Phone camera pictures only – Finland and the North

66°33′45.9″ to be precise. The Arctic circle – a zone defined by having at least one day a year of total sun, and conversely of course at least one day when the sun never rises. The further north you go, the more that extreme becomes. In northern Finland that gets to be about 50 days of either in totality. I was headed there with little idea of what to expect.

Sunset over the Gulf of Bothnia, as my plane approached Oulu in Northern Finland. I’d never heard of the Gulf or Bay of Bothnia, but it’s there – seawater that seems miles from the open sea. Sandy beaches, marshy patches and no real tide. I didn’t know Oulu was the ‘Gateway to the Arctic’, nor that it was Finland’s second city. Did you?

Below: Map of the region showing the position of ‘the Circle’.

My 2500 Km route in purple…

My hotel view of my first night in the sub arctic. The Oulu river thundering past into the Bay of B. This was as dark as it got. Below; the next morning and jolly Finns riding to work on a fine but cool day. They don’t get many opportunities to wear shorts or T shirts. This was close.

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Breakfast traditionelle I guess. A continental buffet that has become the easy option for hotels – although it must be VERY Scandi to throw in the berry compote as well as uncooked salmon. At £92 a night I considered this hotel cheap. I could have had the whole family with me… Not.

Above: Some place names could be made from your Scrabble leftovers…

I wondered about keyboard settings. ä & a happily coexist

Below: Some places are well known…

There was a frisson of excitement in the car as I approached Sweden’s border town of Haparanda on the first morning. I was the only one in the car but felt it was worth stopping for – Sweden’s most Northerly IKEA. Indeed the WORLD’S; so double frisson.

In the same lot, a Lidl – but sadly, like reindeer moss, the chain had spread further north and this one couldn’t claim any prizes except for the oddity of selling Fuller’s beer.

Somewhere about 3 hours north of Oulu, I passed into the Circle. I’d chosen the route north that tracks the Tornio river – a meandering behemoth that looked black and glassy, cold and dangerous. Liquid obsidian.

On the left bank Sweden, the right Finland. On the 400km drive north, I crossed the border 4 times choosing the parallel road on either side. One minute Swedish Krone, the next Euros. Was it like crossing a US state line – one minute Electric Chair, the next, Lethal Injection?

Do they have customs? Stupid question. None of it. You are politely invited to slow to 30 kph to cross the box girder bridge; but no sign of Policeman Plod. No peaked caps and being waved into the ‘naughty lane’. As a post script: On my 2500Km tour I crossed borders 8 time and never saw an official. In fact I never saw a policeman or patrol car.

The Arctic Road

Trees and more trees. My Garmin SatNav was handier than you’d think. Google Maps works fine BUT it does not give you ‘Elk Alerts’ or news of Reindeer crossing the highway en masse.

By 5pm I had reached a place called Enontekio, where I had booked an Airbnb cabin. Pawing at a map back in homely SN10, I hadn’t appreciated how remote Enontekio 99440 was. Jukke, the ‘host’ said we should meet at the only place on the road north – I wouldn’t find her cabin in the woods without her. I wouldn’t find anything. I’d just done 250 km of pine forest with only the occasional passing car – there was hardly any way of knowing anything. I was entering the stuff of movies.

Below: The Trading station where I had to rendezvous with Jukky Jukke.

Note the prominent display stand of insect repellent

Within 10 minutes a souped-up-clapped-out boy-racer swept into the car park of the local store. Billowing dust onto the watching Alsatian ‘guard dog’ and all the wares hanging outside. It was Jukke, who beckoned me to follow her into the woods. Her car had extra headlights, special seat belts and what looked like a roll-bar. Mine was a Hertz VW Polo.

So into the deep woodland to my cabin. A typical Finnish hut [I later came to appreciate] complete with its own sauna, outside loo and a view of Sweden 50 metres across the river. Oh, and signal. 4G. So I could, during the sunny dusk, look up how many wolf attacks had been recorded locally.

I was in another world. Stuck somewhere between the North Pole and places I’d never heard of. On the banks of the Tornio river with only a group of diehard fishermen sitting on the bank in front of me. I quickly dubbed them (in my own active mind) The ‘Deliverance 3’.

[The importance of that epithet only being valid if you know the classic film ‘Deliverance’.]

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No English, and what language they did speak certainly wouldn’t be ‘table talk’ in Helsinki. They’d caught fish, more fish and more; they had cleaned and scraped the things on the ‘gutting basin’ right on the bank and were now smoking them in another little loo-like shed next door. Swigging vodka and chortling, I did worry about my personal safety as I stoked the fires for a Scandinavian ‘bath ‘. Without meaningful speech I was shown a panopoly of the catch of the day on their iPhones. Truly impressive stuff.

Below: Bath Time.

A good heat after foraging for logs and brash in the unending forest.

Out there in the ‘unending woods’ was my fuel for the evening – along with the reindeer moss, which looked to be the lighting material. In the end newspaper was better.

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Sometime after this I scoured the net for dangerous Finnish animals. Up cropped the wolf, bear and angry moose and a thing called the wolverine. It didn’t mention Deliverance Man.

Back at the trading station for free morning coffee I bought some tinned elk meat, reindeer pate and a reindeer skin. I felt I’d done my bit for the local economy on this remote arctic road. Mrs Putikki had had 100 euros off me with hardly a smile.

White is the colour – the purer the dearer.

The main line. Apparently a reliable way to go all year ’round.

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North North North. Through a wilderness that the map described as Lapland and Finnmark territory.

The warnings got more frequent and the animals larger.

I never saw an elk except on the side of a tin.

It’d be wrong to say the wilderness was bleak, there were trees and shrubs – a few flowering plants and endless water. Periodically you’d pass the only car for miles, parked up in the bushes. The guide book said Scandis were passionate about fishing and the outdoors – so, as there was inevitably a lake nearby I left it at that.

Colour in the arctic. Willowherb was one of the few flowering plants to brighten the journey.

Reindeer roamed everywhere. I established that most were ‘owned’, with some of the tamer ones behaving like New Forest ponies who just about got out of the way of the car and little else.

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Above: Another cabin in the woods. This one with a security lock to prevent scratching bears  or people with screwdrivers. The shower and sauna arrangements were powered by electricity, so no need to traipse into the woodland in search of fuel.

Another day; another decision. The E6, Norway’s longest trunk road where I met it after leaving Finland. Wiki tells me that its entire length from the prosperous south to the wastelands around Kirkenes is nearly 3200Km. Kirkenes being literally the end of the road in the distant north just a stone’s throw from Russian Murmansk and the frozen Oblast region. How many other European routes can last 3200 km?

I was entering Norway.