Every design for Kittilä

Do you know the kind of cold that makes the air ring? In Kittilä it is a point of local pride. Pokka, out in the municipality's wilderness, holds the official record for the lowest temperature ever measured in Finland, and every winter brings a stretch of polar night when the sun never clears the horizon. In summer the midnight sun stays up for weeks on end.

Kittilä lies well north of the Arctic Circle, far inland in Lapland, a vast and thinly peopled municipality crossed by the Ounasjoki. In Northern Sámi it is Gihttel. The church village strings out along the main road between Rovaniemi and Muonio, with Engel's wooden church at its heart. Up at Sirkka, Levi has grown into one of the country's best-known ski resorts, opening each season with a World Cup slalom, while Kätkätunturi rises just to the west. Back in the village, two artists left their mark: Taidemuseo Einari Junttila fills the painter's former home, and Palsa-museo keeps Kalervo Palsa's cabin and studio. Junttila also drew the wolverine on the municipal coat of arms.

When the road bends past the church and the river comes into view, you are back where the light and the cold make sense.