Page 45 of A Winter in Wonderland
Turns out, she was great at English. Her voice was soft and lilty, her smile wide, her tone kind. She welcomed me alongside Esteri, who she linked arms with the whole way around the museum, telling us (in English – so so kind!) all about the museum and background of the area, inviting us to learn more about the Sámi heritage from the museum staff. Afterwards, she took us for lunch in the museum restaurant and I ate a ginormous croissant filled with nutty cheese and salty ham. Yum yum. Ginormous anything always gets my vote.
After noshing, we went into the gift shop. I picked up a smooth wooden cup,kuksa, a traditional craft about the size of a coffee mug sometimes given as a gift, which stated it had been made by a local Sámi artisan. The lines and detail were beautiful, it was authentic with deep historical roots, and I thought I could gift it to Shay and Tess, a keepsake for their new baby, perhaps. I picked up a small wooden reindeer, painted red, to give to my dad and a book on Sámi culture for me and paid for my purchases, clutching them tightly and carefully to my heart.
Kalle had taken the afternoon off work, so after lunch she told us to follow her in her car, and we drove another twenty minutes away from the village and into the wilderness, stopping outside a beautiful blue-painted wooden home with a sloped roof that was piled high with snow. It was nestled in a forest, and before I got out of the car, I spotted a reindeer slowly wandering past the front door.
Seeing my face, Esteri said, ‘Still not used to seeing the reindeer everywhere, are you?’
We stepped from the car and onto the snow at the same time as Kalle did from her car, and she beckoned us towards the house just as the front door opened. Out stepped a woman about our age, holding a little girl on her hip, long hair straggling down her back and cheeks a rosy pink.
‘Who is this?’ Esteri asked.
I put my hand on her arm and said quietly, ‘Esteri, don’t feel you all have to speak English for me. You all just get to know each other, I’ll be fine.’
She just smiled at me in return.
Kalle reached forward and the little girl clambered from one set of arms to another. ‘Esteri, Myla, this is my daughter, Sade, andherdaughter, Taimi.’
Esteri’s eyes grew wide. ‘I have a cousin and a niece too? Well, second-removed-whatever version of a cousin and niece?’
‘You do,’ said Kalle.
Sade stepped off the porch into the snow and pulled Esteri into a hug. ‘It’s so very, very nice to meet you,’ she said with a warmth to rival a summer midnight sun.
I let a sun beam smile dance across my face, happy for my friend.
That evening, having spent the afternoon drinking coffee and being shown around Kalle’s peaceful and quiet homestead, we sat down to a dinner with Esteri’s new family. Over a delicious dinner of delicate salmon soup, and tangy and sweet cloudberries to nibble on afterwards (which looked like orange blackberries and tasted a little sweet and a little sour), Kalle, her husband Onni, and Sade told us all about their lives, and Esteri told them about hers, and about her parents and brother. There were some tears, but a lot of laughter, and that night, before we went to sleep in our beautiful guest room, Esteri tempted me outside where we wrapped ourselves in colourful blankets and looked up at the stars, dazzling thanks to so little light pollution.
Kalle and Sade stood beside us, and Sade said, ‘Have you seen the Northern Lights yet?’
‘Not yet,’ I replied. ‘I’m hoping to see them at least once before I leave Lapland at the end of January.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ Sade replied. ‘Do you know the Finnish myth for how the aurora borealis originated?’
‘I do, but I would love for Myla to hear it from you,’ said Esteri, tearing her eyes from the stars to look at Sade with interest.
‘Well, as you know, Esteri, in Finland our word for the aurora isrevontulet, which translates as “fox fires”, right?’
Esteri nodded.
‘The story goes that the Arctic foxes run over the fells andthrough the sky, and when their tails brush against things it sends colourful sparks into the air, and that’s what causes the phenomenon.’
‘I love that,’ I said, turning my gaze back upwards in the hope of seeing sparks.
Sade and Kalle took their leave back inside and left Esteri and me standing there. It was absolutely freezing, but too beautiful to feel the frost.
‘You’ve had a good day, haven’t you?’ I asked my friend.
‘One of the best days,’ she confirmed. ‘I have family again now. It’s the best Christmas present ever.’
That knocked the wind out of me for a moment. Family. I had my family at home, preparing for Christmas, with a new addition on the way. Even with my mum all the way over in Malta, she was still my family.
‘It’s nice when Christmas can be about family, you know?’ Esteri added, and I just nodded, because somewhere, somehow, very very deep down – like, the bottom of a frozen-over lake deep – I thought maybe I did know that.
We drove back to Luosto the following day, after a deliciously silent sleep in the wilderness, and a morning of more great food.
In the car, as we neared our Lapland home in the late afternoon, Esteri said, ‘I want to go back up there again, you know?’
‘Of course,’ I said, totally getting it – it was gorgeous up there. ‘Kalle said you were welcome back anytime.’
‘And you too.’ Esteri smiled. ‘I feel like … I don’t know … ’
‘What?’ I prompted.
‘I feel like I want to go back properly. There’s so much I still don’t know about Lapland, so much to explore. I mean, just take the North of Lapland … the history and culture. I don’t know.’
‘You want to move there?’
‘I don’t know,’ she repeated, and then went quiet, lost in her thoughts. She didn’t speak again until we turned into Luosto village to drop off the hire car, where Daan would pick us up if we called him. When she turned off the engine, Esteri spoke. ‘It just feels like change is on the horizon, you know?’
