Postcards from the past: remembering our travel experiences

In a new series, writers share memories of their favourite holidays. For our first week, travel editor Tom Breathnach remembers his favourite destination: Finland

Elk/moose traffic road signal on a Finnish landscape.

Skinny-dipping, a moose and Dr Eva Orsmond? They’re the iconic story reels I wasn’t quite expecting when I embarked on a trip to Finland. But then again, the Nordic nation has always been a travel enigma. 

Perennially overlooked versus its Scandinavian neighbours, Finland receives less than half the tourists of Sweden and Norway and is largely bypassed by Irish visitors — save for a few expeditions to Lapland every Christmas. However, after embarking on a road-trip through the wilds of the country in 2013, I discovered an unfiltered utopia that still ranks as my ultimate European escape.

My fateful trip would kick off with some unexpected star power. Bumping into Dr Eva at Helsinki Airport, that is. As a writer on assignment, it would have been remiss of me to relinquish the chance of some insider tips from Ireland’s most famous Finn, so I soon made my move at the baggage carousel. 

A beautiful brown bear looking at me between cotton grass in a Finnish forest.

Not ten minutes in the country, I was being convivially prescribed with a Finnish survival guide from summer cottage tips to Helsinki’s best design and dining districts; even the offer of a phone number, should I need anything. How kind of her! With a golden line to Dr Eva’s Nokia and the rent-a-Volvo of my dreams, this trip was geared up to be an epic.

My trip, as it happens, would be less urbane and more wilderness. I was off on a 700km haul north to the country’s Kainuu province; home to a vast boreal biome which straddles the border with next-door Russia. With Helsinki in my rear-view, the capital’s clinical burbs soon yielded to the glittering lakelands and Finland’s flat-packed wilds unfolded out around me. There were no major landmarks, no rugged mountains or blockbuster scenery. Vistas here offered rather a mesmeric time-loop of endless lakes tempered by a flora fairytale of lupins, pine and birch forests. Sure, an armed SWAT team attempting to get a rogue moose off the highway added a moment of drama. But otherwise these waters and wilds were a case of pure lumber therapy.

A typical sauna hut at an outdoor activity area by a lake in Finland, with a jetty and picnic area. The sauna is an integral part of Finnish culture - there are 3 million saunas in Finland, an average of one per household, and the sauna seen as a necessity and an important part of the national identity.

Refuge along my route was a mix of lakeside cabins and traditional summer cottages. Highlight was Routa; a postcard husky farm sequestered deep in the forests of Eastern Finland. Here, I spent two glorious nights in the company of owner Aki Käräjäoja, guide Suvi Tauriainen and their rambunctious pack of sled dogs. The daily grind here was heaven: fishing and foraging by day with evenings offering little action but for the blissful combo of sauna sessions and skinny-dipping in the bathwater lakes. Okay, the thought of being maimed by a voracious pike was a little unnerving, from swimming in the land of the midnight sun to the scent of sauna birch in the air, nothing had ever connected me to nature more.

It also didn’t harm being served up the most satisfying meals each evening: freshly-caught pike meatballs served rustic style with dill potatoes and a creamy chanterelle sauce. On another culinary note, Finland also proved a food paradise for myself as a life-long coeliac. The country has the highest rate of the condition in the world and perhaps due to a national foodie socialism, everywhere in the country seemed to cater for special diets. From enjoying delicious pastries in Helsinki to finding hot-dogs at middle-of-nowhere gas stations, there was a real novelty in being able to live life in Finland as a care-free, gluten-free glutton.

Leaving my husky pack and continuing north, my journey would reach its crescendo in the settlement of Viiksimo; a veritable pin in the pine forests which flank the Russian border. Finland and Russia don’t actually share a natural border (such as a river or mountain range), so their entire frontier is buttressed by the Finnish-Russian Border Zone: an off-limits buffer which straddles both countries in wavering depths of wilderness. And I was going in to spot one of Finland’s notoriously shy residents: the brown bear.

A mountain wood sauna with a large window in which to relax.

Finland is home to 2,500 (and counting) bears and the Boreal Wildlife Centre, which operates out of a former border guard station in Viiksimo, offers some of the best chances in Europe to view them. And so with passport details submitted and permit granted by the border authorities, I was off for an overnight observation jaunt. A short 4WD spin into the zone, we arrived at our base: a primitive wildlife hide set in a boggy taiga clearing blotted with cottongrass. We’d be there until morning.

Joined by my guide and a couple of French wildlife photographers, our party of five sat in silence before a blank canvass of Finnish nature, hoping for a glimpse. Hours passed without event, the most exciting occurrence before midnight was a text alert from Dr Eva: “How are the bears?”, she inquired. Fortunately, I’d soon be able to share some good news, as deep into the night, a magnificent bear finally emerged from the thickets edging towards the spoils of a carcass. What soon followed in hot pursuit was an even greater surprise, an elusive grey wolf. Wolves and bears are said to flourish in this Finnish-Russian no man’s land where a ban on hunting means a relative safe haven for the carnivores. And seeing both these animals in the wild, transiting through the world’s largest habitat, capped the most thrilling of road-trips. Finland had surely been one apex experience.

visitfinland.com have a seriously cool animated website which is well worth a snoop if you’re looking for inspiration for when you can travel again.