I spent a full 48 hours in Finland before I actually saw the sun. The sky fluctuated between dark and extremely overcast—the kind of weather most people want to run from in winter. But it was exactly what I had in mind when I booked my solo trip to Lapland in November of last year. Instead of beaches and sunshine, a cold, snowy, totally off-the-grid trip was exactly what I needed. Plus, I hate wearing bathing suits and Frozen had just become popular again. It made sense.
I also had yet to take a vacation in 2019. The entire year had been a mixed bag of emotions: a combination of family triumphs, personal heartbreak, and global tragedy. The thought of traveling for pleasure just hadn't occurred to me. But when my winter blues kicked in around late September, I became strangely motivated to shock my system before I rang in 2020. I did some research, settled on Northern Finland, asked my doctor to adjust my antidepressants, and looked forward to my upcoming solo trip. I had expectations of total isolation and freezing temperatures, soul searching, and lots of writing. It was to be my own personal version of The Shining, only with more reindeer and fewer axes.
Boy, was I wrong.
My first stop in Finland was Ivalo, a tiny town of about 3,000 people located 100 miles above the Arctic Circle. It took me four flights to reach it from my home in Kansas City—the last being a shaky, one-hour ride north from Helsinki—but my crippling jet lag disappeared when the air hit my face on the final tarmac. It wasn’t as cold as I had anticipated, but the air was crisp and fresh, like jumping into a pool on the first day of summer.
Those first two sunless days in Ivalo were filled typical Arctic activities: feeding lichen to reindeer, visiting a husky farm to try my hand at dog-sledding, and snow-shoeing across a frozen river. Most of the adventures were booked through Aurora Village, the first hotel on my itinerary. Pretty much every outdoor winter sport was available, including the aforementioned snow-shoeing excursion with Juha Tuunanen, the hotel’s CEO who offered us a fire-building lesson—a necessary survival skill for any Lapland resident. We sat around the fire and drank cups of warm blueberry juice, watching the sky turn from gray to black at 3:30 p.m.
That night, I joined in on the Aurora Sleigh Adventure, where guests sit in a covered, heated sleigh pulled by a snowmobile. We drove for about 15 minutes before setting up camp surrounded by a pitch-black sky. The two snowmobile drivers—both young Dutch men who work in Lapland during the winter season—fed us marshmallows and more blueberry juice. I asked one particularly handsome driver if he ever dates during his months up north. “Well, I downloaded Tinder when I first got here,” he said. “But my closest match was 300 kilometers away, so I just deleted it.” We waited for the skies to clear up (and roasted a lot more marshmallows) for about an hour before packing up and heading home. No Northern Lights, but a good night nonetheless.
When I climbed into bed that night in one of Aurora Village’s 28 glass-roofed igloos, the snowy trees over my head made me uneasy, as if I had a horde of very tall neighbors peeping through my windows. As I fell asleep, though, I started to see them as a protective shield rather than a band of intruders. Needless to say, this trip so far wasn’t exactly the type of last-woman-on-earth isolation I was seeking. To my surprise, it was better.
For the second half of my trip, I relocated a little further south to Levi—still above the Arctic Circle, but about a 3.5-hour drive from Aurora Village. Levi is more developed than Ivalo, with ski slopes and a quaint downtown area. But you can still find that pristine Finnish air if you know where to look. And where to look is HaliPuu, or the “Hugging Tree” forest.
As my shuttle pulled up to the entrance of HaliPuu, I was greeted by Ritta Raekallio-Wunderink—manager of the forest’s tree adoption operation—who shared the story of her family business as we started walking into the woods. After acquiring the plot of land after World War II, the paternal side of Ritta’s family spent decades growing the forest and preparing the trees for timber. But when the time came to cut down the trees, her father (known affectionately as “Pappa”) couldn’t bear to part with them. As an alternate way for the family to make money, he offered up his beloved trees for adoption by “tree-huggers” from around the world—hence, the hugging tree forest we see today. Ritta’s eyes welled with happy tears at the end of her explanation. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I always cry when I tell that story.”
We continued walking for a bit into the forest, a Seussian landscape filled with Lappish pines bent over from the weight of snow. The air here was impeccably fresh, evidenced by the abundance of beard lichen—a type of vegetation that can only flourish in areas with low to zero pollution. Ritta stopped us when we reached a clearing in the woods. The sight before me was like the Arctic’s version of an oasis: cackling campfire, fur blankets draped over benches, and hammocks swinging between trees in the breeze. A man was busy heating kettles and stirring pots over the fire. He introduced himself as Steffen, Ritta’s husband and the self-proclaimed “campfire barista.”
Over the next hour, Steffen made us chai lattes and passed out lingonberry marshmallows to roast over the fire. Then Ritta moved each of us to our own hammock, tucked us in with blankets, and rocked us back and forth before moving to the next person. (“We want you to feel like a Finnish baby,” she said.) The sun had come out by this time, so my view was filled with ancient treetops backlit by pastel clouds. The silence was only briefly punctuated by the barking of dogs from a nearby husky farm. When Ritta came back to wake us up 30 minutes later, I told her that I felt like the trees were really taking care of me. She smiled and nodded in understanding. And as much as I hate to admit it, the sunshine really did make the whole experience more magical.
My intent when I left home for Finland was to leave myself, my life, for a week. To go to the frigid Arctic Circle, frolic with some reindeer, and not have to talk to another person. Imagine my surprise when I left my trip feeling more like George Bailey than Jack Torrence. I can easily understand why Finland is frequently dubbed the happiest country in the world: Northern Finns might be geographically isolated from the rest of the world, but they are not isolated from each other—the sort of social environment where introverts like myself can thrive. Everyone I encountered seemed comfortable in their own skin, happy to share a story or mug of hot blueberry juice. Even when I outwardly bemoaned the lack of Northern Lights visibility, the general response was, “You never know when things will change.”
I found that ease and optimism to be quite contagious, holding it with me as my four-flight journey back to Kansas kicked off. The feeling has wavered since returning to the daily grind, but perhaps if I can conjure it back to full force, I can ward off the winter blues for good this year—even with the sun shining garishly after 4 p.m.
