finland

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.

Riddu Riddu thaws Arctic boundaries

/ Jane George / 1 Comment

After tallying up a record number of visitors, more than 9,000 over five days, Norway’s 28th Riddu Riddu Indigenous festival wrapped up in the early hours of this past Sunday.

“The festival has surpassed my wildest fantasies,” said festival manager Sandra Márjá West in a release.

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The outdoor stage at Riddu Riddu 2019, which this year saw a record number coming to the festival in northern Norway. (Photo courtesy of Riddu Riddu)

“I am happy that so many people would go to Riddu Riđđu this year,” West said.

I wasn’t at Riddu Riddu to watch the festival unfold, but sitting 5,200 kilometres away at my at off-grid island cabin: I had made no plans for July other than to watch the eagles roosting and see my family.

But then suddenly, thanks to social media, accessible now on my phone,  it felt as if Riddu Riddu was taking place close by, and I wished I could just step off my boat and be there.

Riddu Riddu, which takes place annually in Kåfjord in Arctic Norway, includes Indigenous music, art, theatre and dance, youth camps with artistic and political workshops, a children’s festival, seminars, course programs, films and literature.

Riddu Riddu means stormy wind off the water in the Saami language, and had I been at the festival I would have dressed warmly as I could see that my Saami friends wore light parkas over their gáktis during the evenings.

Every year, Riddu Riddu reaches out to other circumpolar regions and indigenous peoples to spotlight the music, art and culture from a northern, Indigenous people.

And this year, its featured Indigenous northern people of the year were the Inuit of Nunavut.

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Silla and Rise, who fuse Inuit throat singing with dance floor beats, perform at Riddu Riddu. (Photo by Kalvig Anderson/courtesy of Riddu Riddu)

The line up of performers from Nunavut included, among others, award-winning Tanya Tagaq and Silla and Rise.

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Tanya Tagaq, winner of numerous awards, performs July 12 at Riddu Riddu. (Photo by Kalvig Anderson/courtesy of Riddu Riddu)

Tagaq, who has appeared at Riddu Riddu several times, also read to festival-goers from her new book, Split Tooth, which I reviewed for Nunatsiaq News.

Back in 2004, Riddu Riddu’s Indigenous people of the year were the Inuit of Nunavik.

They came after, in 2003, I had first gone to Riddu Riddu with two throat singers from Nunavik, who performed under the name of Puppuq.

After that festival, I had headed south into Finland with a busload of Koryaks, members of Mengo, a 21-member dance and theatre troupe from Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East.

The Koryaks, 6,600 of whom live in Kamchatka, were Riddu Riddu’s northern people of 2003, arriving at the festival with boiled reindeer meat, broiled salmon and fish cakes.

I can’t remember how we communicated about where they should let me off, but their bus left south of Oulu where I spent a week with friends at their island cottage, immersing myself again in Finnish.

In 2006, I was back at Riddu Riddu, when the program showcased everything from polar ska, Ainu dub, tribal funk to ethno-futuristic rock played by groups from Norway, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Siberia, South Africa, Greenland and Alaska. I hardly slept.

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Oki plays the tonkori, an Ainu stringed instrument, mixing traditional Ainu music with reggae, dub and other styles of world music. (Photo by Jane George)

I stood in front of the Riddu Riddu stage late into the night, listening to Oki, an Ainu from Japan.

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Members of the Siberian group Ayarhaan, as seen at Riddu Riddu in 2006. (Photo by Jane George)

And then there was the Siberian group Ayarhaan, which means “the tribe of the creator” which took the festival by surprise with its wildly traditional music combining elements of traditional throat-singing and Jimmy Hendrix.

Their home, Yakutia in central Siberia, is a place where temperatures range from -40 C in winter to 30 C in the summer, an extreme sort of place that produces an extreme version of throat singing.

“To survive you have to be strong, so you can hear the strength in the music,” Albina Degtyareva, the group’s lead singer, told me. “In Yakutia, you can feel and hear the power inside you.”

Her mouth harp, or “khomous,” looked like a pair of scissors with a metal tine sticking through the middle. Yakutians traditionally used the khomous, which was said to have been made by gods and possess a magical voice, to accompany their throat-singing. But Degtyareva said that 20 years ago, only 10 people in Yakutia knew how to use the khomous.

Raised in a small village, with a family where the harp was still played, she said she was one of only two people in Yakutia who felt confident enough to teach others how to play.

(And playing the khomous certainly isn’t easy: you have to learn how to make the separate oo-aa-ay-e sounds and then vary them by using your tongue. At the same time, your hand has to stroke the harp in a certain way, moving it back and forward, “like dancing,” slowly or fast, depending on the desired sound. It’s the kind of music someone has to teach you personally — and that’s what Degtyareva and her two partners did in workshops at Riddu Riddu, showing an interested group how to produce basic sounds on the khomous.)

For me, going to Riddu Riddu was an inspiration and an affirmation of strength and cultural and linguistic unity which I had always felt throughout the Arctic—and so it seemed this year for some of those at Riddu Riddu.

To see more photos from Riddu Riddu look at their Facebook page.

And, if you haven’t already, take a look at my “Like an iceberg” series of posts  on being a journalist in the Arctic in the 1990s.