Inuktitut

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.

My best Arctic trips ever: Part I

/ Jane George / 5 Comments

There’s something about COVID-19, with its imposed lockdowns and social distancing—and advice not to travel anywhere—which makes me, as I sit in a two-week isolation, think of the trips I have taken: the good and the not-so-good.

I’ve gone almost nowhere recently. One year I remember taking 44 flights (I counted them) and since this past March I have taken none.

But, first, I want to get the worst trip (or one of the worst) out of the way here: it was a train trip that started in Finland taken when I was still in my teens.

Here I am right before I left from Finland to Russia in a photo I found in a long-forgotten journal.

I learned I could travel all the way from Helsinki to Vienna through Russia, with a two-day included stopover in Moscow, for $50.

I wanted to go on holiday after having worked all summer in the Marimekko clothing store in Helsinki. It was a hot summer and we sweltered between the racks of brightly-coloured dresses in the store, whose windows didn’t even open. On those steamy weekends, I would either spread myself out on the rocks by the seashore within the city or take a four-hour bus ride to the summer cottage of the friend I was staying with. It was located a small island called Nagu or Nauvo in Finnish near Turku. For a couple of days there we lived on a diet of fish and cucumbers and then headed back to the city.

That place was like paradise but the trip through Russia seemed like a good deal to me because 1) I had no money and 2) most visitors were still only allowed into Russia in groups. I’d been to St-Petersburg with a school group a few years before, but this time, I would be an independent tourist. Yes.

From Helsinki to Moscow, I shared a berth with two girls from Tokyo who were on their way to catch the trans-Siberian train. They spoke almost no English. but they shared their food with me and later they would send me postcards which I couldn’t read.

The Metropol in Moscow. (Photo/Wikimedia Commons)

Once in Moscow, I was deposited by a guide at the Metropol Hotel, right around the corner from the Red Square. There was really no problem with the hotel at all: it was elegant and my room was enormous. That was good.

There bathtub was in the corner, I think. No hot water. The sheets were dirty. The toilet was down a cold hallway: a woman, who sat on a chair, guarding perhaps, handed me sheets of newspaper to use as tissue.

She and no one else there spoke English or any other language I spoke at the time. So I don’t recall how I found out that the little tickets I had been given as part of my train trip also included a free bus tour of the city and two breakfasts at the hotel. I made it to the tour bus. But the patter was nearly all in Russian. I had no idea what we were seeing, the university? the Kremlin? And we visited many churches, one decorated with what looked to me like gold.

And soon I was back out on my own, at the hotel, with the rest of the day ahead of me. I walked to Red Square and somehow, because it was obvious I was a foreigner, I was put at the top of the long queue of people waiting to see Lenin’s body.

Recently I came across a journal I kept during that trip. I hadn’t seen it in years. There’s a brief description written in my nice handwriting about the visit to Lenin’s tomb.

We walked by quickly. He was under glass, his hands were folded over this chest and waxy. I noted his hand was clenched, just like mine!

The gaudy and gorgeous St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. (Photo/Wikimedia Commons)

I walked over to St. Basil’s Cathedral. Its decorations were painted on! Strolling around the Red Square were many people dressed in their traditional clothing, one with a huge knife hanging from his belt, I recall (but of course I had no camera.)

I stepped into the large building, the Gum bazaar, then a dark maze of shops. I peered down into the metro. I wanted to go down the long flight of stairs to see where it would lead but all the signs were in Cyrillic letters. How would I get back?

I was only nn observer. My memories are vague, maybe because I was in a bubble, just looking and not understanding.

I watched as people went to a metal dispenser of liquid opposite my hotel that held a glass. They went over and over again. To me, the sign on the dispenser looked like it said “vodka” but it maybe was water. The people used the same glass over and over.

And somehow I managed with the little money I had to buy several buns at a kiosk: some were filled with cabbage and others with a sweet chocolate. That’s all I would eat for the next two or three days when I finally got back on the train.

The good part of the train: the endless hot tea I was served. The bad part: the Russian soldier who attacked me after I had chatted and then shared a cigarette with him (in retrospect a bad move on my part.)

Then, somewhere along the way, the train stopped for a long time. A nurse went from seat to seat with a big needle, vaccinating people or giving them a shot of some sort for cholera: I said “nyet.” She was insistent. I said no: I hadn’t yet learned about the dangers of sharing needles, but I had the feeling that wasn’t good.

I have no memory what I read or how I passed the time other than looking out the window. Every time we passed a village or town there were walls along the tracks, so I couldn’t see much. And finally, the trip, at a time of my life when I had too many hours, little life experience and hardly any money, ended.

My lessons from that trip included watching my back, making sure I had some money and learning the language of where I was.

I also learned to improvise, which would help me in the 1990s when I started to travel in Canada’s North.

But, let’s flash ahead to 2006. That’s when I decided to drive from southeastern Finland to Murmansk in Arctic Russia. (I never made it to Murmansk because I found out I couldn’t go over on a day pass as Norwegians did.)

But while I have no photos from that early Russian journey, COVID-19 has given me time to look over the photos I took in 2006…

I started after Midsummer with my Finnish family… we stood by the kokko fire far into the night.
Late June in Finland when you can go out at 3 a.m. and it looks like this scene from 2006 by Lake Saimaa.
Sometimes we sat inside, but usually only if it rained or the bugs were too bad.
I rented a small car and started driving north, stopping only for reindeer.

And then…

To be continued