Early Saturday morning on December 22nd, I was up early with my host family and in the car on the way from Lahti in southern Finland to Utsjoki in the far north.
It only takes about 14 hours to get there from Lahti, which means it only takes 15 or maybe 16 hours to drive the entire length of Finland north to south.
We stopped about every four hours for something to eat and to stretch and use the restrooms, so we left around 7am and got in around midnight. I slept most of the car ride on and off, but when the sun was up, I did my best to try and stay awake, since the time is so short for that.
Lapland is the darkest place in Finland since it is so far north, and the previous day (the 21st) happened to be the darkest day of the year.
For dinner we stopped in Ivalo a couple hours down the road from Utsjoki and ate used the bathroom for the last time, because after that, there is only one more city a few miles up the road, and then nothing until you reach Utsjoki.
I ate a greek dish with all sorts of veggie-like toppings and meat and sauce inside a pida bread bowl. It was so good, but so big, and quite difficult to eat too.
The sign above is a logo for things made in Finland. Finland has two official languages, so the top two words "Hyvää Suomesta" is in Finnish, and the other words "Gott Från Finland" is in Swedish. "Hyvää Suomesta" means "good from Finland". Adding an "-sta" to the end of a word means "to come from" because there are no articles such as "the, from, a, etc." Esim (example): Minä tulen New Mexicosta. This means; I come from New Mexico.
Here is a picture of the place we ate at for dinner. There are many pizza and kebab places here in Finland, so that is where we went to eat. It was quite an interesting place, because the decor was a bit random, we were the only ones there, and there was a Spanish guy who ran the place and he still couldn´t speak too much Finnish. It was nice though, and the food was great.
Outside it was about -22 degrees celsius (about -8 degrees fahrenheit), so everything was in and out very quickly.
We left Ivalo and drove the rest of the way to my host grandparent´s home which is actually a bit further out of Utsjoki, up around the west on the boarder with Norway. It was completely dark when we arrived, so we unpacked our things relatively quickly, showered up, and went to sleep for the night.
On the 23rd, we spent the day making some preparations outside and getting settled in a bit more. After lunch and everyone was up and ready to go, we then decided to drive somewhere to get a tree.
This picture is looking out from the driveway, south to the hills right across the road from their land.
In the distance, you can just make out a darker colored building which is the sauna house. We trudged out through the snow to the sauna house to look around and get some exercise too.
The sun is only up for about three or four hours, starting at noon. This means that everyone is up and ready to go outside to enjoy things while it is light out. As we started our drive west further along the border, the sun was already begining to set. I wish I could capture the colors even better, because they are absolutely stunning. Everything is so much clearer in Lapland and there is no light pollution in Utsjoki.
There is only one road up to Utsjoki and one that goes along the border as well. On one side of the road is Finland and on the other, to the north is a river; the Utsjoki ("joki" meaning "river" in Finnish), which naturally divides Norway from Finland. Those hills on the rightside are all part of Norway and just behind those trees is the Utsjoki.
We drove down the road for a good 40 minutes and then pulled over to the side and parked, so we could visit a cemetary where my host grandma´s parents are buried.
Just a note, when visiting lapland, you expierence a new feeling of cold, because immediately you feel a difference when you breathe and it tends to tickle a bit and the air feels a bit thinner too. Also, any liquid freezes, so if you have exposed hair, it will freeze from the precipitation that comes from your mouth when you breathe.You will most definately expirence the inside of your nose freezing too, that is the first thing you notice. Just how cold does it have to be for this to happen? Usually around -20 C (-7 F) or a bit less. How cold was it when I was in Lapland? The warmest was -22 C, but most days it was -28 C (-18.5 F), and even -30 C (-22 F). Quite cold.
It was pretty cold in standing ourside and I had several layers on. We lit some candles and walked around a bit, before getting back into our cars and driving back towards the house. Looking around at the tombstones, you mostly see the same last names, because there aren´t so many people living in Lapland (only about 5,000 spead up amoung the entire top of Finland in the Utsjoki region), and many of them are the Sami people, speaking their own language.
The views in Lapland are amazing. My host grandpa paid 5 € to the forest survice, so we were able to cut down our own tree from a designated area, and luckily I could take some amazing pictures from where we stopped.
There are no real mountains in Finland, but the hills in Utsjoki, go on much higher than they appear and you really feel like you are out in the wild.
Dressed in many warm layers, it´s easy to be outside for quite a long time, no matter the cold. But you need to watch out for your hads and face, and limit your time outside. It really doesn´t feel so cold, except when the wind blows, and it was pretty windy while we were there.
We walked up out of the road a little bit to look at some of the different trees to try and scope out the right one.
There were quite a lot of different trees, but many of them were too tall, despite being shorter in comparision to the trees down south, because the growing season is so short this far north.
When we finally picked out a tree, it was sawed off and my host uncle carried it down to the road, so that it could then be loaded into a car and taken home.
My host uncle, Helmi, and I, after getting the tree. My camera lense was frozen, so that´s why the image isn´t entirely clear. The tree was then loaded into the trunk of my host grandma´s car. It was quite a funny site to see the tree sticking out of the back, because it was so tall, but it made it home in one piece.
It was a very good first day in Utsjoki, but then on the 24th, the Christmas celebrations began at last.
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