Tuesday 16 January 2024

This week is going to be an admin week, so to keep you interested, I thought I’d share some amazing facts about Finland and Helsinki.

The northern part of Finland is in the Arctic circle (>660 N) Arctic comes from the Greek (Arktos) meaning “bear” - as in polar. Bet you didn’t know that.

Helsinki, at 600 N, is still pretty close to Santa’s home. So, in the middle of winter, it’s appropriate that we see snow and chilly temperatures. It’s very pretty, though.

Finland looks big on the map, but it’s not quite 5% the size of Australia. Just a little bigger than Victoria, really. And Helsinki? Well, at 1.6 million out of the total 5.5 million in Finland, it’s the largest city. Oh, by the way, the sea here is now frozen. Shipping lanes open though.

Now back to the Arctic Circle. It’s in this little circle that you get a polar night and a polar day. 

The polar night is a phenomenon where night lasts for more than 24 hours. The opposite phenomenon, polar day, or midnight sun, occurs when the Sun remains above the horizon for more than 24 hours. We can’t wait for that!

Polar night






Polar day (yes...)







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