Flying Finnish

Cheryl Morgan is on her way to Å-con 6 at the Hotel Adlon, Mariehamn, Åland, Finland, which will be happening May 9-12.

Cheryl is taking advantage of her routing through Helsinski to scout the city’s proposed Worldcon facilities, a timely opportunity with 2015 Worldcon Site Selection voting just opened:

[While] I am here I intend to make use of my time looking for things that prospective Worldcon attendees might be interested in. After all, there may be some of you who haven’t yet made up your minds to vote for Helsinki in 2015. If there are any specific questions that people have, please ask them in comments below. I’ll be visiting the convention site on Monday when we have got back from Åcon so I’ll have time to look around, shoot some video, and ask questions.

This reminded me of Jane’s Fighting Smofs and the visits Scott & Jane Dennis made to potential Worldcon sites years ago.

In case you’re wondering, Mariehamn is 325 km away from Helsinki by road on Finland’s west coast. Here’s what this charming minicon has to say about itself —

Å-con-what?
– all of the programming in English
– a small, fannish, literary, cross-cultural relaxacon
– membership cap at about 100 members
– a gathering of fans mainly from Finland and Sweden
– the most fun you can have in a DMZ (at least until Wårldcon)
– Åcon is pronounced awe-con, (it really is that åsome!)

One thought on “Flying Finnish

  1. Not entirely by road, Mike. Mariehamn is in the Åland islands. You get there by ferry from Turku, or from Stockholm which is the other terminus of the ferry service. The convention is a joint project of Finnish and Swedish fandom.

    Most of the convention very book-ish, though last year we rented the local cinema to see Iron Sky, and this year we have a showing of a Polish film of the Karin Tidbeck story, “Who is Arvid Pekon?”

    There is some side entertainment as well. With Finnish fandom gathering in Turku last night ready for the morning ferry, some bright spark thought to get Bruce Springsteen to play a gig in the town. Also there was the small matter of the USA-Finland ice hockey match, which I seem to have survived despite the result.

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