Go Finland:Bringing a child on a bear safari in the Finnish wilderness may sound grizzly to some but Gary Quinnand his daughter had a great adventure
IT’S NOT EASY being a bear. You spend your days trying to be bigger than the next bear and fighting for your territory. You win it, you hold it and then a bigger bear comes and pushes you away. Then the hunting season starts. It’s a tough life.
I came face-to-face with my first wild bear in eastern Finland in Wild Taiga country, a vast landscape of forests, lakes and hills. Hidden inside a former army checkpoint on the Russian border, surrounded by forest and bog land, with sea eagles in the air and the chance of wolves at any moment, it is almost impossible to explain how excited I was. Which is a problem, because the one thing that wild bears avoid is noisy humans, so staying quiet is crucial. Throw three children into the mix and the hide becomes a pressure cooker of stifled giggles and desperate-to-shout over-excitement. But then a bear lurches into view and everything stops.
We are inside a wooden hide with beds and seating for up to 10 people. Each person has a small window for viewing and a personal curtained hatch to point their camera through. Some people spend days like this, simply watching and photographing these majestic beasts as they go about their daily rituals.
The first two bears that amble into our view make us all laugh. We’re a bit nervous but terribly relieved to see them arrive and, still staying deathly quiet, our eyes bulge wide with excitement. These bears are big and heavy and they’re very wild. They could tear us apart. They could smash down the door of our hide. They could eat us . . . but they don’t.
In fact, as our guide Suvi Tauriainen explains, in truth, they would run a mile if they knew we were nearby. Bears have no interest in meeting us or being aggressive to humans and there is no history of brown bears attacking people, unlike their North American grizzly cousins.
There are around 1,000 brown bears in Finland, making it one of the best places in western Europe to see this terrific animal in the wild. Stroll over the border into the vast Russian wilderness that borders Finland and the numbers increase significantly and it is this Russian population that helps the Finnish bear numbers. The bears lolling about on the marshland in front of us are relaxed because they are safe, for the moment at least. Tauriainen explains that once the hunting season begins in the autumn the bears get visibly nervous, as though they can smell the hunters or sense that they are coming.
Hunting is a normal part of life in Finland. It’s a wild place and the hunters and the photographers share the vast forests that make it so. Each, we are told, hope to bring the other around to their way of thinking, but not by force. To the outsider at least, the passion the Finns hold for the bear and the land they inhabit rises above conflict. The bear watchers, at least, believe gentle persuasion could reduce the autumn kills, but admit that a complete ban on hunting in Finland is unlikely in the near future. The two have learned to live side-by-side.
And this it seems is the Finnish way, a land of extremes, each co-existing. The midnight sun shapes the summer while the long weeks of winter darkness, we are told, bring another Finn to the surface. Quieter, more introspective, wilder perhaps?
Stories reveal how the heat of the sauna is only bearable with the promise of a plunge into an ice-cold lake. Vast forests and lakes, larger than our imaginations, defy maps but offer perfect mobile phone coverage at every turn. This is the land of Nokia after all. And yet it isn’t tamed.
I WORRIED ABOUTbringing my nine-year-old daughter here, exposing her to a wild slice of life that she might not be ready for. But she was hungry and took to Finland like a native. She picked cloudberries in the forest and ate salmon smoked in a tent. She fished for pike and swam in dark lakes. She hiked mountain trails and lit her first campfire. She joined the women in a sauna and raced to meet packs of huskies, despite their barks and howls as they anticipated pulling as a team. And she loved the bears, particularly the younger ones.
If it’s family adventure you’re seeking then Finland is waiting. The guides we met were so perfectly in tune with children and families that we were totally relaxed. Everything had been thought out and planned for in advance, and the experience and cooperation of the organisations involved was admirable. If Finns can be described in a word it could be calm.
In fact, there was a calmness throughout our stay. The stillness of the landscape seemed to force itself onto our agenda and curbed our normal father-daughter squabbles, the silence towering over everything. It’s a rare privilege to stand by a lakeside with your own child, close to midnight, the sun casting its last light across the water and simply listen. It’s something you carry home.
We stayed in a privately-run hotel overlooking lake Lammasjärvi, called Hotel Kalevala. It specialises in family activity holidays and is on the edge of the town of Kuhmo which in wintertime is one of the most popular ski resorts in Finland. An hour’s flying time north of Helsinki but not quite as far north as Lapland, it’s an area that is steeped in folklore.
The hotel's name, Kalevala, relates to the great Finnish epic of Kalevala– a series of 50 stories that make up one of the most important works of Finnish literature. Out of it emerges tales, songs and poetry that define and create an idea of Finland that is said to be inspirational in its telling.
We took bikes and cycled to the Juminkeko cultural centre, a fine example of Finnish wooden design by the architects Mikko Heikkinen and Markku Komonen. Here we were taught how to pull sound from simple reed flutes and got a history lesson through old and hand-made wind instruments. Through a Finnish version of our Sean Nós we learned of the power of the lament and how the singer and our guide Minna Hokka used it to channel her emotions, something that she believed could have more healing power than medicine.
Hokka's song was the story of a woman lamenting the loss of a man so I returned with an Irish song, Maith Dhom, a man asking forgiveness of a woman. Bizarrely, I didn't feel odd singing in public in the mid-afternoon with tourists all around. Later, I apologised to my daughter and asked did I embarrass her? She laughed and said no, but was puzzled why we both sang our songs, Finnish and Irish, with our eyes closed. I didn't have an answer.
Nearby the hotel is the Petola Visitor Centre, an interactive museum that reveals the complicated lifestyles of the predators that roam the Finnish wilderness. Only a short walk from the hotel, it provides a fascinating exhibition with audio, video and text telling tales of superstition and fact about the role of predators in Finland. Another beautiful building in harmony with the landscape, it was a great preparation for what was ahead, and ultimately the bears.
ANOTHER OF OURguides, Pertti Koivisto, has built his home in the forest. He welcomed us onto his land by another huge lake and took us out onto the water with tales of the forest and landscape that surrounded us. We fished from his motor boat and then, returning to land, took turns in his sauna in the forest. Built inside a Hansel and Gretel-style small house, I finally realised why Finnish people love saunas so much. Forget what you think you know from our leisure centres and gyms. The smell and atmosphere of a Finnish sauna in the wild is something very special. It's a social event and Finnish people, being relaxed about their bodies, enjoy the experience intensely.
Koivisto cut a bunch of birch twigs to whip ourselves with in the wood-fire heat. Sounds odd? It is, but strangely seductive and after a few minutes the smell released from the branches, the slight stinging sensation it creates and the tremendous heat from the sauna, builds to create a heady acceptance of Finnish ways. And afterwards, emerging into the sunlight once more, it just seems right to jump into the lake and cool down. Everything about this country was beginning to make sense.
Nearby, in a teepee, salmon was being smoked and pies, which are locally known as Teos, were being prepared. Teosmeans opus, a great work, which is an indication of how highly they hold their cuisine. Again we were met by marvellous contradictions – sweet lingonberries and potato pie, reindeer pie, creamed rice pie which, we were told, is best smeared with lots of butter. The combinations and ingredients shouldn't have worked but, of course, they do.
THE NEXT DAYwe took a canoe trip on another lake – no one was quite sure how many lakes there are in Finland, certainly more than one around every corner. This time, our guide, Urpo Piirainen (one of the most skilled canoeists in the area we were told), wanted to teach us a little about wild camping and so we set off in a team of canoes, landing on an island to set up camp for lunch.
Again, organisation was everything – the wild is wild but with the right knowledge you can find some comfort. The children disappeared almost as soon as we landed, making the island their own and making their presence felt only by their whoops of laughter from all corners of our temporary island home. My daughter was caught running past and taught to light a campfire. Later, as we sat around it cooking sausages and drinking great coffee, she told me how happy she was. And so was I.
That evening we set off for the bear hide. Driving even further into the forested landscape we came to the Boreal Wildlife Centre. This is a specialised adventure company with the skills and experience to bring you up close and personal with the predators that live in the region. Although our visit was only for a few hours, you can stay in their accommodation and have days of intimate contact with the wild.
The centre is a former Finnish/Russian border station and the guides know their territory well. They lay small amounts of food – dog biscuits – near the hides to attract the bears and then simply wait. During our three-hour stay in the hide we saw some 10 bears amble around. Scratching and sniffing and sometimes wrestling together. Chasing each other at great speed across the plain in front of the hide, rolling on the ground and sometimes coming right up to the hide itself.
It’s hard to believe they don’t know we are there. They seem too aware of everything else in their kingdom. Perhaps they allow us this small indulgence in the vain hope that we won’t pull out a gun and shoot them. Photography really is a great weapon. The bears pictured here are still roaming the forests in Finland today and we got to see them up close. It’s another privilege.
There was one other animal that we needed to meet before we left Finland – huskies. On our last day and on our way to the airport we made a diversion to Vuokatti husky farm which is a family-run business in Kuhmo and one of the most successful in the region. Winter or summer, huskies want to pull a sled, it seems.
A modern take on this great winter sport is the so-called husky Mercedes – a large metal sleigh with wheels that can be used during the summer. For my daughter, all that mattered was how cute they were, and they are, but these dogs want to work and in packs of nine they pulled us around a woodland track. They barked and howled in anticipation of the pull and there could be no mistaking how much they wanted the exercise.
It was fast and a thrill, and when I was given the opportunity to drive them myself it was slightly terrifying. It’s hard enough keeping one dog under control but a pack of nine? In reality, though, they controlled me. I turned the wheel to go around corners, but only because they led me that way. It was just the buzz we needed to encourage us to come back in the winter and do it all again in the snow. How great must that be?
When to go and how to get there
When to go
Season of the bear:April 10th to October 31st.
Season of the wolverine, wolf and eagles:February 1st to October 31st.
Getting there
Aer Lingus(aerlingus.com) fly Dublin to Helsinki twice a week.
Finnair(finnair.com) offers connecting flights to Kajaani in eastern Finland where a connection can be made with your hotel.
Where to stay
Hotel Kalevala, Kuhmo. Tel: 00-358-8-6554100 or hotellikalevala.fi. Family packages, for a week half-board, from €735-€1,075 depending on the season. Flights not included. A night's bear watching is extra at €185.
ContactsFor information on Finland visit visitfinland.com.
Wild Taiga(wildtaiga.com).
Boreal Wildlife Centreviiksimo.fi.
Juminkeko Cultural Centrejuminkeko.fi
Vuokatti husky farmvuokattihusky.com.