Kemi-snow, ice and diamonds

Once the chairman of the tourism committee suggested that a sign should be installed in both sides of the city: "Kemi - nothing to see. Havea nice journey ahead."Ironic?Yes, but it tells that the city was blind to its neighbourhood.

On the icebreaker cruise tourists experience in practice how ice is broken. There is time to eat traditional Lappish food, reindeer and salmon. And finally it is possible to go swimming in the icy sea.

The first impulse to become a tourist city appeared 25 years ago when a goldsmith master Mr Teuvo Ypyä founded a gemstone gallery, with his own largest collection of stones in Europe, in the old customs storage building. A quarter century ago Finland was about to crash the icebreaker Sampo, which had becometoo small and old-fashioned. Mr Juhani Leino, Mayor of the city, had come up with an idea to buy the vessel for Kemi and put it for tourists' use. Today the Arctic Icebreaker Sampo is the most international tourist attraction in Kemi. Inspired by Sampo Kemi started seriously to look around what this northern city, 100 km South from the Arctic Circle, could offer for tourists.

The inpiration came from the pure nature, silence, snow and ice. In the North every child builds snow castles in winter time. Couldn't the city build the world's biggest snow castle? In the post depression time of 1990s it was challenging indeed to sell the idea to the political decision makers. But there was creative madness and couragement of the inhabitants of Kemi. After two months of hard work the huge castle opened its gates.The castle was accepted bytheGuinness Book of Records. There was ecumenical chapel in the castle where services were held and also weddings and baptisms arranged. There were souvenier stalls, a restaurant, a snowhotel, art exhibition, slides and a big stage, where many famous artists, singers, dancers and actors per- formed. Success and publicity exceeded all expectations. The 16^th castle has just recently closed its gates. Snowcastle melts in the spring and therefore every castle is unique. Snow construction technique, skills and tools have developed enormously. Nowadays castle is built within half of the time needed in the first year. The attraction of this year's castle was a comic exhibition: icy, colourful Asterix, Spider Man, Tin Tin and characters of the Ice Age, as well as dozens of others.

The Snowcastle has launched a snow construction boom especially in Lapland: smaller castles, restaurants, snow sculpture exhibitions and other constructions are built in the region. Standards for snow construction have been drawn. Many studies on using snow for building, tourism and business have been made in the Northern universities.