Nari and I are gathering our scarves and gloves, ready to head out into the dark night, when the violin man stops us at the door and spreads his arms wide as if to contain us. He smiles and says, ‘Olkaa hyvä ja jääkää kahville.’
Nari’s shaking her head, polite but confused, and reaching for her translation app, when I realise he’s directing us towards another room off to the side of the stage which everyone seems to be slowly filing into.
‘Coffee and food, please stay,’ he adds, in perfect English.
And so we follow him, finding a long table set out with cups and Tupperware and tins full of all kinds of homemade baked treats. And that’s where we spend the rest of our evening, making conversation, sometimes aided by clever technology, with our new friends. Nari likes to at least try to speak the local languages, but I’m relieved the whole party speaks English clear as a bell; in fact, they all seem to be fluent, despite their frequent apologies for their (perfect) English. I tell them their language skills put me with my ability to say precisely zero words in Finnish (well, I do knowsauna) to shame.
I’m eating a gorgeous nutty cake with butter cream icing when I ask the woolly clergyman – who turns out to be sweetly gentle and exquisitely quietly spoken without his microphone and speaker system – about one of the songs I’d heard. It had sounded as though they were singing my name, Sylvie. ‘Did I imagine that?’
He walks off, coming back a moment later with a leather-bound songbook, and he shows me some lyrics.
‘Sylvian joululaulu?’ I say, stumbling over the pronunciation and making everyone within earshot smile, humouring the dopey English woman.
‘It’s a Christmas song, very famous in Finland, very important.’
‘It was lovely, what is it about?’
‘Oh, this is not so lovely. A song about night-singing birds, trapped and then cruelly blinded and kept in cages, so their singing in the darkness will attract other birds, who are also then captured.’
‘Oh!’
‘Yes, I know,’ the vicar smiles. ‘Very Finnish.’
‘And it’s a Christmas song?’
‘Yes, a very old one. But it’s about loving Finland too, and the winter and longing to be at home, safe and comfortable.’
‘That’s beautiful,’ I say, as he presses the book into my free hand – the other is still clasping a plate piled with delicious cakes and cookies.
‘Our gift to you.’
‘Oh, I can’t take this, it belongs to the church.’
‘I insist. Return it on your next visit, if you like, some other winter.’
And so, Nari and I leave the church late that night, only just in time to hop on the last bus to Frozen Falls resort, with my new songbook souvenir, our bellies full of festive baking, our heads buzzing with music and the happy chatter of the congregation. And that’s how it begins to come back to me, my love for Christmas. At last. I’d known, deep down, Cole and his heartbreaking hadn’t stripped it away completely.
All the way back to our cabins I tell Nari how much I adore this time of year and everything associated with it, and how I’m finally utterly convinced we made the right decision to come to beautiful, surprising, welcoming Finnish Lapland.
Chapter Fourteen
Hello from gorgeous Lapland.
Our second day here has been a whirlwind of snowy adventure. There were husky dogs (adorable), elk stew (delicious), blood pancakes (yes, I saidbloodpancakes) and cured reindeer meat (tastes exactly as you’d expect it to: like something you’d buy for your poodle in a pet shop) sliced off in big hunks for me to chew by a new friend in a traditionallavvutent.
Tonight, my friend S and I dined early at the resort restaurant again. The atmosphere’s cosy and bustling, and its fine as far as food goes. There is a lot of meat, I meanloads, and some root veg and gorgeous bread. But it’s expensive to transport fresh produce up here, so we’re making do with the odd apple and preserved summer fruit (jam, pickles, chutney, frozen berry smoothies). I’m already becoming a bit of a stranger to greens this holiday, but the scarcity of fresh stuff makes it all the more special somehow. Imagine getting excited over a side of fresh broccoli, but that’s what happened!
So, what about the overall experience so far? I’m realising that even if you get everything you came for (snow, elves, huskies, winter sports) the average tourist doesn’t really get to know Finnish Lapland and its people, culture or history. Luckily, we’ve found two guides steeped in the history of this place – our guides to something more ‘authentic’. Though, even without their help, I think we stumbled into a true local community space tonight, and we were welcomed with open hearts.
If you can visit the little chapel near Saariselkä, you must. I sang every carol; nobody seemed to mind that I didn’t understand any of the words, and I couldn’t pronounce them either. It was perfect, unforgettable, and beautiful. And I got to do it with my best friend; a rare treat for me, the lone traveller.
So, here’s something to chew on. Did you know that Finnish Lapland is in large part Sápmi–the ancestral lands of the Sámi (or Saami) people, sometimes described as the only indigenous people of Europe? Sápmi lands stretch right across the northern Scandinavian countries.
There are thousands of people who identify as Sámi living in Finland and hundreds of thousands living all over the globe. Part of the history of the Sámi people is depressingly familiar: displacement, developments on traditional territories, and the suppression of traditions, languages and cultural practices. But here in Inari, and all across the Sápmi, there’s continuance too, and cultural investment, and celebration and a flourishing worldwide sense of Sámi belonging. All of this, according to my new friend, N.
He’s going to tell me more tomorrow.
I want to get to know the man, find out what it’s like living and working in Lapland and, if he’s happy to share, learn more about his family traditions. Until tomorrow, sleep tight, Nari Bell
