Koli National PArk
Our first excursion brought us to the East of Finland and the Koli National Park, introduced to us as a sacred site, formerly used for sacrifice.
Koli is home to three quartz-capped peaks - Ukko Koli [the old-man sky god], Akka Koli [his consort; goddess of fertility] and Paha Koli [the evil one] - the remains of the Karelianfold, mountains formed two billion years ago.
In the 19th Century Koli's scenery provided the stage set for the Finnish National Romantic movement, of which the Kalevala (first published 1835) was the lynchpin, and which contributed to independence from Russia in 1917.
The day we visited, the temperature was 10 below zero. It had snowed heavily the day before. Without snow shoes we could only safely walk the shortest trail. Still, sometimes, it felt perilous.
The landscape yielded animal and skeletal forms. From the peaks, we looked down on vast spruce forests and islands hunched like seals in blue frozen lakes.
pine tree on Ukko Koli
We were told by Tero Mustonen of snowchange.org about the phenomenon of "drunken trees" caused by damage from heavy early snowfalls. Each year in subarctic regions brings new freak climate events.
In the old Finnish poems, lakes like these are described as seas. Lake, indeed, seems to small a word.
pine tree on Ukko Koli