Here at Lapland fun facts you'll find things
you probably don't know about Lapland
Here you can find Lapland fun facts of all kinds:
Amusing
Interesting
Shocking
Factual
Eyeopening
and so on. Just enjoy this collection of big and small facts from the different parts of Lapland.
The "Moose House" ('Älgens Hus' in Swedish) at Bjurholm in Southern Lapland is a tremendous experience. Here you can see and pat real live moose,
and you can even taste and buy moose cheese which they produce at the "Moose House".
Gullik Hansen and Odd Johan Nelvik are planning to start the production of the world's northernmost aquavit
at the world's northernmost town, Hammerfest.
Of all people in the world, the Finns drink more coffee than any other nation.
Speeding tickets in Finland (and Finnish Lapland) depend on your income. One man with an annual income of 7 million Euros was fined was
fined 116.000 Euros.
Nelson Mandela visited Tromso in June 2005 when a concert was arranged there to honour him. Tromso is far above the Arctic Circle. Before leaving Oslo someone told Mandela that in Tromso
the nights are white and the sun shines day and night. Mandela did not believe it.
When Sami people want to protest against something, they can show their disgust by turning their Sami costume (the gakti) inside out.
For a Sami this is probably the strongest non-physical way of protesting
10 % of the Sami in Sweden work with reindeer herding.
The number of wild cats in Vardø are spreading at an alarming rate. In autumn of 2011 the local government took ownership of the
many hundred cats and decided to kill all the cats. Animal protectors also took ownership of the same cats and accused the Vardø
local government of cruelty against the cats.
Nobody wants the raccoon dog (nyctereutus procyonides) to spread in Lapland or other parts of the Nordic countries.
Kaamos is the Finnish word for the twilight season of Lapland when the sun is below the horizon for up to two months,
depending on how far north of the Arctic Circle you are. The Kaamos is about two months long at the North Cape, but it gets longer
as you move north of Norwegian Lapland (Finnmark) and towards Spitsbergen and furhter on towards the North Pole.
Finlands largest wooden shopping center will open in November 2011 at Nuorgam, which is one of Finland's smallest villages.
Nuorgam is Finland's as well as the EU's northernmost village just on the Norwegian border. Nuorgam is also situated on the shores of the
Tana river which is one of the best salmon rivers in Europe.
At Saariselkä they have prepared skiing tracks in October with snow that they produced last spring (with snow cannons).
At Vuollerim they arrange something they call
the 'House Jumping Dinner'.
In 2009 the Finnish newspaper "Inarilainen" called Syltefjord in Finnmark "the poor man's North Cape.
In all parts of Lapland you can manage well with English in most situations.
In the autumn of 2011 we saw the first snow 8th October in Tana. Just a very thin layer, but still snow.
Maybe around 5.000 Sami live in Oslo, the Norwegian capital. Thus Oslo may be the biggest Sami municipality in the world, bigger tha
the Sami municipalities of Lapland, i.e. Finnish Lapland (Lappi),
Norway Lapland (Finnmark) and Swedish Lapland.
Lots of place names in all parts of Lapland are originally Sámi. They describe the place according to its natural features or any peculiarities
connected to the place.
Place names have functioned as maps and as orienteering tools. The non-Sami versions of the names are the original name in a
form which is easier for non-Sami to pronounce.
The church at Dorotea has a group of sculptures in natural size called "
The Lord's Supper". The sculptor was Björn Martinius.
Kiruna is the
largest city in the world - measured by area.
Probably you didn't know the
Skolt Sami language names for these Nordic countries:
Finland = Lää´ddjannam
Norway = Taarr
Sweden = Ruöc`c
In 1915 the University of Oslo dug up and
took away 94 skeletons from the old Eastern Sami graveyard at Neiden. On Sunday 24th Septemder 2011 there will be
an
Orthodox reburial ceremony for these skeletons. They were all Russian Othodox.
Ruska is the Finnish word for the colourful autumn season when Lapland dresses herself in an array of orange and red.
Several hundred
wild cats at Vardö has just experienced their last summer. The municipality is about to take the responsibility for them, and see to it
that they are killed. The Food Supervision Authority has recommended that cat owners mark their domesticated cats with nail polish on their backs to make it
easier for the wild cat hunters to distinguish wild cats from domesticated cats.
Nearly 100 % of the students of the elementary school at the
Skolt Sami village, Sevettijärvi in Finnish Lapland, are
Russian Orthodox.
Around 10 % of the population of the Sør-Varanger municipality are
Russians.
Porsanger is the
only trilingual municipality in Norway.
Volunteers at Jokkmokk built a community centre in 1912, but it was partly
damaged by a huge fight.
The Lapps, Ole Nilsen Ravna and Samuel Balto, particpated in the first expedition that
crossed the Greenland ice sheet.
The leader of the expedition was
the famous Norwegian explorer Fridjof Nansen.
Pregnant women in Porsanger (as of 2011) have learnt not to have their term in the middle of the hunting season because the only local midwife is
away hunting.
The reception area of the Hotel Porjus is
full of antiques. What is unusual, is that
you can buy all of it.
The
altarpiece of Karesuando church (in Swedish Lapland) consists of Jesus on the cross. Together with him we find the priest Lars Levi Laestadius, Mary of
Lapland and the preacher Juhani Raattamaa.
The legendary singer and preacher,
Jokkmokk's Jokke, heard a church bell chime when his mother died in the nineteen sixties, even if the nearest
church was 40 kilometres away. From then on he started looking for that bell with the extraordinary sound. Some years later he finally found it - in
Israel. Today you can hear it at Porsi Jokkmokk, just a few kilometres from Jokke's childhood home.
The first
Sami sound shower has been constructed by Kevin Johansen. In this shower you can take a Sami language immersion instead of
a regular shower. In the sound shower you can listen to Sami poems.
The
world's morthernmost labyrinth is near the small fishing village Gamvik on the Nordkyn peninsula in Norwegian Lapland (Finnmark).
It was made sometime beween the
12th and the 17th centuries.
See map
There are some special characters in the alfabeths of the Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish languages:
The yoik is the traditional Sami way of singing or chanting.
You never ask a
reindeer owner about how many reindeer he's got.
If two persons have the same first name, they are called
"kaima" in Finnish and
"gáibmi" in the Sami language.
Traditionally they felt closer.
Even if the Sami population is small, they speak
many different Sami languages. Some of them can't even understand each other's language.
These are some of the Sami languages in the Nordic countries (Finland, Norway and Sweden):
-Northern Sami (the biggest)
-Lule Sami
-Southern Sami
-Inari Sami
-Skolt Sami (maybe the smallest)
These languages belong to the
Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic languages.
At the Sami village Kautokeino they often have
big wedding celebrations. There are reports of up to 2.000 guests at a reception.
The population of the village is around 1.500.
There are several special characters in the Sami languages:
Here are some more
Lapland fun facts
And finally you may want to read some fun facts
about the Finns
and
about the Norwegians and
about the Swedes
Lapland Blog
Here you can see at a glance what is new, or what is changed/updated on Lapland Travel Info.
We hope this is useful for you.
