The Long Table at Pudasjärvi

The marriage of Aldo Heikki and Leena Mäkinen took place on the shore of the Heikki family's lake cottage near Pudasjärvi, some eighty kilometres north-east of Oulu. The cottage had been built by Aldo's grandfather, Aarne Heikki, in the 1960s, and Aldo had spent most of the summers of his childhood there, helping Aarne repair the jetty, the sauna, and the boathouse. Aarne had died two summers earlier. His widow, Liisa Heikki, then eighty-three, sat in the front row in his chair, which had been carried down from the porch for the purpose.

The ceremony was a civil one, conducted shortly after three o'clock by Riikka Salmela, a registrar from the local magistrate's office, on the grass between the cottage and the water. Around thirty-five guests attended. The Heikki side was represented by Aldo's parents, Kalle and Sari Heikki, his sister, Ella Heikki, his grandmother, and a dozen men from the crews of Heikki Construction with their wives. The Mäkinen side had travelled north from Helsinki the previous day: Leena's parents, Mikko and Helena Mäkinen, her brother, Arttu Mäkinen, and her sister, Siiri Mäkinen, then sixteen, who photographed the entire day and most of the night that followed. A handful of Leena's friends from art school and her travelling years made up the rest.

The ceremony itself took less than twenty minutes. Aldo, who was not given to speaking in public, managed his vows without notes and without looking up from Leena's hands. Leena departed from hers twice and was smiled back on course by the registrar.

The reception was held at a single long table assembled from trestles along the jetty and the shore. Leena had cooked most of it herself over the preceding two days in the cottage kitchen, refusing every offer to take it from her: smoked salmon and whitefish, rye bread, Karelian pies made to her grandmother's method, new potatoes with dill, and a cloudberry dessert that ran out before the second sitting reached it. Helena Mäkinen helped in the kitchen anyway. Sari Heikki, who had planned to cater the meal herself, watched from the doorway and said very little.

The two families were cordial and careful with one another. The Heikkis were northern builders, reserved and practical; the Mäkinens were a talkative Helsinki household of curators, teachers, and artists, and both sides were aware of the distance. Kalle Heikki spent much of the evening in conversation with Mikko Mäkinen about the proportions of the cottage's timber framing, a subject on which Mikko had more opinions than knowledge and Kalle more knowledge than inclination to share. Ella Heikki and Siiri Mäkinen, five years apart, found each other early and were inseparable by the end of the night.

Liisa Heikki left the table at ten, when the light had softened but not gone. The younger guests moved to the sauna and the lake. Aldo spent some minutes alone on the end of the jetty that he and his grandfather had rebuilt, and came back without saying where he had been. The last guests went to bed a little after two, with the sky over the lake still pale.