A Little Break, Recent Weeks’ Activities, and Pallas's Midnight Sun

Lately, it feels like nothing has happened, yet at the same time, a lot has. My interest in my creative projects has been low, and I’ve allowed it to be that way. With varying degrees of success. If anything, in recent years I’ve learned that the drive for my own work comes in waves. Sometimes everything happens all at once with full energy, and sometimes nothing moves forward for weeks. You just have to learn to live with it.

In terms of "nothing" happening, it’s mostly been at home. The heat drained all of our energy, especially the dogs. They mostly slept near fans on the cool floor. Luckily, we were able to go swimming, which often became the day’s main exercise since it was too hot to move outside otherwise. The river’s water stayed refreshingly cool, flowing down from the north, so the heat didn’t warm it up too much. A lot of ice cream was consumed. A lot.

Papu's tip for the heat: place a frozen oat pillow (left in the freezer overnight) on your belly.

Toward the end of the heatwave, we went to E’s family’s summer place in Kainuu to help with haymaking. We spent a week with scythes and rakes in hand, a very familiar activity for me from childhood, having grown up on a farm. I had brought my camera, thinking I’d take advantage of the slightly darkening southern nights, but in the end, I didn’t feel inspired, so I let it be.

We had a truly lovely week, working, reading books, and swimming. Proper summer relaxation.

Papu and E’s dog Rover were also exhausted after a week of supervising the haymaking. They slept soundly on the way home.

After spending a week working on the farm and around the yard, the longing for our own home and house only grows stronger. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been searching for a year, and now with E, we’ve spent a second year diligently looking for our own place here in Lapland. It hasn’t been easy, as we’ve realized. A couple of times, we’ve come close, but still, we haven’t found our home. Locals tell us their own stories of searches that can take years, even decades. Patience is truly tested when you want to buy your own place up north.

Every morning, the online property listings are checked first. We discuss which homeowner or local we might call today to ask about empty houses or properties. E does an excellent job handling the calls and making rounds at coffee tables in the small villages where potential buying opportunities might exist. We study and calculate the costs and possibilities of renovating different properties.

Buying our own home has become a full-time job.

We’ve mainly been searching for a house, not a cottage. There are some cottages and vacation homes for sale, but very few houses—if any at all. Especially old houses are rare here, as almost all of Lapland’s old homes were burned during the war, so finding a log cabin like the one photographed in Kainuu is nearly impossible in this region. Still, I hold on to the belief that we’ll find it one day.

Before heading to Kainuu, we spent time under the midnight sun in the Pallas fells. I had an idea for a video and wanted to capture some footage in the light of the midnight sun. We drank generous cups of coffee around ten in the evening and drove through the quiet village of Muonio to the parking lot of the Pallas Hotel. On the way, clouds covered the sky, and a post-rain rainbow pointed the way, but in the fells, the sun was waiting for us just beyond the ridge.

To see the sun, we had to climb to the top of the fell and cross over to the other side. Sweaty and surrounded by mosquitoes, I made it there by 2 AM. E had gone ahead with Rover on the other side, while it took me longer since I was filming along the way and had to run back and forth with the camera.

The sun shone warmly, as if it had never dipped below the horizon. I sat for a while on the summit, letting my eyes rest on the lush greenery of the eastern side. If I hadn’t known better, I could have easily believed it was daytime. Birds sang and darted after mosquitoes, flying surprisingly close to the sharp edges of the rocky terrain. It was so warm that I didn’t even need a long-sleeve shirt at the top of the fell.

I thought I had only been sitting for a moment, but when I started heading back down toward the valley, it was already nearing 5 AM. Time disappears so easily in the fells. But that’s exactly how it should be. The fells can do as they please—they have their own will.

I managed to nap in the van at the parking lot for about half an hour before E returned from the fells, covered in frost and visibly happy from the night’s adventure. There’s magic in those fells, I know.

We ended our nighttime journey with breakfast at the Pallashotel, which had just opened, feeling groggy and foggy, but incredibly happy.

I hope your summer is going well and gently, wherever you are. It’s wonderful that you spent this little moment with me and read all the way to the end.

I’ll return with a new video after an undetermined amount of time, whenever I find the inspiration to edit it. There’s no rush for anything, really.

♥ Sanna