Travels Within Finland 1865 – 1952
Sibelius traveled extensively within his homeland: the northern border of his travels followed the route of Karunki-Tornio-Oulu-Lieksa. In the east, he explored Karelia on both sides of the current border, giving concerts in places such as Viipuri. In the west, concert locations included Turku and Vaasa. Sibelius was familiar with the southern tip of Finland, including the archipelago off the coast of Hanko.

Before his marriage in 1892, Sibelius’s summer travels took him to Sääksmäki, Loviisa, the Turku archipelago, and the Järnefelt family’s summer destinations in Ähtäri and Tottisalmi near Vaasa. After the wedding in Tottisalmi, the young couple went to spend their honeymoon at the Monola house on the shores of Lake Pielinen (see Life Events). The route passed through Imatra, after which the journey likely continued by water. At that time, the railway to the east branched off to Kuopio and Viipuri. The railway did not extend to Karelia. Sibelius took a detour from his honeymoon to listen to runo singers on what is now the Russian side. According to the travel report he wrote for the university, he journeyed the route Pielisjärvi-Ilomantsi-Korpiselkä-Suojärvi-Korpiselkä, after which he stated that he had “traveled away from Karelia.”

In the 1940s, Sibelius told his son-in-law that he got the idea for his work Night Ride and Sunrise (see Music) while riding in the moonlight from Suojärvi to Värtsilä. Quite a ride, about a hundred kilometers as the crow flies! Sibelius likely departed from Korpiselkä along the postal route toward the shores of Lake Ladoga and completed a roughly 30-kilometer ride from Soanlahti to Värtsilä.

Before the construction of Ainola, the Sibelius family spent their summers in Ruovesi and Kuopio (1893), Orismala in Isokyrö (1894), and on the shores of Lake Vesijärvi (1895-96). From 1897, they began spending summers in Lohja, continuing even after Ainola was completed. Aino Sibelius’s mother Elisabeth and her brother Arvid hosted the Sibelius family during summers. The family also spent three summers in Virolahti (1903, 1905, and 1906), and twice in the same year at Lake Unnasjärvi in Kuhmoinen (1912).

Sibelius worked during his family trips within Finland but also traveled alone for composition. The Finnish piano arrangement of Athenian Song was created in the summer of 1899 in the village of Pitkäpaasi in Virolahti, where Sibelius had arrived by ship from Helsinki via Suursaari and Kotka. The productive summer of 1902 was spent by Sibelius in Tvärminne. He developed his Fourth Symphony with Eero Järnefelt at Koli in 1909 and, a year later, alone on Järvö Island in Porkkala, as well as during a trip with Rosa Newmarch in Viipuri and Imatra. His Seventh Symphony was likely on Sibelius’s mind already in the summer of 1923 when he wandered in Åland with Walter von Konow. He further developed the symphony in Imatra five years later. This was a commissioned work, the Imatra Symphony. The project did not materialize.

Sibelius also participated in song festivals, such as in Tammisaari in 1891 and Jyväskylä in 1899, but financially the most important trips were to his own composition concerts. Sibelius conducted his works not only in Helsinki but also in Oulu, Vaasa, Pori, Tampere, Turku, and Viipuri.

Sibelius’s last trip beyond the vicinity of Ainola during his lifetime likely took place in August 1952, the Olympic summer, to Helsinki. “For the last time in this life,” Sibelius said as he visited Kaivopuisto to see his former home.