Climate Change affects badly the winter season and if you want to experience freezing cold and snowy winter you have to travel north (or south) to its extreme.
Lapland, for me, is the ultimate winter destination — piles and piles of snow, utmost temperatures and adventures, the Northern Lights; plus Santa Clause lives somewhere there 🙂
Huskies ride through a virgin snow in the forest is one of the most memorable adventures from our first visit to Lapland. We went early in the morning for a husky safari at Korvala (a village close to Rovaniemi, Finland).
The same place organizes reindeer rides so it’s better to combine those two activities in one day. The only problem is the time gap of 4–5 hours in between. So, after getting off the husky sled we’ve been told:
Take your time, guys!
Feel free to use the cross country skies in the shelter if you feel cold. See you in 4 hours.
This was our first encounter with the Nordic hospitality. Of course, we survived the cold weather, made several laps around the frozen lake, and started a fire in the shelter. Luckily, we had some sandwiches; toasted them and even made a picnic at the lake!
Ever since I’ve been wondering why it was so OK for our host to leave us half a day by ourselves… My explanation is not that they are unkind — the Nordic people are just extremely concerned about not intruding on your privacy, overly polite and do not want to overstep any boundaries.
We’ve returned to Lapland two more times since then and had great winter adventures … by ourselves. Just keep in mind the contrast in social behaviors — making small talks in Lapland gets awkwardness and confusion in return 🙂
Starting a fire in the snow is not easy…
So is understanding the Nordic hospitality.
So, I would not call the Nordic people cold or strange. We are all different and in the same way it takes efforts to start a fire in the snow, it’s not that easy to understand the Nordic hospitality.
