Shutter Island revisited

Have you ever watched the movie Shutter Island?  It takes place on an island with a hospital for the mentally ill- it’s an eerie movie, that only gets creepier as it goes on.  That movie was in the back of my mind (and I wasn’t the only one) on our trip on Saturday. 

View from the ferry on the way to the island

It was a grey, rainy day. Umbrellas out, raincoats zipped, our group huddled around our guide. “We’re going to walk around 1 kilometer, along the way I’ll tell you the history of the island.” Other than our group and the one group behind us, the island was deserted. It’s an isolated place- to arrive, we’d driven by bus for about an hour outside of Turku, then taken a ferry to a slightly larger island, driven a bit further, and then taken a 25 minute ferry ride across the Baltic sea. We’d passed small islands, isolated summer cottages, pleasure boats. But that was now. In the 21st century. Back in the 17th century when Seili first became home to a leper colony, and later an insane asylum, Seili would have been an almost forgotten place, difficult to reach, and difficult to leave. Even into the 20th century it remained cut off form the outside world- news of Finland’s independence in 1917 didn’t reach Seili until weeks later.

“The original buildings that the patients slept in were made of wood, and none have survived”, our guide told us.  She proceeded to tell us a story of inhuman living conditions- rooms with tiny windows that were left closed so “patients” wouldn’t escape, a decreasing supply of wood on the island that meant freezing winters without enough wood to heat all the buildings thoroughly, patients who could be trusted to leave their rooms wandering the island naked in the summers since they weren’t provided with enough clothing and were saving what they did have for the cold winter.  No doctor lived on the island at this “hospital” for the mentally ill.  There were nurses, but the only treatments they provided were sedatives and “ice helmets” to calm the agitated. 

Our tour took us to a yellow, solid looking building where we stopped.  It was the more modern hospital, built to improve living conditions in the 1800s.  When Russia took over Finland in the 1800s, and the Czar received a report on the island, he ordered changes and a modern hospital building was constructed.  Life was slightly better for the patients there, but they were still often kept in solitary confinement in rooms just 1.8 meters by 2 meters square. 

As we walked further down the path through a copse of trees, our guide reminded us that Finland is rising from the sea.  There used to be a bridge connecting this side of Seili to the other, which used to be a distinct island.  From the early 1600s through the late 1700s, lepers were sent to live on the leper colony of Seili.  No one really knew anything about the disease, and it was feared, so lepers were exiled.  Food was delivered to them across the bridge, and there were church services on the island (lepers had to enter through a separate door and sat in a segregated area at the back so they wouldn’t come in contact with anyone else) but that’s the only contact the lepers ever had with the outside world.  People feared the disease so much that the bell tower was built detached from the church so that they could find someone willing to ring the bells without fearing contagion from leprosy.

The section of the church where the lepers sat.

The graveyard behind the church is a sad place.  Maybe a dozen wooden crosses tilt haphazardly.  All of those who died on the island, both lepers and mental patients, were buried here, but no one ever replaced the grave markers as they decayed over time.  Where a dozen crosses now stand, perhaps as many as 1000 people are buried. 

The feeling of melancholy and isolation are hard to shake.  It’s hard enough to imagine being one of the researchers living on the island today (they are conducting marine biology research and have converted the former mental hospital into a research station).  But it’s even harder to imagine living there centuries ago, surrounded by misery, and so distant from the outside world.  One of the directors of the mental institution went mad himself, and was committed as a patient by the courts to the hospital where he himself had one been the director.  He’s buried there in the graveyard, but out of deference to his former position, he’s buried with the staff and an iron cross bears his name.