Arctic Circle (5 of 5): The ARKTIKUM Museum

Our last day in Rovaniemi we visit The Arktikum Museum a museum dedicated to teaching about arctic peoples, traditions, history, wild life and environment. The exhibits were great but we couldn't take pictures of most of that (we snuck a few). I was really struck by the building itself, though. Most of it is underground, practical in that cold climate and also mimicking the way nature shelters itself from the harsh winter in the north. You enter through the crecent shaped building at the back of this picture, then decend under the highway and into the grand hallway that is flanked on each side by exhibit space.
Looking down the whole length of the building, from the river to the entrance.
Chairs made from birth trees and reindeer hides. Much of the building uses these and other indigenous building materials.
We meet a polar bear,
... explore the inside of an ice chamber ...
... see a very old sled...
... hug a brown bear ...
... see some arctic fish ...
... and Kalee and Charles make an important proclamation.

There must be a traditional story about these geese and the little charter who is leading them, but we didn't hear it.



Kalee dances to some contemporary Sami folk music. We ended the day at a great restaurant at a mall next to our hotel and Kalee had perhaps her favorite moment of the whole trip - a free bouncer in the mall.

Arctic Circle (3 of 5): Rovaniemi

The city of Rovaniemi sits at the confluence of two rivers ( the Kemijoki River and its tributary, the Ounasjoki). Rivers are always important strategic points in war and Rovaniemi found itself in this situation in WWII. At the end of the war when German soldiers were retreating, they destroyed the entire city. Literally. The bombed out the bridge and leveled nearly every building.
90% of the city was leveled. Have you ever been in a city built entirely in the 1950s? Not really very inspiring architecturally. Starting with a blank slate Alvar Alto (of course) designed a new street layout that looks like reindeer antlers ... ... and new municipal buildings. We never ventured out far enough in the cold to see those buildings. Maybe they were more interesting than the main street.

One morning, though, we did walk down the pedestrian mall to the river. We saw this ...
... an Alvar Alto sculpture of the Northern Lights.

After the war they re-build the railroad bridge and then, more recently, added this bridge a bit further down river.
Short bench?
No, just lots of hard-packed snow.
In Lapland you can make a snowman that stays all winter long.
Kalee takes a bow.
Now, a few state, according to wikipedia:

• average temperature: +0.2 °C (+32°F)
• annual rainfall: 535 mm/annum (21 inches)
• snow stays on the grounds 183 days a year on average
• lowest temperature ever recorded: −47.5 °C (−54°F), recorded on January 28, 1999
• highest temperature ever recorded: +30.6 °C (+87°F)
• the midnight sun can be seen from June 6 to July 7

Arctic Circle (2 of 5): Santa's House

On Thursday we made the long-anticipated trip to Santa's house, just outside of Rovaniemi right on the arctic circle.The coolest part was going into Santa's Chamber where we got to see the giant machinery Santa uses to stop the earth from turning on Christmas Eve so he can deliver presents to all the children of the world. Photography was forbidden and I also couldn't find any pictures on the web so you'll just have to take my word for it - walking through all those creaky gears and cranks was really neat. Then we all had our photo taken with Santa. He is a very sweet man, over 300 years old, he said, but doesn't look a day over 200. Instead of the real picture, here's Kalee with a fake Santa.


Here is the line of the arctic circle, itself.


Santa lives 6204 km from New York.
Naturally, there are many crafts people who live near Santa. Some of them have shops that we visited. Here Kalee is standing near a large amethyst rock that is native to Lapland.
We stopped for a bite to eat ...
played a little ...


... and visited Santa's main post office.

It was COLD outside. Yes, that says -20 C. (which is -4 F). Our last morning in Rovaniemi the temperature was -32 F!! Forcasters have the sense to call this "bitterly cold."
But we didn't let the cold stop us. Slide across the Arctic Circle, anyone? Kalee had a great time with this ice slide. No sled required.

In this kind of cold you can build houses out of ice. The had a whole ice village but it was closed when we were there.

We visited more shops with some beautiful hand-crafted wares,
and got to see some jewelers at work. Kalee has had about enough of this, but ...... she got her energy back as soon as we went outside to wait for the bus.

Arctic Circle (1 of 5): On the Train

Wednesday Feb 17th we boarded the train in Jyvaskyla for a three-train 8-hour journey north to Rovaniemi and the Arctic Circle. Our route is in red.The trains were great. Kalee and Charles had a lot of fun exploring each train, going between cars and walking from one end all the way to the other. Some of the trains (the new high-speed ones) have play-cars for children ...



... and a game room where we played yatzee.
These new trains are quieter than some of the older ones we road on, but when it gets up to top speed - 140 km/hr or 90 mi/hr - the whole thing shakes and bumps so much we could hardly drink our coffee and Charles could barely write down our yatzee scores.

And here is what we saw of the Finnish country side.
Trees ....
trees ...
trees ...
frosted trees ...

harvested trees ... [there is a huge timber industry, here, but no deforestation because over 100 years ago they passed a law that you have to plant a tree for every tree you cut down. Seems to be working as the vast majority of the country side is still forested despite seeing train after train full of logs.]
a few farms ...and lots of old train stations.