European Snow Trip to the Arctic (part 4)

We kept driving north and the days went by without any northern lights on the horizon... We started getting worried and decided that there was no way we were leaving the Arctic without seeing this natural phenomenon. We knew that our best chances were further north, deep into Lapland - the magical land of the Sámi people. With its Siida museum of Sámi culture and more than 30% of its population being Sámi, the city of Inari is widely known as the "capital of Sámi culture". Three of its four official languages are Inari Sámi, Skolt Sámi, and Northern Sámi. Together with its surroundings, it was a place of many “firsts” for us!

It was the first time that we met a Sámi woman and fed the reindeer freely roaming in the beautiful snowy forest around her house. 

We learnt from our hostess that they were wild animals wandering in the north in summer and only coming to the farm in winter when food in the forest was scarce. As a result, they lose 50% of their body weight during the cold months and need the lichen that we fed them with. 

Some reindeer looked like they were fighting but were actually just trying to remove their antlers. Our hostess explained that both male and female reindeer grew antlers that they dropped once a year, and the Sámi used the abandoned antlers to make various artefacts. 

We also learnt that only a Sámi could "own" a reindeer and each Sámi kid received their first one as a gift when they were baptised. The reindeer’s earmark shows who the owner is to whoever comes across the animal in the wild and there is even a list of ownership available to all reindeer herders. 

After having fed the reindeer, our Sámi hostess showed us around the farm which was such a serene and inspiring place. There were lots of vibrant coloured birds that she was feeding as well. Incredible artefacts she had made from antlers or flowers trapped in ice blocks were also hanging from the tree trunks.

Our hostess also taught us a lot about her people’s way of life. We learnt that the Sámi - these mystic kings of the Arctic - are a minority living in the territories of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia, and the only recognised indigenous people of the European Union. They have adapted to and been living in the harsh conditions of the Arctic for tens of thousands of years. The Sámi have also created their own languages, history and culture - their traditional clothing, handicraft and music are unique.

The nomadic lifestyle of the Arctic people had influenced their housing. In the same way that their cousins in Canada and Greenland - the Inuits - were using the available material to build dome-shaped igloos made of sea ice and snow, and tents made from seal or caribou skin supported by poles crafted from driftwood or whale bones, the Sámi were relying on the reindeer skins and the boreal forests in Scandinavia and Russia to raise temporary tent-like structures, called lavvu. You can see them, together with some more recent Sámi log cabins, storage huts and reindeer shelters, in the open-air part of the magnificent Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida in Inari.

The museum also displays traditional clothing, handicraft and lots of pictures and explanations about the Sámi. 

We learnt that the majority of them have light eyes and blond hair and are therefore quite indistinguishable from Northern Europeans in terms of physical characteristics. While they are also known as fishermen and fur trappers, their best-known means of livelihood is reindeer herding which provides them with meat, transportation and fur for housing and clothing. 

The gákti - the traditional clothes worn by the Sámi people - are made of reindeer leather and sinews and their colours, patterns and jewellery indicate where a person is from and whether he or she is single or married. 

The spiritual and melancholic Sámi songs - the joiks - traditionally chanted a cappella slowly and deep in the throat, reminded us of traditional Mongolian music. 

The museum also tells the story of persecution and forced assimilation of the Sámi and the cultural and environmental threats they are still facing today, including mining, dam building, logging and commercial development which interfere with reindeer grazing and calving areas and other aspects of traditional Sámi life. Even though they have very weak political influence, the Sámi Parliaments founded in Finland, Norway and Sweden (Russia has not recognized the Sámi as a minority and, as a result, has not recognized the Sámi Parliament of Russia) are nowadays the representative bodies working to promote the Sámi people’s rights and preserve their culture, languages and heritage.

If you want to learn more about the Sámi and the importance of reindeer herding to them, the movie “Stolen” - based on the novel of the same name by Ann-Helén Laestadius, a Swedish Sámi journalist and writer - is a must-watch.

Another first in Inari for us was snowshoeing through a beautiful forest and on the frozen Tuulisjärvi lake. Despite my initial doubts about the solidity of the ice, it stood strong!

It felt pretty amazing to be surrounded by snow, sun, blue sky and complete silence - who needs anything else to be happy? Snowshoeing became our new favourite sport and we even brought two pairs of snowshoes back home which we have been using each winter ever since.

It was also the first time that we drove a snowmobile on the frozen Inari lake - the third largest lake in Finland with more than 3,000 islands. It was fun but so freezing cold that we had to insert hand warmers in our gloves to avoid losing a finger or two! 

The lake had its own road signs and even parking areas for snowmobiles popping out from the ice. 

As if this was not crazy enough, we also went for some ice fishing - another typical Finnish experience. What used to be one of the Sámi livelihoods is today a popular hobby for the Finns. If drilling a deep hole in the ice with a weird tool called an auger and waiting for hours at a temperature of almost -30°C for the fish to bite is your thing, you should definitely go for it! 

Since we did not catch anything and almost froze to death despite the dry suits, our favourite moment was actually what followed - a cup of hot berry juice and a bowl of delicious soup (including a piece of reindeer meat for the meat lovers) in a traditional lavvu on a private island in the middle of the lake. Sitting on the wooden benches covered with reindeer skins around the amazing fire pit in the middle of the tent felt like heaven after the efforts in the severe cold of the Arctic! 

The best thing at the end of each day was our log cabin in the forest with a private sauna, which helped us cope with the crazy temperatures! Finnish guys take saunas pretty seriously and it is highly likely that you will find one in most of the houses, and even apartments, where you stay.

Lapland was a land of extremes where the almost unbearable cold went hand in hand with some of the most breathtaking sights on Earth. If it was not for the harsh temperatures, we would have been able to watch for hours the bright light of the sun setting forever over the snowy forest, the magical sunrise over the frozen Inari lake and, above all, the northern lights dancing over our cottage. Inari is also the place where, after many days of cloudy sky in a row, we finally got lucky - the sky decided to cooperate and we saw our first aurora borealis!

The scientific explanation for the northern lights and the southern lights (or aurora borealis and aurora australis, deriving from the names of the goddess of the dawn Aurora and the gods of the north wind Boreas and the south wind Auster) may sound slightly complicated. This natural light display in Earth's sky appears when tiny particles of the Sun, carried by the solar wind, hit and transfer their energy to the atoms and molecules of the gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere, which in turn give it off as another kind of energy - the colourful lights that we call aurora. These lights occur most often around the North Pole and South Pole because Earth’s magnetic field guides the incoming particles toward the poles.

I prefer the much simpler and more mystic explanation of the phenomenon in the various cultures of the Arctic people. The Finnish word for aurora borealis is “revontulet” which literally means “fox fires”. According to a Sámi legend, the lights are caused by a magical fox running across the Arctic fells who sweeps its tail across the snow sending a trail of sparks up into the sky. Sámi people in Lapland also believe that aurora borealis are the energies of the souls of the dead. 

For Cree Indians, the lights are a way of communicating with their ancestors, while for the Inuits of northern Greenland they are the spirits of the dead playing celestial games. 

Some Native American stories depict the northern lights as torches held by the spirits who were tasked with leading the souls of the recently deceased over the abyss to the land of brightness and plenty.

Seeing aurora borealis for the first time dancing in front of your eyes through the car window and realising that this is it is a feeling of pure euphoria and awe. Spotting it a second, third and even fourth time makes you feel like the sky has made you part of a sacred ritual and is writing some ancient hieroglyphs, trying to tell you something. And you just stand still, completely still, watching and listening… 

Our most breathtaking auroras were over the frozen Inari lake - it was definitely worth waiting in the dark and in the cold for hours… 

If the northern lights are one of your bucket list items, the best advice I can give you is not to book any tour but go chasing them on your own. In order to see aurora borealis, you need the 5G - 1/ Good (clear) sky, possibly away from the lights of a big city, 2/ Good (strong) aurora for which the app “Aurora” that you can download on your phone may help, 3/ a Good (dark and open) spot like a lake, 4/ Good (very warm) clothes like thermal underwear, and the most important of all - 5/ Good luck! We were also grateful for the window roof of our car that allowed us to stay in the car as much as possible and still be able to spot the lights! And another, probably useless for most of you, piece of advice based on experience - if you watch the northern lights from the shore of a frozen lake, do not go on the lake as the thin ice may crack and spoil your experience or worse!

After the aurora borealis magic, we headed north again...