What it’s like to wild skate on a frozen lake in Finland
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Loading... - Sascha Esser
- 04 May 2023
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Forget the ice rink – James Stewart joins the Finns for something far scarier in Tampere
To people of a certain age, Ravel’s Boléro will be forever associated with skating. To its haunting melody and insistent rhythm, Jayne Torville and Christopher Dean pirouetted to gold in the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, simultaneously achieving both the highest score recorded for a single figure skating programme and the pinnacle of British skating achievement.
We’re not natural ice skaters, us Brits. While we love the sequins and glitter of Dancing on Ice, skating for many of us holds best-forgotten memories of going in circles in glorified sports halls. At the first hint of ice we spread grit.
Finns, of course, know better. Ask them about skating and they’ll tell you about ice hockey, their nation’s favourite spectator sport (Finland are four-times world champions). More probably they’ll skim over figure skating to mention the popular outdoor hobby of tour skating.
Once toddlers can walk, Finns shove them on to a frozen lake. It’s not simply that they have to do something in winter on the gazillion lakes that make their maps look like marbled paper. It’s because tour skating — what we rink-skating Brits might call wild skating — epitomises the Nordic zeal for being outside whatever the weather. When I heard that a UK operator offers short tour skating holidays in south Finland, with accommodation in a spa lodge and an arty design hotel, I imagined something peak Nordic: effortlessly stylish, healthy, life-affirming.
I got the first hint that things might not be so simple during my two-hour induction near Tampere city. In a hut beside Lake Nasi, the instructor Pekka explained the rudiments of the sport: how to propel myself with poles and a sideways swish of the legs; how to stand tall for better balance. Read More…
