What I learnt in the Wilderness
Ten lessons from seven days spent in the Arctic Circle.
Hello friends. I recently got back from seven days spent in the middle of Lemmenjoki National Park right at the top of Finnish Lapland.
For six days we skied ourselves and our supplies from one wilderness hut to another, surviving on expedition food (and jammy dodgers) in temperatures that dropped to minus fifteen. We had zero phone signal and zero showers.
It was bliss.
All that time focusing on ‘left, right, left, right, left—don’t fall over’ gives you plenty of reflection time. When I got back to basecamp I wrote a quick list of the ten things that stood out to me from my Gutsy Girl’s trip to Finnish Lapland, before I could forget.
And if you’re left feeling inspired - well, they’re already taking bookings for 2025 👀
More from Scrambled Eggs
If you’re new here, welcome! I’m Emma, a creative trapped in the body of a Type A personality. I write weekly on creativity, culture, and how to get the most out of your work-life and your life-life without burning out. Subscribe for free to receive new posts as I hit publish.
1. Finnish Wilderness Infrastructure is on point
We stayed at two different huts during our six nights in the National Park and both were equipped with beds, fireplaces and… saunas. I’m confident that the only place you’d stumble on a sauna in the Lake District or Scottish Highlands would be a five star country hotel with prices to match. But in Finnish Lapland, certain huts come with the chance to warm your bones and, thankfully, wash your body, with a traditional sauna. As a result we managed to sauna every single night I was staying in the wilderness - not something I had been expecting.
The huts that we stayed in during our trip were ones that the guides pay for (given they are for commercial use, and that they will need the huts on specific dates), but the majority of cabins in the National Park are for ‘open use’. This means anyone can turn up and use them for a night, as long as they leave the cabins as they found them (clean and tidy, with restocked firewood).
When I was initially told that the firewood needed to be replenished, I assumed we’d be cutting it ourselves as we did in a previous trip to Northern Sweden. Not the case here: there is a ‘firewood hut’ for each cabin area where you can grab a bag of pre-prepared firewood by the National Park. Similarly, I was tickled by the fact that many of the outhouses we frequented had two side-by-side, each with an image to signal the ‘Gents’ versus the ‘Ladies’. Of course, on the inside we still were treated to the same wooden box over a large hole of our collective waste, but hey, at least there were two toilets - maintained again by the heroes looking after the National Park.
The precarious side to staying in open cabins is that wilderness etiquette dictates that whoever arrives first needs to be first to leave. No ‘rule of bagsy’ here: you can be all cosy in your cabin, mid-meal but if someone new opens the door fresh from the wild you need to be ready to ship out and put up your tent outside. Ultimately it makes sense: if you’re already warm and refreshed it’s safer and kinder that you are the one who stays outside, leaving the newcomers space to get dry. And given the community spirit embodied by the whole affair, we heard many will happily share if there’s space.
2. Ration your loo roll
No rolling suitcases in the wild: we’d be carrying everything we needed for the trip ourselves. In our groups of two, one of us pulled the pulka, or sled, which was loaded up with supplies for us and the group, whilst the other carried a day pack: a rucksack filled with our lunch, snacks and water.
It wasn’t just our own belongings we had to pull on those pulkas: we had our food and cooking supplies, sleeping bags and mats, emergency tents, showshoes, and a shovel. So when we did pack, we packed light - with everything carefully counted and rationed. And that includes loo roll.
At the start of the trip we all had one loo roll each. Henna, our badass Wilderness Guide advised us that we keep hold of our own loo roll, so we’d be aware of how much we were using. But buoyed by the community spirit the Wilderness engenders, we decided to share our stash.
This was a mistake. By the end of day three we had somehow managed to use five rolls of toilet paper between seven of us, and I’m not exaggerating when I say we were fast approaching our Lord of the Flies moment as a group. We swiftly agreed that (as with everything else) Henna was right, and started rationing use.
By day four we were each volunteering, unprompted, how many sheets we had used on our latest trip, just to avoid suspicious glances and raised eyebrows. Thankfully we made it to the end of the trip, butts wiped and group unscathed. We even took a photo to mark the moment, which I’m sure Henna will now use to illustrate her cautionary tale to the next group she encounters.
3. Leave something for your hut elf
Finland has a strong tradition of tonttu: elves who are said to inhabit the country’s homes and saunas. The belief is that these elves watch over you and your house - and if you look after your elf, then your elf looks after you.
Looking after your elf might look like:
Leaving the sauna elf some steam once you’ve all finished your own sauna. Our guide always threw a few more drops of water on the coals just before we left the sauna hut, for the elf to enjoy.
Giving some food to your house elf after you’ve gone to bed. If a piece of sausage falls into the fire, for example, you can say ‘that’s good: our hut elf can enjoy that’
Keeping your house and fire clean and tidy. If you didn’t, your elf could become upset and start to create more mess or hide your things to demonstrate their displeasure.
We had our own experience with our hut elf. The night of toilet-paper-gate, we could only find two toilet rolls left out of seven. We were convinced there had been at least three. Tensions were rising.
That night we had a rare non-rehydrated meal of sausage and mash. Maybe our stomach wasn’t used to so much rich food, but we couldn’t finish it all, so we left half a sausage ‘for our elf’. The next morning, we found the missing roll…
4. Embrace your troll self
If Finland brought the elves, we certainly brought the trolls.
We were lucky to be able to do our nightly ablutions thanks to our nightly sauna, but in terms of a wash, plain old warm water was as far as it went. Henna had already warned us not to bring any toiletries with us except toothpaste (‘what, not even deodorant?’ Not even).
Why? Apparently when you wash with soap, you take off the natural oils on your body, which will work to keep you warm in colder temperatures. And even I know it’s a bad idea to wash your hair in below freezing temperatures.
Despite Henna’s warnings, I confess I still brought deodorant. Every morning I stubbornly slathered it onto my already slightly-stinking armpits and grimaced. By day five, we definitely started to smell each other as well as ourselves. But as expected, it was freeing to ‘wake up and go’ every morning, released from make up and relieved from the hairdryer (one of my least favourite things).
I still looked forward to that sauna wash each night. And the shower when we got back to civilisation is up there with one of the best I’ve ever had.
5. Rolling in the snow naked *is* as invigorating as it sounds
One of my favourite things about the sauna ritual is taking a cold plunge afterwards. I find that after fifteen or twenty minutes in the dry, suffocating heat my body starts to crave the cold - even more so when you’ve been layering sweat upon sweat without daily showers.
But in the wilderness in March all the plunge pools are frozen over. Your only option? A roll through the white stuff piled up outside.
Though I’ve suffered many inglorious tumbles into the snow, this was the first time I’d ever dived in on purpose, and… completely naked.
But it was joyous. We waited until we were so hot we couldn’t stand it any more then ran outside, turned around and let ourselves fall backwards, quickly making snow angels before our body fully understood how cold it was. Racing back into the sauna, your skin suddenly feels on fire - prickly, pulsing and flushed. It’s exhilarating - and hilarious when you realise you have snow lodged between your buttcheeks.
We repeated, this time diving face first into the snow, under the light of the nearly-full moon, laughing together at how we must have looked to any imaginary passersby, and pondering what shapes our bodies had left in the snow.
Though I love the hot-and-cold-therapy that sauna brings, my favourite times have always had conviviality in common. Shared saunas provide the chance to be naked (figuratively and literally) with other women, bonding over this experience, and others that have shaped us.
Five final lessons I learnt from the Wild (OK, Henna)
6. Don’t put water-based lotion on your face if it’s minus degrees outside. It can freeze and give you frostbite on your face. I would never have thought of this.
7. Don’t let the sauna fire go out. You will make it 10x harder for the next person to have a sauna, incurring the wrath of Henna (as well as the sauna elf, most likely). And yes, I learnt this one from experience. Sorry, Henna 😅
8. Mint Vodka in your hot chocolate is a must. We also tried other wilderness tipples to keep our insides warm after a long day skiing, including brandy cut with vodka and 60% proof rum. Just your standard day on the slopes!
9. Dehydrated meals *can* be delicious. I ate a wicked mac and cheese, demolished a delicious veggie chilli, and found a new appreciation for super noodles (leave to soak in the thermos for three hours and they’re super plump in time for lunch). That said, I did miss vegetables.
10. Drilling for your water makes it taste better. There are no taps in the wilderness - and even if there were, they’d be frozen over for a large part of the year. So when we needed water to drink, wash and rehydrate our meals, we’d have to drill for it. It was quite the workout, but kept us warm, tasted better for it, and made us feel like we might actually manage to survive a night without Henna if it was necessary.
… Who am I kidding?
🐻 Thanks to Gutsy Girls for a great trip to Lapland and for bringing Henna, Imogen and five more Gutsy Girls into my life. This is my third trip with the tour group and there’s a reason I keep going back. Not only has it brought so much adventure into my life but also so many wonderful women. I highly recommend.
📸 Most of these snaps were taken by others on my trip - I have lost track of who took which ones, so am asking who would like to be credited & how and will update as I hear back.
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First off mint vodka sounds like a game changer. But more than anything this post is just magic. The pictures and the list of learnings is just so great. I found myself very jealous as I read.
Sounds like an amazing outdoor experience Emma! Tough! Well done. As I met you on a Gutsy Girls trip (a rather softer version of paddleboarding in Sardinia tbf 😂) I can 💯 vouch for the delight of a GG trip and the quality of women you meet 😘. Off to review their webpage as we speak…