Winter in Lapland

We’d planned a day of winter activities in Finnish lapland. I went to the big house to ask where we could find something fun to do, but unfortunately there was nobody home who spoke English. We drove to a petrol station near the Norwegian border. There was a supermarket as well, so we could stock up. Just across the border was a big farm that could organize some activities. Unfortunately for us there was a big husky competition going on and all else was closed for the day.

Back in the cottage we had a 3 o’clock lunch and then spoke to the owners. They could arrange something with snowmobiles. We were getting really excited as we thought we could drive the snowmobiles ourselves. When all was ready it turned out there were two snowmobiles with big sledges behind them. We all got helmets and sat close together on the sledge. An intimate experience. The ladies took us through the forest and fields. Since there wasn’t much to hold on to it seemed like a never ending abs exercise. As it got dark it got much colder. Slowly I started to lose all the feeling in my toes. Seeing the sunset was beautiful, but after a while we all wished we were there already.

In the evening we could visit the sauna. A must-do when in Finland is running out of the hot sauna and jumping into the snow. A shock went through my body at the temperature switch. I couldn’t stand still because my feet seemed to stick to the frozen ground. Afterwards the sauna felt like a special reward.

The Finnish love their sausages and pretty much everywhere you’ll find places where you can barbecue them above the fire. Here, we had a little house with a big fire place in the middle. Dinner was toasted bread and sausages from the fire. There was guitar music and singing until the guitarist got so drunk that he started to slam his guitar into the benches. Something he would really regret the next day.