Chilled to perfection

Published on Sunday 1 April 2007 01:13

ON A stop-off at Finland's Helsinki airport, the sleek wooden interior confirms the city's reputation for chic Scandinavian design. An hour and a half later, at Ivalo airport in Lapland, the arrivals desk is made of rough-hewn tree trunks and displays a stuffed white willow grouse. Things are different in the Arctic.

I'm on my way to Kakslauttanen, a small resort where I hope to see the aurora borealis, or northern lights, and try some winter activities. At the door of one of the hotel's huge log cabins, set in an idyllic snowy forest, I'm greeted by guttering candles and a friendly husky. Kakslauttanen is a truly remote spot. On the way here from Ivalo, we passed a small town, but for 200km to east and 100km to the west there is not another living soul. When I arrive, it is -24C, so cold you can't even make snowballs - at temperatures below -5C, snow won't stick together.

We have just sat down to eat when a tall figure with a grey beard and a fox-fur hat strides in and booms, "Who wants to go ice-fishing?" This is Jussi Eiramo, owner of the hotel. He first spent the summer here 32 years ago, living in a tent while building a sauna - essential for both washing and warming during such harsh winters. Eiramo then gradually built 32 log cabins, scattered across ten hectares of woodland, to give his guests independence and privacy.

The atmosphere here is reminiscent of a holiday camp. On arrival, you are given a torch and a map and sent off to find your own cabin or igloo. You are free to light a fire, but must fetch your own wood from a storage hut and drag it back on a sled. This is typically Finnish - capability is assumed because even city-dwellers in these parts spend a lot of time in the countryside.

I spend my first night in a glass igloo, something that is unique to Kakslauttanen. Eiramo realised that guests staying in the ice igloos he builds every winter were torn between staying warm inside and watching for the northern lights. His hi-tech solution is an igloo constructed from heated glass - 85% of the heat keeps the interior warm, while the rest keeps the outside clear of snow. Turn off the lights, lie back and you can gaze at the sky until you drift off to sleep. The display is amazing - more stars than I've ever seen.

Sadly, the northern lights don't come while I'm in the igloo, but the next evening the sky is still clear so I take a snowmobile trip to a nearby hilltop. Again, nothing to see except stunningly bright stars. We continue to a cabin for tea and sausages, and are about to leave when someone spots a green flickering flame through the trees. The display builds up with great ribbons of glowing light wavering and curling across the sky. We race back to the hilltop and watch, exhilarated, until the bitter cold and late hour send us back to the resort.

The clear sky sends the temperature plummeting to -30C the following morning, but I'm going off to try husky-sledding. This usually entails six dogs pulling a two-person sled. One person sits, while the other stands on the back and operates the foot brake, the only form of control you have. The huskies follow the path set by a snowmobile in front, and as each team is released from their ropes they speed off into the woods. I'm on my own, with four dogs pulling my sled, giving me a power advantage. Before nerves get the better of me, I realise I can do nothing but hold on tight and try to stop my team from overtaking the sled in front. When I step on the brake, the dogs turn and glare at me with sinister ice-blue eyes. When we stop, they spring into the air, jumping and pulling at their harnesses with sheer impatience. They roll in snowdrifts at the side of the track and take bites of snow to quench their thirst.

The Lappish landscape we are speeding through is like some exquisite, magical kingdom. A pink glow on the horizon shows where the sun is rising. Pristine snow stretches in all directions and weighs down drooping pine branches. Birch trees look like they've been dipped in sugar, each twig covered in sparkling ice crystals.

We stop for lunch round a fire in a tepee, tucking into salmon and potato soup and rieska, a barley-based flatbread. I'm surprised to learn that we've already covered 10km. We take a different route back, and when the dogs start barking to herald our return I'm genuinely sorry to be stopping.

Back at Kakslauttanen, I heat up my cabin's sauna and spend an hour alternately working up a sweat and cooling off under the shower. My fingers visibly plump up as my circulation is restored. Then I settle into a rocking-chair in front of the fire. With no TV, news or e-mail to distract me, I relax completely.

Later on, at dinner, I'm surprised when the waitress greets me in a Scottish accent. Gemma Lawrie and her boyfriend Thomas Murray, both from Paisley, have been working here since December. I ask them what's best about Lapland. "It's the snow," says Thomas. "In Scotland, snow will only last a couple of days. Here, it's every day."

The next morning dawns cloudy, so the temperature rises to -10C, noticeably kinder to toes and nose. I'm off to meet Pentti Nikodemus and his wife Riitta Lahvonen, who herd reindeer and live in a tiny village 20km from Kakslauttanen. With no running water and only a wood stove to heat their house, they lead a tough life.

A queue of obedient reindeer have been harnessed to wooden sleighs. It takes at least two years to train them for this work, but it's that or they end up on a dinner plate, jokes Riitta. We sit on reindeer skins and are tucked under blankets before setting off at a genteel pace. Passing red-painted farmhouses with white-framed windows, then barns and fields scattered in forest clearings, we get a sense of how people live in Lapland. It starts to snow, so it's a relief to be welcomed back with a warming fire in the tepee in the couple's front yard. We cook pancakes in long-handled pans and brew tea and coffee in sooty black kettles.

If I had stayed longer I could have tried ice-fishing, visited the Sami museum or gone skiing. Sleeping under the stars, seeing the northern lights and whooshing through the snow on a husky sled are all sublime experiences, but there really is nothing like crunching along a snowy path through this beautiful wilderness with the promise of a roaring fire and comfy chair to come home to in a cosy log cabin.

Fact file

Finnish Lapland

Hotel Kakslauttanen (00 358 16 667100, www.kakslauttanen.fi) offers half-board accommodation in a glass igloo from 173 (117) per person per night (based on two sharing), or in a log cabin from 110 (75) per person per night. Excursions cost extra and can be booked on arrival.

Finnair (0870 241 4411, www.finnair.com) flies direct from Edinburgh to Helsinki from 203 return. Scandinavian Airlines (0870 6072 7727, www.scandinavian.net) also flies there from Edinburgh, via Copenhagen, from 220 return. Flights from Helsinki to Ivalo, a 30-minute drive from Kakslauttanen, cost from 117 return with Finnair.