Makkara

Finland is an outdoorsy country. Pretty much everyone has, at some point in their life, camped, fished, skied, gone trekking, picked berries, built a fire, punched an elk, etc.

What you soon realise though, is that the main objective for any outdoor activity in Finland, is to get to a place, often a laavu, where you can cook and eat sausages (Makkara).

The Finnish sausage is a bit of a sorry beast. Most people seem to peel of the plasticky skin, often burnt anyway, and then cover the sawdust meat inside with mustard. Those that know me will confirm that I am almost completely devoid of national pride, but the Finnish sausage is a poor imitation of its German or British equivalents.

Makkara

British Sausage

The countryside here is full of laavus, traditional shelters once used by the farmers when they went out to cut the hay meadows. Nowadays pretty much every ski day or trekking day is designed around a visit to the laavu where desperate skiers/trekkers hurry to the fireplace to get their burnt sausage fix.

They really are makkara addicts. This year I joined a kayak club and on the beginners' course they explained how the kayak has a little storage space just perfect for storing a barbecue for your sausages. Having passed the course, we adventured off to a nearby island only to find it full of people who'd come over for the day in their yachts. We watched them land, walk to the barbecue spot, cook their sausages then get back on their boats and sail away again.

So passionate are the Finns about cooking sausages al fresco that they have even invented telescopic barbecue forks which fit neatly into your backpack/ski pants.

Sometimes it feels a bit like the Pokemon craze where going out is actually an unintended consequence of getting to a place where you can wave your phone at imaginary Japanese characters/ cook sausages. At least it gets him out of the house.

Man overboard!

On the weekend I heard a great story about a man who jumped overboard from a Tallink ferry, swam to a nearby island and survived for two weeks stealing crackers from a restaurant that was closed for the winter.

The man himself told the police that he had regretted his act immediately [presumably seconds after he hit the icy water. Ed.] and had swum to the nearest island. - ERR news.

That nearest island was Pihlajasaari which, as you can see from the map, is barely 1km from shore. It's a busy tourist island in summer but in April he was lucky he didn't freeze to death in the sea.

Here are my top 4 scenarios for why he jumped.

1. The Abort. "What? This ferry goes to Estonia! Abort!" Like when you realise you've got on an escalator that takes you to the wrong floor. You can either ride it out, slowly go all the way down then find the escalator that takes you slowly back up, or you can turn round and charge back to the beginning, leaping at the end to get back to non stationary land.
2. The Did I Leave The Oven On? Maybe you did. Maybe you didn't but there'll be no peace till you've checked. Now over the side with you scatterbrain!

1. The No Ferries To Pihlajasaari in April Eh? "Well I'll show you. Tally-ho."
2. The Stop The World, I'm Getting Off. "Five euros for a coffee! In a paper cup! I wake up at 6 to get on a stinky ferry, travel 2 hours to a job I don't even like then two hours back to a wife who complains I don't do enough around the house. Well no more my friend! I'm going to live on an island and listen to The Stone Roses. See you later suckers!"

Hitching in Lyngenfjord

The old man stopped to give us a lift. He opened the back of his estate car and helped put our heavy packs in without asking where we were going. He'd been down to Nordkjosbotn to get some dog food and now was heading back to his home near Nordmannvik, about a 3 hour round trip.

He told us that there didn't used to be a road on this bit of the fjord. This was where the Sea-laps (Sea Sami) lived and fished; there was no road to them, only boats.

Then the road was built and later the tunnels to protect the roads from the landslides falling from the sheer slopes in the winter.

He remembered a time when there were lots of people who spoke Kven, something similar to Finnish but different. There were some words that sounded familiar to him but it was hard to understand.

He'd heard that once, more than a thousand Brits had come over, by boat, to work in the mines. That was a long time ago.

Many of the first tourists here were Germans. Many soldiers had been here, during the war, and fallen in love with the place; they came back to visit with their new families.

Now there are lots of Japanese tourists. They come to see the northern lights. Most nights there are half a dozen coaches parked in Skibotn. Most of them stay in Tromsø.

They're building a new tunnel too. Then the trip to get dog-food will only take two-and-a-half hours