Even Santa needs a summer holiday
Lapland isn't just for Christmas. It is a summer destination – and it comes highly recommended by Emma Pinch.
Holed up in snowy Lapland all winter, working his fingers to the bone, Santa Claus is one man who deserves his summer jollies.
And with a well-known talent for making wishes come true, I wondered where his dream trip might take him.
Barbados? Florida? Swotting up on a bit of culture in the galleries of Florence?
Santa's summer destination of choice is, in fact, the Arctic. Yep, not a 15-minute sleigh ride from his HQ situated hard by Rovaniemi airport in Lapland. I can be trusted on this. Because I asked him.
Two months after our meeting I'm still trying to banish summer Santa from my mind. Think the usual floppy red cap, grey beard and crimson cloak – now atop an odd little nightie affair, hanging daintily above leather boots and hairy tree-trunk legs.
Anyway, putting a thumb in the leather-bound tome he'd been poring over, comfily ensconced in a squashy wingback in his sorting office, he explained in a rumbling, sing-song voice that in July he'd passed his usual vacation right here in Lapland. Nodding for emphasis he told us how hiking and swimming in the lakes in the light Arctic evenings was the treat he and Mrs Claus looked forward to all year.
The magic of Lapland's summer is a secret that practically only the Finns are in on.
Thanks to its northerly position Finland enjoys four distinct seasons: winter temperatures routinely dip to minus 30ºC, while in summer they reach 30ºC or more.
For the Finns, who pride themselves on being close to nature (with 75 per cent of the country's land taken up by forest and a further ten per cent taken up by its 200,000 lakes, they can hardly avoid it) outdoor adventure staple feature of every season.
Everyone skis and almost every family has either a cabin next to the sea or a home in the forest for the summer.
Lapland, which takes up 30 per cent of Finland, is where the wilderness really starts and its largest town, Rovaniemi, which is just on the Arctic circle, is the perfect city to start exploring.
The scorched earth policy employed by the departing Germans during the Second World War means it is not a picturesque town, but skiing, hiking, skidoo and fishing trails fan out from Rovaniemi in every direction. The Hotel Scandic is one of the best and most central places to stay.
Within 15 minutes of leaving Rovaniemi you are plunged into a flat, still, countryside, with pine, birch and spruce forests which seemingly go on for ever.
As we drove out into Rovaniemi Province, knots of skittish reindeer appeared out of misty drizzle on the deserted roads, then vanished into the foliage.
Though Finland has embraced the age of the microchip, the simple purity of nature is celebrated. If a thing can be fashioned out of pine, it is.
We stayed at Vaattunki Lodge, a collection of pine cottages nestling on the fringes of glassy, tree-lined lake.
The lodges around it were delightful, with each bedroom containing an upstairs bunk-room reached via ladder. It had a Goldilocks and the Three Bears feel to it: even the lampshades were crafted out of pine. Breakfast in the main lodge was a wholesome array of ham, fish, jam, rye bread and yoghurt, a smoky fire deliciously scenting the rustic, stylish interior.
In the morning we hiked through trails in the forest, led and educated on woodcraft by our handsome forester and guide from adventure tours company, Snowgames, whom we christened Risotto.
The government plays a helpful part in making the countryside accessible to its taxpayers, providing narrow wooden duckboards, which took us safely over marshy places.
The forest is dotted with roughly hewn wooden tee pees to
