Teemu’s town in Lapland, Finland, has more reindeer than people. Around 22,500 reindeer versus 8,876 people, according to the latest census from 2015. The latter number has been decreasing steadily.
The town in question, Sodankylä, is four times the size of Antwerp. The province, not the city. That amounts to less than one person per square kilometre. Now I realise why some call Lapland Europe’s last wilderness.
“Welcome to the good side of the Arctic Circle.”
Teemu drives his car out of Rovaniemi, past Santa Claus Village. According to savvy marketeers, the Arctic Circle is located here. But more about that in one of the next blog posts. Rovaniemi is the capital of Finnish Lapland and Teemu has vowed never to live further south. “I am lost in the big city”, he says, “Put me in Helsinki and the crowds and the hubbub will drive me crazy. After four hours, I want to run away and drink beer.”
A car ride through the snow
It is -15°C outside. Siberian cold. Little do I know that two days later I’ll call this shorts and t-shirt weather. Although it is not snowing, we constantly drive through a screen of white powder. The traffic blows snow into the direction of our car. No problem, Teemu has lived in Lapland all his life and is used to worse. No Belgian would leave his house in these circumstances, but the Finns drive around like they’re making a Sunday fun ride. It is, nevertheless, quite a scare when Teemu suddenly hits the brakes. In the roadside, half a dozen reindeer run into the opposite direction.
Certain places on earth take you by surprise. Others are perfectly what you expect. Finnish Lapland belongs in the latter category. In a world that constantly gets smaller, you can still feel the vastness and roughness of the landscape. The night is dark, civilisation scarce and scattered. Like in a movie, we drive through an endless tunnel of trees and snow. Spotting a house becomes an event.
A long drive brings us to Kelujärvi, a village the size of a handkerchief. In villages like Kelujärvi, the heartbeat of Lapland sounds the loudest. Teemu takes a deep breath, a blissful smile on his face. He is home. “City folks say there is nothing here. But in Kelujärvi, one can still live from nature”, he brags, “We eat fish we catch ourselves, moose we shoot ourselves and blueberries we pick ourselves. In the summer, we put potatoes in the ground and we harvest them in the autumn.”
How cold is Lapland?
A word about the cold. The temperature drops until -40°C during our stay in Finnish Lapland. No ‘real feel’ or ‘wind chill’, no, plainly and straightforwardly -40°C. I doubt that thermometers even go so low in Belgium, but for a Finn, it’s the temperature to put a sweater on and consider turning on the heating.
However, we experience the coldest temperatures in Lapland since 1999. You know it’s really cold when the temperature makes a headline on the front page of the local newspapers. Just to put things in perspective: the average freezer should ideally be -18°C. -40°C is a cold that I didn’t know existed. At the same time, Lapland’s is a pleasant cold. Not like Belgium’s, where wind, icy gusts of rain, hail and cold chill your bones.
Not that the cold in Lapland is not intensely penetrating. All of my clothes can’t stop that feeling. Literally, all my clothes – three pairs of socks, two of which are made from wool, waterproof hiking shoes, normal underwear, thermal underwear (Best. Buy. Ever.), pants, T-shirt, shirt, two sweaters, a thick jacket, scarf, hat and two pairs of gloves. Five minutes outside is enough for the hairs in my nose to slowly turn into small icicles. Within no time, I look like a mountaineer. Or, more appropriately, like Santa Claus. Despite all those precautions, we never stay outside for longer than an hour or two.
It’s quite confronting when you see the local youth without hats and with their coats open. Or, like two teenage girls later that week in Oulu, with bare ankles. No pain, no gain. We even see people on bicycles. It is not unusual for Finns in Lapland to use their bike all year round, to ride to work, to school or to the nightclub, whether it is 30 degrees below or above freezing. Fortunately, the locals have enough ‘snow how’ to keep themselves warm.
Was the school ever cancelled? The grin on Teemu’s face says it all. “Even when it was -40, I had to go. On foot. Although we were allowed to stay inside during recess when temperatures were that low.”
Sauna tales
For those who haven’t realised it yet: Teemu is a tough Finn, who doesn’t say a word too much. Just like the archetype of the silent, strong Finnish man from Aleksis Kivi’s novel The Seven Brothers, the godfather of Finnish literature: “He doesn’t talk and he doesn’t kiss.” Teemu loves the moose hunt, ice fishing and wrestling with bears, although we’re not entirely sure about the latter.
That tough Finn thaws as soon as he opens his first (gluten-free) lager in the outdoor sauna. He will be the one to insists on a farewell hug. But I’m ahead of things.
“My grandfather built this sauna”, says Teemu. “Traditionally, it’s the first thing a family man constructs. His family can sleep, cook and wash there while he builds the rest of the house.”
Teemu pours a splash of lager on the hot stones. They hiss a hushed thank you, and a cloud of steam rises up. The entire sauna immediately smells like freshly baked rye bread.
“Sauna equals tradition. When you reluctantly leave for work on Monday morning, you comfort yourself with the thought that it will be Wednesday in two days. On Wednesday, you can have a sauna. And on Saturday, you celebrate the weekend. People used to have a sauna that day because they wanted to smell fresh for the evening ball.”
“You clean yourself in the sauna, both physically and mentally. When you’re sitting alone, you have the time and space to think. It is also the place where Finnish men, after a few beers, discuss the real problems. Then they no longer talk about sports and cars, but about life, relationships, politics.” No wonder that various Finnish politicians and businessmen conducted negotiations in the sauna.
So there we are, butt-naked and sweaty. And you can never guess what happened next! Read it in part two. Hint: it has to do with a bright green light in the darkest of night. And no, we didn’t have to take LSD.
We visited Lapland after our writing resideny in Sysmä, awarded by Finnish literary organisation Nuoren Voiman Liitto. This article was first published in Dutch on Tom’s blog.
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