LOG ONE: NORTHERN LIGHTS

In this first edition of Notes From Anywhere, Newt and the lights, supermarket sausages, and lost connections.

On my way home from the Santa Claus village in Rovaniemi, Northern Finland, I met a girl on the bus. My phone had no data, but I’d loaded some particularly raunchy fan-fiction on my phone for the journey, so I wasn’t lacking entertainment. For once, I didn’t start the conversation. The girl politely asked me if I was from England, as she’d heard me ask another stranger if this was the right bus back to the city centre (it was). I said yes, I’m from just outside of London. I think she was an environmental tourism student at the local university. I was a tourist who came here with no expectations. The conversation didn’t stick with me, but the memory of having it did. We talked about Finland, and the weather, our respective degrees and the queerness of…something. I remember that we got into the LGBTQ of it all, but I don’t remember if she was a part of the community, or any specifics. Rovaniemi has a population of 63,032, and I was sat on a bus with a Helsinki transplant, discussing bisexuality or something. I wanted to get her number. I was in town for a few more days, we could have gotten a beer, or some reindeer. I think she was pretty. It was all very fleeting. I got off before my stop, and yelled pleasantries to Mysterious Finnish Girl as I scrambled off of the bus, tail between my legs. 

How many people am I never going to see again?

I have collected stories upon stories. People are vulnerable when they know you’re never going to meet again. 

—

“I actually love looking at the stars.” 

A burly footballer shared this with me at the edge of the lake that borders the Arktikum museum, just outside of central Rovaniemi. I don’t remember his name. He pointed out Orion’s Belt to me, but I couldn’t tell you I retained the knowledge on how to point it out. I tipped my head to the sky to follow his finger. It was one of the clearest nights I’d ever seen. 

This was the night that 5 strangers and I ran to Arktikum Beach, just before 12 AM, in hopes of catching the Northern Lights (spoiler alert, we did).

When I’d climbed onto the 7 hour train to Rovaniemi from Tampere, Central Finland, I don’t think I had much of a plan. An old guy sat across from me and gave me the stink eye for the whole ride, with his face mask (we’re in 2021) under his nose, his fingers carefully handling a little plastic bag of almonds. The train grew quieter and quieter the further north we reached. Finland is sparsely populated, and a random Saturday in November wasn’t a busy day for transit.

I was just getting from A to B. I’d looked up a list of the biggest cities in Finland, picked a few, and stopped for a few days in each one. I wanted to make it to Lapland in hopes of crossing the border into Sweden without having to fly. Just a couple of nights prior, a woman working at the hostel I stayed at in Tampere helped me vaguely sketch out my route into Sweden. There was a border-town a few hours away from Rovaniemi I was interested in reaching, so I saw it as an opportunity to take a few days out in the biggest city in Lapland.

Look, you don’t plan to see the northern lights. They don’t come out for you. My nan loves to tell me this story of her younger sister taking a cruise to Norway in hopes of seeing them, and coming back disappointed. It’s a common misconception that the world works for you, not the other way around. With that family horror tucked away in the back of my mind, I didn’t get my hopes up. I didn’t even plan to go in search of them.

Until I got to my hostel. Hostel Cafe Koti, a modern and clean place to rest my head. I don’t know how to talk about hotels and hostels. The coffee in the cafe was fine, the rooms were sparse and very Nordic, and the people were buzzing. None of them had come to Rovaniemi for the same reason I had. They’d all come in hopes of seeing the lights. 

Two of my roommates were wrapping up warm when I reached the shared dorm. They were giddy, chatting eagerly back and forth with me and each other. The aura they’d crafted was warm, communal. Verbally, they shared too much me, which I could appreciate as someone with similar instincts. My mission was set then. I was determined to get drunk with these strangers. 

“Did you guys wanna grab dinner later?” I asked, inconspicuously enough.

“Oh, we can’t! We have a tour booked later. We’re going to try and see the northern lights.” They explained. I deflated.

Of course they were. I quickly found this to be the truth with the majority of my roommates, and I awkwardly expressed that I hadn’t come here for that reason.

It was then that I thought, Why the fuck was I here, actually? It was -10C, there wasn’t a whole lot to do for cheap, and I was going to be the youngest in any bar or pub I entered. 

The next day, I booked a tour to see the lights. I ran out of data on my phone the morning of the tour, so I was a little apprehensive when I reached the meeting point for the tour guide, wrapped up in my stupid chicken feather coat, blinking left and right in hopes of spotting the car that was meant to escort me on a magical journey.

I think the tour cost me something like 59 euros? It was one of the cheaper options on Viator, and after two weeks of backpacking through one of the most expensive regions on the planet, it was a necessary choice. Sketchy feeling car ride to a big forest in the dark? Check. A late evening meal of sausages and pastries the tour guides probably bought from the supermarket? Also check. 

Our guide was a small Ukrainian man who’d been living in northern Finland with his wife for a while, and a picture of his baby flashed up on his home screen whenever he received a notification. He talked about them both with an admirable reverence. My tour buddies were a French family and their own baby. We didn’t speak much due to our language barrier, but they glowed with each other, so I didn’t mind all that much. I just enjoyed the gaggle of parental joy that was crowding me. I didn’t have much else to do since my phone, again, had no data. 

Past the arctic circle we went, and the trees engulfed our group as the car turned into the forest that was going to be our light spotting playground for the evening. I can’t remember the name. I probably wasn’t paying all that much attention. My comfort zone was miles away, back in my hostel bed. 

We sat around a campfire in a little kota, a type of hut built for rest in Finland’s many forests. There’s an innate trust from person to person in Finland. These huts are free for anyone to use, and often come with adjacent cabins that contain supplies for chopping wood. Maintained by forest rangers, there’s a kinship between the Finns and the forest. It’s going to be looked after. It has to be. That trust is part of the ecosystem. So we sit in the trusted hut in the well kept forest, and the fire is hot and the other members of the tour aren’t exceptionally friendly. I end up chatting to the guides, mostly. One dude’s response to the ‘where have you come from to be here’ question is a puffed up ‘the United States of America, sir’, which sours my mood. His party had a baby who wouldn’t stop crying, probably because it was -12 degrees and she was freezing. I’m dumbfounded as to why anyone would take a baby on a sightseeing trip for things that they’re not going to remember. They aren’t having fun because their baby won’t stop crying, and it’s distracting.

I leave the kota often in an attempt to spot the lights. It’s a beautiful night, clear as anything, but the KP levels (don’t ask me) aren’t high enough for the elusive sky dancers to show themselves. I see shooting stars, but no lights. In and out, 3 sausages in. I’m toasty, and pretty content, but the lights aren’t coming out. 

I think we’re there for two hours before the guides decided it was time to pack up and leave. I’m fine with this. I’m there alone, and the other patrons are all in families or pairs, so it’s a little lonely to be waiting around the fire, hoping for something, anything at all. 

On the way back, to make up for the disappointment of a stolen experience, the guide makes a slight detour to the Santa Claus Village. I hadn’t been there yet, and with a pair of incredibly slippery shoes, I made my way across the ice, towards the yet to be gritted late night village grounds. You can just walk in. No one is standing there in elf ears, begging for payment. It must be 11 PM at this point, and of course the attractions are closed for the evening. 

At the Santa Claus Village don’t turn off the lights. There’s some LEDs that are mimicking the movement of the aurora, but it’s not the real thing. We’re standing in the cold for 10 minutes or so, and I occupy myself with helping the excited infant from the French family across the sleet, holding her little gloved hand. I feel very alone. It’s almost a nice experience, to be a permanent stranger. The mother of the infant holds the opposite hand of her child, and we carry her towards the exit. 

I don’t remember what I did when I got back. I probably ate a stale rice cake and went to bed. 

Actually, a lot of my trip was eating stale rice cakes before going to bed. 

When I saw the lights for real, I cried. I called my family as soon as I got back to the hostel.

It’s sort of an unremarkable thing. People live and work and fuck and suffer in Rovaneimi and they see the lights frequently. I spent 70 euros on a train ticket and didn’t even layer appropriately before we practically sprinted down to the beach. 

I wonder how those six strangers tell this story. We share it, after all.

I won’t share my full experience with you. It’s nice to keep some things tucked away. What I will tell you is that you can get a return ticket to Helsinki for £120, a sleeper train to Rovaniemi for £20 if you book far enough in advance, and it’ll set you back £60 or so for a couple of nights in Hostel Cafe Koti. Go do it for yourself.