Carry on up the Kemijoki
The thin, crooked finger of the Gulf of Bothnia points north to where the midnight sun shines – but even at it's northernmost point the golden orb still dips just below the horizon at midsummer. The Arctic Circle, with its promise of eternal sunshine, lies about one degree of latitude further to the north. It seemed a shame to be so close and not visit. When I had been planning the trip, idly flicking through the Times Atlas of the World, I had noticed a couple of blue lines snaking southwards through Lapland to the coast. I would have the canoe with me on Teal - why not try and canoe upriver to the polar circle?
The Torniojoki looked like the best river to try, meeting the sea slightly further north than the other alternative, the Kemijoki that flowed into the sea at Kemi; it also took a more direct southerly course. Then Peter did some research and discovered that it had famous rapids only a few miles inland from the coast. Fun to canoe down, perhaps, but tricky to get up. Further researches revealed that the Kemijoki was dammed in a number of places for hydroelectric power. The reservoirs behind the dams ought to be easy travelling by canoe.
So here we were at Kemi. There seemed little point in hanging around, especially as Peter was only with us for a few days. I checked with the marina that it was ok to leave Teal there for a few days. It was, and remarkably good value too – 10 euros per day for the first two days, and only 4.40 euros per day after that. Like most of the marinas round here it was run in a quiet and efficient manner by the local council, who were glad to provide it as a service to visitors to the town, not see it merely as an opportunity to squeeze money from them. I wish British coastal towns were as enlightened.
We left in the late afternoon, paddling along the seafront until we found a channel that seemed to lead in the right direction. Our only guide was a road map of the whole of Scandinavia that showed the 70 miles we had to travel as a thin blue thread just a few centimetres long. We reckoned it shouldn’t be hard to follow our noses though.
The channel we were following was rather pretty – a quiet tunnel running through overhanging trees. It opened out occasionally into ponds with marshy edges, and passed under a couple of low bridges and meandered past the local pulp factory. On several occasions we had to get out to drag the canoe over rocky sills and up to a slightly higher level.
It clearly wasn’t the main river however, which, draining a fair fraction of Lapland, we expected to be pretty big. After the best part of an hour of winding along, a large embankment loomed ahead and our channel narrowed, turned sharply to the right through a ravine cut in solid rock, and suddenly began to climb steeply. It wasn’t canoeable, at least not in the upwards direction, and we got out to explore. The embankment turned out to be the first of the dams, and the channel we had paddled up some sort of relief channel or overflow from the reservoir. Time for a portage.
The canoe was never lightweight, and with the added weight of the bulkheads I had shoehorned into it it was a job for three of us to carry. We made a separate load of the camping gear, rucksacks and food and laboured up the hill with our loads. Hard work, but at least it made a welcome change from paddling.
Above the dam was a different world. Here was a lake a mile or more wide, stretching as far as we could see into the distance. Most of the land was quite open, with fields and dotted houses and the odd church or farm. It certainly wasn’t wild, and in fact most of the way up the river the banks were more often than not the well-manicured frontages of holiday homes, rather than than the primeval forests and rolling tundra I had naively expected.
We paddled on, our shoulders and backs beginning to complain from the paddling. Imperceptibly, the lake narrowed, and gradually we began to feel the stream against us. It became hard work to make progress up the middle of the river, and we started to hug the bank instead and make use of the little eddies at the side. It was tiring work though, and we were glad when we turned a corner and saw ahead of us another steep embankment. This second dam was even more imposing than the first, with a head of about 20m. We emptied the canoe again, carried the kit up, portaged the canoe, and found a convenient little camping site just above the dam where we lit a camp fire to try and keep the mosquitoes away (with almost total lack of success) and ate some smoked fish that we had bought in Kemi. We all slept well that night.
Before we set off the following day Peter nipped a short distance into the woods to answer the call of nature. 'I do like a poo with a view', he told us before he set off, and with the lake before him and the rolling woods around him it was a picturesque tableau, so he was no doubt preparing to enjoy himself. But a series of yelps and curses reached us from his leafy commode, and he reappeared with an scandalised expression on his face, accompanied by a cloud of fat and contented mosquitoes. 'There was one RIGHT ON THE END OF MY WIGGER!' he complained in outrage.
It wasn't long before I too had to brave the hungry humming haze that occupied the woods. There was simply no way to do it without being bitten. All you could do was adopt a policy of minimising blood loss by getting the deed over with as fast as humanly possible, using a switch cut from a nearby tree to swat whatever you could, and slapping your buttocks frequently to prevent too many of the evil horde from settling there to tuck into their breakfast.
The paddling was easy to begin with, with a few more miles of broad, level reservoir to enjoy. With three of us, and only two paddling positions, we had settled into a routine of two hours of paddling each followed by an hour of rest, snugged down in the nest of rucksacks and odds and ends that the middle section of the canoe was crammed with. Our muscles were beginning to ache now, and soon two hours seemed like a very long time.
The reservoir above that second dam didn’t last very long, and soon we could feel the gradient make itself felt again, with a strong flow against us. In some places we could be paddling flat out and going nowhere if we let ourselves drift too far out into the stream, but by creeping through the quieter water along the bank we managed to make a little progress. Every so often a rock sticking out into the river would even create a back-eddy that we could relax in for a few short strokes, letting the energy of the river itself carry us upstream. But as we reached the head of the eddy and nosed out into the current it would swing us round so we were pointing out into the stream again and we would have to paddle like demons to get ourselves above the obstruction and into quieter water again, the man at the back trying his hardest to keep her head pointing in the right direction as the swirling water pulled the canoe back and forth.
The really steep bits were rare though, and with plenty of good steady paddling we slowly reeled off the miles. In one relatively calm patch Brandon insisted we have a go at sailing. I wasn’t convinced that any sail we could improvise would make enough difference to be worth the hassle it would involve, but in the end I caved in and we opened out into a single flat sheet of plastic an enormous bin bag that I had brought along to keep things dry. An unsuspecting sapling growing on the bank was sacrificed for a mast, stepped by jamming the heel amidst the clutter in the bottom of the boat, and lashed precariously in place with a bit of string. Another sapling was turned into a yard, and up went the sail.
To my astonishment, that bin bag really made a difference. Where the wind was behind it gave us a knot or so of boat speed, enough to make a big difference to the amount of paddling we needed. Admittedly it wouldn’t set any closer to the wind than a beam reach, and even that far forward it was of dubious value, pulling us sideways at least as much as it pulled us forwards. The wind was rather variable in that part of the river so as we twisted and turned we had to keep resetting the thing or taking it down when the river turned into the wind. Brandon was right though - it was more than worth the effort of making it.
Every corner we turned we hoped to see the next dam ahead that would mark the next reservoir and some nice easy paddling again. But no, ahead would be another stretch of the wide unending conveyor trundling gently down towards us. Finally the river divided. To our left the channel narrowed slightly and the current was strong, to the right it was calm and wide and peaceful. ‘Might be another relief channel like that at the first dam’ I suggested to the others. Our map was utterly useless, but it looked a lot easier to paddle up than the left hand channel so we opted to try it first. We were in luck – after about a mile we could see another great embankment rising ahead. We did have one obstacle before we got there, a rise of about a metre over a barrier of boulders lying across the channel that required a short portage. We saw a reindeer shyly come down to the riverside for a drink, but it kept its distance and melted back into the woods as we approached.
When we got to the dam it was another monster. We had to unload and portage again, but at least it was easier to pull the canoe up that 20m overland than it would have been to paddle it up the same rise through flowing water. The rapids that must have existed before the dams were built would have been pretty impressive to see. I was glad we hadn't attempted the undammed Torniojoki.
We knew what to expect above the dam now, and enjoyed the flat water while it lasted. It was time for dinner, but we were reluctant to stop while the going was good, and we had a decent following breeze here so we had the bin bag hoisted and were making good progress. It was Brandons turn off watch so he cleared enough space in the middle of the boat to set up his little camping stove, fried up some onions, dipped his billy over the side to get some water and knocked up some pasta too. Delicious.
Late in the evening we stopped and set up camp in the forest, where a thick covering of bilberry bushes made a pleasant springy mattress for us. The mosquitoes were evil though – we didn’t hang around getting the tent up.
We packed up in the morning and forced our aching limbs back into paddling motions. Brandon and Peter had very different styles. Peter, who preferred the light plastic paddle that I had bought in Tallinn, would do quick light strokes, and just kept on going like a clockwork toy, while Brandon would really get his back into the rough wooden paddle he had made just before he left, making the canoe fly - but only for a few strokes before he stopped to light a fag.
Slowly we crept along the blue thread on the road atlas. On that scale progress was soooo slow – it took nigh on an hour for each millimetre we moved across the chart. I worked out later that it was about a micron for each paddle stroke.
Late in the morning we came across a fisherman setting nets across the river. Shortly afterwards we reached another junction, where again the left hand channel contained all the fast flowing water, while the right hand channel was calm and peaceful. Full of confidence after the last dam we turned right.
For the first half mile all was well and we paddled along cheerily. Then the river began to get shallow and dotted with boulders. For a few hundred yards we managed to squeeze our way through ever-narrowing passages amongst the rocks, but in the end the water ran out entirely. It seemed to be the old watercourse of the river we were following, for we could see ahead of us a ribbon of boulders stretching away, with pools of water between. If we continued to follow the route it would presumably take us up to the dam and join the river again – but it looked like there was at least a mile of that terrain, and over those boulders a long portage would be practically impossible. We held a little conference and decided to go back to the junction and try the other channel.
We had to paddle into the wind to get there, and when we made the corner the stream in the other channel was exceptionally strong. It was only by creeping along within inches of the side that we could progress at all – if the man at the back didn’t watch his steering and let us drift out any further the swirling mass would carry us straight back. The channel seemed to be man-made, cut straight out of solid rock.
We had to paddle pretty much flat out, and although it was theoretically my off watch the third paddle got pressed into use too. Halfway along we stopped for a rest and to eat some chocolate, hanging onto an overhanging branch to prevent being swept back. We knew it couldn’t be too far to the dam though, and it was probably rather less than a mile of fighting the current before we saw it ahead of us. Now we just had to get up it.
At all the previous dams the power generating plant was small and self-contained, and we had never had a problem finding an easy route over or round the dam to the reservoir above. This one was different. On the left hand bank was a big compound bordering on the river, with big workshops and stores and offices for the hydroelectric plant. Ahead of us the dam was a near-vertical concrete wall, with churning water appearing from the outlet of the power station. We opted to try taking the canoe up the wilder, wooded bank on our right, and got out to explore. It was a stiff climb up an overgrown slope followed by a good distance through the woods, but it would have been possible to get the canoe up there with a bit of work. However, right at the end was a 10 foot high barbed wire fence. That wouldn’t be so easy to get past.
We went back to the canoe and ferry-glided over to the other bank. Getting the canoe out there would mean walking right through the busy industrial compound of the power plant, but the hefty security gates at the far end were wide open so we shouldered our rucksacks, wandered nonchalently through, and returned to pick up the canoe. Nobody seemed to mind or even notice. We sat on the far side on a grassy bank and set to a well-deserved lunch.
The reservoir above this dam was the biggest yet, several miles wide in places and around 10 miles long. There were a few little wooded islands in the middle, and the scenery was far wilder here. On one bank there were dotted holiday homes, but the other bank was just rolling forest to the horizon.
Eventually we reached the head of the lake and were back on the meandering river again. It turned out to be only a few more miles to the next dam, which was an easy portage compared to the mornings effort.
Above the dam we had a glorious sail, and once again cooked our dinner in the bottom of the canoe as we went along. The banks were again wild and wooded to begin with, but gradually houses began appearing. We were approaching civilisation, the town of Rovaniemi which we knew lay just a few miles beneath the Arctic circle. According to Peters ‘Lonely Planet’ guide there was a campsite in the centre, so although it was late we opted to keep on going. We got there at 11pm, rather knackered after considerably more than 12 hours paddling, and treated ourselves to a stay in the municipal campsite.
We had fought for 65 miles against the current, and there were only a few miles left to the circle – but how would we know when we got there? I understand that on the main road that runs north from Rovaniemi there is a white line and a signpost, just next to the Santa Claus theme park (I also read somewhere that the line isn’t really fixed, as wobbles in the earth's rotation mean that the precise point at which the sun just touches the horizon at midsummer varies slightly from year to year. So if you’ve had your picture taken by the sign thinking you were on the line... you may have to think again, you could have been a few tens of metres short). But we were probably the first intrepid explorers ever to arrive in a sawn-off canoe, so it was unlikely that anyone would have bothered to stick a signpost up on the river for us. We did have our trusty road map, which showed we only had about 2mm left to travel, but it was hardly the thing for precise navigation.
We solved the problem by finding a signboard which had a map of the local area with a much larger scale. I took some close-ups of the relevant parts of the river with my digital camera, so we navigated by using the tiny digital screen on the back of the camera as a guide. So much for my intentions of not using new-fangled electronic gizmos to navigate by. I should have brought a sextant.
We left all our clatch at the campsite in the morning, and set to our paddles in the dismal rain which had started overnight. The river splits in Rovaniemi, so for the last couple of miles we were no longer on the Kemijoki, but its tributary the Ounasjoki. It was instantly quite different in character, appearing almost like a delta at this point with several channels swooping round long thin islands and sandbanks composed of a coarse reddish sand.
The current was against us of course, but we did have the wind in our favour. After an hour or so I peered at the little screen and judged we we were approaching the circle. We sailed over with the trusty bin bag, and found a little sandbank to stop at for some celebratory chocolate and the mandatory pictures.
Back at Rovaniemi a couple of hours later we spent the rest of the day relaxing and celebrating further. No champagne, but we had brought a 2 litre bottle of finest Estonian beer with us – which at 10% alcohol soon had the desired effect.
Despite the stormy crossing from Estonia, the slow progress up the Finnish coast and the frequent calms in the north of Bothnia, our long days of paddling up the river had got us to the circle on the midsummer solstice, bang on schedule. The good news was that this meant that it was party time for everyone up here, the bad news was that almost everyone disappears to their holiday homes to party, so the town was nearly deserted. We couldn’t find any food shop to replenish our food supplies apart from a tiny kiosk which luckily had milk but few other staples – but we still had a fair few odds and ends left so we wouldn’t starve on the way back down. We had dinner in one of the ubiquitous Finnish pizza restaurants – it was the only place we could find that was open.
Peter had only one day more full day with us before he had to head south to catch his plane. We got train times from the tourist office for him, and reckoned we could drop him off within walking distance of one of the train stations on the way back down the river, for the train line ran parallel to the river most of the way. When he had gone it would leave just Brandon and I to paddle down the rest of the way on our own, which would make the portages very hard work. Brandon decided to try and find another paddler, so walked up to a young Frenchman who was camping nearby and persuaded him to join us.
Maxime was an apprentice watchmaker. He was doing a placement in Helsinki, but had taken a couple of days off to come up to the Arctic circle for the solstice. Apparently it takes seven years of training to become a watchmaker, and hand-made watches are still very much in demand. We talked about watchmaking for a while. As a builder, Brandon needn't be too unhappy with a brick wall built to within a centimetre or two of what was intended, though worked to tighter tolerances when he was boatbuilding. Peter was proud of his wooden recorders, which he turned on the lathe to the nearest tenth of a millimetre. But Max – he worked to the nearest micron. We were in awe. Why were hand-made watches still wanted though when a machine could work to the same tolerances and for a fraction of the price? ‘Because ‘zey ‘ave ‘vivre’’ said Max. Peter agreed, for handmade recorders have life too, a little of the love and care of the craftsman entering the very grain of the wood. And Brandon and I agreed too, for wooden boats have a soul that no plastic mass-produced yacht pressed in a factory from a mould can possess.
The highlight of Midsummers night in Rovaniemi is the lighting of a bonfire at midnight. It seems a strange custom, for the sun is on the horizon and it is as light as day. But we wandered along to view it, a pyre built on a raft out in the river lit from a boat by..... Santa Claus. I always wondered what he got up to in the summer. It seems he just hangs around the theme park built for him up here in Lapland, and helps out at civic functions.
Peter glanced at a poster advertising the rest of the festivities. ‘Hey Brandon, there is a display of Lapp-dancing!’ he exclaimed. But we only stayed for the bonfire, for to tell the truth we were rather tired and our shoulders ached.
After breakfast we stuffed Max’s small pile of gear into the already cramped canoe and all climbed in. There was certainly a good bit less freeboard with four of us, but it was just enough. We were soon enjoying having the current with us – and even better, the wind as well, for it had swung round in the night and on most reaches was in our favour. We got to the first dam in record time, portaged it quickly and carried on. The next section of river went equally fast, and we were soon on the big wide lake. Here we had the best sail yet. We were doing a good 3-4 knots just under that little scrap of a bin bag, and whereas before when we had sailed we had usually kept paddling as well to keep our speed up, here it wasn’t necessary. It just took one of us at the back to use his paddle to steer.
At the big dam at the ned of the reservoir we encountered a problem. The busy compound we had wandered through before was shut, the big security gates firmly closed with a chunky padlock. The Finns take their Midsummer holidays seriously. We looked for ways through or round the fence, but nothing looked easy. There was one way down that looked a lot of fun – a huge metal slide, presumably once used for sending logs downriver. Unfortunately it ended with a 15 foot vertical drop at the far end, so we reluctantly abandoned it as slightly unwise. A bit more prospecting revealed one other possible route down. The big barbed wire fence on the east side of the dam that we had come across on the way up was overhung at one point by the walkway that ran beside the road on the top of the dam. If we could lower the canoe down so that it was inside the fence, we could probably clamber over the fence or the gate at one end of it.
On the road by the power station was a skip, with lots of interesting electrical junk. In it we found a couple of lengths of thick electrical cable long enough to do the job, and we carried the canoe along the dam until we were above the fence. Good job everyone at the station is on holiday, I thought, as I clambered over the fence whistling nonchalantly. I looked up to where Brandon and Max were lifting the canoe over the walkway to lower it down to me – and saw a long line of curious tourists toddling along the top of the dam gawping at these strange men breaking into the power station grounds with a big green canoe. A bus had just driven up and disgorged them, and we were the star attraction for the day. Well, if you ever have to break into somewhere, just do it confidently – no-one seemed in the slightest bit worried that we were doing anything wrong, they just wanted to stare and take lots of pictures.
Once we were over the fence we still had a quarter mile or so of steep grassy slope to negotiate. Much of this the canoe covered on its own, when we slipped on the wet grass and it made a bid for freedom. But in the end we made it down to the water again, and, much relieved, let the swift current bear us away.
This dam was one place Peter could have caught the train. The next was at Tervola, still another 15 or so miles away. Even with the delay at the dam we had made such good progress that we thought we might as well carry on. It was past 11 when we finally stopped and camped in the thick grass of a damp meadow within walking distance of the station. We had covered 40 miles since breakfast. It was of course still broad daylight though, and there was a fireplace nearby so we gathered a few sticks and sat around and enjoyed the peace for a while, until the mosquitoes finally drove us to bed.
Our ways parted in the morning – Peter left on foot for the station, and Brandon, Max and I put our weary shoulders to the paddles and carried on down the river. We still had more than a third of the river to travel down, and the wind was less favourable that day so we got less benefit from our sail.
There was a stiff headwind blowing by the time we reached the mouth of the river at Kemi, and the last half mile back to the marina was hard work through choppy seas. I was anxious to check that Teal was OK – not that there was any reason she shouldn’t be, but it’s traditional for skippers to worry about their boats while they are away. Other than the mizzen sail coming a little loose from its ties and flapping wildly in the breeze (my fault for not putting enough ties on), she was fine. She hadn’t even taken on much water – after five days on her own less than 60 strokes of the pump emptied the bilge, which was considerably less than I had feared.