Journey to the Land of Forever Winter pt 2

Husky Safari

Our first activity was a trip to a husky kennel outside of Saariselka.  When we arrived, we were funnelled into a round, wooden Saami hut, fed tea and cinnamon rolls around an open iron hearthplace and allowed to ask questions about the facility and the huskies.  Huskies are not native to Finland at all, actually; they are native only to Siberia, Alaska, and Canada.  Until recently, the Saami people only used reindeer for transportation by sled.  I couldn't help but wonder how genuine the experience was given the lack of husky history and culture in Finland: was the kennel here only for tourist reasons, or do the natives actually use them for legitimate purposes?  Soon thereafter my brain answered "Who cares, PUPPIES!!!"  They took us out to a caged area where we could play with some of the younger dogs.  They were all very well trained, friendly, and allowed everybody to pick them up.  They were puppies, though, so I had the pleasure of having one gnaw on my hair and ear before letting him down.

Just adorable.  The dog is pretty cute, too

Puppies!

The love of goofy animal pictures is universal

After the dogs nibbled enough holes in my gloves and my head, we were shown the basic skill set needed to drive a sled.  To my disappointment, they didn't teach us any vocal commands, so I didn't get to yell "MUSH!"  We divided into pairs and were assigned our sled.  Each sled had five dogs.  It's amazing how much power and endurance the little guys have; they really weren't even big dogs, just lean and fast as hell. We were led in a train guided by several snowmobiles, so the ride was very linear and scripted.  We would stop every so often so that stragglers could catch up or to switch positions.  Whenever we stopped, you could see steam rising off of the dogs bodies and they would roll in the snow to cool off.  The two dogs closest to our sled were less interested in cooling off, though, as they would become possessed by demonic feral instinct and ferociously barking and snapping in each others faces.

It's a lot colder than it looks...

Gorik and I

If you'll notice, my driver, Gorik, doesn't seem as happy as I am.  They encourage the drivers to ease pressure on the dogs as much as possible by pushing with one leg or getting off and running along and pushing the sled, especially when going up a hill.  I'm completely out of shape, the dogs run fast, and we were in sub-zero temperatures, so both of us were exhausted after our shifts.  The whole ride took about an hour.  After we finished we were allowed to take pictures with our dog bros.

My leading sled dog bros

Norway and the Arctic Ocean

Our next event was a bus ride to Bugoynes, a small fishing village on the coast of the Arctic Ocean in Norway.  As if we hadn't had enough time on the bus already, we spent another 5 hours driving further north.  The temperature actually rose as we approached the Arctic Ocean because, even this far north, the warm gulf stream waters regulate the region's temperature, which usually stays above -10 (14 F).  It is so far north that for two months in the winter there is absolutely no Sunlight, and two months in summer there is daylight all day.

Our first stop, and most memorable, was our dip in the Arctic Ocean.  Somehow, it had become a thing for visiting tourists to take a dip in the icy arctic waters (the bay is very inviting).  The Norwegians didn't understand why but since so many people did it they built a Sauna close to the water so people wouldn't freeze to death.  I like Norwegians.

The cozy Arctic Beach

So we warmed up in the Sauna before taking our dip.  Despite the Sauna's purpose, it's still a decent walk from the actual water's edge.  Most people make the mistake of running to the water; this is the wrong way A. because you look like a sissy and B. because the frozen ground hurts like hell when you run.  Our guide, Stewart, instructed us the proper Finnish way to take a dip is to walk in calmly and deliberately, showing no emotion.  The hardest part of the walk was over the rocks; there is no clearly defined path right to the beach, so we had to walk over slippery frozen, watermelon sized rocks to reach the shore.

This video is my second dip in; the first time, I lost a sock, hence my asymmetric dress.  If you'll notice, the ocean stole my second sock this time around...

Anyways, after our dip we went to a restaurant nearby where an old Norwegian guy gave us cod soup and showed us a video he made of his town.  The man was like the Grandpa everybody wishes they had: you could tell he couldn't wait for each busload of student tourists to come so he could show them his video, which was a just a mash up of pictures of the town in no apparent order to a bizarre soundtrack that didn't make any sense.  Lots of the photos had bizarre color filters and photoshop effects that he undoubtedly thought were fascinating.  Every couple of pictures he would stop the video and enthusiastically point out "This is the church!" or "This is the Midnight Sun in Summer!"  He was proud of his video and proud of his town.

The town's main industry is actually Norwegian King Crab fishing.  In the 1950's, some crazy Russians transplanted the King Crab from the Bering Sea (In between Russia and Alaska; the same crabs as on Deadliest Catch) to the icy waters outside Scandinavia.  The crabs thrived, so now this town is basically the Norwegian version of St. Paul Port on Deadliest Catch.  Cool stuff.

The Northern Lights

While in Saariselka we tried to see the Northern Lights a few times.  They typically come out between 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., and the best view is on the hill overlooking town.  The hill is, of course, also the windiest place in town, and when the cold drops to -30 C, it doesn't matter how many layers you have on, you can't stay out for much more than an hour.  The cold made it difficult, but we still managed to see the lights twice.

Unfortunately, the lights were pretty underwhelming.  All the pictures you see of them are like the one above, with very bright, vivid colors (to clarify, the above picture is from google).  The first lights we saw we actually thought were clouds because they were a dull grey and looked like somebody just took a huge paint roller to the sky; nothing like what we expected.  The second time they were much better: they formed the actual ribbon shapes they are known for and were a light bluish teal color, but still very grey.  On photo, though, it came out like this:

The lights are no doubt fascinating, but it's still disappointing to realize that most of the beautiful photos you see of them aren't what you'd see with your actual eyes.  The green in the photo was barely visible to our eyes, and the lights are only that bright because it's a long exposure picture.  Most pictures of the Northern Lights are long exposure, allowing the light and color to stack, making them much more prominent.  Still, freezing my feet and fingers off was totally worth that picture.

Reindeer Farm

Our final destination was a Reindeer Farm outside of town.  Most Saami people are reindeer herders / farmers, so they are everywhere.  Reindeer are like regular deer but with antlers: they are dumb and poop everywhere.  We visited the farm at the time when the reindeer were shedding their antlers (which they do naturally) which is why some of them don't have any in the photos.  

We got in these little sleds and the reindeer pulled us around a tiny track at a snails pace.  It was weird and and made me feel like I was a fat tourist.  Then we went into a traditional Saami hut, ate processed wieners and listened to a Saami woman sing.  It wasn't all that remarkable.

So that's about it all of my experiences in Lappland.  After the reindeer farm we started our return trip to Sweden.  

Journey to the Land of Forever Winter pt 1

Lappland is the far northern region of Scandinavia known for its frigid climate, the Aurora Borealis (northern lights), and as the home of the Saami people, an indigenous population with a shamanistic, pagan culture that relies heavily on reindeer herding.  We travelled to Saariselka, a small town in the center of Finnish Lapland 250 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle that is covered in snow for all but two months of the year.  We began our journey with a five hour bus ride from Vaxjo to Stockholm and then boarded a cruise ship that sails between Stockholm and Helsinki.

Our travel path from Vaxjo to Saariselka

The cruise takes seventeen hours, but is a popular choice because it is cheap and, much more importantly, you can buy alcohol duty free on it (earning it the nickname "The Booze Cruise").  Even though the price really isn't significantly better than in Sweden or Finland, the Nords jump on any opportunity to save money on alcohol.  In addition to the duty free shops there were plenty of overpriced restaurants, bars, clubs, a casino, and a Finnish guy with an accordion, beret, and that stereotypical striped French turtle neck who was trying to sing French songs (to the displeasure of my fellow French travellers).  We sailed overnight and arrived in Helsinki at 10:00 the next morning.

Helsinki

Helsinki is the capital of Finland and a beautiful city with a short yet interesting history.  It has a unique blend of Swedish and Russian culture and architecture as both countries have controlled it in different periods of history (it was actually founded as a Swedish settlement).  I loved the city so much that I'm going to write a full blog post on it later; for now, I'll just leave a few photos...

The Baltic Sea frozen solid

The Orthodox Church

Statue of Alexander II

The Lutheran Church

The Harbor

A lovely day for a nice walk on the frozen sea...

The Gulf of Finland from our ship

The Santa Claus Village

The bus ride out of Helsinki took another 17 hours before we arrived in Saariselka.  Everything slowly became a purer shade of white the further north we went; non-evergreen trees appeared as stationary white clouds floating above the ground as their branches were frozen solid.  We made frequent stops at gas stations that could be called the Finnish equivalent of WaWa: they had a restaurant, a grocery store, WiFi, just about any kind of food you could possibly want on the road, and staff on duty 24 hours a day.  

As I got off the bus on one of our more northern stops, I became acutely aware of a booger protruding out of my right nostril.  I unashamedly went digging for gold but, to my surprise, came out with nothing.  After several more fruitless attempts I realized that this phantom booger was, in fact, nostril hair that had frozen after only several breaths.  Man, we had arrived.  Ok, not really, we still had about six hours left of northward driving before we arrived in Saariselka.

Before we made it to Saariselka, though, we stopped at the Santa Claus village, a tourist trap that lies right on the Arctic Circle in southern Lappland.   Did you know that Santa Claus lives in Finland? I sure as hell didn't and remained suspicious of this Finnish impostor, but everybody else went into a Santa fueled frenzy (complemented by sleep deprivation).  Every year, the village receives thousands of letters from kids too young to know that Santa actually lives at the North Pole.  If want to spread this deceit and enjoy lying to little kids, you can buy post cards which the villagers will then send to your niece or nephew on Christmas.  Or, if you're feeling particularly lonely, you can have a post card sent to yourself, which apparently people do.

The coneheads never went home; they just went to Finland

The village is run by Santa's little helpers, who have to hang up their dignity along with their clothes every morning before putting on their bright red onesies and pointy hats designed for a conehead.  They were basically larger, hairier, more masculine versions of the demonic mall elves in "A Christmas Story."

Anyways, the main attraction here is that you can get a photo taken with Santa because, unlike the Santa in your local mall, this one is real.  You get to wait in a long line outside of a sealed room where Santa sits.  Along the walls are pictures of celebrities and Japanese businessmen (I have no idea) with Santa.  The only one I recognized was Conan.

Alright, this place can't be that bad if Coco came here

After you get out of the room you get the chance to buy your photos.  Five post cards for only 30 euros!  Nothing says the Christmas spirit like capitalizing on tired parents with young children (or, in this case, college students...).  The whole experience was fun, from my perspective at least, as I watched the little child come out of college students from around the world to throw money at an attraction designed for young children.  That being said, it's probably the most disingenuous and touristy place you'll find north of the Arctic Circle.

Saariselka

Six hours later we arrived in Saariselka, a small village nestled in rolling hills covered in taiga forest and snow.  The town has one main street with a grocery store, a few hotels, and several restaurants and souvenir stores.  On the outskirts are log cabins and a few streets of suburbs, if they could even be called that.  We stayed in a wooden cabin with all the basic amenities and, since this is Finland, a sauna.     Saunas are, in fact, a Finnish creation, which came as no surprise to me because they are everywhere. In Finland, it is a common practice to warm up in the Sauna at 80 - 100 degrees depending on humidity and then go for a swim in a hole in the ice.  If you don't have a heart condition, studies have actually proven that this practice has many positive health benefits.  So when you see pictures like this:

             

                    Or this:

You can bet your ass they're not just goofy internet memes.  Now, I don't know how often people drink coffee on a porch in neck deep snow, but here's a couple pictures I took of some old people swimming in an ice hole in Helsinki:

Just another morning in Finland...

I used the sauna in our cabin once.  After spending 15 - 20 minutes in 70 - 80 degrees (158 - 178 F), we rushed out, jumped into the snow, and then ran back in.  It was a strange sensation; I don't think my body knew how to react to such quick and drastic temperature changes because I was left with burning, freezing, tingling sensation like I had rubbed mint toothpaste all over my body.  It was so cold it still took several minutes to get warm again.

Anyways, our cozy cabin had heated floors but was otherwise unremarkable.  What was remarkable in Saariselka was the 1.5 km sledding slope, which is supposedly the longest one in Europe.  Here is a video of me talking to myself while going down it.  When I yell for apparently no reason it's because I pass a couple of my friends, not because I'm a maniac..  Just kidding I don't have friends which is why I talk to myself.

Saariselka also has skiing slopes and some hills with great views, but is otherwise just the hub for other activities in the vicinity.

Just, you know, shoveling the roof

A log Cabin

View from the top of the sledding hill

In the interest of keeping this post at a reasonable length and because I want to give my other experiences the length and description they deserve, I'll finish this post here.  In part 2 I'll talk about the most memorable experiences from the trip, including a husky safari, a trip to the Arctic Ocean, and seeing the Aurora Borealis.

Cultural Misconceptions

I was going to make another post about Swedish culture in general and how Swedes, on the whole, are different from myself and other Americans.  But after spending a decent amount of time with Swedish people, and also speaking with my friends back at home, I think I'd rather talk about our similarities.  If there's one thing that I've really learned, it's that, beyond the language barrier, we're all really the same.

As humans we inherently classify everything into groups.  We love to stereotype and generalize; it's a fun and easy way to poke fun at people and helps us to feel like we belong when we find a group we associate ourselves with.  In Europe, especially, where there are so many different languages, cultures, and nations packed tightly together, there are stereotypes and jokes for everything.  French people are snobby and their women don't shave their armpits, Germans are punctual, orderly, and drink too much beer, Spanish people are late to everything, Canadians are overly nice, and the Dutch... Well, being  responsible for Dutch Ovens, Dutch Rudders, going Dutch, and Dr. Evil, they're pretty much the worst people on Earth.

In the end, though, stereotypes can end up being false just as often as they are true.  Their main purpose isn't to give an accurate portrayal of a certain group of people, but to satisfy our brain's need to classify them into a group different from our own.  Right now, I live with a German who doesn't like beer at all and another who is rarely on time.  One of the biggest assholes I've met here has happened to be Canadian.

My point is that these cultural groups we assign people to can be fun, but are ultimately stupid and misleading, not because they aren't always true, but because it makes us think people are different from us when, at the base level, they really aren't.  Swedes and Germans are both supposed to be fairly punctual, and from my experiences, I would say that is more often true than not.  But punctuality (or beer consumption) isn't a personality defining trait.  I bet that anybody reading this, no matter their nationality, has friends who reliably late or on time to events.  But you don't think of him/her as either German or Spanish.  That's just who they are.

In the original post I was drafting, I was going to write about all of the things I've noticed in Sweden that are different from the America.  You would read them, and, if you didn't know any better, create a mental image of Swedish people based on what I wrote.  Somehow, I was going to drag the following out into a whole post:
Swedish people are...
Punctual
Liberal
Non-Religious
Distant and shy until you get them drunk
Attractive

There's your Swedish stereotype.  But seriously, if I removed "Swedish" from the description, these traits could easily describe millions of people all over the world.  Hell, I would say most of these adjectives can be used to describe myself (other than attractive, of course).



These are not cultural traits, they are human traits.  The average Swede is probably no different from the average American any more than an introvert is different from an extrovert or a Texan from a New Yorker.  If you can look past the stereotypes, you see that we share all of the important things: we all want to live, laugh, love, travel, make friends, drink, party, have fun, and prepare ourselves for the future.  Personally, I can identify with Swedes better than with the average South Carolinian, but that doesn't make me any less American.

So the next time you meet somebody from a foreign culture, don't identify them by their nationality; you're depriving yourself and them of a more natural and fulfilling conversation.  More importantly, you're making yourself look bad.  If there's anything that is worse than judging somebody else by their nationality's stereotypes, it's confirming your own country's stereotypes.  The Europeans like to stereotype Americans as loud, obnoxious attention whores and ignorant, so when you confirm this bias by calling a German a Nazi or asking if Paris is a country, you're making all of us look bad because they'll just think "damn, Americans really are stupid."

Instead, just buy them a beer and speak to them like you would any other person and you'll have a new friend in no time.

Skål!