I peer inside at the black diamond-shaped pastilles. I do like a wine gum or two, and my stomach’s grumbling, it’s been so long since the breakfast I was too nervous to eat. I pop a couple of the hard sweets into my mouth, not easy in these enormous gloves, and I scrunch the bag closed again.
Christ on a bike!These are no wine gums. I’ve got salty liquorice cloying to the roof of my mouth and in between my teeth, and something about the taste is taking me back to the dental hygienist’s chair. And why is my tongue going numb? It would be rude to spit them out, wouldn’t it? So I work and work at the evil cough medicine flavour chews until they gloop down my throat with a berry juice chaser.Yuck!Not everything in Lapland is what it seems, I’m learning. So much is shockingly unfamiliar.
I squint up at Stellan and notice he’s laughing, his shoulders rising and falling.
‘You knew I’d hate those, didn’t you?’
‘Salmiakkiis an acquired taste, I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, you look sorry. I’ll remember this, Stellan Virtanen.’
‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’ He’s still laughing, with teasing in his voice, and something else, I choose to imagine, vaguely suggestive. Instead of looking up at him again – I don’t want him to see me all flustered – I settle down for what remains of our journey.
We pass between two gently sloping hills and suddenly we’re turning off the main trail onto a rougher, narrower path leading towards what looks like a big tipi tent in the far distance. I can smell wood smoke from a fire. The scent travels on the unpolluted air and makes my nose prickle. I hope this means food. I’m starving.
‘This is it. Niilo’s herdinglavvu,’ says Stellan as he slows the dogs to a stop and steps off the sled, immediately tying the ropes to a gnarled, stunted tree. The dogs all immediately lie on their stomachs and lick the snow to cool themselves, their breath rising in little clouds around the frosted fur of their muzzles.
Stellan comes round to stand in front of me and offers me a hand, pulling me to my feet.
‘Lavvu?The tent, you mean?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he says. ‘This is the first stop on our wilderness safaris for the tourists, and it looks as though one of the herders got Niilo’s message to light the fire.’
After a few moments spent feeding the dogs crunchy biscuits from a sack and loosening their harnesses, Stellan walks ahead, carrying boxes he’s lifted from the front of Nari and Niilo’s sled, interrupting their long, involved conversation.
It’s obvious Nari had forgotten me and Stellan were even on the trail, and she beams at me after a moment of slowly dawning recollection.
She heads straight for me, her arms outstretched and gives me a hug and we laugh and break into a run as best we can through the deep snow towards the tent, our stupid, huge black leather Santa mittens preventing us from holding hands properly.
‘What’s thelavvuetiquette? Do I knock?’ I ask Nari, realising that Stellan’s disappeared inside. Nari shrugs.
Niilo’s running to catch up in his reindeer hide coat and his big fur hat. He’s got the blankets from the sleds bundled under his arm and looks glamorous and other-worldly somehow. The knife on his leather belt glints in the already fading daylight. How can it be getting dark again already, it’s only just past noon?
Just as Niilo reaches us, Stellan pushes his hooded head through the tent flap, pulling the scarf from his face, and says with a grin, ‘Come inside.’
Everything suddenly feels fun and adventurous, and I’m aware that we’re young – wellfairlyyoung – and we’re on holiday and its Christmas. What with being raised on MTV and cheesy eighties’ pop songs, I can’t help thinking of my favourite Wham! video where the gorgeous gang of skiing couples arrive at some sophisticated alpine resort for the holidays and they spoil their permed mullets messing around romantically in the snow.
The coming days suddenly feel full of possibility and I realise that, for the first time in a long time, I’m really enjoying myself.
And the fun carries on as Stellan leads us all into the surprisingly spacious interior of the tent and indicates for us to sit on the reindeer hide covered benches around the crackling fire, and we all help to unpack the food from the boxes he carried in.
I’m a little disconcerted to find we’ll be eating elk meatballs, though the pasta and buttered bread accompanying them is very welcome. Just as I’m about to ask what exactly an elkis– is it like a moose or a reindeer? – I’m stunned into goldfish mouthed silence by the sight of Stellan pulling the black beanie from his head. I watch in dazed shock as he musses his fingers through thick, choppy hair.
All this time I’ve thought of him as I last saw him, with his jaw-length surfer’s waves, and I’ve been secretly praying he hasn’t changed them. The sight of his now messily cropped short locks, all Scandinavian blond and dark honey, makes me want to do a dramatic movie-starlet swoon. Instead, I offer to help stir the big pot over the fire and try to pull myself together, not helped by the whispered, ‘Wowzers, talk about a blond bombshell,’ from a mercilessly teasing Nari by my side.
Niilo is the last to sit, after deftly dishing up our lunch and handing out the steaming bowls.
‘Thank you, I’m famished,’ Nari says as Niilo settles on the seat next to her.
Elk, it turns out, is delicious and lean, and not unlike my mum’s beef hotpot.
‘The cold burns calories faster than any workout. You need to up your carbs on this kind of trip, keep your strength up,’ Niilo replies, matter-of-factly, and I watch as Nari’s face lights up. I saw her slipping a jumbo bar of Galaxy chocolate into her backpack this morning so I’m guessing its days are numbered now.
There is something magical about sitting in the firelight with the aromas of wood smoke and rich, hearty food in the air, and I find myself feeling surprisingly festive, even in the sparse simplicity of thelavvu.
Stellan produces a big bottle of something carbonated and black which, I naturally assume is some kind of Finnish cola drink, but which turns out to be orange flavoured. Of course it does. I should have learned by now to expect the unexpected here.
As I’m remarking upon the curious unfamiliarity of so many of the things we’ve encountered since our arrival, Niilo serves up something from a frying pan that smells delicious. He simply calls them ‘pancakes’ as he offers them around.
