Rovaniemi, Lapland

 

Rovaniemi from Ounasvaara tower

 

I had never been to Rovaniemi, nor had IT. PW had been there twice and was not much impressed. This time we were going to do things right and BE impressed. 

Rovaniemi is a Finnish city right by the Arctic Circle. I checked, and there's plenty of Finland north of it - 1/3 of Finland's length spreads above the Arctic Circle, 2/3 below, approximately. Not many humans live so far up north though. Mostly reindeer and stuff. 

Rovaniemi is still on the area of continuous boreal forest. In the northernmost part of Finland it gives way to open fells and tundra. We had no time to go that far. Our train trip took nine hours one way, twelve hours the other. Trying to get to the tree line would have taken another four hours. We were planning to stay in Rovaniemi for two days, so we would only check out the immediate environment. 

Actually, what with hogging villages and forests, the borders of the city of Rovaniemi are huge. You could drive two hours and only stay within the city limits. Although "city" is a stretch. There's a decent size downtown, but outside of that it's mostly forest. 

Paul had some work things to do: His residency permit in Finland is thanks to a helpful professor in the University of Lapland, SM, who wrote an invitation to come and do research. PW wanted to meet up with SM and thank her for the help. IT and I wanted to come along, but on Thursday we were to amuse ourselves.  

Santa Claus' village

 Rovaniemi is the official home of Santa Claus. It's all for tourists, really, since all Finns know Santa Claus actually lives on Korvatunturi, a fell northeast of Rovaniemi, really out there, by the Russian border. But Santa Claus has a village and some sort of amusement part here in Rovaniemi. Of course we wanted to see it! PW had been there a couple times, so he didn't mind missing out. 

IT and I took a bus to the Arctic Circle, crammed with tourists, strollers and suitcases. Not expensive, unless you make the mistake to climb into the Santa Bus, which is double price. 

You can visit Santa for free which is as it should be. The picture price is exorbitant though! The smallest print was 30€. I took it anyway. Any price is worth it if you can get your teenager to actually look at the camera. And smile! It took Santa to get this to happen. Sorry this picture might be blurry, since it's a photo off the print. 

Santa was happy to meet some Finnish people - we were the first ones that morning! He asked us about our lives and promised to meet us at 6:30 pm on Christmas Eve in Turku, where we'll be spending Christmas with my family.

We really wanted to see reindeer, and we did. Santa's reindeer can take you on a little drive. They stood munching their lichen, looking so lazy and happy. 

 

The horns are impressive

We didn't buy the tour - there was no snow anyways yet, and the reindeer there were only led by their caretakers while tourists sat on the carriages. We took photos instead and fell in love. We want a reindeer now! One would surely fit in our backyard? 

Just look at this reindeer!

 Besides the reindeer, we visited Santa's main postal office and a store or two. Our favorite thing however was a café in Mrs. Santa's home. (Btw, Mrs. Santa sounds super official and not like her own person at all. In Finnish we say 'joulumuori', which is much better - translates as "the Christmas old woman".) We didn't see Mrs. Santa, but we had extremely good hot chocolate at the cozy café. The place was made right. 

 Before the snow arrives there is actually very little to do in Santa's Village besides shopping. I hear that during the snowy season there's all kinds of fun activities, like a snow hill for sledding. Late October there should already have been some snow, but it will keep getting later each year with climate change, so we will make do. 

 We met PW at Arctikum, a museum that introduces arctic life in downtown Rovaniemi, We liked the museum. It has a long glass roof walkway that you can see if you google it. This picture is from the other side where the entrance is. 

 I'm not good with photos. 

There was a large exhibition about the nature in the arctic and another about the history of Rovaniemi and Lapland. 

Our family in the Arctic

 The history of Rovaniemi was surprisingly touching, since it has to do with WWII. After two wars, Finland made peace with the Soviet, and the Soviet demanded that the Finns should kick out the German troops that had been in Lapland. The Germans felt betrayed and decided to destroy everything. Rovaniemi was burned to the ground and the rest of Lapland was covered in mines. This was called the Lapland War. Almost everything in Rovaniemi is built after 1945, despite the fact that humans have lived there for thousands of years. 

We got to build an igloo

 

And we saw an Arctic Bunny. He was hoping for snow. 

On Friday we rent a car and went to see the nature. It was dripping all day. "Köngäs", a Laplandish word for rapids, was something I wanted to see. There are big rivers in Lapland, but not in the South. We headed for the Arctic Circle Hiking Area, about 1/2 h from Rovaniemi. We walked a short hike, marveled at the rapids and made a fire by the neat lean-to shelters that the city had built for wanderers. 

Fire in the drizzle

 

Rapids at Vaattunkiköngäs

While we had a car, we also visited Ounasvaara, a large hill on the other side of the huge Kemijoki river from downtown Rovaniemi. There was a viewing tower - and of course a lean-to shelter with a fire ring. I think traveling around Lapland you should always carry with you something that you can cook on the fire. We had chosen "vihis", a vegetarian version of Finnish meat pies. We trusted that everything is good when cooked on fire and eaten in the nature, and we were right. 

Lean-to shelters get sad if you climb on them

  Even in the worst possible weather (which I consider +2 Celsius with drizzling rain to be) it was totally worth it. The night train without cabins, however, was not. Not only was it as uncomfortable as an airplane, they never dim the lights. Awful. But we survived. (We were too cheap to get expensive cabins for three people - that would have been two cabins. But in the morning, when we saw smugly well-rested travelers walking to the restaurant car through our relentlessly bright carriage, we were NOT happy.)