Small Village
A frozen river, a birch tree, and one month above the Arctic Circle
For a whole month, I opened the curtains every morning and saw exactly this view: a large, bare birch tree overlooking the frozen Ounasjoki River, deep in Finnish Lapland. This was a view I couldn’t get out of my head. I just had to draw it. That drawing became “Small Village,” and this is the story behind it.
In November 2021, we lived above the Arctic Circle, in a small black cottage in a tiny village: Tepasto. The river flowed right behind the house and froze over a little more each day. November was a beautiful month, too. There was still a bit of sunlight, long twilight hours in the morning and evening with magical light, and the sense that the polar night was approaching. All reasons to capture this soft pink light of the early morning in a snapshot.
Our home in November
On the banks of the Ounasjoki
Tepasto is located about 50 km north of the church village of Kittilä. It is a classic riverside settlement: the houses line both banks of the Ounasjoki, because for centuries the river itself served as the road. The river formed the natural thoroughfare through the wilderness.
The village is said to owe its name to Teppo Lappalainen, who came here from Norway in the 17th century and settled here. Around the same time, Finnish settlers also moved to the region. The spring floods made the riverbanks fertile and easy to cultivate, resulting in good pastures and grazing land.
The kind of farmland we would later come to know well ourselves.
Our HOME in November was right in the middle of the village, on the banks of the Ounasjoki.
A small black cottage in the center of the village, right on the bank of the Ounasjoki, with the river murmuring behind it and that pastel light streaming in every morning.
The yellow house
The Yellow House by the Rapids
Tepasto is small, but big enough to hold both of our homes. The black cottage was actually the exception. For most of our winters in Lapland, home was the yellow house: a farm about five kilometers toward Kittilä, right where the Ounasjoki accelerates into rapids. It's the place we kept coming back to, season after season. The November we rented the black cottage in the village center, we moved back to the yellow house for the rest of that winter, from December to April as we did so many other years.
The farm was situated in the middle of vast grasslands. The owner had long since retired, but you could still recognize the old dairy farm by the layout of the surrounding buildings. During that second period (the depths of winter) the landscape around us continued to change: the river, with its rapids, froze solid and came back to life in the spring.
From my diary
A few fragments from my diary.
Nov. 4, 2021 · +2 °C · sunrise 8:43 a.m., sunset 3:24 p.m. · Cloudy
First day in our little cottage by the river! What a view, Soooooooo beautiful. I slept well, too, with only the murmur of the river as background noise. We’ve made it cozy here. Our HOME for a month.
Nov. 27, 2021 · −18 °C · sunrise 10:37 a.m., sunset 1:40 p.m. · Sunny
It's 8:52 a.m. and outside it's the "blue hour." Beautiful. Two days later, sunrise was at 10:47 a.m. and sunset at 1:31 p.m. That's about 20 minutes less daylight and it was a milder −8 °C, with fresh snow.
The photograph
How the illustration came to be
The photograph that became the drawing ... same river, same birch, same lilac light.
Walking to the water’s edge every day to photograph the river: pink light, sharp rays of sunlight, the twilight descending over the water from the bench… the first snow, the frozen blades of grass at -18°C… This place was a natural, effortless source of inspiration.
The photos I took found their way onto my drawing tablet, as a memento of this place. A peaceful, snow-covered landscape: the large birch tree stands proudly beside the Ounasjoki, the river covered with a thin layer of ice…
Across the water stand two charming Scandinavian cottages. The sky is filled with soft pastel hues (light pink, soft blue, lilac) because the polar night was approaching, and I loved accentuating that wintry atmosphere with color. One word to describe the whole scene: magical.
Frequently asked question
Living in a small village
Living and working in a village this size is special. Even if you don’t live there permanently and keep traveling back and forth between Belgium and Finnish Lapland, winter after winter, they know you!
One day, our brake rotors were completely frozen solid. We were tinkering and improvising in the middle of our own street with the frozen rotors, convinced that if we rocked the car back and forth on the hard-frozen road, the brakes would eventually come loose. A neighbor pulled up next to us, took one look at the situation, and gave us the amazing local solution: get some hot water, pour it over the frozen brakes, and they’ll click right loose.
A great tip from a friendly neighbor. And every time we run into him on the street since then, we still wave to each other, years later, we still do!
What's still there
Tepasto is still the little village on the Ounasjoki River!
These days, you can go whitewater rafting or kayaking on the Ounasjoki, go ice fishing in the winter, or cast your line right from the bank in the summer. Across the river, opposite our little black cottage, a husky organization was active all winter long. A few years later, we went on a husky trek with them: gliding across the frozen river behind a team of five enthusiastic huskies. That’s a story for our Arctic Adventures, but this illustration originated right here in the center of Tepasto, with a view across the water.
STORy behind
Bring this work of art into your home
Small Village is available as an art print in my webshop. If a serene, pastel-colored winter scene above the Arctic Circle is the kind of view you’d love to have on your wall, then this is exactly what you’re looking for.