I love the North. I don’t know why and I know it’s not very common, specially from someone who comes from Spain, specifically from the Canary Islands. People are always looking for warmer places and tropical beaches for their holidays. But I prefer colder destinations. And it’s not because I’m a fan of cold, I’ve never liked it. But every time I have to think where I would want to spend a holiday, I always end up looking North. I guess it all started when I visited Sweden for the first time. It was in August and I went to Stockholm for two weeks. To be sincere, Sweden wasn’t a place that attracted me by then. I only wanted to spend my summer holidays with my boyfriend. I didn’t even know anything about the city. The weather was horrible for most part of the time I was there, rainy and cold (specially cold for a Spaniard!)… But, surprisingly, I fell in love with Stockholm. And less than two years later, I left everything in Spain and I moved to Sweden. And since then, I have this special feeling for the North.

There’s something special in northern countries, something that always draws me. The seasons, the weather, the cold, the light, the infinite long summer days, the magical winter darkness, the snow… And the nature. Northern countries have such a special relationship with nature! There’s nothing like that where I come from. Even if tourism is starting to bloom in northern countries, you can still feel the wild and raw nature there, as population is very scarce. There’s nothing I like more than driving on these empty roads, without seeing any other car for hours. There’s nothing like hiking and having the trails just for yourself…

My husband told me a few months ago that he had the opportunity to go to Finnish Lapland for a few days and that we could spend a few days there too exploring the region. I immediately started dreaming with infinite snowy landscapes and forests, with reindeer, moose, red squirrels… We couldn’t have chosen a better time to go there. While in south Europe the end of March means spring, in Lapland it only means a few more daylight hours. The cold remains for a few more weeks, there’s still plenty snow and more falls every now and then. But the cold is not as extreme as in December or January. That makes March the perfect time to travel to Lapland.

As we did in other places, we planed a road trip, from Rovaniemi (the “capital” of Lapland and home to Santa Claus) to Inari, at 265km from the Arctic Circle. In this occasion, the distances we drove weren’t as long as in other trips, as the roads are still covered in snow and ice. We mainly visited National Parks, where we could hike and walk with our snowshoes.

Here are some photos I took during our first day in Lapland. We visited two places near Rovaniemi: the waterfall Auttiköngäs and the Korouoma canyon, where there are three more waterfalls. Of course, all of them were frozen and covered with ice and snow, but the landscape was still beautiful. I hope you like them!

I’m still impressed by the landscape we found in Lapland. One could think that, after living in Sweden and Switzerland, I would be used to the snow. But Lapland is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The deep forests that cover all the landscape as far as the eye can see, the huge frozen lakes, how flat the Finnish landscape is compared to Switzerland… But if there’s something that really amazed me, it is the silence… I think I’ve never been so aware of the sound of my own breath as I was in Lapland. The only sounds we could hear in those infinite forest were the ones we made: the snow crushing under our feet… that was all. Complete silence accompanied us as we walked in that eerie and frozen world…

Friendly Friday Photo Challenge

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