Drive Vol. 8: Swedish Twilight

Simple concept: pictures taken from a car

Well, not all pictures in this Drive episode are taken from a car, but it's my series, so I can also break the rules at will. Ok? Good.

The reason I'm breaking the rules, is because these are part of the Norway roadtrip we did in May.

In Trondheim, we got some problem in our car – not an acute problem, but still something we didn't wanna risk, so we decided to take the shortest route back to Finland instead of continuing to Lofoten archipelago, that'll be left for another trip. So, we started to drive back towards Finland through Sweden, well, everyone else except me, because I don't have a driving license, but at least I had a camera so I wasn't a totally useless guy.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with Swedish Lapland, but it apparently snows in late May there. Or maybe we were just unlucky. Either way, stopping wasn't an attractive option, so we just kept going and decided to go all the way through the night until we'd arrive in Iisalmi, Finland, where a dad of my friend had a place to stay. 1300 kilometers in a single session.

It wasn't summer yet, but we were so far north that it never got completely dark, and we experienced a beautiful twilight. One of our favorite hits during the roadtrip was Roy Orbison. In the song the lyrics "Mä ajan koko yön" (I drive all night long) were quite fitting for the context.

In all other languages, Finland is well, something very similar: Finnland, Finlandia etc, but in Finnish, Finland is "Suomi". I think the etymology comes from some "Finn-tribe" that lived in the area that is known as Finland today, so then it became just that: Finn-land.

A bridge in Tornio-Haaparanta with the other side being in Tornio, Finland (white) and the other in Haaparanta, Sweden (yellow).