From the time my daughters were in diapers, Higgs family vacations have always followed my Nikon to the wildest places we could handle, from Sleeping Bear Dunes on the northern shores of Lake Michigan to the Smokey Mountains around Cherokee, N.C.
Now that we’re all grown up, my D600 and I led them and my two grandkids in 2023 to the Upper Amazon River, which is literally the world’s wildest landscape at the center of the Earth.
In May, we’re venturing to the far northern end of the planet to explore the vast wilderness known as Lapland between Rovaniemi, Finland and Alta, Norway, where I will capture – and the family will experience – the Arctic Ocean in the Midnight Sun.
Along the way, we’ll scout Helsinki and Lapland’s capital of Rovaniemi, Finland; drive along the Torne River, the border between Finland and Sweden; and explore Kautokeino, Norway, capital of the indigenous Sami people.
Tickets have been purchased for grandpa’s graduation gift to Raina, who will matriculate from Purdue University as an electrical engineer a couple weeks before she, brother Vale, mother Crystal, and I depart Indy for Helsinki, with a stop in New York to pick up aunt Jessica.
When she was a teenager, Raina joined me on I’d say a third of my backcountry explorations for A Guide to Natural Areas of Southern Indiana, IU Press, 2016. She’ll be off to the real world when we get back, working for an environmental consulting firm in Denver.
The seeds for this trip were planted by Indiana University women’s basketball player Henna Sandvik, whom I got to know through my vacation-fund retirement gig as an Uber driver. I learned about her country by connecting the captain of the Finland national women’s team to friends who were going to Helsinki for a conference.
When I discovered that Henna’s homeland is the world’s cleanest, greenest, and happiest country, it became the no-brainer last leg of my Retirement Travel Trifecta, which began in Austria, Italy, Slovenia, and Spain in 2023 and continued through Colombia, Brazil, and Peru to the Amazon ‘s Amacayacu River in 2024.
Lapland, home to more reindeer than humans, is a vast wilderness that lies mostly above the Arctic Circle and spreads from west to east across the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and into Russia’s Kola Peninsula.
The region’s geographic diversity doesn’t approach that of Colombia and the Andean-draining Amazon Basin. But it nonetheless ranks among the world’s most remote and magnificent wild land complexes and would be a worthy notch on any nature photog’s belt.
From west to east, Europe’s northernmost landmass is bordered on three sides by the Norwegian, Barents, and White Seas. It traverses the 6,500-foot-peaks of the Kolen Mountains, fjords, and archipelagos in Norway, through fingerlike lakes in Sweden, to low-lying lakes and bogs in Finland.
“Norwegian Lapland is largely open and windswept, with timber growth only in sheltered tracts and the more protected interior,” Britannica says. The southern and central areas occupy “swampy coniferous forest, with its saturated land and many bogs and swamps. Forests of pine and spruce give way to the dwarf birch, heath, and lichens of the tundra farther north and at higher elevations.”
As we did in the Amazon, the family and I will be sharing our time and space in the Arctic with indigenous peoples: the Sami, Europe’s only native population.
The 100,000 or so Sami are concentrated in Lapland, the bulk in Norway and Sweden, and they share many characteristics of Native Americans. Their ancestors followed game along the retreating glaciers some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago and adapted into nomadic hunters and gatherers who lived in hide-covered dwellings, similar to teepees.
While the Sami maintain many of their traditions, the culture and lifestyle eventually has been largely subsumed by the Europeans. Britannica says nine of their 11 languages are still spoken, but almost all Sami are bilingual, and many no longer speak their native tongues.
As with the Ticuna Indians we followed through the Amazon Jungle two years ago, the Sami have a rich cultural and artistic heritage that is tied to their traditions and nature.
Their form of handicrafts is known as Doudji, which incorporates artistic and utilitarian elements into items like clothing, bags, cups, knives, purses, and cases, which are crafted from natural elements like antlers, bone, skins, and roots.
The Midnight Sun may not hold as much attraction as Lapland’s Northern Lights of winter, but photography is an exercise in painting with light, and 22 hours of original source material will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
And the landscape, well, according to the Luontoon website and others, all 12 Finnish Wilderness Reserves are located in Lapland: “An experienced hiker can roam the wilderness of northern Lapland for days without running into other travelers and enjoy the magnificent nature of the north.”
Our first photo stop will be a trail to the Auttiköngäs waterfall, which Visit Rovaniemi calls “one of Finland’s most magnificent waterfalls” an hour from Rovaniemi. The two-mile Auttiköngäs nature trail runs “through peaceful old-growth forest to a hilltop with views over Taiga forests.”
From there, it’s north to Alta and back.
Happy graduation, Raina.
