WILD WOOD
AS THE PLANE from Helsinki descends to Ivalo, I spy thousands of golden birch trees blazing sun-bright across miles of fell and feel a jolt of pure joy. In a few hours, I have jumped a season. Back in England, September is still summer-warm. But high above the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland it is late autumn, and a promise of the first snows hangs in the air.
I take a bus for the last hour of my long journey north, around the shores of vast Lake Inari to the small town of Ivalo. I was last here three years ago. The events of 2020 put paid to an idea to return for a snowshoeing trip; but after an enforced hiatus, I’m excited to slot more pieces of my Lapland jigsaw puzzle together.
INTO THE WOODS
Finnish Lapland has a distinct charm. Its fells are little lower and more rounded than their Scandinavian neighbours, but what they lack in drama they gain in a kind of sweetness. Trying saying the Finnish (plural: ) – the cadence of the word as it rises speaks to their character. The Finnish fells are islands in an arboreal sea; verdant, highly eroded and gently angled, breaking above the endless forest. If the weather turns as you wander the high ground, shelter and the promise of a campfire are not far away. You can feel the taiga here - that huge biosphere that binds the north as it threads through Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. And you’re more likely to encounter the big beasts of the boreal – elk, reindeer, perhaps even wolf or wolverine – than hordes of hikers.
