For our last full day in Kiruna we decided to drive down to the Kemi Snow Castle. Like the Ice Hotel, the Snow Castle had a 'SnowExperience365' open all year round and also the main attraction - a snow castle built every year. The snow castle houses a series of activities such as a maze, snow tube slide and snow slides.
The drive took about an hour and a half and unfortunately the road speed limits drop in Finland in Winter, so it was 80km/hr most of the way. We stuck to this speed limit due to the number of speed cameras, but were overtaken so many times that we wondered whether there was something we were missing. In summer time, the road has a 100km/hr limit so we guessed that the locals just stuck to this.
We weren't super keen on getting a speeding ticket in Finland as the fines are proportional to income (and also include factors such as number of dependant children). We did alright on the dependants part, but we were not sure how our Aussie salary would compare and this could mean that we ended up with a large fine. There have been stories of millionaires getting fines of €54,000 for a 20km/hr excess speed offence. The record appears to be €116,000 for a motorcyclist who was exceeding the speed limit by 25km/h. While we would not be on anywhere near that amount, we were aware that when we were under the expat contract my pay included the accommodation, car and a series of additional tax elements that pushed the 'effective' pay quite high, while not drastically changing what I received each paycheque.
Anyway, the main highlight of an otherwise boring drive was coming across a herd of reindeer grazing on the side of the road:
It was still very white and snowy:
The first thing that greeted us when we arrived at the snow castle was the cold. It had dropped to about -12 degrees C and we needed our jackets:
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| My water bottle had frozen overnight |
The next thing that struck us was that there was no snow castle. It turns out that the castle is not completed until late January. We still had the option to check out the SnowExperience365, but it was a bit of a pain to drive 1.5hrs to find that there was no castle.
We were greeted by the mascots at the door:
These slightly freaky characters were Arttu and Terttu - animated snowballs. A sign inside told their story:
Far by the land of eternal snow there was a valley surrounded by mountains where the snow never melted.
All the animals in the valley were white.
It had snowed for so long already that the snow itself began living. Thus the living snowball named Arttu was born.
Arttu couldn't speak but you could see from his eye his mood of the moment.
Arttu, however, was lonely in his valley so one day he decided to go look for friends.
After a long wandering, Arttu came up to a beautiful snow-ball-girl with the name of Terttu.
As the trolls in the valley began to threaten the life of the snowballs, Arttu and Terttu left to look for a nicer place to live in.
Eventually they ended up in the city of Kemi, in the SnowCastle where they've lived ever since.
Inside the building was a small shop, a couple of meeting rooms and a set of signs detailing previous snow castles and some information about how the castle is created.
We bought our tickets to the snow experience (€45 for the five of us - still cheaper than a Santa photo...). The theme for this year was circus.
The experience was a single room with a handful of sculptures but the boys loved the ice slide and even Alana and I had a shot.
The first SnowCastle was built in 1996 and was gifted by Unicef to the city of Kemi. A new castle has been built each year with a variety of themes such as fire (2006), sauna (2004), sea (2007), travel (2008), Cartoon (2011) and Haunted (2019).
The snow castle was in the process of being created, so we watched the workers start to lay down the initial foundations and walls:
We were also able to look out over the frozen sea:
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| Looking back towards the main building and the hut cabins that can be hired overlooking the sea |
Since we'd finished up at the Snow Castle so quickly and we didn't want to waste the drive, we took a drive to the border town of Tornio where we crossed back over to Sweden briefly and got lunch at Ikea.
On the way out of Kemi we stopped briefly to check out the Kemi Church:
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| On the road to Tornio |
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| The border at Tornio |
It had gotten pretty dark by the time we were heading back:
When we arrived back in Rovaniemi we started packing ready to leave the next day on our southward leg.
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