Snow Queen: A Cold Pursuit of One’s Finnish Roots, in the Dead of Winter

I have a thing for snow. When other people head south on vacation, I go north. I come by it honestly. I was born and raised in Northern Ontario, and my mom is a Finn. So when editor in chief Ed Loh needed someone to fly to the top of Finland and breach the Arctic Circle to test Nokian’s newest tires, the formulation of a plan began.

Snow, tires, cars, reindeer, northern lights, and saunas—time for a good old-fashioned Motor Trend road trip. Spoiler alert: Things got personal along the way.

Nokian Tyres is a big deal in Finland. The company traces its history back to the founding of the Finnish Rubber Works in 1898, and it invented the winter tire in 1934. Today Nokian has a 1,730-acre winter test site near Ivalo, 180 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Nokian is a household name in Europe when shopping for winter tires, but in order to grow it must enter the mainstream with new lines of all-season and all-weather tires. Hence its desire to raise its profile in the U.S.

New tires have been developed for North America, and Nokian is building a $360 million tire plant in Dayton, Tennessee, with ambitious goals of doubling sales in five years.

So we headed to Lapland (a region covering the northern third of Finland) for a taste of what this small player—$1.7 billion in sales in 2016 versus $32.5 billion from giant Bridgestone—with big plans has to offer.

Our Motor Trend trio included videographer Cory Lutz—a fellow Canadian in danger of getting soft after years of living in Southern California—and photographer Robin Trajano, who was born in the Philippines, now lives in L.A., and could provide thin-blooded comic relief in these frigid arctic climes.

We rendezvous in the capital of Helsinki and hop a 1.5-hour flight to the northernmost airport in the European Union. “Welcome to Ivalo,” the airport sign says, showing a current temperature of minus 4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit). No big deal; my hometown in Ontario has dipped to minus 40. Trajano, however, is giving me sideways shade for putting him in this icebox. Eh, he’s young and tough.

“Kiitos” I say under my breath, Finnish for “thank you” and a remnant of the Finnish I knew as a child listening to my mother talk to her mother. I am finally in a place long on my bucket list. I swallow hard past the lump in my throat.

In Ivalo, a former gold-mining town that is now a winter recreation destination, you can snowmobile to the highest point in Finland and see Russia. Finland is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its independence from the Russian Republic; they haven’t always been the best of neighbors.

Nokian is the only tire manufacturer with a permanent winter testing facility. Nicknamed “White Hell,” the Ivalo Testing Center has slalom and handling courses, a 1.0-kilometer (0.6-mile) speed run on the lake, a rally track for drifting, hills to test traction, an SUV course through the reindeer-populated woods, and an ice hall housing 2,300 feet of natural ice. There are more than 30 tracks covering 62 miles on a variety of ice and snow conditions. In this sprawling complex, Nokian tests 20,000 tires a year from November to May. Every day, results from icy ovals are sent back to corporate headquarters in the pursuit of the best beads, compounds, treads, and studs to improve grip.

Nokian is not alone in its quest for winter tire supremacy. Michelin, Goodyear, and Bridgestone now have small test sites near Ivalo, Hankook recently built a facility, and there is an independent facility the industry shares.

In Finland everyone knows Nokian, which has its headquarters and a tire plant in the city of Nokia, near Helsinki. Nokian split off from conglomerate Nokia (best known for cell phones) in 1988.

Winter tires are mandatory across Scandinavia, Russia, and other northern countries. As a result, the Nokian brand and its Hakkapeliitta tire have become synonymous with excellent winter tires. (“Hakkapeliitta” was a Finnish light cavalry unit during the 30 Years’ War. The name refers to their fearsome roar as they charged into battle.)

The brand is also known in Quebec, another place where winter tires are mandatory. But Nokian is largely obscure on this side of the Atlantic—beyond users such as the Michigan State Police and wonky Hakkapeliitta enthusiasts. The push to increase awareness is now the responsibility of new CEO Hille Korhonen.

For our Finnish excursion we are joined by Nokian PR rep Dan Stocking, a Michigan native who grew up smelling rubber at his family tire shop. Among the Finns who meet us at Ivalo Airport is Matti “Mr. Tire” Morri, a Nokian technical expert who has spent the last 27 winters in Lapland but has never seen it in the summer. Growing up, he cross-country skied a mile-plus to school every day on a track his father groomed for him. He still likes to end his day with a kick-and-glide on an XC trail.

We pile our gear into cars. Morri whips away at breakneck speeds on what we later discover are roads of hard-packed snow compacted to the consistency of ice. Our studded Hakkapeliittas so completely grip the low-mu surface that we are caught unaware when we get out of the cars. We promptly windmill our arms as we struggle to keep our balance.

Among the perks of Lappish life: Our rooms at the Hotel Tunturi in Saariselkä have private saunas. The Finns invented the sauna, and I was eager to compare them to the traditional wood-fired saunas in Canada in which we steam and then jump in a lake or roll in the snow. And conveniently, my room at the Tunturi has a snow-covered patio. We also are invited to join Nokian dealers and executives in a corporate-building communal sauna and dip, but I prefer to limit my team-building exercises to Motor Trend Of The Year testing.

Another Finnish delight: As we walk back from dinner, crunchy packed snow underfoot, we see the northern lights. The scientific explanation for the aurora borealis is charged particles hitting the Earth’s magnetic shield and releasing energy in bands of colorful light across the sky. Northern Finland is in the “Aurora Belt,” where the lights are most frequently seen as leaping iridescent lime spikes, flaming pink shoots, or bright purple curtains in stark contrast to the inky black sky above the Arctic Circle. By contrast, back home on Ontario’s 49th parallel, my last sighting displayed black and white piano keys being played across the sky like beams from a flashlight in need of new batteries.

Day 2

We are back on frozen rural roads heading north to Inari through areas where reindeer farmers herd via snowmobile. Our destination is Lake Pasasjärvi, also known as White Hell Area 2. A fleet of Audis awaits us.

To escape the minus 20 C (minus 4 Fahrenheit) cold, we hop in a yellow AWD RS 4 with studded Hakkapeliitta 9 tires to try the slalom and handling courses. There also are areas for drifting and collision avoidance. Although drifting on the slippery stuff is tempting, the actual goal is to drive on the edge of control and not drift. The combination of the car’s traction control and the grip of the tires almost stops the vehicle completely until it regains control and accelerates again. Same excellent grip in a red RS 5 with studded tires.

A blue RS 6 is doing speed runs on the lake. Nokian has the world record for fastest car on ice with the RS 6 hitting 335.7 km/h (208.6 mph) on the Gulf of Bothnia wearing studded Hakkapeliitta 8s. By comparison, we are mere amateurs. Bouncing along the uneven surface at autobahn speeds, I repeat the winter-driving mantra, slow hands, slow hands. We back off at 100 mph, knowing the car and tires could easily have done more.

To test the new SUV tires we try Audi Q5s with studded tires but also with the nonstudded Hakkapeliitta R2 SUV winter tires. Even without studs, the traction on sheer ice is remarkable. The vehicle prefer to stop rather than drift. There are occasions I’m convinced of an imminent kiss with a snowbank, but the tires pull the SUV back on track time after time.

On the way to lunch at the Kultahippu restaurant, we stop abruptly on the crest of a hill. In the not so far distance, we spy Murmansk, Russia. We taunt our grumpy neighbors with our American, Canadian, and Finnish flags.

Finnish cuisine is influenced by Germany, Sweden, and Russia. But Lapland is influenced by what is available. We have a fine lunch of traditional reindeer stew (sliced reindeer strips in gravy over mashed potatoes with lingonberries and pickle spears). Dinner that night: the same reindeer stew but with a third pickle spear.

I learn Finnish men drink giant glasses of milk with their meals. I also learn that pulla (the Finnish coffee bread I grew up with) is not on every table. In fact, I never found it during my travels. Crepelike Finnish pancakes were also scarce, and the fish stew I know as kalamojakka is apparently not a Finnish word at all! “Oh, yes, in Finland it is called kalakeitto,” my mom tells me after I get home.

With bellies full of Dancer and Prancer, we dash through the rest of White Hell before calling it a day.

Day 3

We’re up early to start our road trip south. It’s still March, but the days have started getting longer—with sunrise about 7 a.m. and daylight lasting until almost 6 p.m. in this land of the midnight sun. We have a pair of rental cars: a 2016 Volvo V40 fitted with studded Hakkapeliitta 9 tires and a 2017 Volvo XC90 with the R2 SUV tires. Our ultimate destination: Nokian’s headquarters, which employs about 1,500 people at its R & D facilities, tire manufacturing plant, and immense logistics center.

The V40 will finally be sold in the U.S. when the next-generation 40 series launches, starting with the XC40 early next year, so we were curious to spend time in its European predecessor. We have a bare-bones Volvo V40 T2 with cloth seats and no navigation system. Our support vehicle is a Volvo XC90 D5 with a two-tone leather interior and soft-pore wood. Compared with Motor Trend’s long-term XC90 T6 Inscription with the 2.0-liter gas engine, the diesel in the D5 provides nice, smooth acceleration. It also means we got to pay 1.426 euros/liter (about $1.70) for diesel rather than €1.545 for regular gas or €1.609 for premium gas.

Our new Finnish friends greet our drive route with skepticism—they attempt to persuade us to book a flight for part of it. What they underestimate is how much driving, photography, and video from thigh-deep snow we can pack into a day. What we underestimate is travel time: Speed limits are reduced in winter, coinciding with the December 1 to March 31 mandatory winter tire period.

We leave Saariselkä and head south on E75. Finland is a country of 5.5 million people occupying 151,000 square miles. It looks exactly like Northern Ontario—I swear I have not left home—with 190,000 lakes, high snowbanks, and packed-snow roads that don’t see pavement until spring. The same pine, spruce, and birch trees mean we see the same barn wood as we cruise through Finland’s rural environs. They also have the same national animal: the mosquito.

Our studded tires perform so well in the deep snow that we can whip the V40 around to double back for photography. It is proving to be a sturdy vehicle and blends in with the other small cars and SUVs that dot the roads—with Volvo, Audi, VW, Mercedes, Mazda, Honda, and Nissan nameplates being the most common. Finland has the most vehicles per capita in the world, and many wear extra headlights to spot reindeer during the long, dark winter months.

We stop for a late lunch in Rovaniemi, hometown of Santa Claus. But its history is not the stuff of children’s books. Snow covers the ground pockmarked from World War II bombings by the Russians and the scorched-earth retreat of the Germans. The local airport is a former Luftwaffe airfield.

We visit the Arktikum Lapland museum, the gateway to the north. You enter from the south, and the structure disappears underground like an animal burrowing under the frozen tundra for warmth. Inside are scenes of Finnish Lapland and Arctic life: fishing, hunting, a cold room, and a northern lights theater.

Our trip then meanders west to the border with Sweden and the Gulf of Bothnia.

The weather gets milder as we cross the Arctic Circle—where we also cross the freezing mark. It is easy to forget we have studded tires when the pavement bares itself, but we are reminded in the hotel parking garage in Oulu with a staccato snap, crackle, and pop underfoot. The Hakkapeliitta 9 has new stud technology. There are more studs, including some in the center of the tire, and the corners of the studs are cut so the tire doesn’t hit the ground before the stud does. But the studs are also smaller, lighter, and designed to spread out on impact to help protect the occasional exposed patch of pavement.

In Oulu we walk under fat snowflakes to a French bistro for dinner. Robin rejoices; he has had enough reindeer for one trip. Once again, my room has a sauna. I am in heaven.

Day 4

We are up with the sun as sleet swirls outside our windows. We continue south on E8 along the coast to Vassa, where the scenery is marked with elevation changes and rock outcroppings. I choke up; Vassa is the birthplace of Signe Kujanen, my mummu (grandmother). She is the one who introduced me to pulla and taught my mom how to make the incorrectly named kalamojakka. Listening to her, I learned Finnish as a toddler. My first car was the 1972 Chevy Impala she willed me. We gave it a Finnish accent: It was known to everyone as the “EEMP-a-lah.”

Vassa is a city of 68,000 with a history of Russian occupation. Everything is covered in snow and ice. Pedestrians prod the snow with walking sticks for traction and push sleds on sidewalks to carry their groceries, and some brave souls ride bikes on the ice.

We grab a quick bite at a Finnish McDonalds, find some terwasnapsi pine tar liquor for the questionable palate of my colleague Frank Markus, and get back to work. We have a lot more kilometers before we reach Tampere, near Nokia.

It was a longer trip than it appeared on paper, with many single-lane highways, fluctuating speed limits, and a preponderance of speed cameras. Despite our diligence we see a bulb go off. Finland is one of those counties where the fine is pegged to your annual income if they deem it an infraction. We appear to have had luck on our side, however, so I won’t need to get creative with my expense report.

We have missed sauna time by the time we reach the Sokos Hotel, ending our fabulous 700-mile trek from the top of the world. The info sheet at check-in lists public sauna times and, more importantly, lets you know women are in room No. 1, men in No. 2. This avoids an awkward moment, as a true sauna is performed alasti—in your birthday suit.

Day 5

Nokian immersion day. Developing a new tire can take four years in pursuit of a better tread pattern, studs, and the all-important compound for better grip. Technicians are working on tires with studs that protrude or retract with the push of a button—James Bond fans will recall this once-fantasy technology from The Living Daylights. Nokian engineers are always looking at new raw materials; they even tried reindeer hair, but it was a no-go.

How intensive is the R & D effort? Hakkapeliitta 9 used five compounds and had 100 treads before deciding on the final design, said Olli Seppala, development manager for car tires. In addition to its track testing, Nokian conscripts Finland’s notoriously aggressive and opinionated cab drivers to test prototypes. That’s market research.

But Nokian is not solely about winter tires. The zLine all-season tire developed for North America launched a year ago. Nokian will also continue to leverage its Hakkapeliitta expertise by expanding its all-season tire lineup, as well as its all-weather tires designed to perform better in the wet, slushy conditions that account for most winter accidents.

We tour the assembly plant that makes 3.5 million tires a year and is able to produce a tire in 40 seconds. First builds of new tires are done in Finland, whereupon the tooling is sent to the larger Russian plant near St. Petersburg for volume production. Globally, Nokian makes about 20 million tires a year; the 1,300 employees in Russia make 80 percent of those tires.

I finally sate my craving for Finnish pancakes in the cafeteria for lunch before we head to the nearby logistics center. The size of 12 football fields, it holds nearly 1 million tires on stacks of pallets while awaiting delivery. Remember that endless warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark? It’s like that.

Nokian does not sell directly to automakers. Rather, it concentrates distribution through dealerships, independent shops, the company-owned Vianor retail chain, a few large retailers, and a partnership with a major ski resort company.

When the Dayton plant starts production in 2020, it will focus on all-season and all-weather tires with capacity for 4 million tires a year, eliminating the cost and six weeks’ time to ship from Europe.

By late afternoon we leave the rental cars at the Tampere airport and take a short flight to Helsinki. We toast our success with Napue gin and tonics, decorated with cranberries and a huge stalk of rosemary, at a Finnish smorgasbord in the capital. The neighborhood is a mix of East and West, with ornate buildings sandwiched between Soviet-era brick boxes. A Zamboni is at work on an outdoor ice rink; ferries on the waterfront break the ice anew for each arrival and departure.

As we head for home, we can attest that a company immersed in a land of snow and reindeer knows how to make tires to get motorists safely across an Arctic countryside that’s frozen half the year. That’s the easy part.

Nokian can’t outspend the competition, so it has to be smarter, says Tommi Heinonen, head of Nokian North America; sales here are evenly split between Canada and the U.S., but future growth will come from America.

“The hardest to sell is the first one,” Heinonen says. After that, Nokian usually has a customer for life.

The hard part is getting the word out. I wouldn’t underestimate the hardy, resolute nature of the Finns. After all, this is a culture whose idea of a good time is to dash from a steam room and plunge into an icy hole in a lake. These folks don’t mess around.

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