Our aircraft’s wingtips traced endless, snow-laden pine trees. It was early afternoon in February and the sun was dwindling. Unlike the carefully man-managed forests of Western Europe, there were no boundaries to hem in the vast spaces below. The trees stood jaggedly uneven in size and widely spaced: so fleeting is the summer that a pine can take a century to mature and must fight for every ray of light.
We landed at Kittila in Finnish Lapland, several hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. The coldness was raw and instant, the wind chill breathtaking; yet the pilot had reported an unseasonably warm daytime high of -9°C. The airport was one short runway and a spartan arrivals hall on a rink of compacted ice. As I trudged across the apron, I imagined myself a defecting spy and half-expected to find George Smiley waiting at passport control.
I’d embarked on a seven-day ski trip in the Finnish resort of Yllas. Like its sister resort Levi, Yllas has a truly arctic winter. In October some lakes freeze thickly enough to be navigable by truck and maps show seasonal roads crossing their waters. In December, the shortest day yields 46 minutes of light. The ambient temperature can drop to -50°C.
In Manchester, I’d foolishly decided to get Euros from a Finnish cash machine to avoid commission. Finland was after all a keen new member of the EU. I then discovered that neither Kittila nor Yllas possessed such novel technology and I boarded the airport bus with €4 to my name. With two large beers costing a truly Scandinavian €15, this was a problem. As my hundred-item Visa statement would demonstrate, so common was this dilemma for locals and tourists alike that packets of chewing gum and bus tickets could be paid for by credit card without fuss. The armchair explorer really could survive an arctic winter with two skis and one piece of plastic.
I hadn’t come to Yllas as a ski aficionado. I’d skied once before in the popular Swiss resort of Crans-Montana. I fancied myself an intermediate skier because I’d survived my own inept enthusiasm. Better skiers than I told me that Yllas, whose slopes rise from 200 to 700 metres, didn’t offer enough diversity or challenge to engage the advanced skier for long.
It did however offer a friendly learning environment, largely free of the competent but intolerant central Europeans cramming Alpine slopes. When my black runs ended in farcical calamity with limbs and paraphernalia spread across the hillside, I generally found an affable Finn had picked up most of the pieces while I was still eating snow. I improved my parallel turns and learned to spot studious pity from 50 paces.
Practically and culturally, cross-country skiing is of far greater importance to the Finns than the frivolous downhill variety. Walking uphill or downhill, through crystalline woods or across frozen lakes, the five to eighty-five year old locals sliced through the landscape with speed, grace and irritating ease.
How hard could it be? I hired cross-country skis for a day and neglected to have lessons. I spent ten minutes moon-walking and a further hour teetering like a new-born foal might if it had electrified planks strapped to its hooves. I tainted the pure air with a blue fug of obscenity. In true British style, I politely declined local help, insisting I’d get used to it. The locals believed me as only a Martian could find cross-country skiing tricky. I fell badly and hobbled to my hotel, muttering and occasionally slapping myself to keep warm.
My hotel in Akaslompolo was a quick ski or a very long limp from the slopes. My room offered triple glazing and a sauna in the bathroom to help melt away the daily aches. The cafeteria served reindeer stew or sushi, depending on whether Western or Japanese guests prevailed. While the hotel and other bars were friendly if uninspiring, the frightening cost of drinks steered me towards debatably healthier extra-curricular activities.
For true refreshment, find a Finn prepared to take you to their lakeside cabin. While the sauna warms to stellar core temperatures, your host will chainsaw a person-sized hole in the metre thick lake ice. You will be encouraged to strip to your smalls, sit in the sauna until your fingerprints dissolve and then skip outside and into the freezing water. Do this slowly and you won’t do it at all. I felt like a red-hot poker in a bucket of ice. My gulping lungs and lump-hammer heart tried to leave through my mouth. My male pride would have fitted in a pixie’s matchbox. The shock was exhilarating and deeply cleansing. Awakening to the joys of masochism, I eagerly rinsed and repeated.
That evening I felt overdressed in two layers of underclothes and one-piece thermal bodysuit. I’d joined a nocturnal skidoo safari and had been briefed to expect a balmy –20°C with wind-chill and chafing for overzealous ice-plungers. Our guide Reiner was native to Akaslompolo and revelled in its remoteness. He said the village had escaped being razed by the Germans during the war because they hadn’t known it was here. He and his compatriots spent the winter running the ski resort, keeping huskies sleek and reindeer fat, making Santa Claus real and ensuring that skidooing and ice-fishing are rarely lethal. He would spend the brief and humid summer in the fathomless forest, hunting, fishing, getting drunk and stargazing.
With a sharp eye for the incompetent, Reiner linked me to the machine’s ignition by a dead-man’s cord and told me how to start and stop. Hand signals were exchanged and six snarling half-tracks volleyed into the pellucid night. Skidoos accelerate smartly and steer less so. Reiner set a hair-raising pace and showed that speed, noise and whip-cracking wind-chill are best experienced on twisting and pitted tracks lined by trees that positively will not get out of your way.
We halted deep in the forest. A hexagonal Lappish shelter found form in the shadows, darkly solid and stocked with firewood and reindeer pelts. Reiner lit a fire with sleight of hand and made coffee. Cleaving to firelight in a landscape transfixed by frozen distance, he told tales of bears, wolves and hard liquor. I’ll be sorely disappointed if the mundane business of skiing is the highlight of my next winter holiday.
