Ivalo Off The Beaten Path

Making a camp fire:
If you plan trekking, skiing or motor sledging trip into Lapland ('Lappi' in Finnish), the fire is the best friend of you.

In warmer countries, like in Borneo, the nature might surprise you with an occasional rain. You will just get a little bit wet and that is all. But in Lappi - and similar nature zones - you will be wet and *cold* with rain and wind. Off the beaten track, without fire and dry clothes the situation can change dramatically in just two or three minutes and there might be quite long a way to call help.

I will not repeate the mythological history how human beings got the fire from the Greekian Gods; I just give some hints how to get campfire in Lappi and also in other countries in this nature zone (Sweden etc.)

In Lappi, there are two main natural and very helpful resources to putting up a camp fire.

First (image 1) is a skin ('tuohi' in Finnish) of a birch ('koivu' in Finnish). Avoid to strip off a living birch, instead use the fallen and dead skin of a birch instead. The skin of the live birch is inside wet.

Second options is a snag (image 2), which is not so common in other countries outside of Scandinavia. Snag ('kelo' in Finnish) can stand still - like in image 2 - but mostly they are on the ground. Kelos are dead trees, which are basically quite dry and consist tar, and a fire loves to gorge tar.

Tuohis and kelos can be also wet. So, if you are *really* off the beaten track, try to carry some tuohi and minor chopped branches of kelo always with you. For one good fire, you need maybe tuohi similar to area of palm of the hand and one 10 centimeter piece of minor branch from kelo, which can be sliced later. The weight of the overall is just some hundred grams but it is really worth of it. Tuohi or kelo materials are not branded yet and you can not find them from the shops of northern Finland. Just pick them up when wandering (see the images for recognizing).

And remember to buy some fire bricks ('sytytyspala' in Finnish) before trekking.