History and architecture... and other Rovaniemi, Finland General Tips

Favorite Thing: Rovaniemi doesn't have ANY old buildings. I think that's a bad thing, because we don't have any kind of a historical atmosphere in the city. Rovaniemi was bombed TOTALLY by the Germans in year 1945. That's why any of the old building aren't up anymore. Before the bombing Rovaniemi had been a developing little town, and it's main business was timberfloating - there was a lot of wood going by the two rivers to southern Finland. Also tar was taken south through Rovaniemi.

The new city plan was made by the famous Finnish architecht/designer Alvar Aalto. The city plan is made in the shape of a head of reindreer. The main sportsfield is the eye and the roads going away from Rovaniemi are the horns.

Nowadays Rovaniemi has many building project and many buildings are very modern. The coolest architectural buildings are probably the Jätkänkynttilä - bridge and Arktikum, the Arctic Centre Museum. I'll write about these two to my Rovaniemi-page as soon as possible! :)

If you want to learn more about the history of Rovaniemi go to page:
http://www.rovaniemi.fi/historia/


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Favorite Thing: Rovaniemi is located in the branch of two rivers, Ounasjoki and Kemijoki (joki = river). The city is surrounded by fjelds, small mountains or big hills. Because Rovaniemi is only 8 kilometers south from the Arctic Circle, it is mostly surrounded by evergreen conifer forests. The city is not very wide, and only 5 kilometers from the town, where I live, the landscape has merged into forests instead of roads.

There are also many small lakes around Rovaniemi, and people have summercottages around them.

Finland is said to be the country of thousand lakes and neverending forests. The truth is, that we have 180 times 1000 lakes!! 180 000!! Can you believe that? I dropped from my chair when I heard that.

There are about 42 000 different species of animals, plants and fungi in Finland. Here are some examples of them.

Large mammals: moose, bear, wolf, lynx, reindeer, deer.
Medium mammals: hare, fox, beaver, pine marten, wolverine.
Small mammals: mouse, shrew, lemming, stoat.

Large birds: swan, pheasant, goose, eagles, hawks, owls.
Medium birds: crow, raven, magpie, goldeneye, duck, woodpecker
Small birds: great git, robin, blue tit, yellow-hammer

Insects: mosquitoes, ladybugs, small butterflies, bumblebees, wasps... about 20 000 different species, but none of them are really hazardous or horribly big.

Amphibians: lizard, frogs, viper (the only poisonous snake).

Fish: salmon, pike, perch, whitefish, bream, baltic herring..

Because Rovaniemi's nature is very similar to the nature in the rest of Finland, this page will be very useful to you if you wanna know more:
http://virtual.finland.fi/Nature_Environment/
And on this page you can see sattelite map of Rovaniemi: (later)


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Favorite Thing: I love the Rovaniemi weather! In Finland we have all fours seasons. Here's how they are in Rovaniemi.

Winter in Rovaniemi is cold - usually something between -5 and -25 degrees celsius. We have a lot of snow. The winters are dark and we have the so called "Kaamos", dark period when sun never gets above the horizon. This is because the Earth is tilted on it's axis: northern and southern areas are either really sunny or really dark, depending on the season. In the winter we have beautiful natural lights: the beautiful Aurora Borealis. Winter is from November to the half of April.

Spring is warmer than winter, from -8 to +8 degrees, (warmer in the end of the spring), but there's still enough snow! Springtime starts in the second half of April, and lasts until the first days of June. During the spring snow starts melting and sun starts shining more & more. Snow reflects the sun beautifully and there's light everywhere! Early spring is the best time to do wintersports. When it comes closer to June, snow has melted and the summer starts.

Summer is lovely. In the summer people get active. It's about +18 to +30 degrees warm. Usually it's sunny, but there can be cloudy summers too. In the midsummer Finland is best!!! People are active and happy and there's a big midsummer feast all over Finland (June 21st). Summer lasts from June till mid-August.

Autumn is a colourful season. All trees turn yellow and red, and the ground gets covered in berries and mushrooms. Also the grass-root plants get painted in red and brown. The weather can be from +18 to -8 celsius, depending on what stage of autumn we are. From mid-August to September the autumn is lovely, but October is probably the ugliest month of the year, because it's so dark, the leafs from the trees have dropped and the snow hasn't come yet. But the whole year apart from October is lovely!

The best time to come is either in March-April, or from late June to the mid-July.


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Favorite Thing: Here are some useful links for online info about the Rollo Rock City (Rovaniemi :P).

Rovaniemi homepage in English
www.rovaniemi.fi/?deptid=3694

Rovaniemi online weather (in Finnish, but it has figures)
www.foreca.com/fin/saa/index.php?c=fin&spot=Rovaniemi

Rovaniemi online weather (in English)
http://www.fmi.fi/weather/local.html?Keywords=&kunta=Rovaniemi&param=T&neito=1

Currency converter. Remember: Finland has euros!!
http://www.xe.net/ucc/

Finlands train system homepage in english
http://www.vr.fi/heo/eng/index.html

Accomodation finder
http://www.accomodation.ws/Rovaniemi.php

Rovaniemi hotels
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-hotel-483021-rovaniemi_hotels-i

LaplandTourism - excellent page
http://www.laplandfinland.com/contentparser.asp?deptid=7405

...more coming up...


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