Silence in Lapland

For some Christmas mood, photos from Finnish Lapland, January 2014. They are from a ski resort village called Levi – the nearest airport is in a town called Kittilä.

Lapland was magical and majestic. The snow-covered trees looked beautiful in their stillness. What I loved the most was that it was very quiet there; at times there was just complete silence. Time felt frozen, in a very good way.

You noticed yourself start to slow down and detach from the busyness that rules your normal day.

I hiked up a hill to this cafe – it was actually open though covered in ice!

We stayed in Lapland for a week and during one or two days we experienced some very cold temperatures of -38 °C! The batteries in our cameras froze and we discovered the limits of our California-designed, Chinese-made phones’ tolerance to cold. Ski lifts were halted and snowboarding had to wait.

Not that I was there for winter sports! As my regular readers might know, I’m more of a summer person. I was just there to take in the scenery, get massages at the beauty spa, drink hot chocolate with a book, and hang out while Hubby did all the snowboarding. I was the one with the frozen camera problem. But it was worth it!

Dressed in plenty (and I mean plenty!) of layers (I recommend merino wool garments), I was surprisingly not that cold outside, except for my face. The part of my face that I couldn’t cover warmly was the part around my eyes and I felt like my eyeballs were going to freeze.

Stairs to the café

Dressing and undressing while going outdoors and indoors took a lot of time. It might be above the Arctic Circle, but the moment you came indoors with all those clothes, you started sweating.

Unfortunately, we didn’t see the Northern Lights. So we’ll be going back one day.

Contrary to the lukewarm and grey winter weather in southern Finland today, Lapland in north Finland two years ago was white, with colorful skies. More photos coming in my next few posts.

Merry Christmas!