After a number of posts from the borderland between England and Wales, the Marchland, with villages and churches, where nature and culture are weaved together, I will change the subject to Northern Finland in a number of the coming posts.
Jen and I went there last year in January. We flew to Helsinki and then a local flight to Kuusamo. Kuusamo is just south of the Arctic Circle and a latitude just north of the northern tip of the Baltic Sea. We then drove further north to a little cottage – complete with sauna of course – and stayed there for a week.
The purpose was to see a special snow phenomenon called Tykky. I will try to explain that a little bit more in later posts, where you can see it in my images as well. But I was also hoping to see the Royal Eagle, the villages in this part of Finland and frozen rivers and streams, where everything converged into black and white – with large amounts of snow, mainly white!
Some of “our photographic expeditions” are undertaken alone. Just Jennifer, me and a rented car. But this adventure would have been impossible without our guide, Paavo Hamunen. Paavo knew everything about nature, wildlife and local weather conditions in this remote part of the world. And he drove the snow scooters that took us to remote parts close to the Russian border, just 2 kilometres away, to see the Tykky (just be patient, I will explain later what it is!) and to photograph royal eagles from a hide
But this first post is only a few photos about where we were staying. Jen and I had our own hut situated at a lake, Oivangijärvi, north of Kuusamo. And in a separate hut was the sauna, a very cold walk in wintertime, but our host had kindly arranged a second sauna inside the main hut, where we were staying, so we didn’t have to run naked in the snow!
And between Oivangijärvi and the next lake, Singerjärvi, a small stream went which once had supported a watermill.
Sweden has lots of lakes, but it is easily beaten by Finland. If you haven’t travelled there, take a look at a map and you will see that the whole country is criss-crossed by oddly shaped lakes creating a beautiful landscape.
