Night train to Rovaniemi

I wrote most of this in the waiting room at Rovaniemi station this morning, with the last of the coffee from a thermos I had filled at home and the Bessa next to me on the bench where I could see it. I had started it in the cabin the night before. The train got in at twenty to eight, almost twenty minutes late. Riikka, a friend who moved up here two years ago and has asked me to visit every winter since, collected me at nine. I am finishing it on her sofa.

The night train leaves Helsinki in the evening and takes about twelve hours. I booked a cabin in one of the double-deck sleeping cars, on the lower deck because it is cheaper. You pay for the whole cabin, so I had both bunks to myself and used the bottom one for my bag. On the lower deck the window sits low, and at stations I mostly looked at legs and suitcases.

For the trip I bought one roll of Ilford Delta 3200 and kept it in the fridge drawer for a month, next to the HP5. The name says 3200. According to Ilford's data sheet the real speed is closer to 1000, and 3200 is a rating you reach with longer development. I set the dial to 3200 anyway. The whole point was a train at night with the lights on.

The first few frames were of my own reflection. I noticed somewhere around Tikkurila. By Riihimäki I had a method: cabin light off, the front of the lens pressed against the glass, a scarf draped over both. Then wait for something lit to go past. Level crossings, mostly. Station signs. Once a petrol station, very bright, gone before I found the shutter release, and once a farmhouse with the kitchen light on, which I think I may actually have got. With the lens wide open at a thirtieth, the car sways enough that half of these will be smears.

The train stood in Tampere long enough that I put my coat on and walked up and down the platform. I grew up there, and it was odd to stand on that platform after ten at night, a short bus ride from my old school, without having told anyone I was passing through. Then I ate the sandwich I had brought from home and went to sleep, badly at first, then fine.

I woke at about five, somewhere after Oulu, and lifted the blind.

It was not quite dark any more, and everything was a flat grey-blue. Around Oulu the fields were bare, with old snow lying only in the ditches and under the trees. It got deeper the further north we went, and after Kemi there was nothing but snow, settled and a little grey, on the fields and on the roof of every shed. For a while a road ran next to the line. I did not see one car on it.

The sun came up a little after six, as we were leaving Kemi, low and orange behind birch trunks, and lit the tops of the trees while the ground stayed blue. Twenty minutes later the cloud closed over and it began, very lightly, to snow. I used most of what was left of the roll after that, where the line turns inland up the Kemijoki valley. I am not sure what the meter made of any of it. I followed it and bracketed the ones that mattered.

In December I wrote about six hours of daylight in Helsinki. Rovaniemi had about two and a half hours that day. Today it has a little more than Helsinki, over twelve and a half hours, and it gains about seven minutes a day. This is kevättalvi, spring-winter: the snow is still deep, though two weeks of thaw have settled it, and the sun is suddenly high enough to matter.

What surprised me when I stepped off the train was how bright it was. It was not warm. The sky was one even white and a few flakes were coming down, but the light comes from the sky and then again from the ground, and nothing is really dark. On a clear day, I am told, the shadows on the snow go properly blue. Black and white film would turn that into a grey anyway.

Delta 3200 is the wrong film for any of this. Even under cloud, with all that snow, the Bessa wanted the lens stopped all the way down and a fast shutter speed.

Riikka told me on the phone last week that after a cold enough night the crust on the snow holds in the morning, and you can walk straight across fields you would sink into by afternoon. That is hankikanto. If tonight is cold enough we will try it before breakfast. I have not done that since I was a child.

Four frames left. I will develop the roll at home next week.