Episode summary:
I travelled to Finland for some Finnish winter fun: experiencing the snowy beauty of its forests and walking across a frozen lake. Crunching over the icy surface during the brief hours of daylight is one of the best things to do in Finland in winter. You can usually walk on lake ice in Finland from November to March but check with the locals first to make sure it’s safe. Finland’s lakes in winter are ideal for cross-country skiing too and zooming across on a snowmobile, so include those activities on your Finland winter itinerary: what to do and where to go. And at the end of a serene winter day warm up in a traditional wood-fired Finnish sauna at a cabin in the woods.
So, do yourself a favour: listen to this podcast about the quiet and calm of a frozen lake in Finland, then get yourself over there to the World’s Happiest Country to experience the real thing.
Transcript – S1 E1: Quiet and calm on a frozen lake in Finland
This week we’re crunching over a frozen lake in midwinter in Finland.
I’d like to report that being out here, on the ice, brings a feeling of complete calm. It certainly feels serene, surrounded by snow under a clear pastel-blue sky, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that I’m standing on the surface of Finland’s deepest lake. It’s frozen more than a metre down, the locals assure me, and indeed, while dipping my korvapuusti cinnamon roll in my coffee this morning in my cabin, I saw a team of snowmobiles trundling across it in the far distance. If it can take their weight, I tell myself, surely it can take mine. If I was Finnish, I wouldn’t think twice about it. I’d have been conditioned to iced lake walking from an early age.
Winter wonderland
I continue on, my boots crunching satisfyingly as they leave impressions in the few centimetres of snow lying on top of the ice. It snowed last night, in fact it snowed all of yesterday, giving the snowman I’d made an extra cloak and coating the forests one more time. It’s January and it’s been snowing here off and on since early November, so the seemingly endless stands of mighty fir trees are almost completely covered. There’s virtually no green left to see, it’s all Arctic white, a genuine winter wonderland.
The snow layer on the lake ice is so perfect and untouched by anything human made that I feel a little guilty as I trudge over it. It’s so rare these days to experience a thoroughly natural place. But there’s a good chance it’ll snow again later this evening, erasing all evidence that I was here. There must have been a fairly stiff breeze over the lake last night too, because the snow has been sculpted into little ridges and shapes that resemble lenticular clouds.
A small drift of snow has been blown around the tip of a granite boulder, the only non-white thing out here. I’ve seen this boulder before, in summer, when the lake was inky black. It’s part of a tiny islet and not even big enough to moor a rowing boat on but now it’s locked deep in the ice as the lake and its surrounding forests sleep on through the long sub-polar winter.
The one season I’ve not experienced here is spring with its famous ice cannonade. My local friends tell me when the lake ice starts to melt it cracks into sections. The noise, apparently, is like cannon fire, warning humans and animals alike that the winter lake-walking season is most definitely over.
It’s mid-afternoon now and the sun is already setting, having only lazily got up a few hours ago. It’s spent the few hours that it was present, hugging the southern horizon, barely above the treetops.
The weather forecast predicted a top temperature of –8C today, and I’m guessing this is it, the positively balmy mercury zenith of the day. It’s going to plunge to –16C tonight.
As I walk, my breath creates misty phantoms in the air, and I sing to myself just so I can watch the little clouds I can make in the frigid air. Ah, the things you can do when you’re on your own and nobody’s watching. Marvellous.
Literary landscape
My route takes me close to the shoreline now and into the shadow cast by the forest. The scene takes on a very different character. I lose the sun’s feeble warmth and am reminded again of winter’s grip. I stop to rest by another granite boulder and think of the much-loved Finnish author and creator of the Moomin books, Tove Jansson, who wrote magically about secret mysterious creatures that only emerge in the depths of winter: “the lonely and the rum”, she called them in her book Moominland Midwinter.
Are they with me out here now, lurking under boulders, planning mischief?
Warmth and light
The temperature’s dropping and the wind is picking up, moving the giant firs just enough for a few snow bombs to fall with a thud and startle me. I love this place but I also respect its extremes. I set off again and pick up the pace to keep warm. By the time I round a small headland the sun has set and the ice has turned from white to a colder cerulean blue. In the forest a few hundred metres ahead of me is the sight I’ve been waiting for. A beacon in the gathering dusk: light from flames flickering around my sauna’s wood-lined walls.
In winter I like to light the birchwood log fire in the sauna and let it crackle and smoulder slowly while I go out for my walk. Sometimes I get ambitious and walk more than I should, circumnavigating islets, and I’m homeward bound after dark. Then it’s a really handy lighthouse to make a beeline for. Warmth, light, hope: all an iced lake walker really needs.
© copyright Matthew Brace
