The House She Slept On
It all started with a house in the woods. A secluded one, built in two weeks just for her – or so the story goes. Rovaniemi was a tiny town, mostly razed by the Germans a few years ago just before their retreat. It was a few houses in the wilderness along a highway that meandered north through the Arctic towards Murmansk.
Sisu
After the war, the Finns came back to burned homes, disease, and no food. In many cases all they found was a charred cellar, standing underneath burned-out timbers of their log homes. But they came back. And started to rebuild.
Sisu.
And that’s why she came. Eleanor. No longer the First Lady, but a representative to the newly formed United Nations. To witness this sisu. This grit in the face of insensible plight inflicted upon them by an ally quickly turned enemy with nothing to lose, hoping to leave nothing for the inevitable arrival of the Russians.
What little remained of the population came out to greet her. They brought flowers, just bloomed after the long Finnish winter, their color so precious to the Finns in this part of the country, who lived in darkness for most of the year.
In Spirit, She Was There
That house, the secluded one. The one from which she mailed a letter to President Truman, postmarked: Rovaniemi, Arctic Circle, Finland. It was a novelty really. This woman who had only a few years before been living at the White House, now supposedly spending the night in a cabin in the woods in one of the most remote parts of the world. In truth, she stayed at the Hotel Pohjanhovi, the city’s premier hotel and at the center of the reconstruction activity. But in spirit, she was there.
This cabin is now the centerpiece of something different: Santa Claus Village. It’s where the real Santa lives (when he’s not at the North Pole.) You can pay 300 euros to see him privately. Take photos, tell him what you want for Christmas.
The Finns. They rebuilt Rovaniemi into something entirely different. And the Eleanor Roosevelt house – the one that she never slept in, she slept on – that stands at the center.
Chasing the Silence
We went to Rovaniemi chasing the silence that it had when she was there. But it’s not there anymore. Our train, which left Helsinki at 1930, had a big sticker on the side that said Santa Express. It’s just a normal train, but we boarded it fantasizing it was the Polar Express, buying Hershey bars in the dining car to melt in the watered-down hot chocolate made from powder. It was a fine train. And despite its normalcy, it carried us north through the night, past a countryside probably as peaceful as Rovaniemi was 80 years ago – before the Roosevelt house. Before any of it.
But at 0600 we got off the train to a different Rovaniemi.
Our Airbnb, 10 minutes outside of town, was this kind of silent. It was in the woods. Half buried in snow. A sauna, a buried back deck, we found that peace there.
I woke up several times during the night because my app told me that the northern lights may be visible, only to look up at a cloudy sky. We went sledding in the back in our swimsuits, after the sauna. We made macaroni in the kitchen. Drank Finnish whisky.
An amethyst mine. A frozen lake. A dogsled ride. We did the things that made you feel like it may have before Eleanor was there.
And That’s OK
But the kids will not remember it for that. They’ll remember Santa. The train. The sushi restaurant downtown. The hot chocolate at the coffee shop where we escaped the cold.
And that’s OK.
The Rovaniemi we found was not the one we expected. But just like her, we experienced it as it was. And adapted to the rest.
