6/4 -- Transfer to Ivalo, Finland

We left the ship this morning and briefly explored the small Norwegian town of Kirkenes. This place not only relies on fishing, but also on iron  mines and it became very important to the Nazi's during WWII. This is also part of the Sami homeland. First we drove to the main square, where a couple of kids and a young woman were playing chess with large pieces, next to a gathering of men. There were also a couple of historical panels and photographs, and one of the locals offered to tell me some of what I was looking at. Veera was also talking about a remarkable woman of the 1800s, who was depicted here as well. There were also photos of some of the Sami.The weather is so delightful --near 60 degrees, sunny, and not windy, that it was described as Kirkenes' single day of summer.

This is our first clue that we are close to Russia.

Central square with big chess game and men's gathering.

Apparently, there is a big enough Chinese
community here to justify this gate. The man
I spoke to said the Chinese celebrated their
spring New Year here annually.

 

Kirkenes in 1898

This well-off woman came here in 1896 and used her camera
and writing to document the situation of the less well-off.

It is possible this is a statue to Ms Wessel,
but the lighting prevented me from reading
the dedication.

Sami family in Winter, 1897.

Sami woman milking a reindeer. Given the bright outdoor
lighting today, reflections were unavoidable.

I did not expect to see this sign here. First
bowling lanes we have seen anywhere here.

As we were getting ready to leave, the gentlemen were starting to cut up some cakes and Veera asked if they were celebrating a birthday, but instead they were celebrating the last day of Ramadan with cake and tea, and a couple of them brought over bowls of wrapped candy for us to try. In a town of about 2,000, the gentleman told us there were about 200 refugees from places like Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. On our way back to the bus Veera told us that following the Ramadan rules was very difficult up here because the sun doesn't really set for months, and we wondered how the faithful would manage to follow their religion under these circumstances.

The cheerfull 'End of Ramadan' group.

Our next stop was a bomb shelter built during the war. The mine owners had the equipment to allow them to dig the tunnels through the rock with several entrances that were very helpful during the Nazi occupation. There were over 1200 sorties over Kirkenes and 328 bombing runs, primarily by the Russian army. When the Russians finally drove the Nazis out, the Nazis burned what was left of the town to the ground on October 25, 1944. This year there will be a big 75th anniversary celebration of the liberation. There is a statue to the Russian liberators and Putin was invited to the celebration, but declined. These tunnels could hold upwards of a thousand people, but they had no toilets and no air shafts until much later. They were kept in good condition through the cold war as safety from an atomic attack.

Our local guide who was from a neighboring valley originally.

 

Our guide in front of a piece of iron stone
autographed by a former king. That little
nail near his hand was a magnet that
demonstrated the high iron content of the rock.

The largest gathering area we saw, where we watched a
movie about the war and the use of the shelters.

Monument to the Russian liberators.

Because we were only 6 miles from the Russian border, we drove there with strict instructions to not even try to put our big toes over the border line.

We drove toward Finland and stopped at a waterfall, where Veera treated us to a small glass of cloudberry liqueur to celebrate our imminent arrival in Finland, where we headed next.

We drove back along the river toward the Ivalo intersection
and noticed this house on the hill -- in Russia.

Notice the fish ladder on the right.

Our cloudberry treat

On the right, the top  language is Finnish, then Sami,
then English.

The initial Finnish landscape was kind of dull, but it
got greener with better trees as we drove. 70% of the
country is tree-covered and a lot of the rest is lakes.

Lunch was at a summer camp, where the Sami people there had cabins for rent and camping spaces and a little restaurant. We ate in the kitchen, which was better suiting to holding 24 people than the dining room. Among the dining options was reindeer meatballs with mushroom sauce. Rudolph tasted pretty good!

Sami cemetery next to the camp. They are typically
Russian Orthodox and more likely to attend church
than other Finnish.

Cabins for rent.

Sami traveling abode. When they settle for a while, they
have wooden pole buildings they can break down for
transport.

The lady in blue was our hostess in front of her little
restaurant.

On our drive down to Ivalo, Veera shared some information about driving in Finland. It is expensive to get your first license: about $2,000 for the school and passing the test. After that, it costs about $100 every 5 years to renew. Fines for breaking traffic rules are based on ability to pay,  like a percentage of income, so a speeding ticket could cost $40,000 for someone well off and be free for a  pauper. You lose your license for your third offense but the length of the loss depends on what you did. Veera's dad got 3 speeding tickets and  lost his license for two weeks. If you do something really stupid like really fast speeding or DUI, you can lose your license at the first offense.

The largest lake we passed -- it extends to the Russian
border and paralleled the highway for quite a while.

Ivalo where we will stay two nights, has the airport that we will use to fly to Helsinki, the last stop on this portion of our adventure. The hotel has a swimming pool and at least 3 saunas, which local people use naked. Clothing is apparently more optional here in some circumstances than in the US. We had dinner at a rustic restaurant nearby, and Rudolf was on the menu again, this time complimented by lingon berries, which have the same kind of tartness as cranberries.

Above and below: the view from our room