ROVANIEMI AND THE ARCTIC CENTRE

Sunday 13th June 2010

A beautiful day when I woke at the decent hour of 7am. This room has a decent
blind that does block out light. That's great. I thought I heard lots of people
having showers, but it turned out just to be the fan running in the ensuite. I
haven't found a way to turn it off, but it does not worry me. If anything it
helps dry the shirts I have hanging.

Breakfast was OK with all the usual items found on this trip. I did notice that
they charge 1e for any coffee or tea you have after breakfast time finishes at
10am. That's a new one on this trip.

I went first to the Arctic Centre or ARTIKUM. This was a 10 minute or so walk
down one road and there it was. It is a big building and today they were
getting ready for a conference which was starting this afternoon. It was a
conference on tree rings in Arctic areas, except they had given the study a
scientific name. When I saw all the conference packs out I was rather amazed at
the number who had registered. A lot more than we get for our NZ media teachers
conferences, that's for sure. From the sound of the voices I heard it would
seem to have pulled in an international enrollment. Perhaps it is the location
which has attracted them?

Having paid my admission I did not want to pay extra to see a temperance
exhibition on prohibition in Finland last century. I was more than happy just
looking at the permanent displays.

There were posters down the main foyer, which ran the length of the building and
traced out the geological history of the area. This largely related to the
movement back and forth of the great Ice Age sheets. I was amazed to read that
in one place nearby the sheet would have been 3 miles deep. That is a lot of
ice and a heavy lot at that. No wonder the land was rubbed flat.

I also saw pictures of ancient Baltic Sea beaches in the area. Looking at that
pictures I wondered if that was what a series of rocky tree less areas I saw
from the train actually were?

The main display looked at the impact of man on both the Arctic environment and
the empact of later arrivals on the original inhabitants of Polar areas. It
considered what the impact of global climate change is likely to be and
suggested that perhaps the polar bear will have to learn to live on land.

You could trigger off a video which showed a glacier ice avalanche into the sea.
Interesting but I watched the real thing last year and saw it several times. It
had the right sound though. There was explanations of permafrost and photos of
pingus which I saw in Tukuk.... etc last year as well.

One room was the ice room where you could touch an actual column of ice, set a
machine going to feel the icey wind blast and test out various sun goggles.
Another room had a display set up about an Arctic research camp. They had an
actual film running or a polar bear looking in the window. That would have been
scary I think.

There was a small room where you lay on your back and looked at a display of the
Northern Lights up on the ceiling. That was good and I watched it twice and also
shot video of it.

In the centre's theater they had a screening of a presentation called Under The
Northern Lights which was just a slide show but on a huge screen. At first I
wondered if it was gong to be IMAX.
It was a pity to be sitting near a couple of young women who whispered right
through the show. Quite annoying and I never said a thing to them. Isn't that
amazing?