This week is Oulu summer week! At least so say GoArctic, a ‘tourism service’ offering walks, rambles, guided tours, canoe runs, and bike rides as well as ‘Viking boat trips’ into the Gulf of Bothnia. A three-hour tour of the Turkansaari outdoor museum leaves the City hall (Kirkkokatu 2) today at 15.00, admission 5€, followed by a (free) tour of the graveyard at Kajaanintie 1, 18.00. And a Viking Boat ride (on recreated Viking boats) sets sail from the marketplace today and on Thursday at 13.00, tickets 55€. Click here for more detail and events.

Puppet Theatre Akseli Klonk are performing Hans Christian Anderson’s The Brave Tin Solder today and on Tuesday in the Speedpark on Hietasaarentie at 13.00 and 17.00. Tickets are 3€ or 9,5€ including all the park rides (bouncy castle, super-slide, house of fun, trampoline).

The Oulu Worker’s Stage Group's adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is on at the Hupisaari summer theatre, with showings on Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday at 19.00. Tickets 12€/10€/8€ from the ticket point on Stockmann’s top floor.

A short drive from the city in Kiiminki, Too Fat For A Butterfly, from theatre group The Varnishes, will play Wednesday 19.00 on the beach beside the Jäälinmaja resort at Rantakuja 10. Tickets 0€/7€.

For those musically-inclined, sing-song evenings have been arranged at the Hupisaari summer theatre in Ainola park today at 18.30 and Tuesday 18.00 at Kahvelitie 1, admisn free. 

Liminka, a half-hour drive from Oulu down the motorway, has a full week of music offering Mozart to Dvorak to folk. The programme starting on Wednesday and continuing through to Sunday of the following week. Many of the performances are free. Click here for more details.

Downtown, the Military Band will play Rotuaari at 12.00 on Wednesday, admittance free. The Ähtäri church choir are singing a Midsummer Night’s Choir Concert at the Pyhän Tuomaan church, Mielikintie 3, on Wednesday at 19.00. Tickets are 5€. And Maija Tykkynen will play organ music from Haydn and Mendelssohn at the cathedral, 12.15 Thursday, admittance free.

If punk’s your thing, ‘Palaver Days Goes Potato Field Rock,” a two-day punk rock festival with 24 bands including Brutopia, Snoo Snoo, Erkki ja Tuomio, and Throwback, hits the Ykän Pubi at Merimiehentie 1 on Friday at 19.00 and continues on Saturday at 16.30. Tickets 10€ Friday, 12€ Saturday, or 20€ for a two-day pass in advance from Levykauppa Äx.

“On the track of traps,” an exhibition at the Kierikki Stone-Age centre in II, Pahkalantie 447, opens today, available from 10 to 10.00 to 18.00 in the evening.

“Statuary Oulu,” a free guided tour of Oulu’s sculptures and reliefs, leaves from behind the City Hall at Kirkkokatu 2 at 15.00 on Tuesday.

Fancy a bit of baseball? Lippotaret are playing Viinijärvi for a ladies’ ‘super baseball’ league game at the stadium at Ylioppilantie, 16.00 Wednesday. Tickets are 8€/5€.

The Oulu Eden Finnish Open 2009, this year’s league Finnish tennis championships, are taking over the concrete courts at Nallisport from Friday to the following Friday. Men’s doubles winners will pick up 3000€ plus medals and the ladies’ doubles winners a somewhat reduced 1000€. Elsewhere, Midnight Golf, a 36-hole competition at the Sankivaara golf centre, will start on Saturday at 16.00. And the Finnish Rally Cross Championship starts  at the Iinati motorsport centre on Saturday at 11.00 , tickets 15€.

Finnish outdoor dancing will put to shame again on Wednesday in the evening at the dance lighthouse on Hietasaarentie 13, with music from Mikko Mäkeläinen and the Storm Lantern band.

Here, a round-up of this week's art exhibitions: