I resist the urge to interrogate Stellan about where exactly we’re heading; he’s obviously enjoying having arranged a surprise and I don’t want to take that away from him, and besides, I trust him.
As we pull up at my cabin door a few moments later I admit I give him a puzzled glance. He pulls the brake lever and turns to me, putting an elbow on the passenger seat headrest, noticeably pink about the cheeks and coy looking.
‘Sylvie, without any pressure or expectation, I wonder if you mind…’ He stops, suddenly self-conscious. He raises his eyes with embarrassed annoyance to the fur trim of the Santa hat he’s just realised he’s still wearing and hurriedly pulls it from his head as a blush spreads appealingly across the lightly freckled apples of his cheeks. ‘What I’m trying to say is, where I want to take you, it’s a distance from here. Is that OK?’
He sees me nod with raised, intrigued brows, so he carries on.
‘The thing is… do you want to sleep there, with me? Overnight, I mean.’
He’s adorable when he’s struggling like this; his respectful reticence somehow contrasting sharply with his broad ruggedness and the curve of his lips that seems to betray his unvoiced thoughts.
‘Are you saying I should pack my jammies?’
For a split second I see the blaze in his eyes before he grins. ‘Jammies are optional.’
I stifle a laugh and unbuckle my seatbelt. ‘Give me a sec, then.’
Carried by some higher power other than my snow-booted feet, I dash up the steps and into my cabin, grab the thing I need and turn immediately again for the truck, stopping only to wave my pink toothbrush jubilantly in the air from the doorway. I see Stellan through the driver’s window, resplendent in his festive outfit, tipping his head back in a laugh.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Merry Christmas to all my readers out there! If this blog is posted as scheduled, you should be able to see this bright and early on Christmas morning, and I should be safely tucked up in my cosy bed following a night out on the town with a new acquaintance… more of this in a moment!
Readers, if you’re Scandinavian, you might be getting steamy round about now. I’m talking about the traditional Christmas day sauna.
Did you know there are approximately five million Finns and three million saunas in Finland? They take this red hot ritual seriously, people. It’s a necessary part of everyday life here, and it’s especially important at Christmas when the sauna has an early spring clean and a festive makeover before the family pile in together for a holiday sweat.
I asked a (very cute, very chatty) local, one of the resort workers (a handsome reindeer herder, in fact), about his sauna habits and this is what he had to tell me:
“I sauna every day; it relaxes me and helps me switch off from work for a while. And yes, we sauna naked. It’s not a sexual thing. We have good body image here because nakedness is just a natural part of our day. If a Finnish friend invites you to sauna then he really likes and trusts you, and you’ve been extended a great honour, so make sure you bring some beers. You can talk, or not talk, you can make it hot or not too hot. As long as everybody is happy”.
Now, I’ve sweated with the best of ‘em: in a (hokey, just for tourists) steam ceremony in the California desert; in Turkish baths in Istanbul; in a serene Japaneseonsen, so I have zero qualms about the Finnish Lapland version, but my travel companion, S, really isn’t into it. The very idea of it had my BFF clutching at the zipper of her fleece and pulling it up to her chin. She said, and I quote:
“As if!There’s not a snowflake’s chance in a sauna I’d strip off in front of [name redacted, LOL!] and then publicly perspire. Its gross and it’s weird and it’s just too Scandinavian”.
She might be too far gone to help. But my handsome herder got me thinking about how public communal saunas seem to be at odds with the national stereotypes about shyness and introversion. Now you know I love to crush a stereotype, but I’m hoping all this ‘good body image’ and healthy attitude to nudity means these Finlanders are just as uninhibited in other parts of their lives… for example, when sharing a cosy Christmas date with a new blogger friend from England, maybe?
Happy Christmas, you guys! xx Nari
#NariBellInvestigates #BFFsGoDating #ChristmasinLapland #HotHerder #SmokinHot #Sauna #ChristmasDay
Chapter Twenty-Three
The journey out to wherever we are going is one of those wildly happy moments you only get in the excitement of getting to know someone new – or in my case, getting to know them again – when your jokes all land perfectly and they catch every offhand reference you throw. Nothing’s miscommunicated, nothing’s amiss, and you’re convinced no two people in the whole world could possibly have the intense connection you’re sharing right this minute.
We drive on a main road for some time in the grey light of the early afternoon. As far as my eye can see there’s nothing but tall forests of pine trees covered in snow and the occasional truck making its way in the opposite direction.
‘Want to see how the resort got its name?’ Stellan asks.
‘Frozen Falls? I’ve been wondering about that.’
A moment later, we turn off the road and Stellan pulls the truck to a halt in what is unrecognisable as a layby. The snow is piled high in drifts and I can’t see any way out of here. That’s when Stellan reaches behind his seat and hands me some weird metal rectangular-frame things and says, ‘Snowshoes, they fit over your boots.’
‘We’rewalking?’
‘Sure are,’ he says, as he steps out the truck, shrugs on his thick black jacket, and packs the things Rasmus the chef gave him into an already heavy-looking backpack.
The pace is embarrassingly slow as I struggle to stay upright and to stop laughing. With every step I take my feet sink into the powdery snow right up to my calves, despite the snowshoes, and I have to haul myself out again, and the whole time Stellan’s effortlessly walking backwards and heaving me by the arms. He’s sinking too but doesn’t seem to be having the same amount of difficulty I am; mind you, he has half a foot’s height advantage over me, not to mention his muscled thighs powering him along.
