In Lapland, Finding Santa at the Source

On Ice

On our circular route back to Helsinki, we stop in Kemi. There, during a four-hour icebreaker cruise, we learn that Finns have 17 words for snow and 15 words for ice.

"There's a word for solid ice that has never been broken, and another for ice that has been broken and refrozen, and ice that's okay to walk on, and ice that's not safe to walk on, and then there's ice that has water on it, and ice that is two layers thick, and flat ice, and ice that isn't flat, and floating ice, and others," says our icebreaker tour guide, Esa Ruuskanen. "It's stupid, but we need it."

The Sampo, Ruuskanen's ship, is advertised as the only icebreaker in the world that takes passengers. Ruuskanen clarifies that by saying there is one other, but it's impractical. That icebreaker sails from Murmansk, Russia, around Siberia to Japan. The trip takes 83 days, he says, and costs more than $21,000. The Sampo trip, by comparison, is a more reasonable $230, including lunch. The ship is one of two major tourist attractions in Kemi, the other being the LumiLinna SnowCastle, a hotel and restaurant that opens each January and closes when the snow starts to melt in late spring.

The 246-foot Sampo is nicely outfitted with lounges and a restaurant, and the salmon soup is fantastic -- score one for Finnish food. We spend a lot of time on deck watching the hull smash and push aside ice that is up to 4 1/2 feet thick. It's a show for the benefit of the 150 tourists on board: The Sampo retired as a working icebreaker in 1987 because it is too narrow to break way for the most modern monster ships. So tourists from around the world relax or tour the ship while awaiting the highlight: a dip in the freezing waters of the Gulf of Bothnia.

Jumping in wearing just a Speedo would kill you in minutes, so instead, you crawl inside a triple-heavy-duty rubber suit that keeps out the water and makes you look like a giant, orange, overweight Teletubby.

The ship has broken open a swimming pit of sorts, and Maddie and I slide off the edge of thick ice into deep black water and float among big chunks of ice. The suit makes you extremely buoyant. I feel a little like a seagull riding out a storm, and a little like an ice cube bobbing in a giant cocktail. Whatever, I like it and am disappointed that we only have about 15 minutes in the water. The suit will keep you alive and cozy for hours, but we have to share with waiting passengers.

In the early 1980s, before the Sampo took guests and the snow palace opened, Kemi attracted between 80 and 300 foreign visitors each year. Today, the two attractions draw about 12,000 foreign guests in winter alone.

World-renowned architects each year design a new version of the snow castle, which during our visit was a 36-foot-high vision in packed snow and glimmering ice, with a 200-seat restaurant, a play area with snow slides that wind through the castle, dozens of sculptures of snow and ice made by art students from throughout Finland, and a chapel of ice. Every year there is a chapel, and 20 or more weddings are held during the season.

Among the 32 rooms of ice for overnight guests: a honeymoon suite.

Someone should make sure the newlyweds know the igloo trade secret.

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