Hello there!
You have probably heard different stories of the people, who had moved to Lapland and stayed longer to live there. This is my story how I fell in love and stay in Lapland.
For the beginning
I have lived almost my whole life in Vantaa, middle of the concrete jungle. I have always liked to move in the nature with dogs and have different kinds of hobbies, for example skiing and cycling. When I graduated from Merchant´s Business School with business administration degree in 2017, I didn´t want to stay any longer in metropolitan area. While I was in the military in 2018, I started to like more moving in the nature with some difficulties, like hiking.
When I got home from the army, I lived in Kuopio for about a year, while working at restaurant in the Tahko Mountain. In the summer 2019 my life got a new twist that would change everything.
Picture of husky puppy.
In the summer 2019
when I searched new jobs for me, I got a job offer from the Muonio to the job of as a husky guide to the winter season 2019-2020. I have had always dogs in my family, so I had some experience in handling dogs and I had nothing that should have kept me in Kuopio, so i thought; Damn it, why not.
In the autumn, I moved with my car full of my stuffs in Muonio and started to work as a husky guide. Then I started with other guides training the dogs for the season, and get to know of all about 200 huskies.
Picture of myself on the husky safari.
After the season, I started to love the nature of Lapland and sled dogs. First time in my life I had some work experience where I really liked. Unfortunately because of CoViD-19, the work of the husky guide has been quiet. When the season ends, I still wanted to stay in Lapland and I moved to Rovaniemi. I worked as a construction site cleaner as summer job. Luckily in summer, I got a place to study tourism in the Lapland UAS in autumn 2020.
Picture of myself in the Pallas.
Don´t hesitate new experiences
From that I moved from big city to small town basically middle of nowhere, I have had so much experience to work with different people and used my language skills in the different situations. I have hiking in the national parks and skiing in many of ski centers in Lapland.
If I have to say something from my experience of hesitating, I would say this:
If you hesitate anything to do, just go for it, you won´t regret it.
Here is the video about how extreme sport mushing can be. The musher in the video is my ex-co-worker 🙂
Thank you for reading my story, see you next time!
-Niko-