I’m in the home of Kaarina Nurmi, in the old–town of Rauma, a Unesco World Heritage site on the west coast of Finland, and I’m confused.

I’ve been brought to her 19th century home to marvel at a hoard of antiques and bric–a–brac filling every inch of available space she owns. A 19th century bible, illustrated by French artist Gustave Dore, traditional Finnish farming tools, 1950s Playboy magazines... you name it, Kaarina has it.

Dressed like a giant fruit–pastille lollipop in a multi–coloured knee–length woollen sweater, the PHD research manager tells me the house has seen many tragedies – suicide, prostitution, alcoholism. I’m readying myself for some sort of historical revelation, a story that reflects the significance of the preserved 17th century wooden town I’m in, maybe even a turning point in the Finns’ cultural existence that would define them for the rest of time.

But the revelation never materialises.

My experience in Kaarina’s home does, however, come to represent something about Finland as a whole – that its people and culture are hard to define. Some three hours from the capital Helsinki, washed by the chilly Gulf of Bothnia, Rauma is a cobbled network of wonderfully preserved wooden buildings, some dating from the 1600s, most late 1800s.

It’s built around a charming Franciscan monastery where the mid-15th century Church of the Holy Cross still stands.

About 10 miles inland from Rauma, hidden in the vast Boreal forest, is a genuine ancient wonder. Sammallahdenmaki is a vast Bronze Age burial site.

If you are unaware of its existence, strolling through the luscious green landscape, you’d have no idea that the nondescript mounds of granite rocks you’re stumbling over were in fact deliberately placed there more than 3,000 years ago by some of Finland’s first people.

The town is sleepy and a stay here provides me with ample time to rest before I turn my attention to the real focus of my visit – the Pori Jazz Festival.

Further north, up the coast from Rauma, the much larger town of Pori is, quite frankly, one of the ugliest concrete nightmares I have ever had the displeasure of visiting.

Bleak, grey monstrosities tower over a clinical grid–system of streets, blotted with mid–range bars and restaurants that appear to have left their fronts untouched since the 1960s.

Our Visit Finland host Virpi Aittokoski explains that the Government of the Sixties and Seventies embarked on a mass modernisation of the country’s urban environment, flattening almost every traditional building in sight and replacing it with a much more functional structure, more finely tuned for modern living.

Less than 13% of buildings in the country date back to before 1920. But even ugly–mug Pori has a beautiful town hall, designed by 19th century German architect Carl Ludwig Engel, plonked in the middle like a diamond in the rough.