Category Archives: Finland

The Best Holiday Ever

January 22, 2014Finland, Norway, Swedenarctic circle, aurora, camping, cooking, finland, holiday, northern lights, norway, road trip, snow, Stockholm, sunrise, sunset, sweden, travel, walking, winterJudy

Yes, I know. Not everyone would be thrilled to be going overseas with only 2 days’ notice. But I was. Spending almost 3 weeks in sub-zero temperatures, not seeing the sun for 2 weeks, camping in a tent in the snow, sleeping in the car and even the prospect of travelling so far to see a natural phenomenon without any guarantee of success would not be everyone’s idea of the perfect holiday. Gee, we could have just stayed home and enjoyed (or endured!) a long stretch of 40+C days instead. But I’m so glad we went, and not just because we missed Adelaide’s heat wave.

It was wonderful to revisit places we had seen 6 months ago, in mid-summer. At the time, we wondered what it would be like there in winter …. and now we know. Once we got used to colder weather than either of us had ever experienced, and worked out what to wear, the cold didn’t bother us much. Okay, so I wasn’t brave enough to get out of the warm car when it was -36C, but getting out and about in slightly warmer but still sub-zero temperatures, and even sitting watching for aurora was fine as long as we wore enough clothes. The Norwegians are right – ‘there’s no such thing as cold weather, only inappropriate clothing’.

I had always thought that winter inside the Arctic Circle meant existing in complete darkness, and was very happy to learn and experience that it’s not so. During ‘polar night’, which is the opposite of ‘midnight sun’, it does get light even though the sun doesn’t shine above the horizon. The light is weak, like pre-dawn light here, and it only lasts a few hours. For the first few days, we were looking for dinner at 4pm … well, it had been fully dark for HOURS by then, feeling tired at 5pm and sleeping in until it was light … at around 10am. We never really did wake up early unless we used an alarm, but then we don’t at home either.

We did see the Northern Lights … 3 times. The first 2 nights we were inside the Arctic Circle (the night we slept in the car, and the next night when we camped in the tent), they were there. Not spectacular displays, and if we had realised how elusive they really are, we would have paid more attention and spent more time outside watching them. But because they were just there almost as soon as we arrived to watch them, we figured they would be there all the time and we could see them whenever we looked up at the sky. So, so not true. The third time we saw them was the first night we stayed in the cabin at Birtavarre, but they were mostly hidden by cloud. We could see them through the cloud, but wasn’t a good show.

There are 2 enduring images that I’ll carry with me as memories of our trip, and neither were photographed. The first is the one Greg mentioned, of the couple walking their baby in a pram when it was -36C. The other is of a mother pushing a child on a swing in a playground in Kiruna. It was 4.30pm, -5C and pitch black outside. And it reminded me that wherever we are in the world, kids are kids.

As always, thanks to everyone who has read, commented and sent messages – while we really write and share our photos for our own amusement and to keep a record of our travels, it’s great to know that we entertain other people as well.

Just a few last words … for Greg. Thank you. For planning and organising our amazing holiday; for buying the equipment, warm clothes and other essentials; for doing all the driving, including that long, difficult snowy drive back to Stockholm; and most of all, thank you for your adventurous spirit and for taking me along with you!

South to Stockholm

January 15, 2014Finland, Norway, Swedenarctic circle, aurora, finland, norway, road trip, snow, Stockholm, sweden, travel, wintergreg

It was a long cold 1500km drive south from Birtavarre Norway to Arlanda Airport in Stockholm. We spent another fruitless night looking for Aurora. It was a clear night with the temperature dropping to -18C, but no sign anywhere of Aurora.

We left Birtavarre at 5:00am, and within a couple of hours we were back in Finland, refuelling the car with cheaper Finish Diesel (about $A2 a litre) rather than expensive Norwegian Diesel ($A3 per litre). When we refuelled it was -24C and we worked our way through northern Finland for about 100km with the temperature dropping even lower. The temperature finally dropped to -36C with the cars clutch starting to play up getting heavier to use. We thought it might be the cluch fluid freezing , but it turns out clutch fluid does not freeze until -59C, so something else caused the clutch to play up when it was very very cold.

We crossed south into Sweden with the temperature still hovering around the -36C level. We drove through a town where a couple were taking their baby out for a walk in a pram, and it was still -36C.

We finally had the sun rise over the horizon in northern Sweden, unfortunately we drove straight into the low sun for a couple of hours. By the time it got dark at about 2pm we had covered 500km, but we still had a 1000km to go. Once we got to Lulea the road got wider with more overtaking lanes. Around about 600km from Stockholm it started snowing again and you have difficulties overtaking the trucks on the overtaking lanes. The trucks kick up light snow that billows around like dust on an Australian dirt road when you follow them. When you overtake the outside lane has a lot more snow sitting on the road because not as many cars use the outside lane. So you pass on the outside lane driving through layers of snow trying to peer through the snow being thrown up by the truck you are passing. Very difficult.

We stopped at a parking bay about 11pm and slept in the back of the car, waking again at 5am to do the last 350km to Stockholm. We refuelled the car at a Service Station about 40km from Arlanda Airport with only 2 hours before our flight left. We asked the service station attendant if he could take some our of discarded camping equipment, and he kindly volunteered to take it to a local charity. With a very fast and rough repack, and a very superficial clean of the car (it was still caked with ice on the rear) we rushed to Avis to return the car. Hopped on the bus from Avis to Terminal 5, checked in, did the usual long wait in security, changed out of our thermals, and by the time we made the gate, they had started to board the plane.

-36C. The cars clutch started being very heavy and we did not dare turn the car off.

Dawn and -36C. Judy staying in the wamer car (which still had ice on the inside of the windows however) — Dawn and -36C. Judy staying in the warmer car (which still had ice on the inside of the windows however)

Trees covered in snow in the pink light of the low morning sun

Random stuff

January 9, 2014Finlandarctic circle, cooking, finland, food, road trip, travel, winterJudy

When we do road-trips like this one, and the previous one in Scandinavia & Russia, and the one aross the US, we tend not to eat out much, preferring to shop where the locals shop and cook wherever we’re staying.

We’re currently staying in a holiday cottage in Särkijärven. You can see some photos of it and the holiday complex here. Quite a few of the photos on the Booking.com site were taken in ‘our’ cottage. It’s a small place, single storey, sleeps 2 people and has everything we need in it, including a large clothes-drying cabinet and a stove with an oven. The last apartment we stayed in only had a hotplate, so now I’m having fun using the oven to roast vegetables and do some baking. Yesterday we found a packet of bake-them-yourself croissants in a can – you take the dough out of the can, unroll it, cut into 6 triangles along the perforated lines, roll into croissants and bake for 15 minutes. We ate them with cloudberry jam and they tasted great.

We’re having a bit of a pancake ‘thing’ at the moment , because they are quick, easy, use just a few easy-to-get ingredients (eggs, milk, plain flour), and I have never known Greg to decline a pancake, ever. I won’t turn this into a food blog, but 4 eggs, a couple of cups of plain flour and a couple of cups of milk makes a lot of pancakes, and we managed to eat them all, with banana, sugar and cloudberry jam as toppings.

If we are just using our camping stove with its gas cartridge, we’ll have something simple like canned ravioli or burritos made with a packet of vegetarian mince (just add water, cook for 5 minutes, serve), cheese and pineapple salsa. The Swedes seem to really like Mexican food if shelf-space, range and empty shelves post-New Year are anything to go by. But in Finland, not so much. The only vaguely Mexican thing we’ve found here so far are packets of tortillas, in the snack section. Don’t know what they use them for as we didn’t find any related items like salsa, dips or taco seasoning.

The lights in the cottage window that are in a couple of the photos of the cottage in the Sarkijarven post are a very common Scandinavian Christmas decoration. Lots of houses have some kind of light in each window, and then they also often put lights on a fir tree in the yard, or strings of fairy lights on buildings, verandahs, trees, bushes …. you get the idea. As there are so many hours of darkness here, the lights look lovely, and many place leave them on day and night. We spotted quite a few decorated Christmas trees on apartment balconies, which seems to be a good use of the space at this cold time of the year … and the apartments are probably too small to be able to comfortably fit a tree inside anyway.

I’m sure the novelty will eventually wear off, but all the houses here look to us like gingerbread houses, with their snowy white roofs and their afore-mentioned lights. On a more practical note, I wonder if the snow on the roof provides some kind of insulation.

Waiting for the Aurora

January 9, 2014Finlandarctic circle, aurora, finland, northern lights, road trip, snow, sunrise, travel, wintergreg

We are waiting for possibly good Aurora tonight in Finland. The sun has a very large sunspot on it (it has a number AR1944).

Sunspot AR1944 which is big enough to fit 3 earths in it

Two days ago this very large sunspot emitted a solar flare and a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) which has been heading towards the earth at 2000km per second. The sun was not facing the earth directly at the time of the CME, but it is expected to give the earth a glancing blow. This CME is big enough that NASA scrubbed the Cygnus resupply launch to the International Space Station.This CME is expected to distort the earth’s geomagnetic field which is called a geomagnetic storm. The benefit of a geomagnetic storm is that it ….. creates Auroras!

However we need more things going our way, Firstly the CME is expected to hit in the middle of the day out time, and its not dark then (sunrise here is 11:30am sunset 1:30pm). However no one is quite sure when the CME will hit and it could be some hours later. Secondly we need good weather. It has been snowing here in Särkijärven, Finland for the past 3 days and it does not make good Aurora viewing. However tonight it is meant to clearing, with a crisp clear night of -20C. At the moment it is still snowing so we can only cross our fingers and keep watching the Kiruna Magnetogram which indicates the affect of the CME on the earths magnetic field. Kiruna ia a couple of hundred kilometres west of here so it should give us a good warning.

UPDATE: It is nearly 1am and no sign of Aurora. The CME has arrived but not as strong as predicted, so it looks like no geomagnetic storms. The weather is excellent for viewing with clear skys and -17C:

Särkijärven, Finland

January 8, 2014Finlandarctic circle, finland, muonio, road trip, sarkijarven, snow, travel, winterJudy

[mappress mapid=”6″]

Judy inside with the snow falling outside our “cottage” at Särkijärven Majat

After long distances the ice builds up in the wheel-well. The ice here is about 4cm thick and when you eventually turn into a carpark after a long drive the tyres make noise scraping against the ice.

We go on about icicles too much, but they are so exotic to us, here is a large one we found.

The Ice Hotel, Jukkasjarvi, Sweden

January 7, 2014Finlandarctic circle, finland, muonio, road trip, snow, travel, winterJudy

We have booked a few nights in a cabin near Muonio in Finland, just across the border. It’s about 350kms from where we have spent the last few days, but it took us all day and part of the (very long) night to get here. We packed up and left the apartment at Katterjokk just after 10am, wandered around Abisko for a short while and then drove to Kiruna, where we stopped to have a walk around the town centre, pick up some groceries and have lunch in the car.

Just a few kms east of Kiruna is the turn-off to Jukkasjarvi, home of the Swedish Ice Hotel. We had considered staying there for about a nano-second, until we found out it costs at least $700 to stay in the ‘Cold’ part, as opposed to the ‘Warm’ part which is just like any other hotel room, but costs $350 per night. We figured that we had already experienced sleeping on ice for free, so decided to save our money and not stay there, but we did want to have a look at it. Just driving into the car park was an experience – the car park spaces are marked out by huge blocks of ice. We wandered past the hotel reception and the hotel shop towards the magnificent, but temporary, Ice Hotel. It melts at the end of each cold season and is then rebuilt again at the start of the next . It is still in the ‘being built’ stage at the moment.

There is a beautiful, very minimalist chapel just outside the main entrance to the hotel. built mostly of snowy blocks of ice, with clear blocks providing ‘windows’ and fittings for lights. The chapel pews are long solid blocks of ice with reindeer skins providing insulation and padding. The altar is another single block of clear ice. We walked past the hotel entrance down to the lake, and saw new parts of the hotel still at the construction stage. There was a team of dogs and a sled out on the nearby frozen lake, and a forklift was carrying blocks of ice to the builders. We snuck into the main entrance and into the bar, where even the drinking glasses are made of ice, but we needed to purchase a ticket to get any further and we felt like we’d seen enough (*cough* – okay, we’re cheapskates and didn’t want to pay). It was well worth the detour, though. There are also Ice Hotels in Norway and Finland.

We kept on driving towards Muonio in Finland, taking a wrong turn somewhere along the way and ending up in a little village where the (snowploughed) road didn’t go any further, so we had to turn around and find the correct road. We haven’t brought any maps with us, and have been relying on the GPS in Greg’s phone. The ‘voice’ is a very British gentleman we have named ‘Nigel’ and he does tend to get us lost at times. Anyway, we finally got to our destination at around 8pm, then wandered around for a while trying to find the right place. Fortunately the manager was watching out for us and came out to get us all sorted out. We’re staying in a comfy little cabin that has a sauna somewhere, and it is also possible to swim in the icy lake. I feel hypothermic just thinking about swimming when it’s -2C outside. We’ll check it all out tomorrow, by the light of day.

We’re still inside the Arctic Circle, and it is possible to see aurora here, but it’s cloudy again tonight and it’s been a long day, so we won’t be venturing out to look skywards.

10 litre water container left overnight in the car - frozen solid — 10 litre water container left overnight in the car – frozen solid

Shopping Sleds- take your sled and collect your shopping

Removing icicles before they fall on someone

Ice Hotel car park – the pillars are ice.

Wall Ice Hotel — Wall of the Ice Hotel. The Ice Bar is on the other side of the ‘windows’.

Ice Hotel Chapel -with reindeer skins covering the solid ice block pews

More blocks coming out of the warehouse for Ice Hotel construction

building-ice-hotel (Small) — Still constructing the ice hotel

Accumulated snow and ice after 400km of driving