William Cook

The call of the wild | 4 January 2018

William Cook on the beauty and raw power of Lapland’s natural world

issue 06 January 2018

As Sini harnessed up the huskies they were all yelping with excitement, but once we set off and the forest closed in around us they fell silent. Now the only sound was the soft patter of their paws as they raced ahead, dragging our wooden sledge through the snow. It felt good to be back in Lapland, the last wilderness in Europe, where temperatures can drop to –40C, where the population density is barely one person per square kilometre and where the natural world still reigns supreme.

I’d been to Lapland once before, husky sledging, but that was across the border in Sweden, 300 miles away. This time I’d come to Finland for the centenary of its independence — and what better place to spend it than at Jávri Lodge, in the heart of Finnish Lapland, where the country’s longest serving president, Urho Kekkonen, used to hole up and hide away?

A Finnish couple called Juha and Katja have done it up, turning it into a chic boutique hotel with floor-to-ceiling windows and a glass lobby that doubles as the dining room.

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