Iceland

From Nunavut to Finland: my big trip, north-to-north

/ Jane George / Leave a comment

It was time for a trip: I hadn’t been to Finland since 2017 due to work and travel restrictions during COVID-19, and I hadn’t seen friends in Greenland, Norway and Iceland in many years either.

So, when Canadian North and Air Greenland offered a reasonable seasonal flight via Iqaluit to Nuuk this past summer, I decided to book a north-to-north trip to Finland. I started in mid-September via Iqaluit, to Nuuk, Reykjavik and then to Helsinki.

I had never gone to Finland that way. Later, in October, I would add a side trip from Finland to Oslo. 

Is travelling across the Arctic in this way ambitious? Yes, it is, for now. That’s because the north-to-north route is still in the development stage—for example, a variety of issues at the new Nuuk International Airport would keep me in Nuuk for two bonus (but unplanned) days. These kinds of delays may all change after the airport’s official opening in November 2024 and then, in 2025, when the big U.S. airline United looks to add Nuuk to its list of destinations.

Would I do my trip the north-to-north way again? Yes, because I would have missed seeing Nuuk and the old friends I saw there, and, even more so, because on the way to Reykjavik, the Air Greenland flight stopped off briefly for a customs check in beautiful Kulusuk in eastern Greenland before heading on to Iceland.

Here’s some listicles with photos from this trip which ends soon. If there’s a theme to my weeks here, it looks like it’s been food, friends and art. Maybe if you are in these destinations, my listicles will offer some ideas.

Favourite museums:

• Munch Museum (Oslo): astounding spread of works from one person, Edvard Munch. I knew about his most famous work, the Scream, but the output and variety of his work came as a surprise to me.

• Ateneum (Helsinki): great insight into Finnish art…but the exhibition “Gothic Modern, from darkness to light” was somber.

• Alvar Aalto Museum (Jyväskylä): brilliant displays of Aalto’s design work. And then I did go on to visit his amazing home and studio in Helsinki, both also worth the visit.

•Didrichsen Museum (Helsinki): wonderful house-museum & exhibition of works by the Danish artist Carl-Henning Pedersen.

Best views:

• Old colonial harbour (Nuuk): just sweet.

• Lake Saima (Liperi): Finnish lake view at its best.

• From the top of the Opera (Oslo): coffee and a view of the Munch Museum.

• Katajanokka (Helsinki): my old Art Deco neighbourhood, which has now become posh but I had the best Airbnb there and enjoyed my memories, the view and walks.

Best days:

• Picking potatoes (Lannevesi): why just pick potatoes? Make it a family day. Loved seeing everyone in a place I spent so many happy times.

• Island ferry & castle visit (Oslo): a peaceful trip around the islands topped off with a castle (couldn’t do this back home.)

• Sauna (Helsinki): a visit to KotiHarjun Sauna, the oldest public wood sauna in Helsinki, where people used to go before there was indoor plumbing.  Definitely not a tourist destination yet. But a fantastic sauna (separate for men & women,) with an unforgettable wood smell and a cozy place to hang-out post-sauna.

Favourite meals

• Reykjavik: ROK, was it the rain I was finally out of? Or the company of an old friend? Or that I hadn’t eaten all day? The food tasted delicious.

•Jyväskylä: Kisan Wiskat, the restaurant where we used to go as teenagers and young adults on special occasions…it hadn’t changed at all. Even the cat’s whiskers’-themed decor!

• Nuuk: Kunguak Café. I loved the muskox burger in this little café located in the old colonial harbour.

• Helsinki: Rain led us to the Pikku-Finlandia restaurant where a vegan brunch was underway. There was even vegan caviar.

• Liperi: Fresh muikku, a local whitefish, fried up in the pan.

• Best beer (Nuuk): Qajaq

Best desserts

• Oslo: lemon-chia cheesecake

• Helsinki: berry pudding

Random events

• The Baltic Herring Festival was going on at the nearby market square in Helsinki, with fishers bringing in their herring to sell. Even better was our arrival at the square as the boats headed off into the harbour at the end of the festival.

• Oslo’s Deichman Bjørvika Library: there’s so much going on at this huge and beautiful place, where you can find books galore and corners for just about anything else you might want to do.  

• Sagayoga: a sound bath, with bowls, chimes and a gong, Finnish-style in Helsinki.

• Taking a municipal bus around Nuuk in the rain to see the new development.

Biggest surprises

• Weather: warm. I didn’t see cool weather until mid-October.

• Awesome country foods market: Nuuk.

• Everyone wears puffy down parkas everywhere.

• Cruise ships in the Arctic look huge as I saw from the window of my Nuuk hotel.

• Best country for gluten-free: Finland, where bread, whatever, is always available in stores and in restaurants.

• Best WC sign (Nuuk)

• Most hard-to-understand trend: licorice sauce with ice cream.

• Best icebergs (Nuuk): there was one in the port hanging around for days and then in the fiord on a Nuuk Water Taxi trip, there were many!

The two best things overall for me: seeing old friends and also speaking Finnish (in the photo, it’s Tero Mustonen, who won the 2023 Goldman Environmental Prize…)

While I feel quite functionally bilingual in Finnish, I also think that on this trip I realized what I didn’t know. For example, I found it challenging to understand the evening news, although I could read stories in the newspapers or magazines and talk to people. Since I learned Finnish, English has also spread into the country so it must be very hard to learn the language through immersion, as I did. I’m hoping to improve my comprehension for my next visit!

BTW post I wrote 10 years ago on the links between Finnish and Inuktitut continues to draw a lot of traffic, so If you haven’t read it and are curious, take a look!

My friends, from Nuuk to Finland, made every day on this trip wonderful. There’s a few other “Best Arctic Trips” posts I did a while ago. You can find them starting with Part 1. I up went to Part 5 and stopped, so maybe this one needs to be Part 6.

The seven natural wonders of the Arctic world

/ Jane George / 2 Comments

The ancient Greeks had their list of the seven wonders of the world: This one is is entirely my own subjective list of the seven natural wonders of the Arctic, because I haven’t seen everything in the circumpolar world.

But I challenge readers of a Date with Siku Girl to suggest other places that belong on the following list:

1) The Fossil Forest on Nunavut’s Axel Heiberg Island: the Geodetic Hills are pinkish and rounded, streaked with darker lines that mark the remnants of forests that grew 45 million years ago. A tall, lush forest flourished there when the average mean temperature on Axel Heiberg ranged from seven to 15 Celsius. Worried about life? Climate change? You can contemplate eternity here while you look at those ancient stumps.

An ancient stump on the Geodetic Hills of Axel Heiberg. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

An ancient stump on the Geodetic Hills of Axel Heiberg. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

2) Northern Ellesmere Island in Nunavut’s High Arctic: best to visit this beautiful place in the summer, when you can see something. Then the hills come alive with wildflowers, but maybe only for a couple of weeks or perhaps a few days. There is a valley north of Carl Ritter Bay that I would like to return to some July to once again see this view extend before me.

This valley in northern Ellesmere is the most beautiful place I ever see. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

This valley in northern Ellesmere is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

3) Sunset over Mt. Pelly near Cambridge Bay, Nunavut: from every angle, and particularly at sunset, when it catches the last rays, this flat 200-metre-high esker looks great.  And its an esker with a backstory: Inuit lore says Ovayuk and two smaller hills are a family of starving giants who were crossing Victoria Island looking for food. The father, Ovayok, died first. His bladder burst, creating the lakes left below.

You can see Mt. Belly at sunset behind the town of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

You can see Mt. Pelly at sunset behind the town of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

4) Northern Norway’s fiords: why take a cruise? Drive: A surprise awaits you around every twist in the road as you travel from Kirkenes south to Tromsø. It’s hard to focus on the road because the scenery — mountains, fiords, fields, sheep and reindeer — is so awesome. Luckily, there are lots of places to stop, including the World Heritage Site for the Alta rock drawings and the Riddu Riddu indigenous arts festival north of Tromsø. So there’s no hurry at all.

Mountains, fields and fiords, all above the Arctic Circle. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Mountains, fields and fiords, all above the Arctic Circle. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

5) Finnish lakes at sidsummer: Okay I’m biased because the Finnish language and summer in Finland is part of my life, but there’s nothing more heart-warming to me than to see the sun dipping down and staying on the horizon for hours, while the sunlight seems to make everything glow. I just want to stay there forever.

Midsummer in Finland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Midsummer in Finland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

6) Iceland’s geysers and algae balls: take your pick, they’re both wonderful in a weird way.

I hold a jar with an algae ball from Myvatn, Iceland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

I hold a jar with an algae ball from Myvatn in northern Iceland during a 2003 visit. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

The “lake balls,” the strange, ball-shaped algae called “kúluskítur,” or “balls of shit” in Icelandic, or “Cladophora aegagropila” in Latin, only exist in two lakes: Lake Akan on Hokkaido Island in Japan, and Myvatn, which I visited on a Canadian state visit to Iceland in 2003.

Geyser, Iceland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Geyser, Iceland. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

The geysers seemed to be everywhere, and, during later trips to Iceland, I grew to love their smaller, less explosive relatives, hot springs that keep swimming pools steaming.

7) Pangnirtung, Nunavut: this fiord can’t look bad in any light… and it’s as beautiful now as it was in 1993 when I took this photo.

A snowmobile heads out over the sea ice in Pangnirtung's fiord in May 1993. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

A snowmobile heads out over the sea ice in Pangnirtung’s fiord in May 1993. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

(And there are other sights worthy of mention which I have seen, such as Nuuk, Greenland‘s Sermitsiaq mountain or

Sermitsiaq mountain, a landmark in Nuuk. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Sermitsiaq mountain, a landmark in Nuuk. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Nunavik’s plateaus in spring or fall when there are no mosquitoes or

Koksoak river near Kuujjuaq in early June. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

Koksoak river near Kuujjuaq in early June. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

 

the flowers of Nunavut’s Bathurst Inlet in July or

A carpet of flowers covers the land around Bathurst Inlet in July. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

A carpet of flowers covers the land around Bathurst Inlet in July. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

the floe edge in north Baffin or

At the floe edge, ice churns constantly. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

At the floe edge, ice churns constantly. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

the hoodoos of Bylot island.

In the valley of the hoodoos on Bylot Island, 1996. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

In the valley of the hoodoos on Bylot Island, 1996. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

As well, there are places I have not seen that I am sure would rival these sights, such as Little Diomede off Alaska or lush southern Greenland in the summer.

Have you read my “Like an iceberg” series? Check them out here:

Like an iceberg: on being a journalist in the Arctic

Like an iceberg, 1991…cont.

Like an iceberg, 1991…more

Like an iceberg, 1992, “Shots in the dark” 

Like an iceberg, 1992, “Sad stories”

Like an iceberg, 1993, “Learning the language of the snows”

Like an iceberg, 1993 cont., “Spring”

Like an iceberg, 1993 cont., “Chesterfield Inlet”

Like an iceberg, 1993 cont., more “Chesterfield Inlet”

Like an iceberg, 1994: “Seals and more”

Like an iceberg, 1994, cont., “No news is good news”

Like an iceberg, 1994 cont., more “No news is good news”

Like an iceberg, 1994 cont., “A place with four names”

Like an iceberg, 1995, “More sad stories”

Like an iceberg, 1995 cont., “No place like Nome”

Like an iceberg, 1995 cont., “Greenland”

Like an iceberg, 1995, cont. “Secrets”

Like an iceberg, 1996, “Hard Lessons”

Like an iceberg, 1996 cont., “Working together”

Like an iceberg, 1996 cont., “At the edge of the world”

Like an iceberg, 1996, more “At the edge of the world”

Like an iceberg, 1996, cont. “Choices” 

Like an iceberg, 1997, “Qaggiq”

Like an iceberg, 1997, more “Qaggiq”

Like an iceberg, 1997, “Qaggiq” cont.

Like an iceberg, 1997 cont., “Qaggiq and hockey”

Like an iceberg, 1997 cont., “Brain surgery in POV”

Like an iceberg, 1997 cont.: “Masks on an island”

Like an iceberg, 1997 cont., “Abusers on the pulpit”

Like an iceberg, 1998, “Bearing gifts”

Like an iceberg, 1998 cont., “At the top of the world”

Like an iceberg, 1998 cont., “A bad week” 

Like an iceberg, 1998 cont.: more from “A bad week”

Like an iceberg, 1998 cont., “Memories”

Like an iceberg, 1999, “The avalanche”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., “An exorcism, followed by a penis cutting”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., more on “the Avalanche”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., “Robins in the Arctic”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., “Fossil hunting”

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont., “Where forests grew” 

Like an iceberg, 1999 cont.,”And then there was Nunavut”

Like an iceberg … the end