How Cold Is It – Really

When we first told most people that we were going to Finland, the most common response was something along the lines of, “isn’t it cold there?”

Yes, in fact, it is.

However. It’s not actually so cold that we don’t ever want to go outside, nor is it so cold that it’s nothing an extra pair of pants can’t handle. We’ve also learned that while Celsius temperatures make for great shock value (NEGATIVE TWENTY-TWO DEGREES?!), they’re kind of misleading. -22° C is still pretty icy, at -7.6° F, but without wind or humidity, the cold is less biting and cutting. It doesn’t sting, nor does it make you want to hide your face. It’s just… there. It’s peaceful, not threatening. It’s a quiet kind of cold.

That isn’t to say, though, that temperature is not a tricky business here. As it turns out, it’s not the cold temperature that’s the hard part, but, instead, temperature regulation. You start out the day in your apartment, where it’s nice and toasty, but to prepare to go outside, you must put on about 5 layers of clothing. Both the process of yanking everything on and the clothes themselves warm you up quite a bit, so you’re pretty hot when you finally step outside. It’s a relief. Except then the cold starts to seep in, slowly, up the legs of your pants, up your sleeves, down your neck… and then you’re cold. Partially. Your belly is probably still warm. So, to get warmer in the places that aren’t, you have to start walking. (And if you really need to warm up, you try to keep up with Laura.) Except then, with all that blood circulating, you get kinda hot. So maybe you zip down your jacket, take off your hat… and then inevitably you stop for a few minutes, get chilly again, and repeat the above process a few times – until you reach your (indoor) destination, where you go inside and are suddenly burning, so you take off your outerwear. And by the time you get it all off, take care of your business, and get it all on again… well, you see where this is going.

We’ve developed a few tricks to combat the never-ending temperature fluctuation process, but we still haven’t figured out how the Finns can stand grocery shopping for an hour, or sitting in the bank for an hour, or really doing almost anything not outdoors for an hour - in a parka, scarf, and fleece hat… and, though we’ve been practicing enduring as much heat as possible, we’ve pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we betray our foreign identities when we strip down to our t-shirts every time we step into a building.