pencil and enclosed in a small plastic flask, was discovered earlier this year by Agneta Malinen while cutting reeds on Harapois Island in the Korsholm archipelago. She spotted the bottle wedged into the shoreline.
“I saw the little note and realised it must be a message in a bottle,” Malinen said in an interview with Finnish broadcaster Yle.
Inside was a letter from Piia Pääkkönen, then 11 years old, seeking pen pals. She had included her childhood address in Oulu. The bottle had travelled roughly 100 kilometres across the Gulf of Bothnia from Larsmo, where it was dropped into the water in the summer of 1997.
The message remained intact and legible after 28 years at sea.
Malinen sent a reply to the Oulu address listed in the original message. It was still in use by Pääkkönen’s parents. A month later, Pääkkönen received the unexpected letter.
“My mom said I had received a letter and I couldn’t quite understand who it was from since I hadn’t lived at that address for 20 years,” Pääkkönen said.
She asked her mother to read the letter aloud over the phone.
The memory returned quickly.
“I remember sending out the bottle. My sister, who is two years older than me, and I each wrote a letter. We had just gotten a little sister that summer and were at our parents’ summer cottage in Larsmo. I remember we were out on the boat and dropped the bottle in the sea.”
Pääkkönen, now 39 and a mother of four, works as a teacher in Helsinki.
She replied to Malinen with a handwritten letter and a recent family photo.
The journey of the bottle from Larsmo to Korsholm spanned nearly three decades and around 100 kilometres of coastline. Pääkkönen said she had no pen pals at the time and had forgotten about the message.
The rediscovery prompted her to consider using a similar activity in her teaching.
“Could a child write something that they could get to reread when they finish primary school?” she said.
She also gave practical advice to anyone considering writing a message in a bottle.
“Use a small container that won’t get stuck anywhere too easily. And remember to include your contact information.”
Malinen, who lives near where the bottle was found, said she plans to keep the bottle and letter as a memento.
She and her grandchildren are planning to write their own bottle messages and release them when the winds allow.
The original message from 1997 was written on lined paper and placed in a pink envelope inside the bottle. It was addressed to potential pen pals and included no reference to the writer’s age but gave her full name and return address in Oulu.
The letter is now with Malinen, who intends to preserve it.
HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
