2024-01-03 12:19:00
The question sounds harmless. “Do you want to make a little extra loop?” Leena Nurmi smiles innocently. It’s three kilometers to the hut, the sign says, and it’s still early in the day. Of course the answer is: gladly, why not?
Nurmi runs ahead over the groomed trail, with winter forest on steep slopes on both sides. 70 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, the trees are thickly packed with snow, some bent from the weight to the ground. Cannon wood the Finns call them. They resemble seahorses, millipedes, frogs – depending on your imagination.
It starts to snow, cold wind blows in your face, the fresh snow slows down the gliding of your skis. But Nurmi doesn’t seem to mind. She speeds forward along her cross-country ski trail; it’s tiring to follow her. The 26-year-old is in the Finnish B national team and trains 600 hours a year. Sometimes she runs from Ylläs to the Levi ski resort – and back again on the same day. That’s over 100 kilometers.
Source: Infographic WELT
“It’s not far now,” says Nurmi for the fifth time. When it feels like two hours have passed, there is another sign on the edge of the trail pointing to the same hut: three kilometers.
Cozy refuges in the Ylläs winter sports area
Hours later, exhausted, you stagger into the warm room of “Kotamaja”, the oldest ski café in Ylläs. Gloves and scarves dry by the fireplace, and at the counter you ladle leek vegetable soup into a plastic plate and pour yourself a filter coffee. And once again praise the Finns for the wonderful institution of the wilderness café.
The cozy refuges for cross-country skiers have existed in the Ylläs winter sports area for three generations. Some were previously loggers’ cabins, others shelters for hikers. Depending on the owner or tenant, they can be functional, rustic or extravagant like the “Navetta”, or stable in German, where Nurmi stopped for her first break in the morning.
Inside it is dim, hollowed-out, carved tree trunks hang as lamps under the wooden ceiling. Spherical songs float through the room, matching the witch masks on the walls and the photos of dolls with long hair, messy beards and bulbous noses.
Lea Kaulanen says she used to perform puppet shows with these earth spirits. Until her parents died and she came back from southern Finland to take over the farm. “The cows were here in the kitchen, the dining room was the barn.”
Lea Kaulanen wears purple glasses with her fringed hair and striped apron. She is actually an artist, but she wanted to preserve the farm. “And I’m the only one of us five sisters who can live here.”
Most Finns come to Lapland for cross-country skiing
As beautiful as Lapland is, you can understand her sisters. In summer, mosquitoes torment people, and in winter the sun doesn’t rise for weeks.
In the past, people here lived by felling wood and farming on drained swamps, but today tourism has long been the most important business. Paying guests have been coming since the 1930s, mostly for the arctic activities: sledding with huskies, petting reindeer, ice fishing.
Cross-country skiing, on the other hand, attracts Finns more. You can train on the 330 kilometers of trails from October until May. And if it’s too cold in the valley, you can switch to the cross-country ski trail on the flanks of the 718-meter-high Ylläs, where it’s a touch warmer. “The view up there is fantastic,” enthuses Nurmi. All right, agreed, let’s do it.
White and wide: this is how you can enjoy the beauty of Lapland
Quelle: Getty Images
The first thing you see the next morning is the thermometer outside the hotel window: minus 27 degrees. Snow crystals shimmer through the sun like diamond dust, and after a breath your nose hairs stick together.
Nurmi parks in front of the completely oversized supermarket and unloads the skis from the car. The largest reindeer statue in the world rises above her. The indebted owner of the supermarket had them set up to attract customers to Äkäslompolo. He also appeared in various TV shows. Apparently with success: hundreds of thousands of Finns now follow him on Facebook.
Animals avoid the trails in the national park
Nurmi glides past red houses with white lattice windows out onto the lake. Overtaking cyclists on fat bikes, a cross-country skier being pulled by his dog, another by his stunt kite. All around the hills shine like heads of tonsured monks.
Every April, the runners of the Seven Summits race, which takes up an old test of courage for young men: climb all six mountains around Ylläs plus the main peak in one day. Today the participants have twelve hours to do it, and it is more of a festival than a race.
Nurmi is content with a mountain, but the climb up it is steep enough. The sun breaks through the winding branches of the pine trees, the trunks casting long shadows on the pristine blanket of snow. Animal tracks are hardly visible. The moose, reindeer and bears that live in Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park avoid the trails.
On the mountain the view glides over forests and lakes
A final steep climb, then you glide towards the slopes and lifts of the ski area. At the edge of the trail there are blocks of snow wedged one on top of the other; an avalanche occurred from the short, steep slope a few days ago. “Sometimes this trail is closed because the danger is too great,” says Nurmi. Luckily not that day.
The view from the top of the pass is as great as Nurmi promised. In front of her, the vast Lapland stretches out to the horizon, the dark forests, the white spots and lines of lakes, swamps and rivers. The 718 meter high Ylläs is the first mountain in a chain that stretches almost 100 kilometers to the north.
Finns call the trees thickly packed with snow Tykkypuu
Quelle: Getty Images
To the south of it there is only flat land; on a clear day you can see 150 kilometers away – if you stand on the summit. Reason enough to change your skis and climb into the red gondola that whizzes up to Finland’s highest mountain station.
Clouds of snow drift on the summit, jagged ice plumes on the antennae give an idea of how fierce the wind can whistle up here. “We Finns often complain that we don’t have real mountains,” says Eetu Leikas, 24, who has been working here as a snowboard instructor for years. “But in the Alps you often only ski down to the middle station, which is a similar amount of altitude. And it’s perfect here for carving.”
The snow is perfect in the north of Finland
True. You can even ski around on the black piste without any worries because it is as wide as a magnificent avenue. And because it is almost empty, just like the equally spacious red ramps to the right and left of it. The Ylläs slopes evenly on all sides like a volcano.
And the snow is gourmet food in the far north. While the artificial white in the Alps is often hard as a board in the morning and salty in the afternoon, here you have to wade across the powdery, non-slip surface all day long. As a bonus, the wind even blew some deep snow on the sides of the piste.
Electricity, water, environment – that’s how harmful artificial snow really is
Snow cannons are used to enable skiing in the Bavarian winter sports region of Oberammergau. But how does the artificial snow get onto the slopes? And how damaging to the climate is that? We were there and took a closer look.
The clever Finns called the two longest runs “super long” and “extra super long”. Well, at least you can curve down three kilometers in one go.
On top of that, Ylläs scores points with an offer that you can’t get in the Alps: skiing until 7 p.m., when the sun sinks into the taiga with an orgy of colors. Even more spectacular is the cosmic light show that starts in the night sky a few hours later.
Northern lights dance across the night sky
So that their guests can see the longed-for northern lights, the communities even switch off the street lights from 10 p.m. in winter. If you want to see the Aurora Borealis in all its glory, you have to climb a mountain again. Leikas, who also takes photographs quite professionally, chose Kuer Fjäll as the quickest option.
Wearing four layers of wool and down, he trudges up the steep, hard-packed path from the parking lot of a hostel. He doesn’t need the headlamp, the narrow crescent moon makes the snow glow blue. And the first stars are already shining above the last light of twilight on the horizon.
Up here, almost all the trees still have thick coats of snow. Some look like tattered mummies, others like burning candles. Even without a single aurora borealis, it would be magical to walk through this sculpture park. But then it begins.
At first there is only a pale line across the night sky, from which it bleeds pale green. It quickly expands and begins to pulsate and dance. Shades of red mix into the billowing waterfalls and clouds of smoke that spread across half the sky.
Slowly my feet get cold and my nose starts to hurt. No matter, how could you stop now because of such banal niggles? And above all: when will you ever get an après-ski program like this again?
Magical natural spectacle in the sky over Finland
Source: WELT/Sebastian Struwe
Tips and information
Getting there: From Munich non-stop to Kittilä Lufthansa from December to March; from Hanover FlyCar. From Kittilä there are shuttle buses to Äkäslompolo and Ylläsjärvi (yllasexpress.fi). From the end of January to the end of April there is also an overnight bus from Helsinki to Ylläsjärvi (onnibus.com/aikataulut).
Travel time: From Christmas to mid-February it is dark and freezing cold. In March and April it is bright longer and the weather is often stable and beautiful.
Cross-country skiing: There are 330 kilometers of trails, all prepared for classic and skating style. In midwinter or in the evening you can follow 38 kilometers of illuminated trails. Every Wednesday at 9 a.m. there is a bus to the old Äkäsmylly mill. Farmers used to bring their sacks of grain there on skis. Today it has become a cross-country skiing tradition: you go there by bus, ski back and then dance together in ski boots.
Alpine skiing: Day tickets are usually available from 42 euros. In March the lifts run from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and in February until 5 p.m. The best mountains for ski touring are Kesänki and Lainio.
Accommodation: In the two villages to the north and south of Ylläs there is a wide range of hotels, guesthouses, hostels and holiday apartments. In Ylläsjärvi there are hotel boxes right at the valley station of the ski area. 800 cabins in the Ylläs area can be rented through the tourist office.
Essen: In the “Aurora Estate” on the outskirts of Äkäslompolo, excellent Nordic cuisine is served, for example grilled reindeer steak (auroraestate.fi). The “Kota” snack bar is somewhat hidden at the valley station of the Äkäslompolo ski area; In addition to the excellent reindeer pizza, you can also get moose and bear burgers there.
Northern lights: On the website aurorasnow.fmi.fi you can find predictions about the intensity of solar storms and thus the northern lights.
Information: visitfinland.com; yllas.fi
Participation in the trip was supported by Visit Finland. Our standards of transparency and journalistic independence can be found at axelspringer.de/unabhaengigkeit.
This article was first published in February 2020.
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