Into the Arctic Circle

Our journey into Finland began with rain quickly turning the overnight snow to an icy slush.  We arrived at Morrum station for our train journey to Copenhagen airport to discover we would have to catch a bus after our first stop and pick up the train a couple of stations further on at Kristianstad.  Luckily we had a little bit of time to spare and we made it to the airport, checked in with 10 minutes to spare, cleared security and arrived at our gate just as our plane to Helsinki was boarding.  We breathed a sigh of relief as we had a train connection to make in Helsinki.  In Helsinki we caught a taxi to the Helsinki Central Station where we boarded the overnight train to Rovaniemi the capital of Finnish Lapland.  We had a comfortable night in our sleeper cabins and disembarked in Lapland at 7.47am.

The temperature was -17C and we were certainly glad of our warm clothing we had packed as we waited for the bus to take us to Pyhathantuni about an hour away.  Phya is a ski resort well into the Arctic Circle and we are here for 4 nights for our Lapland Experience.  We hope to see the Northern Lights - the Aurora Borealis - while we're here.  On our way to Phya we crossed into the Arctic Circle and watched the sunrise.  The Land of the Midnight Sun is also the Land of the Midday Dark and today was the first day where there was a sunrise since the winter solstice a week ago.  Today we officially had 15 minutes of sunlight; we had about 5 hours of daylight.





Our travel agent met us and we were kitted out in our outdoor clothing which is designed for the freezing temperatures here.  We visited the interpretation centre for the local National Park, which was the first in Finland, where we saw interesting exhibits of the local birds, animals and geology






After lunch we went on a reindeer trail where we travelled through the forest on reindeer sleds and saw wild reindeer.  We were very thankful for the warm blankets.  After the sled ride we warmed up around the open fire in a traditional lapland tent before feeding some reindeer.  All of the reindeer here are unrestrained and are free to come and go.  Mostly they stay around because there is plenty of food for them here and they don't have to dig through the ice and snow for their food.

Watch this space for more on our experience in the land of snow and ice......