A Finnish winter reveals a coastline shaped by ice and time
By Daria Partas
The Baltic had not frozen flat. Out from Kalajoki’s low coastline, the sea had fractured and heaved into pressure ridges, and we saw slabs of ice thrust upwards in pale green layers. Beyond them, the surface stretched into a white plain that dissolved into a low, iron-grey sky. The horizon was indistinct; sea and air merged into a single muted field.
At first glance, there appeared to be very little there at all. But winter landscapes often reela themselves slowly, and this stretch of Finland’s western coast is far more active than its stillness suggests. Kalajoki sits on the Gulf of Bothnia, below the Arctic Circle but firmly within the boreal winter zone. In a typical February, temperatures hover around –12°C and frequently drop to –20°C. When we arrived, locals described the week as unusually mild, with temperatures at –6°C. Out on the sea, with wind sweeping uninterrupted across the ice, it felt fiercely colder.
This stretch of coastline is better known in Finland as a summer destination, long sandy beaches, dunes and holiday cottages. In winter, the beaches disappear beneath snow, and the Baltic itself freezes into an extension of land. This seasonal transformation is also part of a longer geological story. Finland is still rising.
Relieved of the immense weight of the last Ice Age’s glaciers, the land here continues to rebound upward, in places by nearly a centimetre per year. The coast is slowly emerging, and new shallows form. Islands appear and expand. The relationship between land and sea is in constant negotiation.
We had driven an hour and forty minutes south from Oulu through dark spruce and pine forest, the February light diffuse and metallic. From our hotel window, the frozen Baltic resembled a vast natural skating rink, broad, pale and almost featureless from a distance.
We pulled on insulated overalls – three base layers beneath ski suits – before boarding a diesel-powered hovercraft capable of skimming over both water and ice. Inside, it was unexpectedly warm. Outside, our guide Marko Santapakka offered a brief warning: “It’s a stark wind.”
As we pushed open the hovercraft door, the change in temperature was immediate and startling.. The cabin’s diesel warmth gave way, in an instant, to an environment that felt almost extraterrestrial, a flat white surface under a low metallic sky. Wind moved unhindered across the frozen Baltic, hitting exposed skin with a sudden, searing force. There was no gradual acclimatisation, only the immediate instinct to cover skin, pull up balaclavas, and orient oneself in a landscape that felt, briefly and disconcertingly, non-terrestrial.
We stopped near one of the pressure ridges – the so-called “ice mountain”, where waves had frozen mid-motion and compressed into jagged formations. Sheets of sea ice, around 25 centimetres thick, had been thrust upward and layered into pale, translucent blocks with a faint green core.
The hovercraft glided further out towards the Rahja archipelago, a scatter of low islands normally reached by boat in summer. Across the frozen surface, our route curved and adjusted. Our captain, Janne, and guide, Marko, gestured across what appeared to be blankness, discussing thickness, drift and underlying current. The craft confidently followed the invisible routes.
Finally, the spot for ice fishing was determined. Janne drilled through the ice with a hand auger. Beneath the white crust lay black moving water. A thin layer of slush formed on the surface of the hole. Without hesitation, he removed his glove and cleared it away with his bare hand. I instinctively winced. The cold felt sharp even through layers; the idea of direct contact with the freezing water seemed unbearable. Janne barely registered it. That small moment stands out to me. It was the difference between being a guest in a landscape, and living it.
On our return journey from the Rahja archipelago, the hovercraft stalled against the white horizon. Ten minutes later, a snowmobile arrived, towing a makeshift sledge compartment. We were given helmets to pull down over our faces and were hauled back across the frozen expanse.
For our hosts, winter was not something to survive until spring. They moved through it with fluency.
Back on land, the snow told its own story underfoot.
Here it was dry, granular, almost powdery. Each step produced a crisp compression – a sharp exchange between boot and ground. It did not compact into slick ice. It did not thaw and refreeze into treacherous glaze.
In southern Ukraine, where I grew up in a continental climate of hot summers and damp, bone-deep seeping winters, temperatures often oscillate around zero. Snow softens, melts, refreezes overnight, and pavements and roads become layered in ice. Winter demands vigilance, and the season feels adversarial. Winter for me has always carried a different energy and was always framed as something to endure. We layered up, stocked food, and worried about heating.
On the Baltic coast, the cold remains stable enough to preserve the snow’s structure. It stays dry and unexpectedly grippy. While the landscape may appear severe albeit showing up as rather underwhelming, it does not betray you. This difference may seem subtle, it alters the psychology of winter completely.
Finland’s winter narrative is often centred further north, in Lapland’s forests and aurora tourism. Kalajoki offers something more elemental. This is not a theatrical Arctic, it is real life.
The Gulf of Bothnia freezes each winter gradually, forming sea ice that can reach half a metre thick in colder seasons. By late February, even in a relatively mild year, the Baltic along this stretch of coast becomes a temporary extension of land. Snowmobiles cross it. Fishermen drill into it. Hovercraft chart routes across it.
Later in the week, as temperatures dropped again towards –20°C, the town’s winter rhythms continued without drama. Cross-country ski tracks cut through the forest. Toboggan runs shaped low hills by the shore. Local boys gathered to play hockey on open ice. On skates, they moved with effortless fluency, years of repetition embedded in muscle memory. Our guide Jokki, a young man born and raised in Kalajoki, had been skiing since the age of one.
Our youngest daughter had never seen snow before this trip. Born in London in early January, she has been growing up in a city where winter rarely transforms the landscape. Standing on the frozen Baltic, bundled in her magenta snowsuit, she grew quiet, absorbing the vastness of space around her. Against the white plain and the ridged ice beyond, she became a small vertical mark in an otherwise horizontal world.
I had come north hoping to reconnect with something familiar – the decisive winters of my childhood, where winter arrived with tension: heating, preparation, endurance. But in Finland, I found a very altered relationship with cold when winter is not seen as an ordeal.
Children skate as naturally as they walk. Fishermen drill through the frozen Baltic to catch fish. Families gather in a local spa centre to socialise after an early sunset. Here, winter is inhabited, embraced, until the Baltic loosens and opens again to the tide.
