Today’s temperature (May 6): High 13⁰ C, low 1⁰ C.
MAY 6 - Today was the warmest day thus far we’ve experienced in Finland. It actually felt a bit hot, since we normally bundle up before heading outside. A lot of melting snow, dripping from the rooves and making a muddy mess of unpaved surfaces.
Head about 10 km north to the Santa Claus Village. There are many competing narratives on who holds claim to Santa Claus’s home, and how to monetize it as a tourist destination. We visited the Finnish version. One of the competing destinations for Santa visits is North Pole, Alaska, which is near Fairbanks. There are others, including in Sweden, Norway, and North Pole, New York.
One of the added bonuses of the Santa Claus Village is a line demarking the Arctic Circle. This line indicates the point at which the sun stays up for 24 hours at least one day a year. It is not exactly at this point, from what I can tell, as the noted latitude is 66⁰ 32’ 35”. The real Arctic Circle starts at about 66⁰ 34’.
The Santa Claus Village is a huge complex, with hotels, restaurants, and several gift shops. In the winter there are reindeer and husky sleigh rides. We are out of season, so when we showed up the place was empty of tourists. Just the lonely sound of piped in Christmas music, and the occasional friendly employee dressed as an elf.
There was a display of traditional wooden structures. The above is a grain storage house.
There is an official North Pole post office. Here you can leave a letter for Santa, or write cards that will be delivered just before Christmas. Here they receive a reported 200,000 letters a year addressed to Santa, most from Europe and Asia. There is a display of letters, showing examples from almost every country.
Of course Santa is here, all year long, to talk with his fans. There was no line today, so he had time to talk a bit with Odette.
Drove south again, past Rovaniemi nearby the village of Rautiosaari, an area of geologic interest. It was back a ways in the woods, along a muddy, bumpy road.
The site is the Sukalanrakka Ridge, along which are a number of ‘kettle holes’. These features formed when water, flowing along underneath the glaciers about 10,000 years ago, began eroding holes in the underlying rock formation. It forced its way into cracks, and, due to the pressure, loose rocks in those cracks began spinning around in the cavity. This eventually led to the opening of large round holes as the loose rocks ground against the walls. They were all filled with water and ice when we were there, but are fairly deep.
The question would be, why are these kettle holes just found here, and not in the surrounding forest? The answer is that the ridge they formed on is the highest point around, and acted as a ‘dam’ for water flowing under the glacier. This constriction on water flow created higher pressures for the above noted process.
A number of much smaller kettle holes.
It was worth it to be out here for the ridge itself.
A view south over the sub-alpine forest.
I really was not expecting to see a frog this time of year, but there it was.
Taken as we crossed a dam across the Kemijoki.
Ended the day at the Arktikum, a museum dedicated to climate, people, flora, and fauna of the arctic in general. A whole section of the museum is designed for children to interact with concepts relating the the arctic environment.
The museum is located at the north end of Rovaniemi.
Yes, its just a block of amethyst crystals and could be from anywhere, but we didn’t get any other pictures of the interior of the museum.
