Mother Nature Makes Amends in Finland

I may have mentioned – about 700 times – that it rained on our wedding day. We dragged our family and friends all the way to the Caribbean in order to get married on a perfect white sand beach next to pristine turquoise waters, only to get poured on when it mattered most. Not the day before the wedding; not the day after the wedding; hell – not even at a better time on the same day. Indeed, the bad weather moved out approximately 12 minutes after we said “I do.”

Are there bigger injustices in life? Yes.

Did everything work out just fine in the end? Yes.

Am I ever gonna stop whining about this? No.

Whatever. Alanis gets me.

But here’s my theory: I think Mother Nature feels bad about that whole thing because ever since that fateful day, she really has gone out of her way to hook us up. In fact, the instances where the weather has completely wrecked our plans have been vanishingly rare.

I mean, sure, there was the time when everything was on fire in Oregon which, admittedly, wasn’t great, or when it wouldn’t stop snowing in Colorado, or when it was 127,000 degrees in Idaho, but when it comes to us going somewhere specific for a particular reason, more often than not, Mother Nature has come through for us.

And so it was with our trip to Finland.

First… to the map!

As you can see, Finland is a long, narrow country the top third of which is located inside the Arctic Circle. The capital, Helsinki, is located at the southernmost tip of the country (marked by a green flag). The northern section, outlined in red, is Lapland. The population of that entire region is less than 180,000 people. (To say it is “sparsely populated” would be an understatement.) The green flag in Lapland is the resort we stayed at in November, 2024.

Why did we stay at a resort in the most sparsely populated region of Northern Finland in November of 2024? Because the only way I was gonna convince Kevin to go to the Arctic Circle during the cold weather months was to dangle something cool in front of him, and 2024 was expected to be a historically good year for seeing the famously difficult-to-see Northern Lights, and Finland is one of the best places in the world to see said Northern Lights.

In fact, there are three countries known for their Aurora Borealis viewing possibilities: Finland, Iceland, and Norway. What sets Finland apart is that it is host to numerous resorts that offer glass topped igloos and cabins, along with plenty of winter activities to keep guests occupied during the short cold days – think snow shoeing, cross country skiing, and snowmobiling. This way, even if you don’t get to see the Aurora, you’ll still have an enjoyable “winter wonderland” kind of vacation.

All of which sounded great to us.

The only problem was, up until just a few days before our trip, it hadn’t snowed in Lapland.

While the norm has long been that snow starts falling there in mid October, and becomes widespread and consistent by mid November, in late November of 2024 nary a flake had fallen.

As the days ticked down, I started getting nervous that we were about to fly all the way to Northern Finland just to sit in our cabin and stare at each other for 4 days.

Fortunately, just hours before our arrival, Mother Nature was all: “I gotchu!”

Phew!

The Resort

In order to visit Lapland, one must fly into Helsinki and then take another flight to one of the tiny airports in the north.

And when I say “tiny,” I mean tiny.

As in, this is the whole airport:

It is REMOTE!

There are numerous resorts dotting the landscape in Lapland. The one we stayed at offered various packages or a la carte booking options including breakfast and dinner, our transfers to and from the airport, and discounts on the various excursions we booked.

One of the coolest things was the cabins. From the outside, they are large and nicely set apart from one another…

And from the inside, they’re cozy, comfortable, and designed entirely to allow you to enjoy the Aurora.

There was a large lodge where we had breakfast and dinner each day, and where we relaxed and socialized…

And there was a separate building where we’d go to get geared up for whatever excursion we were about to do. At the beginning of our stay, we were fitted with the basic outfit – a jumpsuit style, waterproof, insulated jacket and pants, as well as waterproof boots. We kept those items throughout our stay. We’d then pick up any additional gear we needed depending on the activity we were doing. (The resort had instructed us to bring our own base and mid-layers as well as hats, gloves, scarves, and wool socks.)

And did the Northern Lights make an appearance?

What did I tell you about Mother Nature? She feels very, very bad about that whole thing.

We only saw the lights one night, and they weren’t bright enough to see with the naked eye, but we didn’t care. We could see what looked like wispy clouds in the sky and as soon as we aimed our phone cameras at them, there they were! It was a super cool experience and we were very happy to have experienced them.

I will say one downside of these kinds of resorts is that you have to book your excursions way in advance – when you don’t know what the weather will be. Our resort offered several nighttime roadtrips where they would take you to their privately owned lands even farther north in the hopes of finding more solar activity and less light pollution. The problem is, you have to book these non-refundable trips beforehand and they go no matter what – even if it’s cloudy or snowing. At that point, you’re just bouncing around the back of a van for an hour or two knowing full well you won’t be seeing any aurora.

On the evening of our nighttime trek, it was cloudy but we went ahead anyway because, well, why not? The views from the “camp” were still cool…

and they had a large yurt-style tent with a nice fire around which we could chat with each other and the guides

Best of all, along the way, we met some other Americans with whom we became fast friends.

One last point about the Aurora – a typical feature of these Finnish resorts is that the cabins have alarms (light or sound) that you can set to notify you when the Aurora is visible from the resort. Nowadays, however, most of the resorts just tell you to download an app that sends an alert to your phone. We found these apps to be highly accurate.

Dogsledding

Of course, there was one particular activity that would have made the whole trip worth it even if we hadn’t seen the Aurora, and that was taking a ride on a dogsled. The crazy part is, not only do they offer the opportunity to take a ride, they usually offer you, the dumb, inexperienced tourist, the opportunity to DRIVE the damned thing.

Which is a startlingly terrible idea.

Fortunately for us, because there wasn’t much snow on the ground, and this was the dogs’ first weekend pulling the sleds in snow, the experts decided the experts should drive the sleds rather than us dummies. Which was A-OK with us. Plus, that meant we could just relax and play with the dogs, which is what we really like.

I mean, come on…

For the experienced adults, however, life is basically an endless cycle of FREAKING OUT as they prepare to run – barking, whining, and pulling forward against the ropes that are holding them back – running full speed, and then collapsing in a pile before restarting the process again.

They LOVE it.

And I – as a ‘woman of a certain age’ – loved this dog’s strategy for keeping cool.

Here’s a quick video I shot on our first morning at the resort (fair warning: sound is on). We’d woken up to this cacophony of dogs barking and I went out to see what was going on and saw the sled teams as they were about to take off for their runs. The amount of energy these dogs produce could power a small town, and they do it again and again and again:

Don’t have a headache yet? Here’s the up-close version:

And here’s one I took from our ride through the snowy forest (and no, this is not an activity for people who have back problems):

Snowmobiling

Another day, we went out on a guided snowmobiling trek through the extensive lands surrounding the resort. It was cold…

really cold:

and because the sun only comes up for about 4 hours a day in late November, this is about as bright as it got.

I didn’t take many pictures (because: frostbite) but we thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

Sleigh Ride

Reindeer? Check. Sleigh? Check. Perfectly made-up woman who takes absolutely no shit from the recalcitrant reindeer under her command?

Check!

One of the excursions the resort offered was this reindeer-pulled sleigh through the snowy forest. While we weren’t sure quite what to expect, it ended up being one of the most entertaining events of our visit. Mostly because of Hank.

This is Hank:

Hank is a reindeer with a huge case of Main Character Syndrome.

Before we even started the excursion, the guide told us to just ignore him. She said, “Don’t look at him, don’t pet him, don’t interact with him at all.”

She led the reindeer who pulled our sleigh, while Hank was pulling the sleigh behind us.

(By the way, I have no idea what his name is. I just called him Hank because it seemed fitting.)

In any case, throughout our ride, he kept coming up on the sides of our sleigh

When it comes to selfies, he was like a teenager on Instagram.

Anyway, when not fighting our natural instinct to pet the hilarious animal, we enjoyed the exceedingly peaceful trip through the snowy, silent forest.

And when the trip was done, we got to feed Hank and all the other reindeer in their pen…

It’s Hank’s world and we’re all just living in it.

Helsinki

At the end of our trip, because there were no evening flights back to Lisbon, we spent an additional night in Helsinki. Fortunately, our new friends were there too, so we went out for drinks, dinner, and a wander around the snow-dusted capital. Helsinki has all the hallmarks of a Nordic city – clean, organized, quiet, competent.

Speaking of competent, in researching a bit about Finland, I was impressed to learn just how forward-thinking their government is. With Russia sitting on their doorstep, the Finns have basically built their entire society around dealing with a constant threat along 800 miles of their border. Military training is mandatory for all men, and the military is considered one of the best in Europe. Additionally, the country has designed all its infrastructure to keep out or slow down an invasion. For example, every bridge has a series of hidden locations where soldiers can drop explosives and take the whole bridge out in seconds in order to slow down an invading force. Same with key highways, overpasses, and tunnels.

Additionally, Finland has over 50,000 bomb and nuclear shelters, ensuring protection for every one of its citizens should it be attacked. In addition to a requirement that every large residential and commercial building have an underground bunker, there are huge public spaces (think gyms, pools, and hockey rinks) built over 25 meters (82 feet) underground which, in a matter of hours, can be converted into shelters for thousands of people. These dual-use structures ensure taxpayers get to enjoy their use on a daily basis (and get comfortable with the idea of being underground), while also providing protection for them in case of attack.

Smart!

Final Thoughts

We really enjoyed this trip. It was very different than our usual city visits, but also not our typical hiking-focused nature travels. The only thing we didn’t get to do that I would have liked to try was snow-shoeing, but with only a couple hours of daylight to work with and the resort’s excursion schedule, we just didn’t have time. Fortunately, there are plenty more snowy locales to explore, so we’ll just keep it on the list for another cold-weather destination.

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Note: Thanks to all for your kind comments about my post about Thor. Since he passed, I’ve been trying to find healthy things to fill my time with (apparently, eating cookies while sobbing doesn’t qualify as “healthy.”) When I told Kevin I wanted to write a post about Thor, he got this website up and running again, and has since updated a bunch of plug-ins and programs, but there are still a lot of bugs to work out. So, if you run into any issues – images or video that won’t load, broken links, disappearing comments – would you please let me know ([email protected])?

My intention is to write up some travel posts like this one, talk about life in Portugal, and write about what it’s like to live in Europe – both good and bad. I already went back to Thor’s post and added a bunch of photos to make it more complete. I may also write a travel guide to Lisbon since we often get requests for recommendations.

Anyway, bear with me while we get this site up and running again and please let me know if you run into any issues or have any suggestions.

Thanks, and have a great week!