About Me

Winter Nights in the North

At night, we departed from downtown Helsinki, a bus carrying us slowly toward the sea. Outside the window, frozen streets and freshly fallen snow shimmered under the streetlights, serene to the point of solemnity. Snow covered the world in silence, like a poet refusing to disturb the blank page of night, each sheet unfolding in this land at sixty degrees north. The Gulf of Finland said nothing, letting only the wind skim the surface and scatter distant lights into our sightline.

We stepped into a small seaside sauna, its wooden walls still holding traces of summer warmth. Inside, the temperature neared ninety degrees—a Nordic counterattack against ice and snow. Sweat poured like rain, yet all I felt was my entire body unwinding, cleansed by steam and silence alike. Moments later, the door swung open, and I ran out naked into the snow. The icy sand beneath my feet was as fine as salt. I plunged into the freezing sea. In that instant, the world was stripped bare to nothing but heartbeat and breath. The cold pierced to the bone, but strangely, it made me feel alive.

In the distance, Tallinn. Just a sea apart, two nations sharing this same wintry sting. The night sky was still. Snowflakes drifted slowly, landing on hair and lashes, not melting, not hurrying. Life in the North carries a kind of austere luxury. The snow falls so quietly, as if the entire world is holding its breath, waiting—for one fleeting tenderness: to leap into the sea, then be embraced by snow.