“Does these have cheese?” he asked.
She saw more tourists wearing snowmobile suits that remained at the cashier. She left there before they made eye contact.
“I was thinking, I’ll go here again,” she said.
These were small charges, but enough was enough. If you are a blonde and therefore can identify as a potential Rovaniemi native, you can barely move around the supermarket during tourist season. It’s all Santa’s fault.
Santa’s hometown
The simple marketing idea of playing precious childhood fantasies has made a small city on the edge of the Arctic Circle barely conceived by many people living there. And it’s not just poor tourists in the aisles of dairy and crackers. It also makes noiseless Airbnbs, escalating home crunches, busy sidewalks that can’t walk them without bumping into people, and car doors slam in the middle of the night.
And it all began when the Nazis came to town.
In the early part of World War II, Finland formed an alliance with the Nazis and built a large base in Rovaniemi, the hub of the Lapland Railway. However, by October 1944, the Nazis had lost, and the Soviet Red Army had marched into Eastern Europe. As a small memorial to the Finns and Russians, retreating German soldiers burned Rovaniemi to the ground.
It left a blank canvas. After the war, Finland asked famous Finnish architect Albar Aalto to redesign the city. Known for its bold churches, concert halls and kitchen stools, Aalto came up with the idea. Why not recreate a ruined town with the shape of a reindeer’s head?
