Paddling Lapland
A chopper drops off the author’s party at the start of their journey.
On our first day of canoeing, the Finnish mountains glimmered under a blazing sun, and it quickly became apparent that low water would be an issue, courtesy of a low-snow winter and a continuing heat wave. I felt like I was paddling entirely different rivers from my previous visit. What we had lined seven years ago, we usually paddled. And what we had paddled before was often too shallow to float our canoes.
After four days of scraping and banging down Class I and II rivers and making our overland portage into Norway, we reached the settlement of Goattaluobbal, once used in winter by Sami families for reindeer herding. Crumbling stock pens were overgrown by birches, and bleached antlers littered the green grass. That night, one of the local families arrived on ATVs hauling trailers of gear, kids, and dogs. The daily life cycle shifts dramatically under the midnight sun, and Sami toddlers ran amid the waving red fireweed at 11:30 p.m., catching the fading rays of the northern sunset.
The Kautokeino River proved to be as challenging as the Poroeno and Lataseno. I wondered how I could have forgotten the intensity of its consistent pool-drop formation, which in loaded canoes required lots of meticulous maneuvering. The hardest rain of our unusually dry trip struck along this section one night. We huddled in a lavvu, a large tepee-style Sami tent brought along by Espen Prestbakmo, a Norwegian writer and guide. We built a smoky fire to beat back the mosquitoes and blackflies which seemed unaffected by the cold front as Prestbakmo explained the Sami culture.
Gradually I gained an impression of the struggles facing these northern residents, as well as the contradictions. Prestbakmo leads a simple lifestyle that embraces some of the old Sami ways of living close to the land, yet the Sami now enjoy a higher standard of living than natives in northern villages of North America. Many Norwegians are upset about the Sami use of ATVs. Intended strictly for reindeer herding, the vehicles are now routinely used for pleasure riding and have created networks of trails in remote areas.
Some Sami traditions have been preserved in the village museum at Kautokeino, where we stopped for a layover day. A former herder taught us how to lasso reindeer antlers perched on poles. Because of the language barrier, no words were exchanged, but his demonstration was effective, especially when he roped one of our group who wandered obliviously through the practice area.
A local knife maker, Josef Per Buljo, urged the Kraiker boys to be cautious with their new knives. To demonstrate his point, he held up his forefinger which was missing two joints. "Knife making, not knife using," he said, his eyes mischievous in a broad Sami face. Wonderful, I thought. We were about to paddle the remote upper reaches of the Reisa River-far away from medical help-with two teenagers who have sharp new knives.
We launched five solo canoes and a tandem on the headwater lake of the Reisa, located in a national park with the same name. Farther downstream, the river flows through two exquisite canyons that would require portaging. Our plan was to carry around most of the first canyon, then scout for a new route down a side canyon where we could lower our boats and gear back to the river.
After two days of paddling, we arrived at the first canyon portage. We carried across rumpled rock and camped near a side canyon that offered a steep descent to Class II and III rapids. Perched on the edge of the Lapp plateau, I felt as if we were on top of the world, with the best part of the river waiting below.
The next morning, we carefully descended the steep scree-filled gully and discovered that the Reisa, too, was unusually low. The river had an entirely different character than on my first visit-friendlier but less exciting. I was actually relieved that the rapids were less pushy than anticipated, since I had a painful cut on my hand from a nasty fall I took on the portage. Fortunately, the group had traveled in enough remote regions to accept the fact that a river simply is what it is-a function of its environment and climate. No one wasted any energy wishing it were different. Good thing, too, because we still faced some very hard work to get to the ocean in our remaining six days.
