Last week I wrote mostly about what’s it like to be in central Finland in winter. But when I re-read the post after publishing it, it gave me this scary feeling of: “Don’t you dare to come to this ninth circuit of hell (when it’s hellish, anyway)!” So, now you’ll have a chance to read about how cool it is during the early December to late April winters.

Yes, there are plenty of winter joys one can indulge in during the long winters here (even if you don’t feel like playing football). Think about this: What do you get when you combine a country with no more no less than 187.888 lakes, 1.250 km of shoreline and damn cold weather? Well, what? A gigantic skating rink. And that’s exactly what Finland is right now. Practically any larger populated area has a decent public natural skating rink on the nearest lake(s). These usually provide at least a few kilometers of clean skating ice and an area for playing various winter games (curling being the hit of this winter). The largest one I’ve skated on was a 25 km rink on Kallavesi in Kuopio, while Jyväskylä has only a measly 3 km rink. And I still cannot really get it out of my head that they have figured out the turn-lake-into-a-rink thing no more than just a decade ago.

But once they have figured out it has become the nation’s second most popular winter recreational activity (right after the cross-country skiing). Meaning that practically everyone does it and that during the winter months even the national newspapers are running stories about the longest, the coolest and the baddest of skating places around Finland featuring kids, grandmas and everyone in between doing it. However, half of it (my rough estimate) is not really skating as it is known in the rest of the world, but rather retkiluistelu or tour skating. You put on your skates, preferably take the cross-country or walking sticks for propulsion, warm cocoa and something to eat with you and go on a few hour long skating tour. It makes perfect sense … and it’s absolutely fantastic. The air is fresh, the nature is beautiful and the ice is thick enough. These trips can vary from less than 10 km all the way to more than 100 km which can take you a whole day. During longer skating trips there are publicly maintained resting spots with fire places by the lake where people stop and take a break, roast a sausagge on fire and have a sip of koskenkorva. Thus besides being a great Finnish recreational pastime, it’s also very touristy.

For those who plan a skating holiday in Finland go and check out the Suomen retkiluistelijat home page. While I still recommend that the real skating enthusiasts should plan their trip in time for Finland Ice Marathon. The enormous Gluteus maximus skaters gather annually in the city of Kuopio in the Finnish Savo region where they compete in races of up to 200 km. What really amazes me is not just the distance these skaters cover during their competitions, but also the speeds: the fastest in the 200 km race reach the average speeds of almost 40 km/h. And that’s actually how lake skating came to Finland in the first place. When the Dutch who invented long distance skating on their channels had several misfortunate winters in their home land, they were looking for a substitute. They first went to Canada and then to Norway and finally discovered this small town of Kuopio in the middle of Finland in 1984. After that it didn’t take many smarts to spread the idea to other places around Finland and organize skating on lakes when ice gets thicker than 5 centimeters.

As you see, I really got excited about this skating thing this winter. I mean, I haven’t put skates on my feet in more than ten years, until a few months ago. And there’s a reason for that too as I never really liked the measly skating rinks that are usually on offer in European or North American cities. The problem with those is that every few kicks you have to make a turn. Which eventually becomes extremely boring. So Finnish frozen lakes really do provide an unbelievably liberating experience: it’s as close to running as it gets.

Glide on.

Mladen

PS: Check the gallery for some new skating images. And do drop me a line and tell me how you like your skating to be served.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 24th, 2006 at 12:52 am and is filed under Culture, Finland, Leisure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.