Mythical abode
Land of Snow
Sanjay Austa’s brush with Lapland was nothing less than memorable. He calls it a place filled with snow, exotic arctic adventures and ancient traditions.
The moment we land in Helsinki, we are whisked off to our onward flight to Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland. Till then I had known of Lapland as a distant, almost mythical place that existed only in children’s story books. I had never thought I would bypass the fashionable Helsinki to rush to this Finnish province that lies well beyond the Arctic Circle and alternates between six months of continuous light and continuous darkness.
Adventure-packed
Tourists arrive in Helsinki in hordes only to take their connecting flights or trains up north to Lapland where snow, freezing temperatures, exotic arctic adventures and ancient traditions await them. Most tourists come for the adventures and the rest to indulge in the fairytale exotica it’s associated with. The former come equipped with skiing gear, snow boots, snowboards and other winter-sports paraphernalia, the latter come with kids and head straight to Santa Claus Village, 20 miles from Rovaniemi.
I wasn’t sure if Santa Claus excited me, though I did stand in a queue with excited children for almost an hour waiting for one of Santa’s elves to show me in. The ‘official’ Santa Claus was remarkably the same rotund chubby-cheeked man from my childhood story books.
He greeted me a predictable Namastay and asked my colleagues if they have been good girls in a manner he would ask any naughty school girls who met him. I was happy to get a picture with him to reinforce the Santa Claus legend among my nieces and nephews.
The snow wasn’t an attraction either; not when you have trekked neck deep in the Himalayan mountains. But the moment you mentioned India, the Finns thought of the terrible heat and decided you must be cold to the bone in this weather. For me the psychological satisfaction of having crossed the Arctic Circle was a big draw and one is allowed to rave as a latter-day Marco Polo, for they give you a proper certificate on your personal conquest. For many however, the psychological satisfaction is enough for once they cross the Arctic Circle, they head straight back home.
But I was heading further north to the two small resort towns of Suomu and Kemijarvi where I would indulge in a few exotic adventures I had only seen on the National Geographic. My host Jari had already given me a taste of one such adventure within an hours of my landing in Rovaniemi. At the reindeer farm where he drove us in the fading evening light, I was a bit disappointed to see only two reindeer.
But the jovial Reindeer farmer more than made up for it. He was a Sami — the original inhabitants of Finland — and like all Samis, a traditional reindeer farmer. He took us inside a Kota — a traditional conical shed with a hole on the top — where around a fire he told us rehearsed stories of the Sami people and their lifestyle.
I was egging for the reindeer ride. However, once on the sleigh I realised I was on my own when with a flourish the farmer set the reindeer trotting in the snow. I pulled at the reigns but that made the reindeer start into a gallop. I tugged at them lightly. I whistled, I made low sub-human guttural noises but the reindeer was not interested. He was soon at the ear-nibbling distance from my colleague in a sleigh in front of me.
She was scared and screamed at me to stop my sleigh. I wished I had paid more attention to the Sami farmer. But after a few nerve wracking minutes of this scary ride, I saw his joker’s hat in the distance. We were back in the farm. The reindeer were trained to run a predetermined course and were not programmed to hark to any ministrations from nervous tourists. As if to bring home the irony, the farmer presented me the ‘reindeer driving license’. It was in fact his elaborate visiting card and I was asked to leave my thumb impression on it for good measure.
Many visual spectacles
At the Husky farm in Suomu however, there were more than a handful of dogs. There were two Arctic breeds — the bigger alaskan malamite and the more ferocious greenland dogs. Marek, the young Husky owner was as enthusiastic about the dogs as the Sami farmer was about tall tales. He would not let us go near the dogs until we had heard every last detail about them including the names of each dog.
The dogs whelped in the enclosure and I suspected they were as keen to see us. Soon, half a dozen of the adolescent greenland dogs broke into a ferocious fight. Marek did not stop them even when one of them bled. He said the dogs had a wolfish ancestry and were having domination fights.
Suddenly I was not so sure if I wanted to cuddle the dogs even though their thick warm arctic fur was very tempting. But I was however they are overfriendly with humans whom they loved to push on the sleigh. That made me a little less guilty as I climbed into a Husky Sleigh with three dogs reigned in to pull it. They pulled the sleigh through the pine and cedar forest until they caught a female dogs scent.
They stopped to sniff the air and Marek, who rode with me said the scent of the female in heat arouses them and it makes them forget their human-task at hand. After a series of abrupt halts by the air-sniffing huskies we were back in the farm. The dogs were left sniffing for the scented female while we made our way to one of the log-cabins in Suomu.
Coming to Lapland and not witnessing the spectacle of the Northern Lights is just like coming to India and not seeing the Taj Mahal. The lights are a scientific phenomenon called Aurora Borealis and can be vividly seen from Lapland. I did not realise until I had packed my bags for Lapland that a photograph of Northern Lights had been my screensaver on my laptop years ago.
The photographs are rare as the sighting happen only during a particular time of the year and on a clear sky. It is indeed a rare phenomenon and a delight for any photographer. But I was not so lucky. The cloudy weather did not let up but Jari our guide took us to a Northern Light Centre where a genial lady gave us a presentation on Northern Lights on a projector.
The screen was on the ceiling and we lay looking up at the swishing and the swirling of the beautiful array of lights. Lying there I dream of clear skies when I come to Lapland next.
