Page 146 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL SUMMER 2022 DISCOVERING MADRID

top of a hill, I put both feet on the runners and skiers get off the lift and make fresh tracks in the
coasted. This is how the Finns get around, and it new powder.
beats walking, any day. I have come to Lapland because how can you
Leena jumps up and says, “I’m going back the not want to visit a place whose first sentence in
lake. Care to join me?” the Lapp/English phrase book is llmatyynyaluk-
“No way,” I answer. She opens the door and seni on tayana ankeriaita or “My hovercraft is
runs down the path, surrounded by snow. It’s al- full of eels.” So far, I’ve seen neither a hovercraft
ready late March, but winter in Lapland runs nor eels. Lapland, a cultural area that includes
from October through April, even early May, and the northernmost part of Norway, Russia, and
the lakes are still frozen solid. Today it snowed Finland, is home to the Lapps or Sámi, the only
while I ate lunch at the top of Kaunispaa fell, a indigenous people in the European Union. No
small mountain. From the window I watched the one knows where they came from, but they’ve

146 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE SUMMER 2022