Ylläsjärvi

At early June 2026 it has arrived the time start to slow down and land on holiday season mode. I work very hard and have found it best to start to slow down the control panel before the holiday. You can't always do it at work but playing "slow down" button on your free time does really great for your mental health and recovering & restorative holiday experience.

That's why I was happy to respond positive to the invitation to arrive to Talvenki cottage in Ylläsjärvi, Kolari.

It is a local family owned cottage where we had a family party to organize. That's why I spent there 3 days with my sister from Thursday to Saturday. We had fun and we visited also Särestöniemi.

Right next to Talvenki cottage is Kesänki cottage. They both are owned by a local family. These cottages and many other, also owned by local private persons, can be rent at Nettimökki. I have never used Nettimökki but it is Finnish option to find accommodation instead of worldwide know big operators for tourism industry. 

In Talvenki cottage I started to turn myself on slow mode for the holiday season by self-acupuncture, meditation, yin yoga, reading...

...cryptic crosswords (which I love but have far too little time to do).

Sometimes it is very difficult to slow down. It is easier there where is the silence and emptiness. Before the slow down mode can arrive, it needs you to put aside your smart phone and just be.

In Talvenki cottage is 2 bedrooms.

I had one just for Me & MySelf. I slept so well and a lot in there.

To be honest, I fell asleep several times on the sofa too while having my yin yoga sessions. But if you fall asleep it is what you need!

In Talvenki is modern electric sauna. Electric sauna means that it heats up by electric sauna heater which has the stones over it.

Instead of the electric sauna we used Talvenki's barrel sauna. Believe or not but this was my 1st time ever in a barrel sauna!!!

The barrel sauna in Talvenki has wood burning sauna stove. In my culture boys/men heat up the wood burning sauna stove. Girls and women can do it too if boys/men are not around. We had someone to heat it up for us. It is not something that's banned from female sex. It is rather something how males show care and respect for females. You warm up sauna for someone you care and want to provide hospitality and safety.

It is something like that when we had someone to roast sausages for us on the open fire in the rain with millions of mosquito. I really appreciated that. Instead of diamond rings I prefer this kind of action. 💙

We could have washed ourselves in the traditional way in the barrel sauna but decided to use modern facilities instead to make it faster and let other people to enjoy about the sauna too. You can read here more about how to behave in sauna if visiting Finland.

But hey, what for we arrived to Ylläsjärvi. What we did when we didn't have our "me-time" with my sister?

What we did when we didn't visit the local attractions? What was the family party we arrived to organize and participate? 

What for we had been working as a team also with people we did't know before in the past weeks in May 2026?

It was a baby shower!!!! I am 51 yrs old and it was my 1st ever baby shower. I've seen it on movies but never been in one until now! It is not our traditional cultural thing but of course I was in.

It all was gluten free because of the pregnant mom. It was a great idea to have it all gluten free so no one needs to worry and the pregnant mom could have it all like all the guests. Here is my GlutenFreeZone to find out more about serving gluten free. 

It was a small party and everyone participated. Everyone brought something and we put it all together. This beautiful and delicious gluten free cake was made by a talented young woman I had met never before.

I brought the candies because I knew what kind of they need to be. The ingredient lists can be very complicated even to coeliacs themselves. I helped to build up this watermelon baby carriage. I had never seen one, not to mention make one. But an artisan is always an artisan. We can create many things! 💪 At least then when we are given the instructions.

During the evening we re-decorated the watermelon baby carriage with rest of the fruits. It all was really fun, sweet and tasty.💛

CottageLife

In my previous post I told you how Lapland shows you different things on summer season than winter. But after Summer Solstice, at least on the begin of July the whole Finland seems to close up all its public services and people seem to vanish somewhere.

Lapland's population is approx. 176 000 persons. People mostly don't go away to foreign countries for a longer than 1-2 week holiday in June-August, so they mostly stay in Lapland. But where? Mostly at cottages or at homes. But what is this cottage culture of Finland?

It is "mökki" = the cottage. But why it is there? Why this culture appears so strong all over Finland and also among those persons who already have a house of their own and live even rural? Why they have "mökki"?

First of all it is important to understand that it echoes from old traditional culture from different point of views all over Finland with the same result: summer cottages. When Sámi people lived full traditional life style according to the cycle of the nature they had to travel around like a circle or fort and back, depending on their livelihood. They started to put up permanent small dwellings because it made life a bit more easier. Later when the laws changed because of colonialism they started to have the permanent house where they were forced to stay but still had these dwellings here and there because of their livelihood and surviving. These dwellings still provided shelter when herding, hunting and fishing. Similar culture elsewhere in Finland made people to build dwellings too. All these small cottages were called by different names according to their purposes and geographical location: summer cottages, boat houses, church cottages, meadow shelters etc.

When telling the history of the cottages in Finland it is often connected to the wealthy southern people who started to build up villas by the waters in late 1800 and early 1900. But it is important to understand that the folk had it already and with a long tradition. These cottages had provided even sanctuary during the previous wars and provided it also in 1900 wars. They were the places local people escaped to and hide in  to stay alive over the restless times. Only after the wars in 1900, which means at 50´s-60´s the cottage culture changed closer to it what it is today. People started to maintain only one cottage and they put their money and effort on it. First they re-built their houses in 1945-1950, which were destroyed in the wars, then they kept on building the cottages. And from that the modern culture of the cottages of Finland was born. And because of the wars it is difficult to find older cottages than that in Lapland, where almost everything was burnt in the middle on 40's.

Today these cottages provide sanctuary especially for mental stress of modern work-life pressure for many people living in Finland. We don't have a cottage of our own. We used to go to one shared cottage in Levi. Since covid-19 we have not been there because it was sold. Since that we have been renting one when feeling or needing so. Every now and then we have been invited to visit ones cottages but this summer we actually have accepted few invitations. These pictures on this post are from one private cottage by a big lake in central Lapland area.

If you are invited to visit someone's cottage in Finland they usually say literally: "Come some day for a visit." When a person living in Finland invites you for a visit in their home it means you really are invited and you can pick up the date. In the modern world you are expected to announce the date and the time for the visit ones home. Simply because people are working somewhere else than at home. 

When you are invited to visit the cottage you need to ask the wished date and time for the visit. It means also finding out for how long visit you are invited to: few hours or few nights. When you go, don't expect free room service. You are invited to work there like part of the family, not just hang around like a guest. Don't let yourself to be served. They probably say "no no, you don't need to help, you are our guest" but make sure you are self-initiated and helping also the others. If you are invited over the night bring your own lining or sleeping back and towels. You can get them from the super markets, even disposable, just ask if you can't find. Just use your brains and think how you would like your guests to act if it would be your cottage and your holiday there when your friends are visiting. Like always: live room for the physical space and remember the sauna manners.

The cottages can be very modern with all the facilities. There might be the electricity and sewerage but also no electricity nor indoor toilet. When visiting someone's cottages it is a habit to bring a gift. Practical things are valued, not decorations. Practical gifts can be something that comes to the hygiene or sanitary, disposable kitchen ware, coffee & tea or for example a gift card to ironware store. Also, ask if you can bring something from the grocery. Usually there is no grocery anywhere nearby the cottage so they might have run out of something.

I have wanted to make my own house Green Lady feel like a holiday and cottage. In the way that we don't necessary need to go away to get the holiday mood. If I some day have a cottage of my own I want it to have these beautiful timber walls. Everything else is out of the question. I love these old coffee grinders which are on display at the cottage we visited in June, and will be visiting again in the future. Although I don't drink coffee, I love its aroma. These items reminds me of my childhood.

At the cottages of local people you can see and experience part of the culture history. In Finland you can rent many kind of cottages, also the ones made only for the tourism. They are great too but miss the authentic part.

What is the hook on the wall? Folk calls it "keksin pää". If you use translator for that you get the translation "cookie head" which is actually funny. 😂 It is actually part of the timber rafting tradition. It is like the hook of the pike pole but in log rafting much bigger and stronger. 

When boating with my Forest Sámi grandpa I was his deckhand. On that time children's' life jackets were unpractical, even dangerous if not needed for the saving your life in the water. That's why when carrying out deckhand's duties on his boat for him I was not using the life jacket. Our safety rules were the fact that I needed to be able to dive, swim for 5 minutes in the river / sea, scream aloud and wear a loose-neck shirt. He never allowed me on board before checking my shirt. Why? 

Diving: If I fell off the deck into the water I needed to be able to hold my breath and dive. You fall actually at first into the water. You get up when you just kick by you legs. The surface is always there where is more light. 

Swimming for 5 minutes: It was the time my grandpa evaluated he need for to rescue me.

Screaming aloud: At least that made him to notice I fell off.

Loose-neck shirt: He picked me up from that by the hook of his log rifting pike pole back on the deck. Wow! 

Sounds rough but that's how the life was back then. He had worked also in log rifting so he knew how to do and handle it. But with me he never needed those skills to save a kid. 😅

The cabin we visited has an interesting project going on. There lives bats which you spot in Finland quite rarely. Usually people fear bats and don't want them nearby. At this cottage they have put up even few bat houses after spotting one that needed human help. In Finland I have never seen a bat. Travelling in Greece I saw one at once. 💛

***

Water safety rules: Learn to swim. Teach your kids to swim. If the water is a strange element to you, take a course for this and practice your skills. Never go into the natural waters if you can't swim. There might be surprises under the water even it looks shallow. In Finland you can have fatal hypothermia even in low waters during the summer months!

Sauna

Finland's population is 5,65 million inhabitants of which for about 176 000 persons live here in Lapland. In Finland there are for about 3,8 millions of cars and over 3 million of saunas. It is very hard to find a house in Finland which doesn't have sauna of its own. Also we have sauna of our own.

We've been planning to update our sauna for few years. Like with the parquet I've been unwilling to remove any proper wood only to replace it by another wood. That's why we ended up to wax the walls and ceiling. They sell 3 manufactured shades of the sauna wax: white, grey and black. You do can have any shade you want but these are the pre-mixed factory made shades. 

We chose the pre-mixed factory made shade black. Yep, I know, it looks brown. It looks actually tarry wood. How did we make it? Just using the black wax. See, the original shade of the wood changes the applied shade. It is translucent. Our wood panels were already darkened to yellowish brown (see the 1st picture). This is how it appears through the new black wax. Of course you can't never be sure about the result, only to predict it, but at the end you never know until it's done. That's why you should test it at first on a small spot like we did.

We don't have a functional electric light in our sauna because when it was renovated by the previous owner according to the millennium fashion, which didn't last in actual use. The electric wires are installed in a way that taking it down would need taking the whole ceiling down in both sauna and bathroom. Because we have the window in sauna we have been coping without electric light very well. We considered to install electric lights but decided not to. Having them installed would cost of course but finding an electrician in your desired time window is not easy around here. 

Because the walls get darker now, we need extra light there. I discovered another option than electric lights. They are not candles. Candles in sauna are not very fire-save option. What I discovered? You will see that later when I have been able to buy and install it. Obviously by the autumn when they start to arrive into local supermarket.

We replaced the old sauna bench wood. We could have the old ones sand dusted and fixed. Instead we decided to get new ones, because we need to buy some wood anyway for some garden decoration thing. Instead of buying new wood for garden, we decided recycle the old sauna bench there, and buy new ones for the sauna. In this way we were able to make the benches 10 cm wider, despite we used the old frame to build it all.

Usually people shade all the wood of sauna to the same color. We didn't want to have dark benches because of the lack of the light. I can't see very well. In sauna I can't use my glasses. When it is dim or dark I see even worse. For the light and security we wanted the benches to be visible. For the benches we used aspen tree that is traditional material for sauna benches. And it is a great shade because in our bathroom and everywhere else nearby sauna the wood is in the natural shade, which you can see in the 1st pic of this post. Without these original shade of aspen benches sauna would have looked a bit too different and dark if waxed with black compared to bathroom. Also, notice the green tiles that create more shade difference in the dark sauna during the long & dark winter months.

We have already tested it and the benches are great. They are heavier than before so they are also firmer. He installed some extra support for the bench. I love the wider benches!

Sauna is a great place to be silent, relax and be empowered. Sauna is like a temple or church for the soul healing. You get connected with the spirits in there. Traditionally you got born and die in there. Today you get mostly the traditional soul purification in sauna. That is more than enough.💚

If you visit a sauna in Finland remember to go all undressed and not to hide inside your towel. It is considered very rude when all the other people are in the dress they were born and you warp in your clothes. Remember to leave the space for the silence and physical distance. If you really need to talk, use as low voice as it is possible. Otherwise you will scare the spirits and make them angry and even get their revenge. You can use lower benches/steps if you feel it is too hot. Nobody will laugh at you. Admitting fairly that it is too hot, you will be only considered as a brave person who dares to show your weakness. 

The Reading Challenge 2026 - Part 2

This year in March-June I've read two fat and two skinny (compared to the fat ones) books. All in Finnish and each mine, but 3 of them are vintage and pre-read.

I've read:

T.I. Itkonen's Suomen lappalaiset part 1 and 2. They are huge folklore books about Sámi people in Finland. Also Forest Sámi people are included in these over 1000 pages. Unfortunately Itkonen's books are not available in English. They are very comprehensive and informative books about Sámi people written by an outsider but still one that was part of the Sámi society. He was for about 8 years old when his family moved from South Finland up to Inari, Lapland, when his father received there a job as a local vicar.

Guiseppe Acerbi's Matka halki Suomen v. 1799. That is a part of his book Travels through Sweden, Finland and Lapland to the North Cape that considers Finland. That complete book might be interesting to all and available in several languages. Again, when reading this kind of book, remember it is written by an outsider to outsiders. But it still expresses his own private experiences on his travels and he has seen what he has been shown. That's only the part of the truth, but it is his part of it. Also, because it was written 200 years ago, that creates another interesting aspect to the story.

Juhani Torkki's Plutarkhos mielen tyyneydestä. Even this book is in Finnish it actually is a translation of ancient Greek philosopher Plutarkhos' essays about the peace of mind. It is an ancient mindfulness that still works in this modern world. It is amazing that his 2000 yrs old ideas are still valid and still human nature needs practice in these skills. I received this book as a gift from YoungLady who moved out to study ancient Greek 5 yrs ago. 

Here you can find her Barchelor's thesis.

Here you can find her Master's thesis.

They both are in Finnish but I bet that google translate can understand it better than ancient Greek. They both are about horses: the former about the role of horses in book four of Xenophon's Cyropaedia (which is a partly fictional biography of Cyrus the Great) and the latter is about latin loanwords used by Apsyrtos (who was a renowed horse doctor) in  Hippiatrica (which is the only surviving work on Greek hippiatrics). The topic of horses and hippiatrics has attracted relatively little academic interest. So if you are interested in horses and ancient history, you might be interested in trying to read these with the help of translator. Hopefully she'll get the funding (and a topic!) for her dissertation.

Skating

Today I was skating under the starlight sky. For the 1st time this winter. I am 50+ so it is not the same anymore. And I am not so skillful in it anymore like I used to be. But I still like it, enjoy it and relax when doing it. Despite I am 50+, I am not going to stop it. It does so good to my body & soul.💕

AAW Mittens No9

Just 2 weeks ago I learned this new craft technique: Shepherd's crochet. I introduced it to my students at my working place at Tornio community college. Last week a student started to make mittens by using this method, but she had few wonders and open questions in the project. 

That's why I started to work with the Shepherd's crochet mittens to find out the issue she wondered and see what is the point. We can't know all, none can, not even a professional teacher. By the way, teacher's job is not to know everything, it is to help your students to know what they need and want to know. And that's why I have the promise for my students; if they want to learn something I can't, we learn together. 

At 1st I planned to start the same instruction like my student, but then I realized I had similar mittens for about 25 years ago. I received them as a gift from a friend. Shepherd's crochet is not so stretching sideways. Your thumb needs that in wither action from the mittens & gloves. That's why I designed another type of Shepherd's mittens you see around here.

I used plant dyed (different shades of reed) AAW yarn (50% our own ethic produced arctic angora wool, 40% ethic produced FinnSheep wool and 10% nylon) (100g = 238m). I used the last remaining left over yarns I have from my projects WaterGrassVest OOW, NB Hat No2 and PolarBears AAW. It really is slow craft and FashionNOW. They are very warm, thick and durable mittens. That's why I like Shepherd's crochet, and have already started another project with this design of my own; because He wants a pair too. 

And yes, I figured out the answer for my student's wonder & question. 💕

Learning new is good for your mental heath! And brains! Two weeks ago I had just tried out this method and now I have my own designed mittens! WOW! 

TogetherTo2026

In 2025 happened several things I didn't (yet) find time to tell you about. One occasion was right in the middle of November 15.11.2025 when I had a Spinning Saturday with friends at Elina's Farm Old Leinonen. The pictures of this post have been taken at Elina's farm.

Gathering together with friends is important and actually during 2025 I have been paying more attention on my human relationships. During covid-19 it was ok not to meet your friends face-to-face. But covid-19 is gone so it is time to confess who still has time to share with me. None of us has many good close friends. I do have few extremely good friends far away with whom I write long letters. The ones I have here I want to see. If one never finds time to me it is sad but honest act. That's why I have refused to deliver mail box gifts and send Christmas or birthday cards to persons never seem to find time to see me. I am busy too, I do understand. But I never am too busy to see if someone wants to fade away from my life. It is time to open and close up...

Even harder times are ahead. Unfortunately they will reach all of us, near and far. In good and bad.The window to 2026 has finally opened. I make sure I won't let the frost in. I love frost but its place is outside. I never make New Year's Resolution(s) but sometimes I see if there is a place for a change. Now I see there is. One thing is that I really want to finish my upcoming book next year. 

In our Spinning Saturday in November I had a change to try out this modern style wheel spindle. I was satisfied with it and can warmly recommend it if you seek one. Also the owner of this wheel spindle has been satisfied and happy with it.

It is a low budget modern wheel spindle Woolmakers Bliss (ScT). It still is worth of hundreds of Euros but not at all as expensive as many other.