TOWN

Have you ever been to Rovaniemi? It’s on the Arctic Circle and is the capital of Lapland. I went there once, but in late spring when it was chilly but not that cold. I don’t even remember why I was there – it may have been the time I joined an expedition to North Cape, the most northern point in Europe for the predecessor of this magazine. If so, it was soon after the Chernobyl disaster and everyone was making nervous jokes about eating the radioactive reindeer. I thought my red nose was just the cold but who knows.

Whatever, the Finnish town is of course the home of Santa Claus, so is a mecca (to badly mix my cultural references) for children and their doting parents come Christmas. But when the children go home the area becomes a playground for grown-ups. In this case, taking the place of Santa was the Kalmar company. January and February this year saw the Kalmar Beyond Adventure Arctic Season event roll into town, accompanied by squeals of excitement from those old enough to know better.

So what is Beyond Adventure, with or without the capitals? If you’re worried about paying your heating bills or the repayments on your 4x4 then please look away now.

You won’t be told will you? I was only trying to stop you becoming envious, bitter and possibly considering revolution and insurrection. Or at least sighing and rolling your eyes and muttering. But now that you’ve done that, we can continue.

It’s a jolly basically. A very expensive and rather jolly jolly for those who can jolly well afford it. I know someone who is going off on another jolly, driving WWII Jeeps down the length of Vietnam with suitable stops along the way, and this is that sort of jolly. But this one was also jolly cold rather than jolly hot.

In this case the motive power was not a line-up of irradiated reindeer but a line-up of Porsche 911 RS models in 993-series format. That means the old air-cooled models, possibly the coolest of them all, even if American writer PJ O’Rourke did describe them as ‘ass-engined Nazi slot cars’.

These classics had been fettled by Kalmar Automotive to give them everything they needed by combining old-school design with some modern technologies. And some very trick tyres, in the shape of World Rally Championship Michelins, which allowed the Porsches to drive anywhere, even on ice. These RS – Rally Special – models have surprisingly long-travel suspension, in fact equal to a modern Cayenne.

No it doesn’t dislocate like a Defender of the Scorpion school, at least not unless you hit a rock very hard indeed and even then it’s not the same kind of dislocation, but these Porsches are a lot closer, both technically and in spirit, to the ones that won the Paris-Dakar than to the ones you see posing around Knightsbridge in the hands of painful teenagers with rich dads. Bespoke suspension mounts and adjustable shocks, when combined with the tyres, bring a surprising level of control to what is a rear- biased vehicle trying to travel fast on snow and ice.

To give the occupants some more of that rally vibe, all the sound deadening was removed so you could hear the 3.6-litre flat six burbling and howling, along with the cascade of gravel and stones under the chassis. With a manual gearbox and a limited-slip diff, we are definitely talking about active driving here from the Recaro sports seat, not just sitting back being pampered.

The experience involved quite a lot of time behind the wheel. There were special tracks, and driving day or night. With professional experience on hand to guide the range of drivers, there were new techniques to learn as ice driving is a different thing entirely. Plus there were navigation events, made more difficult by some of them being at night. Light bars on the roof certainly helped as it’s surprisingly difficult to have any depth perception in snow and ice since the natural light is often diffuse and gives no shadows.

But they covered a great deal of of miles, and that included the different challenges of driving through endless forests, as well as around swamps and lakes. It was hardly monotonous driving.

Obviously this wasn’t exactly the Camel Trophy so every night the tired crews were pampered with luxury lodges and gourmet food and drink prepared by private chefs – quite possibly involving reindeer meat. Finland is part of the terrain of the Sami people, who we know have been migrating with their reindeer around this part of the world for at least 10,000 years, even before Porsche started making the 911.

In fact there is a growing and credible scientific theory that the Sami people, unlike literally every other human and animal, did not migrate South when the last Ice Age hit. That Ice Age lasted about 75,000 years, only ending about 10,000 years ago. If the theory is correct, for all those thousands of years the Sami people were here, and they must have been with their reindeer. Imagine a whole lifetime, thousands of consecutive lifetimes, spent living in perpetual ice and snow and freezing cold.

How did they do it? Well, if they did, and don’t tell the vegetarians, they could only have done it with their reindeer herds. Even now, in winter, they live solely on reindeer – the whole beast, meat, organs, brains, the lot – and they stay remarkably healthy and long-lived. No avocados here in February. In fact, hot tip, if you want to eat meat and not get scurvy then eat herbivore liver and you’ll be in top health.

Anyway, are we digressing? Sorry. Oh, and since we’re on the subject, this area is also home to the Royal Marines Commandos, who train for arctic survival and warfare here and were probably not far at some point from the Porsches, although you’d never know they were there. They probably eat reindeer whole and pick their teeth with the antlers.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, a jolly time was had by all, came as guests, left as friends, hurrah and doubles all round. You can hear I’m envious. It looks tremendous as you can see from the photos.

Should you be in the lucky position of finding this a possibility, there are more Beyond Adventure trips around the world, everywhere from Bhutan to the Atacama Desert, so if you and your portfolio are up for it – assuming the bond market doesn’t totally crash while I’m writing this – then the world, or the very fine version of it you’ll find at www.jankalmar.com, is perhaps almost literally your oyster. Sorry, your reindeer.

Our 4x4s

Vehicle: Isuzu D-Max GO2

Year: 2018

Run by: Alan Kidd

Last update: Apr 2023

On the fleet since: January 2020