Finnish Sweets and Treats

Puuro is about as Finnish as you can get.  At every breakfast (and even at some dinners) we were offered porridge - sometimes made from oats, sometimes including rice, usually just semolina.  Finns eat porridge sweet or salty, with chocolate, whipped with berries, filled with cream or just plain.  It feels like a northern, cold-weather dish.  And, filled with tart berries from the arctic fells?  Through the intense sourness, with a purple stained tongue, one might admit that they tasted the essence of Finland's sweets culture - not too sugary, a wholesome base, decidedly quirky.

Porvoo is twee.  It's tearooms are chintzy.  Runeberg tart, it's local specialty, is delicious.  We picked this one out at Cafe Fanny, from a lineup of more staid treats.  Made from almond flour, jam and rum, Runebergs are surprisingly light.
Porvoo is known for its sweets, and its easy to get tempted often - there are chocolates, licorices and caramels in every window, begging to be gobbled up.  But this is something of a Finnish anomaly.  In fact, we found that Finns generally like more solid, less sweet, decidedly nordic treats.

The waitress at Bagarstugan Café & Vin, in Mariehamn, asked if I wanted my Ålandspannkaka with strawberry jam (she shook her head no and frowned) or the traditional prune cream (she smiled and nodded her head yes).  I took the hint and went with the prunes.
Ålands "pannkaka" bears very little resemblance to most pancakes - it's a dense, rice cake that's springy with egg and often served cold.  Rice flour seems like a strange ingredient to find on a cold archipelago in the Baltic Sea, but the Åland shipping industry connected the islands with Asia and the Pacific for centuries.  Because growing grains in the harsh climate was so difficult, a lot were imported anyway - why not rice?
The prune "cream" was more of a compote, and was the perfect sweetness to accompany the rich pannkaka.  When the waitress asked if I wanted whipped cream, she was nodding and smiling again.

Hillomunakas is a close relative to the Ålands pancake, but it's generally treated a little more roughly.  I found this example in a grubby, gas-station display case in Inari; precut, pre-jammed, several hours (or days) old.  On a cold day, with coffee, it didn't matter.
Basically a sweetened, slightly floured omelette, hillomunakas is usually served with jam.  In fact, some Finns translate the name to "jam omelette," which doesn't quite do the thing justice. It's more of an egg cake, browned in the broiler and topped with preserves or berries.  I did see more appealing versions, but they weren't handy when I needed them most.

At breakfast buffets and roadside joints, hyper sweetened strawberry preserve or orange marmalade has begun to encroach upon Finnland's own fruit traditions.  But the further north you go, the tarter, smaller and more woodsy the berries get.  Mustikka (bilberries, similar to blueberries), puolukka (lingonberries), vadelmat (tiny, wild raspberries) and even karpalot (cranberries) are common in the upper regions of the country, while the orangish tyrni (sea buckthorn) is a coastal delicacy.
Our hostesses in Sevettijärvi, where we stayed on a reindeer farm, served us their gourmet take on the woodland fruits: homemade bilberry icecream and buttery crepes with lingonberries.

Another common gas-station find are the silly sounding munkki donuts, which differ not a bit from other donuts.  I had this one at the Siida museum, after a heavy plate of reindeer casserole.  It had everything one wants in a donut - sugar, fat and a hole.  The surprise?  It was also made with whole wheat flour.

Like everyone, Finns love their ice cream.  They also like doing interesting things with it.  At the Hotel Kuntahovi, in Inari, I was served a "smoke sauna" dessert: tar flavored ice cream and birch-leaf sorbet.  It was... smokey.  At Porvoo's cosmopolitan, excellent Bistro Sinne, I was given this licorice ice cream. It was custardy, tasty and local (Porvoo is known for their licorice).

The most common tart in Finnland turns out... not to be sweet at all.  Karjalanpiirakat, from the Karelian region of Finnland, near the Russian border, surprised us on the first try.  What is it?  A thin, toothsome rye crust filled with rice and butter.  That's all.  To the skeptical, I'll say that it's much more delicate than it sounds. To the disappointed, I'll say: try it with some jam.

Porvoo

Katarina at Staghallen Brewery in Åland told us that Porvoo was her favorite place in Finland. Natalia at our homestay in Sevettijärvi told us she got married in Porvoo.  It's easy to see why this place stirs up such emotion in people.  Porvoo is the second oldest city in Finland and it's this perfect combination of elements.  There's the Porvoo river, the parkland around, old wooden storehouses and a copper-topped historic cathedral.  It's all centered upon the Old Town square, relatively 'new' in terms of this nearly thousand year old town.  Built all a'scramble in that winding, clumped medieval style, the Old Town was nearly re-gridded for ease and logic in the late 1800s.  The people of Porvoo protested and straight lines and streets were set up elsewhere.  Even then, the Finns new that this place feels special, you they fought to preserve it.

Porvoo is only an hour by bus from Helsinki. Since the capital itself doesn't really have an "Old Town" per se, it's a little like the city's European Medieval Charm - cobbled streets, labyrinthine lanes -  has been outsourced to Porvoo.  A bit of tweeness has understandably sprung up around the main knobby square, at the foot of the old Porvoo Cathedral.  The church is one of Finland's oldest and largest, mainly built in the 15th century with some parts dating back to the original 13th century.  The centuries that followed brought fires, bombs, arsonist attacks.  It also brought the first Diet of Finland in 1809, which declared the country's autonomy from Russia. If buildings were quilts, there'd be a square commemorating each milestone in the life of the Porvoo Cathedral.  Wooden beams here, stone there, patches of repairs that span 700 years.

The stores and restaurants around the cathedral follow along those lines, a 'times gone by' aesthetic, offering the best little nuggets from the past.  There are antique shops, second hand clothing stores, vintage prints and toy boutiques, candy wrapped in retro packaging, tin crowns and wooden swords.  Anything that makes you think "pleasant, pretty Porvoo" and "the past."
There's also a country chic feel of wicker and floral decor. Leather jacket and denim are ditched for knits and tweeds.  Daytrippers eat it up, quenching their thirst for old world European charm before heading back to the big city to soak up stylish modernity.

Though, honestly, if they just spent the night they'd feel the full thrust of youthful energy right here.  With so many options in such a small place, it was actually easier to swing and not miss here in Porvoo than it had been in Helsinki.  We chose casual pub food at an old chemists-turned-bar with live acoustic music, but were very tempted by the fancier restaurant Timbaali which has a whole menu of locally farmed escargot.  There may or may not have been sirens in the night and some vomit around the ATM machine on Sunday morning to signal how hard some in Porvoo actually party.  Bottom line is that this isn't just a museum town, but a vibrant mini city that's worth more than just a few hours during the day.

When we went into the brand new Art Factory culture center to visit the tourist office and stumbled upon an Eko Fair of green businesses, a dance troupe of young women practicing in the hallway and a restaurant called Bistro Sinne a'bustle with brunchers.  Sinne calls itself a 'bistro,' but the presentation and taste were fine dining all the way.   Everything was locally sourced and treated like rare jewels.  No wrinkled mushrooms or over dressed greens here.  A blazer wearing family of twelve sang Happy Birthday in three part harmony at a long table in the center of the dining room.  It rendition was so classy that no one even applauded after (our own few claps went, mostly, unnoticed). 

The Art Factory is on the western shore of the Porvoo river, which fills with kayakers in the summer months.  This side of the river is the newer New Town, residences built at the very end of the 20th century.  There was concern about new housing so close to the historic center, as well as the new bridge it would necessitate.  The answer was simple and actually quite beautiful.  The new houses are red and rust orange, a modernized mirror image of the historic wooden red storehouses across the water.  There's some green and yellow evoking the trees and painted houses of the Old Town, which peak up above the line of red buildings on the other side.  A dappled reflection.  (Above, the eastern shore). 

Though there are sights to see, the thing to really do in Porvoo is stroll.  Our ramble brought us to the Old Railway Station.  On six Saturdays per year, a 'museum rail car' brings tourists from Porvoo to Helsinki.  There is an ironmongers workshop in one old station building and a souvenir shop in another, both closed when we visited in October.  What we were struck by was the collection of decaying trains.  In use from the end of the 19th century until the beginning of the 1990s, the trains now just sit around - their wood warping, paint chipping and metal rusting.  These relics are mementos, artifacts.  But they are also just leftovers, scraps.  They were really beautiful on an autumn afternoon, that time of year when even bright sunshine somehow seems somber.

The train graveyard, as it really felt, gave a feeling of age that no old cobbled square could.  You could really sense the passage of time, the years coating windows with film, yellowing curtains and separating wooden boards.  Gaps here, scrunching there, the wood resembled an aging set of teeth.  Porvoo is a place that city dwellers come to have country elegance and a slower, refined pace. Fresh air and room to breathe.  It's a place where people from the islands of Åland want to come ashore.  It's a place where young women from above the Arctic Circle want to get married.  It is storybook in a very Finnish way.  What I mean is, it doesn't need to scream 'happy ending,' but rather 'we've had some pretty good times, haven't we?'

Muumibuumi!

Somewhere around the end of the second world war, as Finland was finishing up years of fighting against both Russia and Germany (which is another story), a strange little family of trolls emerged from the literary wilderness.  These weren't evil trolls - the kind that might be frightening if you found them in the woods - but something a little softer.  Big nosed, round-bodied, with a striking resemblance to white hippopotamuses, Moomintrolls (Muumi, In Finnish) were cozy creatures that had adventures.  Sixty years later, they've become a national symbol.  On Finnair jets, bottles of soda, tourist office signs, souvenir tchotchkes, dvd covers, school backpacks - anything you could imagine, really - their eyes stare out with that famous blend of balefulness and excitability.  Moomintroll, Sniff, Snufkin, the Snork Maiden, Little My and even the Hemulen are the faces of Finland.  They're also born travelers, and rediscovering them these past weeks has been a thrilling pleasure…

Tove Jansson was an eccentric Helsinki youth in the pre-war years.  Born to a Swedish-speaking family of artists (who had a pet monkey, because monkeys make for exciting beginnings), Jansson studied art and design and gradually gravitated towards cartoons.  The Moomin characters were born from that work - though they weren't recognizable as themselves early on, and didn't really grow up until they were written into book form.  Because, though the images have made them iconic, the prose is what grabs hold of people.  It's hard to imagine writing more bizarre, personable and fun than Jansson's - it's not kid's literature, it's literature that strikes at the heart of adventure.
In the books, Moomintroll and his family float down multiple rivers (once in a theater adrift in a flood), discover caves, ride clouds, live in a lighthouse, go skiing, dive for pearls, walk on stilts, escape from the Groke and generally cavort through a surprising world.  It's fast paced, but somehow mournful too - the inhabitants of these stories are touchingly thoughtful creatures.

The first time we spotted a Moomin (it was Moomintroll himself, on a blanket in an apartment in Norway) I felt a sudden,* nostalgic wave of excitement.  "What's a Moomin?" Rebecca asked, a little non-plussed.  I wasn't quite sure what to tell her.
It's been years since I first read Jansson's books, and - to tell the truth - I'd pretty much forgotten about them.  Actually, more than forgetting them, I'd stashed them away in the peculiar cupboards of memory reserved for strange books.  Moomins (like E. Nesbit's It) don't coincide well with humdrum, everyday life.  It's hard to think of them as something other than a feeling, and that feeling isn't easily categorized.  I'd remembered the word "Moomin," what they looked like, something of their strange aura, but very little of the specifics.
Later, I saw an english language version of "Comet in Moominland" in a bookstore in Helsinki and bought it.  Re-reading it was more fun than I could have expected.  The words were familiar too - turns out, they hadn't been forgotten at all.
*"Sudden" and "suddenly" are Jansson's favorite words, as in "suddenly, he tripped over the silk monkey's tail and opened his eyes."

Shampoo bottles?  Cough drops?  Icky, strawberry-flavored soda? Bandaids?  Why are the poor Muumi shilling for this kind of stuff?  In the past few decades (unbeknownst to me) the Moomins have become so big, so international, that they're the mascot figures for Dalei, one of Japan's largest retailers (apparently, they're really big in Japan) and a thriving product franchise in Finland.  There's even a theme park, in south-west Finland, where visitors can stroll around a kind of recreated Moominvalley.  The characters have just turned 65, and have now sold over one billion dollars of merchandise.
Thankfully, a lot of this craze (known in Finland as the "Muumibuumi," or Moominboom) skipped America.  While a syndicated television show ran in dozens of countries and feature-length films were made, we American readers were spared the schmaltz.

If someone came to Finland right now with no prior knowledge of Jansson's work, they would probably guess that the white creatures were some kind of advertising gimmick - like a Finnish Hello Kitty or Tony the Tiger.  Sadly, Moomins have become so entrenched in the country's psyche that they can seem like nothing more than a collection of images - they remind me (and it's not just the big noses) of Snoopy, who has become a de-voiced, instant-recognition blob on greeting cards.  Maybe if I were Finnish...
Finland is a funny place, stuck in between proper Scandinavia and Russia, with a language all its own and a sense of humor that matches its dark winters.  Something about the Moomintrolls gets at that identity in a way that must resonate with them.  Venturing a guess: the books are about freewheeling, boundaryless escapades - the characters are endearingly wary of the outside world, but also throw themselves into the adventures head and tail.  For hemmed-in, cold-weary Finns, the sense of freedom these books gives must be appealing. So anti-depressive. Really, just so fun!

Big Fish

Long before "good fats" and "omega-3" became sexy, before bagels & lox and the bento box, salmon was appreciated as the wonderful fish it is up here in Lapland.  This is the sort of fish you can base a civilization around - and that's just what the Sámi who gave up reindeer hunting and herding in the 16th century did.  They switched to the 'red meat of the sea,' as I like to call it.  And they took to the Teno and Näätämö Rivers, which are just swimming with them.

The Teno (or Deatnu "Great River" as it is called in Sámi) is Europe's most important salmon river.  Around 20% of all European river salmon are caught in the Teno.  The world record for largest Atlantic salmon (79 pounds) was caught here in 1929.  Most serious angler are happy to get a 40 pounder, a dream fish for most, but a more common occurrence in the Teno than all other salmon rivers combines.  Postcards around these parts show beaming fishermen holding catches the size of a grade schooler.  The river itself is beautiful, thin and marshy at some points, as wide as a lake at others.  It stretches 210 miles, but when you count its tributaries, you've got a whopping 620 miles of salmon rich water.

Sámi people have depended on and honored the salmon rivers of northern Finland for thousands of years.  As their rights were being defined by the Finnish government, at the end of the 1970s, salmon fishing in the Teno and Näätämö were recognized as essential parts of the Sami culture.  So, the people of this area have constitutional rights protecting their use of the river.  The Sami government is consulted before any fishing laws are drawn up.  For example, worries about salmon farming in the vicinity have headed necessary regulations.  Visiting anglers are not allowed to fish from a boat unless a local is employed as rower.

Norway and Finland share ownership of the great salmon river, as it literally draws the northwestern borderline between the countries.  If you wanted to be very specific, the border runs straight down the middle.  Around 250 years ago, the river marked the line between Sweden and Norway.  This yellow "King's Stone" marked the spot in 1766.  Nowadays, the area on both sides are really just referred to as Lapland and while the Norwegian and Finnish governments have been cooperating on fishing regulations since 1878, it is generally regarded to be more "Sámi' than anything else.

Even more than reindeer, salmon has transitioned seamlessly and successfully into the modern iteration of "cash cow" for the locals of Lapland.  While many leisure tourists would like to spot Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, way more people would love to catch Sammy the pink-fleshed salmon.  (I just made that character up.  Let's just go with it).  Tourism may keep the community afloat as local salmon fishermen are less and less able to compete with the lower prices of farmed salmon.  The Sámi people would like to stick to traditional methods of fishing with nets and rods, but are not able to catch the large numbers they'd need to truly compete.  There's also the scary truth that farmed fish have been spreading bacteria to the wild salmon population in these subarctic rivers.  It's an ongoing battle.  

For now, though, wild salmon can be enjoyed far and wide in Finland.  At the gas station restaurant in Ivalo, at the lunch buffet next to reindeer ragu and whole heads of cauliflower au gratin was a big cauldron of salmon soup.  Creamy salmon soup is a Finnish mainstay.  It pops up everywhere, beyond just Lapland, and is always basically the same.  It is brothy with just enough cream to add a warm milkiness.  The chunks of salmon stand out like gems and the cubes of potato add a silky heartiness.  More elegant than a chowder, chunkier than a bisque, it is dependable and delicious at a road stop cafeteria or in a dining room.

Salmon almost stole the show at the Baltic Herring Fair in Helsinki.  Thanks to the Teno and Näätämö, Finns have long had a relationship with the fish.  They've had a long time to figure out new and different ways to smoke, cure, cook it.  The salmon stands at the Herring Fair resembled deli counters one minute and bakery displays another.  There were cylinders with the criss-crossed twine markings of a smoked ham, spirals filled with cheese sat pretty in cupcake wrappers like frosted cinnamon buns.  Steaks, nuggets, strips, loaves.  Finns really have thought of it all.

Northern Roads and Reflections

At the Hotelli Inari, in far northern Finland, people come more to drink than to sleep.  There are beds upstairs, according to a pricelist, but we're not sure what kind of rough-edged person might sleep in them.
Downstairs in the bar, a full range of Lapland characters came out on a recent Wednesday night.  Bleary eyed men sat slumped over beers.  Young women in perfume and high-heels gathered to laugh and chat. A group of Norwegians were in town to celebrate something.  Inari is a Sámi town, on the shore of a many-armed lake of the same name.  The arctic circle is some two hundred miles south.  There are four different languages spoken in Inari's woods and along the back roads.  A man and woman came to set up Karaoke in the bar.  When they turned on the machines, a waitress told them to wait a bit - the music was too loud for the regulars.  This is the slow-simmering life in Finnish Lapland.

The landscape in this part of the world is flat, wet and mossy.  Lakes and ponds appear everywhere in the northern forests, and dry land can seem only temporarily firm - walk anywhere in these woods, and you'll find places where the ground is soggy and soft with water.  Lake shores aren't exactly distinct boundaries, the liquid bleeds into the low rock like watercolor paint over a pencil line.  One could get lost forever here, in such featureless space.
In October, the Arctic days didn't feel too short, but the feeling of darkness approaching had soaked into everything.

Why would people live here, when it seems so much like a wasteland?  Reindeer and salmon.
Finnish Lapland is also called Sápmi, just as the indigenous Lapp people are known as Sámi in their native tongues.  The native people have lived here for thousands of years because their home is extraordinarily rich in food.  Even today, fishermen pull sixty pound salmon from the Tana river, and herds of reindeer are kept in the forests and fells.  We came across these traditional riverboats up near the border with Norway.  Boats like these are used for checking and maintaining the Sámi salmon nets that are strung from trellises in the water.  Nowadays, angling is more popular than netting.  We passed many signs advertising fishing excursions on the roadsides.

Driving in Lapland is a hypnotic experience.  Trees and water pass, the horizon opens and closes, the distances become almost theoretic.  In some ways, it reminded me of traveling in the American west, where two hours away is "close by."
When a house or a gas station does pop up, it's an event.  At Kaamasen Kievari, which sits somewhere close to two intersections, a traveler can eat, drink, sleep, gamble, send mail or just get some diesel and coffee.  It's not a big place, but it has most of what anybody could need.  The menu was heavy on reindeer, most of the daytime crowd was drinking, the sound of slot machines was a quiet constant.  The road outside is flat and fast through the trees.  If you don't need to stop, there's no reason to slow down.

A big part of the local economy here is Norwegian bargain shopping.  Finland's wealthier neighbors come across the border to buy beer, liquor and gasoline.  Näätämö is a nothing town.  It's no more than a few muddy parking lots, two supermarkets, some rusting cars and fuel pumps.  There aren't any houses - at least, none that you can see from the road.  We know someone must live in Näätämö; there was a row of mailboxes beside the K-market.  The border is ten minutes away.  Square-jawed men and women come down from the northern fjords with petrol cans and leave with bottles of vodka.

We felt, traveling here, that even manmade things had somehow become wild. There are boats everywhere, but we never saw one out on the water.  They just sat, pulled up onto the shore, filling up with rainwater, their engines taken off, looking more like driftwood than transportation.  Log trucks are common, but seem more animal than human as they careen down dirt roads.  Mailboxes sit on the roadsides, with no house in sight - they look like giant mushrooms that have sprung up in the rain.

Ivalo stands out as a metropolis in this emptiness, with its few supermarkets and three roundabouts.  We pulled into one of the two gas stations for lunch. Dolly Parton was on the radio, men in chainsaw chaps stood by their pickups outside.  The lunch buffet was popular with the locals - people sat down quietly with trays of reindeer-hamburg pasta and squash soup.  There were video slot machines at some of the tables, two euros for five shots.  Some of the old men wore cowboy hats.  Included in the price: coffee, bread, salad, herring, juice and lingonberries in syrup.

Finnish Lapland doesn't feel particularly European.  In a lot of ways it feels like parts of remote middle America - I was reminded of Michigan's upper Peninsula more than once.  The people are of a similar type: independent, citizens of vast spaces.  That's not to say that it felt American either.  Maybe better to say that there's a kinship between northern places, as though the circular world near the pole is a separate continent from those attached southern extremities.  Every part of life here is edged in tradition, but the existence is modern - the Sámi part of the land's identity is a picture frame, not the whole portrait.
We stopped the car often to get out and look at one lake or another.  Sometimes the water stretched miles into the distance, sometimes it was just a pool in the grass.  We got caught up photographing the reflections of trees and rocks.  It rained and cleared up.  We hoped to see northern lights at night, but there was nothing but darkness and clouds.  Lapland in October is a meditation more than experience.

On Dasher...

Never ask a Sámi person how many reindeer they have.  We couldn't help but wonder, though, as we stayed on a reindeer farm in Sevettijärvi, would we get to see any?  How many are there around?  There were droppings on the property, confirming their existence and Merlin could tell that they were fresh enough to signal close reindeer proximity.  Those are true country boy skills right there.  But a reindeer 'farm' is very different than the name implies.  These are wild animals, only partially domesticated.  To keep your reindeer is to follow them, gather them, mark them, not confine them.  So, did we see any reindeer?  We sure did.  This is the land of the reindeer, far above the Arctic Circle and even mating season (which it was while we were in Lapland) couldn't keep the reindeer completely out of sight. 

To ask about the number in someone's herd would be like saying, "hey, how much money have you got in the bank?"  Until very recently, reindeer husbandry was the core of the Sámi economy.  The animals were a currency.  In fact, when we asked one of the older schoolchildren in Sevettijärvi why the language textbook they'd sweetly presented us with had a picture of small reindeer bones on the cover, we were told that those were game pieces.  "It is a Skolt game," the thirteen year old explained.  You throw them on the ground and whichever ones land a certain way are reindeer.  "Whoever has the most reindeer wins."  So, basically, it's a very ancient version of Monopoly.  Until the 1600s, Sámi people lived as nomads, following reindeer as they migrated.  These journeys brought them over borders, being defined at that time as Russia, Sweden and Denmark.  The governments of each (and sometimes all three) began to tax the Sámi people and, with no hard currency, they paid with hides and meat.  The need to generate more income in order to pay taxes led to over-hunting and a sharp decrease in the number of reindeer.  There was a threat of extinction.

Many Sámi chose to settle along fjords and switch mainly to fishing.  Others decided to employ the same methods they'd seen Scandinavian shepherds use with their flocks of sheep.  The men began taming small groups of reindeer and herding them from place to place as needed.  The women made clothing and blankets from the fur, boots from the skins, tools from antlers and even cheese from the reindeer's milk.  These reindeer herders, though a minority, became what is now seen as the 'archetypical' Sámi.  As systematic (and sometimes sadistic - in cases of female sterilization) assimilation measures were taken by Scandinavian and Russian governments, the communities most reliant on reindeer husbandry were the ones who held on most tightly to their culture.  There's a direct correlation between the survival of Sámi dialects and traditions and the importance of herding in those communities.  You can pretty much safely put the reindeer at the center of modern Sámi identity. 

Of course, they also ate the meat.  While you'd probably be hard pressed to find any reindeer milk products around Lapland, reindeer meat is very common.  Most often, it is sauteed, resembling beef stir fry or cheese steak shavings, served with lingonberries and potatoes.  For some reason that we can't figure out, the reindeer in Lapland tastes much more like beefsteak than venison.  There is no gaminess and the flesh is tender enough to not necessitate it being cooked super rare.  Other common preparations are dried and cured sausages, sliced thin and eaten as a breakfast and lunch meat.  Reindeer soup made some appearances as well.  Canned reindeer stew, reindeer chunks and reindeer meatballs showed up all around Finland - not just Lapland.  It has grown from being a local delicacy to a national culinary tradition, as Sámi culture has become more widely accepted and respected in recent decades.

Above, a particularly delicious baked reindeer steak with rye and thyme crumble, forest mushrooms and artichoke puree.  This was at Ravintola Aanaar in Inari.  The town is considered the center of Sami culture in Finland.  Merlin ate this (and I had Lake Inari whitefish) in a small dining room adjacent to the main banquet hall.  A group of around 50 people had been filing in all evening and now sat enjoying a meal and some live, traditional music.  "Is it a wedding?" we asked.  "Oh, no.  Just a gathering of Sámi people."  Many had arrived in traditional costume, some wore name tags.  "It happens all the time."   Inari is also home to Siida, a really wonderful museum dedicated to Sámi culture and the nature of Northern Lapland.  Siida is a North Sámi word for a reindeer village and much of the permanent exhibition, naturally, was dedicated to herding and husbandry. 

This old record book shows a series of earmarks and the families and family members they represent.  Every summer, the calves that are born the spring before are rounded up and small cuts and patterns are made in their ears.  This marks ownership.  Thousands of earmarks exist, children have different ones than their parents, siblings and so on.  The best herders earn the most intricate patterns, Natalia explained to us.  "Mine was one no one wanted."  She owned some reindeer (of course, we didn't ask how many) at one point.  Her earmark pattern was simple enough that it could easily be turned into another.  So, one by one, her reindeer began to disappear.  Finally, she sold them off before she had none left.  "I knew who it was and was mad for a while.  But it is all a part of it."  She told us of the skill involved with knowing exactly where to find every one of your reindeer depending on the wind, the surface of the snow, how old they are.  The Sámi have hundreds of words for 'reindeer,' including one for each year of a reindeer's life.

Only around 10% of today's Sámi count reindeer husbandry as their primary source of income.  That doesn't make the animals any less important, though.  Tourism in Lapland depends a lot on people wanting to come up and see Dasher and Dancer et al.  At our homestay, Natalia told us about Spaniards zipping around on snowmobiles they'd never ridden before, trying to find some reindeer.  "I was running around with a first aid kit."  Other guests think that going right up to one and petting it is a good idea.  "They even think they can ride them!"  Most tourist material for the area involves snowmobile and dog-sled tours to go out and spot some reindeer.  Thankfully, absolutely nowhere is there the opportunity to go out on a hunt.  I was happy to see some of the beautiful animals, even if they were just fleeting glances.  And, at night, I even dreamed of reindeer (though our pillowcases may have had something to do with that).

Skolt's Honor

It's not that often that you're hostess catches, guts and cooks your dinner over an open flame, but that's just what happened at our homestay in Sevettijärvi.  Natalia, who did most of this with her handful of a 10 month old daughter balanced on her hip, was tickled with the catch.  "I didn't actually expect to get a fish!" she laughed, struggling to remove her hook from the beautiful lake trout's mouth.  Ice-fishing is second nature to her, but this was her very first big non-icy catch.  "I have to show my sisters!"  she giggled shooting off a picture text on her phone.  Her older sister, who is a member of Sámi parliament and the preeminent Skolt Sámi rock musician ceded the title of "family rock star" for the day.  Her younger sister asked her to save the skin.  "She wants it for her handicrafts - to make a purse, probably," Natalia explained.  "Skolt Sámi use every part of the fish."

Skolt Sámi are the indigenous people of the area at which Finland, Norway and Russia meet.  There are around 1250 ethnic Skolts in the world today.  About 700 live in Finland and 315 of them reside right here in Sevettijärvi, a village just south of the northernmost border between Norway and Finland.  We stayed on Natalia's family reindeer farm in Sevettijärvi for two nights and couldn't have been given better insight into Skolt Sámi culture.  Natalia's knack for storytelling was keen, her laughter infectious.  She told us about meeting her husband at Sevetin Baari, the local bar.  "I was the only single girl for 100 kilometers!"  And about being the only female in her elementary school class, "I've seen it all."  She spoke of her grandfather, a reindeer herder, who was famous for tea that could wake the dead, and her grandmother, who was tiny but fierce.

"Skolt Sámi are short, but she was the shortest," Natalia said of her grandmother who stood only one meter tall, but commandeered big dogs and reindeer like a general.  "If she wasn't good with humans, she was excellent with animals."  Grandma had seven children, one of which was birthed during a routine reindeer feeding in the dead of winter.  Out in the snowy woods, Domna tied her skirt together at the bottom and skied home.  Stricken with dementia at the end of her nearly 100 year long life (by the family's best guess), grandma began to show some vulnerability.  "Take me home," she'd plead, referring to Petsamo on what is referred to locally as "the lost arm" of Finland.
51 Skolt Sámi families were forced to resettle here after their home was signed over to Russia at the end of the 1940s.  She'd pull her grandmother around on a sled attached to the back of a snowmobile.  Up and over and down and back they'd loop to her house, which Domna no longer recognized.  "Here you are! Home!"  Natalia would cheerfully announce and grandma would thank her for returning her to the lost arm. 

Sevettijärvi has only been accessible by car since 1970.  Before then, Skolts got around by snowmobile, reindeer, skis and boat.  "Mostly, we just stayed here," a teacher at the local school told us with humorous bluntness.  The new road brought ease of access and it also brought Toini, Natalia's mother, who met and married a Skolt Sámi man and had two daughters and one on the way when he died of cancer.   Not Sámi herself, she still chose to remain in Sevettijärvi, raising her daughters with a deep sense of their Sámi identity and eventually becoming principle of the local Skolt school.  For income, she turned her home into a campsite and travelers inn with the help of the local women's community.  "The cabin you're sleeping in was built by five grandmothers," Natalia laughed, but also said with pride.  Sámi women are strong - and (honorary Skolt) Toini, and the women she's raised are some of the strongest.

While we were there, a new barbecue house was being delivered.  Our freshly caught dinner was prepared in the older, bigger one, an octagonal log building with a fire pit with chimney at the center.  Groups come here throughout the high season, from April until September.  Snowmobilers that make too much noise, hikers that routinely get lost, bachelor parties that trash the place.  Tourism is a tricky thing and it's an ongoing struggle to gauge how much is worth it or not.  The Skolt Sámi depend a lot on tourism.  Aside from reindeer herding, it is their livelihood.  But this is also a people who are very in tune with nature, who want to continue to strike the right balance with their animals and their environment.  More than anything, the people here want to make sure their culture and traditions don't die out.

Of course, this has the most to do with future generations.  We were invited to visit the local school and meet the students, numbering only 9 at the moment.  When Natalia was in school, there were 100.  There is a gap in school aged children right now.  The district covers such a long area that two children actually live 100 kilometers apart from one another.  "Must make birthday parties difficult," Merlin quipped.  We were sung a traditional Skolt song and then Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in Skolt Sámi, Swedish and Finnish.  When we left, we were presented a Skolt Sámi language text book, signed by all the children.  It is the first book of its kind, published only two years ago and worked on by one of the teachers at the school.  Until 1977, Finnish law forbade the teaching of Sámi language in school.

Across from the school is The Church of St. Tryphon of Pechenga and its cemetery, which the teachers implored as to go visit.  "There is a very special moss."  The Orthodox cemetery is the only spot in Sevettijärvi that has always been fenced off.  So, the beautiful white moss has been protected from nibbling reindeer for decades.  It has been growing and flourishing.  Skolt Sámi is an endangered language.  Only around 400 of the 1250 ethnic Skolts in the world can speak Skolt Sámi, most of whom live in Sevettijärvi.  So, what happens here is important.  This is the spot where it can grow and flourish.  Natalia hopes that there will be a generational shift, a renewed appreciation in language as part of Skolt tradition.

For her part, Natalia is working on a children's book in the language.  One doesn't currently exist for her daughter or that age range.  It is about a bird who overhears her parents talking every night about flying back home to a home that is lost.  "And all the bird can think is this is our home."
Our dinner trout, with flesh as pink as salmon, was caught in an undisclosed location.  There is an unspoken Skolt Sámi law that if you have a building on a lake, that body of water is 'yours.'  But, still, you don't want everyone knowing that your lake is stocked with big, beautiful trout.  "It is a well kept secret," Natalia told us.