Scandinavia on a Shoestring

From the terrace of our log cabin in Rovaniemi, Lapland, we saw the Northern Lights, bright green against the inky sky. They were unexpected – we were inside and merry from drinking cans of flat Karhu to keep warm when I peeked out from behind the blinds and saw that the sky had changed. I should have known to expect it. Finland is alive with nature, and nature wants to be noticed.
We were desperate to see the Northern Lights, but Finland is expensive, and guided tours are no exception. We knew we needed a dark sky, a place to sleep and patience. So we set off for Lapland on our own quest. We reached Rovaniemi (lit up by Northern Lights roughly 2 nights out of 3) by overnight train from Tampere, in a compartment so small we sat still like stuffed animals to conserve space, with a smudgy window through which to watch the wintery landscapes rattling by.
Rovaniemi is slightly eerie in the strange still season a couple of months after Christmas, where the town is almost deserted and snow remains as an afterthought. Disembarking from the train first thing in the morning we were surprised at the quietness, our fellow train passengers swept away into waiting cars, leaving us at a loss for the lack of people to follow to the centre.
We followed the roadside maps to the other side of the city, past shops and bars yet to open, past vast barren ice lakes and looming pine trees, past deserted summer houses and dirty heaps of leftover shovelled snow. It was a long, exhausting walk, much better made by car, but we finally found our log cabin, hidden and distant from the bright city lights.
We were tired when we arrived at the cabin, sustained only by Karelian pies and coffee, unsure what to expect from our budget accommodation. A sauna waited for us in the bathroom, a true Scandinavian delight, our weary frozen bodies sung with gratitude. The log cabin was cosy and welcoming, and nestled into the hill side like a postcard; worth far more than the price we paid for it, a haven after two days of travelling from England.
We spent a long time sitting out in the black night that evening – 4 hours in fact, staring into the sky and hoping. It was only when we gave up and went inside, and left Finland to carry on unobserved, that it grabbed our attention back, leaving us silently gazing up at the night sky. Rovaniemi may have been sleepy, expensive and vast, we may have been poor, freezing and drunk, but the lights bathed us in a quiet satisfaction; we knew why we were there.