It was a cloudy Saturday in mid-February when we set out for our brief drive to Heathrow Airport for the start of a week-and-a-bit of playing in the snow in Saariselkä in Finnish Lapland. This would be our third visit to this part of Finland, and it was going to be interesting to see if much had changed. As we were taking an early flight, we decided to stay in Heathrow’s Hilton airport for a cheap one-night-at-the-weekend deal, and leave the car in a pre-booked, pre-paid BAA long-stay parking lot. The hotel itself is quite interesting, being built around a large atrium containing the reception area and various restaurants, onto which faced some of the rooms; I glad to say that we had an outwards facing room, with even a bit of view of the runways.
Up early next morning to go the terminal, and take our "short flight" to Helsinki. We planned to spend a few days and nights in Helsinki itself, taking in some of the department stores, riding the trams around the city, and having a few decent meals before setting out to Finnish Lapland where the food is perhaps a little more basic. On this visit we were staying in the Hotel Palace Kämp, which is right next to the main harbour to and from which travel the huge ferries to Stockholm. At this time of the year, the harbour is quite frozen, so the ferries are built to have some ice-breaking power.
After a couple of days we headed off to the kotimaan (domestic) terminaali at Helsinki. The taxi driver was perhaps a little surprised that we were heading anywhere but back to England, as it would seem that not many independently-travelling foreign tourists are yet brave enough to head for “The North”. The internal flights to our destination, Saariselkä, (and as we have discovered, to other internal destinations such as Rovaniemi) have “free” (that is, unassigned) seating, so there is often a bit of a scrum to get on to the flight, and to sit with the person or persons with whom one is travelling, but, as on previous trips, we succeeded.
Our brief flight northwards was through clear skies and we could see the countryside below getting whiter and whiter, broken only by the dark-green of the pine and birch trees below. Finnair flights, I might add, have the nice feature of a downward-pointing camera with the picture showing on the overhead screens, which makes it easier for everybody on board to see the view.
Eventually we landed at Ivalo airport, collected our baggage, and then took our first steps outside. It is always a bit of a shock, those first few steps. There is typically a strong cold wind blowing, snow and ice everywhere, and oversized, padded people, heavily dressed against the weather, waiting to meet and greet friends and relatives. In our case, we take a bus; there is a handy shuttle bus which goes from the airport to Saariselkä, and which visits each of the three or four hotels in turn. It was interesting to note a difference from our previous visits, during which there was just one quite small bus shuttling back and forth; there are now two larger buses which travel in convoy; we felt that this was not such a good thing, as it meant that Saariselkä, previously little known, was becoming more and more popular with tourists.
We duly arrived at our hotel, the Hotelli Kieppi, where we waited to check in. Another change, not necessarily for the better. On our previous visits, our fellow guests were always Finnish, but now, to my surprise, there were large numbers of French folk milling around in the Reception area. Not only that, but the all-Finnish staff had been augmented by somebody who clearly wasn’t Finnish, although we didn’t yet know where she was from. Our secret hidey-hole had become known outside Finland!
No matter; check-in completed we went to our room, which at least was unchanged. The rooms at this hotel are in log-cabins, separated from the reception / restaurant / ski-storage block by a few metres, and are simply furnished with a lot of wood, and a good, hot shower.
It was time for dinner! Our favourite restaurant has always been in another hotel, the Tunturihotelli, which is about ten minutes walk along ice-bound footpaths, and features, again, a lot of wood, and comfortable booths with, yes, wooden benches and a wooden table. The menu is simple, but filling. Without remembering the exact details, we probably had a couple of Hampurilaiset (burgers - one with cheese, and one without), “Ranskalainen perunat” (= french Fries), a couple of glasses of white wine and some ice-cream to follow. Not only is it simple to prepare, and they do it well, but it is also simple to order in our pidgin Finnish, which we like to try to use, and which the help, not all of whom seem to speak much English, kindly encourage us to use. Or, perhaps they are just humouring us!
The next day dawned cold and bright (as it usually does in those parts in February!) and we went off to rent our skis for the week for later use on the cross-country trails which criss-cross the area. I say “we” and “our”, but in fact I, a long time ago, determined somewhat painfully that skiing is not “for me” so I clump around on some snow-shoes which I bought on eBay while my wife cheerfully skis around me.
Basically, our days out follow much the same pattern; we either go snow-shoe walking or skiing in the nearby nature park (“Urho Kekkosen kansallispuisto” – named after former Prime Minister and President (not simultaneously) Urho Kekkonen(1)) for a few hours, break for a warming lunch, and then do more of the same for a few more hours and stop for a somewhat larger dinner. Lunch is always easy to find in this area; most restaurants and hotels run a fixed price good-value soup-lunch (keittiö lounas), although a dictionary is always useful as the soup changes daily and is named only in Finnish.
One fine day we decided to snow-shoe our way up a nearby hill, “Kaunispää*” (literally, “beautiful head”, also the name of a ladies’ hair-dresser’s in town.). This has a fine café, with everything a hungry, well-exercised person can need on a cold Finnish day. I always think that places such as these have a special attraction. They generally tend to be full of healthy, cheerful people with their outer clothing in a steaming heap, and their skis, snow-shoes and snow-mobiles parked outside. Warming food and a nearby open fire complete the sensation of gemütlichkeit(2) as it’s called in German. I’m sure that the Finns have a word for it, but I am not sure what it is!
Now, our own hotel’s restaurant (“Riekonlaula” – song of the grouse or ptarmigan) has something of a reputation as a singing restaurant; in other words, it’s a place where after dinner, folk-singing is laid on and you can join in (or not). Our first dinner on our first visit to this place a number of years ago happened to be such an evening; we were having a quiet dinner in the middle of the restaurant when I noticed large numbers of people coming in – they didn’t seem to be eating, although a few of them bought drinks from the bar. They all sat down, a little expectantly, all facing the same way – clearly something was going to happen but what? After a while, it became clear as a couple of men with guitars came in, song sheets were passed around and some rollicking folk-singing commenced, involving everybody (maybe 40-50 people) except for us. We could only catch one word in several; much of the time words like “tunturi”, “lumi” and “poro” (mountains, snow and reindeer) seemed to predominate, but after a while I managed to get a spare song-sheet and we joined in as best we could, knowing neither the songs, much of the language nor the tunes! Some of the songs were in Saami, and so we had even less of an idea how to sing them! This activity continued for some two hours and was a wonderful introduction to that aspect of Finnish culture.
One night on this current trip, we learned that “tonight was a singing night”, so we decided to have dinner there, and then join in the singing. The atmosphere was very different this time. Firstly, we found that the restaurant had been divided into a large area for a buffet (for tour groups) and a much smaller area for people such as us, not there on a package. So, there were two or three Finnish couples in the small area, forty or fifty on-a-package folks in the buffet area and us. At some point the buffet ran out of food, but not out of people to eat it, which was the cause of great and noisy consternation from the buffet area. We joined the Finns in looking somewhat haughtily at the package folks as they discussed, at high volume, the lack of food. It has to be appreciated that Finns are a somewhat quiet, reserved people, and there is often an immense contrast between them and visitors from other countries, such as the French folks on the package who were somewhat more outgoing!
Unfortunately, worse was to come. After we finished dinner, the guys with the guitars came in, and started to play; however, the package folks continued talking throughout the performance, basically treating the show as “background music”. After perhaps four or five songs the guitarists gave up, packed away their equipment and left. A shame, we felt.
As a complete contrast, we went one night to the local church where I had seen advertised on a poster “an evening of Saami songs”. As this poster was written only in Finnish, I thought we had a good chance of being the only non-Finnish visitors there – and I was right; a roomful of quiet, respectful Finns and us (also on our best behaviour, of course).
And so our week progressed, until, finally, we reached the day of our return journey to Helsinki and London. As we had a few hours at Helsinki Airport before our London-bound flight, we decided to go to a science museum a short taxi ride away, where we spent a couple of interesting hours, and then we returned home tired but happy.
1. the astute might notice a difference in spelling between the two words “Kekkosen” and “Kekkonen”; this is not a typo – “Kekkosen” is the regular genitive form of the noun “Kekkonen”)
2. Anybody with a knowledge of the vowel harmony rules of Finnish might take exception to the apparent breaking of the rules with this word “Kaunispää”; however, it’s not a typo – although written as a single word, “kaunis” and “pää” are in fact separate words with an independent existence and the vowels don’t need to match through the combined word
First published in VISA issue 80 (August 2008)
No comments:
Post a Comment