Rovaniemi, the Arctic Circle and Inarii

Yep, I did the Arctic Circle today. In this area, it's a real tourist attraction. Santa has his home at the Arctic Circle, or so they would have you believe. You can even have your photo taken with him. For a price. Can't use your own camera, you have to pay for them to do it. Of course. Unfortunately for me, Santa was on his break when I was there, so i had to forgo the opportunity. Darn!! That area is really just one big tourist stop. Many souvenir shops, a post office to mail with the official Santa Claus postmark, or some such.

I did get my photo taken, with my own camera, standing on the Arctic Circle. I didn't write down the exact latitude, but it's stated as 66 degrees, 32 minutes and 35 seconds at the line. Or in one local publication 66 degrees 33 minutes and 07 seconds. So who knows? In any case, it's further north (or south) than I've ever been, and I'm going further tomorrow. And I thought it was something when I was in New Zealand and they touted the 45Th parallel. That is until I found it was about as far south as Portland is north.

There is one bit of trivia. Eleanor Roosevelt visited Finland in 1950. The local Finns built a cabin in her honor. It apparently was a rush lob. The saying is that the carpenter rushed out the back door as she came in the front. I'm not certain that this cabin is the original, or a reproduction, but it's a bit of history.

I then went back to Rovaniemi to return to the Arktikum. It was worth paying another admission to see the rest of it. I learned a lot about the arctic, the Sami people, the Roma who live in Finland, and the climate in general of the arctic regions. I'll forget most of it by tomorrow, but what the heck, it was really interesting. Seriously, this was one of the better museums I've been to. It's really worth spending a good bit of time there. Even a video of the northern lites.

And it cleared up one historical point for me. When I got here, I read that Rovaniemi had been burned nearly to the ground by the Germans during WWII. I thought the Finns were fighting Russia then, and usually, the enemy of your enemy is your friend, so why would the Germans burn Finnish towns? Because, it turns out, the Finns signed a separate peace treaty with Russia near the end of the war, and one of the conditions was to get the Germans out of Finland. So when the Germans left, they decided to leave with a scorched earth policy.

The town was rebuilt after that, to a design of a noted Finnish architect, ?? Aalto. He laid out the streets, it says, to look like reindeer antlers, if viewed on a map or from the air. If that's the case, I wouldn't recognize a reindeer if one came up and bit me, 'cause I've looked at the map a lot since I've been here, and I can't see any antlers. That's your history lesson for today. No, one more bit of trivia. Rovaniemi is the largest city in area in Europe, more than 8000 square KM. Lots of forest in the city limits.

And I topped of a drizzly day with an excellent meal at, of all places, the Santa Claus Hotel. It really is the best hotel in town, and the restaurant was very good. I felt adventurous, so I had the Finnish sampler plate. Elk, reindeer prepared two ways, Finnish cheese, Arctic char, and salmon, again prepared in two ways. Everything was delicious. You could have fooled me with the char. If i hadn't been told different, I'd have thought I had three varieties of salmon. Some gourmet!

Tomorrow I head for Inarii, my last stop in Finland. From there, it's a long bus ride to Nordkapp, or North Cape, the northernmost inhabited point in Europe. Don't know how Internet service is up there, so you may not get this, or any updates until sometime in July. But then, my cell phone has worked better here than it usually does in the states. On the topic of phones, I tried to buy a phone card, but was told not to by the salesperson. He said I wouldn't be able to find any pay phones to use it with in Finland, as everyone has cells. And so far, he's been right. I haven't seen a pay phone since I left Helsinki.

I'm going to put this in the drafts folder for now, and see if I can upload some more photos to the blog.

And now I'm well past the Arctic circle, in Inarii, the heart of Lapland. And it's raining Reindeer by the dozen today, so I won't see too much of it. A visit to a reindeer ranch in the rain, or a 4 + KM walk to the old wooden church aren't too appealing right now.

Bus ride up here was uneventful, except when we stopped for a break, and I saw the bus pulling out. Turned out, after my heart palpitations stopped, that he was just repositioning it. Another compassionate driver, too. He slowed down for two grazing reindeer on the highway.

Not much to report, as we didn't arrive until nearly 5 PM. With the long (24 hr) days, I did get a chance to saunter around the lake a bit. Tried to find the aforementioned church, but took the wrong path. Dinner was a very pleasant surprise. In a restaurant with chairs with Formica seats, you don't expect too much in the way of gourmet cuisine. But the dinner I had, whitefish and Salmon, with a reindeer salad, was excellent.

One more nite here, then on to Nordkapp. I'll close now, send this, and post it.