SOUVENIRS
Wood, stone, glass and ceramics are best. Reindeer hides look nice, too, but how will you explain them to the kids?

CLOTHES
Locals favour the simple and practical. Look out for winter clothes, too. The Finns excell in them.

FURNISHINGS
From wall hangings to fine wooden items. Sometimes they border on the austere, sometimes they are breathtakingly beautiful.

MUSIC & BOOKS
Look for the publication date. Some guidebooks are wildly out of date. A few describe a country that has never existed.

souvenirs, SHOPPINg

On a cruise it is often hard to know what to buy and where. Will there be something better, or cheaper, at a later port? This guide will help.

Helsinki's biggest malls are out on the western, eastern or orbital highways, but they don't contain its finest shops. The streets of the centre, where the main Helsinki hotels are, have shops of a variety and quality that don't exist in the suburbs.

There are also four shopping plazas and a couple of big department stores. The main shopping streets are:

North Esplanade (Pohjoisesplanadi)
Alexander Street (Aleksanterinkatu)
the south end of Mannerheim Road (Mannerheimintie)

The Esplanade offers high-end design and fashion and is generally expensive. Alexander Street has some 40 cafes, restaurants and shops selling clothes, electronics, white goods and jewellery crammed into half a kilometre (600 yards).

For smaller, quirkier boutiques, go west to Frederik Street (Frederikinkatu).

As a rule, clothes are reasonably priced but not as cheap as in Tallinn. Design goods are expensive but the items are often not available elsewhere. Electronics are high in quality but narrow in range. One exception is mobile phones, which are as good as you would expect in the country that practically invented them.

Prices can fall sharply during sales. The summer sales season used to start after Midsummer but keeps getting earlier. Competition between smaller shops in the centre is cutthroat and there are bargains to be found at any time.

Haggling over prices is not done, partly because you are usually dealing with an assistant who doesn't have the authority to bargain. But if some expensive item that you want costs a bit more than you are ready to pay, it makes sense to say so.

MEMENTOS
Take a look at the bottom of the item before you buy bric-a-brac in the Market Square. Those coffee mugs showing the cathedral or key chains with miniature reindeers were probably made abroad. Naturally this needn't worry you but, if it does, it would be a shame not to realize till later.

The best Finnish knick-knacks use natural materials rather than plastic. You'll be surprised what can be done with wood. Tankards or butter knives made of juniper will go on smelling wonderful for years, so long as you remember not to put them in the dishwasher.

Look out for semi-precious or even ordinary stones; cut and polished they can be astonishing. One rare type of rock found in Finland and hardly anywhere else is labradorite.

As the name suggests, it is also found in Labrador, Canada but the Finnish stone is particularly bright and iridescent. It is called spectrolite and is mined in just one place, in the south-east of the country. It was discovered only in the last century, when the Finns were building a defence line there.

Other popular small items are glassware and ceramics. Some are practical, everyday items at moderate prices. Others are one-of-a-kind and correspondingly expensive.

CLOTHES
A glance at a Helsinki street will tell you that Finnish people don't spend a lot on clothes. Some do but average tastes tend to be plain rather than elaborate.

Twenty years ago, clothing and footwear production was a major business sector and an important exporter. Today most Finnish clothes are produced abroad, although often to designs created in Finland. Local fashion gurus favour simplicity. If you like clear practical lines, you'll find them in Helsinki.

Although it's the last thing on a a summer visitor's mind, the best local clothes are for winter — shoes that don't leak or slip and jackets that keep out the wind and cold. Finns also favour sensible headgear; not great furry hats but simple knitted pipos.

A pipo is a knitted bonnet that can be pulled down over the ears without rendering you deaf to the world. It makes a great souvenir, too, though you may hope you never need to wear it.

FURNISHINGS
Several companies specialize in design textiles, drawing on old handicraft traditions. Look out for bedding, towels and kitchen textiles. Colours are generally subdued grays and browns.

A curious local furnishing is the ryijy, a design rug that is carefully woven to create a scene or evoke a mood, often using hand-dyed wool. These are meant as wall hangings, like tapestries. When properly made they are each unique and hence rather expensive.

You may also be tempted to buy a reindeer hide, knowing that it won't be on sale in other places. With its bright white and gray shades, it will indeed look fine on a bed or the wall but don't try using it on the floor like a bearskin. It won't wear well and will soon go bald.

Finally, while you are in the land of wood, don't forget furniture. Finland has some excellent furniture designers and carpenters. Even if it's too big to carry back with you, a unique item may be worth having shipped.

BOOKS AND MUSIC
There is more to local music than just Sibelius. Another great classical composer was Fredrik Pacius (1809-1891), who was born in Germany but rose to fame in Finland. If you've never heard of him, nor of Kuula, Madetoja or Merikanto, a compendium CD may be a good place to start.

Finns are big on singing. Choirs began as an expression of religion but were later co-opted by nationalists and thrive to this day. Opera also has a strong following.

Finnish folk music sounds a lot like Sweden's, which is where it originated. In the past few years, even Finnish pop musicians have made international breakthroughs. Time spent in a music store will not be wasted.

For a small nation, Finland publishes a lot of books, most of them for locals of course, but quite a few in English and other foreign languages. To save publishing costs, some artistic or scholarly volumes have text in several languages, usually Finnish, Swedish and English.

Although most books aimed at visitors assume that they wish to hear and see only the best, there is a trend towards more honest assessments. Picture books are a different matter. In many of the guides produced by foreign publishers, the text is as outdated as the pictures.