Since first taking an interest in Finland 15 years ago ­ not coincidentally the year I met my Finnish wife in India ­ I have noticed how often Finland is referred to as a synonym for the end of the earth. Whether your cultural tastes run to John Updike, Haruki Murakami, Douglas Coupland or the television comedy Men Behaving Badly, you come across references to Finland being used as a kind of latter­day Timbuktu, minus the tanning options. Nokia aside, most people would be hard­pressed to come up with many facts about Finland beyond it being cold and that its people are fond of vodka.

I‘ve always found this rather appealing. Finland is unknown, and enigmatic. It boasts the world‘s fourth most difficult language (and Europe‘s hardest). While Finland‘s neighbours have exported everything and everyone from Bj枚rk to Bergman, Abba to Hans Christian Andersen, and Ikea to Ibsen, Finland‘s artists and manufacturers have always struggled to make their way once they cross the border. The culture‘s flavours are too arcane, it‘s tastes too subtle or too distinctively Finnish to sell.

But, like many other countries which offer little obvious for the bus tours, Finland delivers a unique and revealing travel experience. While New Zealanders may be able to pass up the opportunity to cast a fly over pristine rivers, few will have experienced anything remotely like cross­country skiing across frozen swamps and rivers. The national pastime is so embedded in the psyche that the Finnish word for skiing, hiihto refers only to cross­country, and downhill requires another word entirely.

People flock north throughout winter to Rovaniemi, Kuusamo and Yll盲s, and head out on spotlit, well­tended trails for journeys that can easily be 50 kilometres long. Better still, they turn left at the nearest forest and head out alone into the thousands of empty kilometres of tundra and wetlands that make up the Arctic north.

Arriving in Finland in winter is akin to being dropped into a freezer. The word for November in Finnish is Marraskuu or Death Month. Helsinki,the locals complain, doesn‘t get real winters.True, the mercury rarely slides below ­25 degrees Celsius, whereas up north the realwinter can be twice as cold as that.

Contrary to my preconceptions, the world in such temperatures is neither black nor white, but a kind of permanent aquamarine that varies little except for four or five brief hours of pale twilight in the middle of the day. Throw in howling winds, and you have a reason for only leaving the building when you really have to.

The difference between winter and spring is staggering. Seemingly within the space of a few days, the skies lighten, slipping dramatically toward what will be 4am sunrises and 11pm sunsets in summer. Grass appears where snow lay only days beforehand, and trees blossom overnight. Hats, scarves and boots disappear, pale skin quickly browns, and the glum faces that Finns tend to wear in winter lighten into smiles and a notable change in atmosphere.

The first of May, or Vappu, heralds the new summer, and Finns explode into parks to feast on picnics, champagne and fresh air, and congratulate each other on surviving another winter.

Easter is probably the best time to experience Finland. Lapland is light, with a two metre snow base glistening under clear blue skies. The downhill skiing at Ruka or Yll盲s is probably as good as anywhere in Europe, but at half the price, with a third of the crowds, and a quarter of the fashion requirements. A month later, head east to Savon for kayaking, white water rafting, or fishing in whichever of the 66,000 lakes looks to boast the biggest perch and pike.

Come summer and Finland basks like a Baltic seal. After six months of not seeing the sun, few things can keep a Finn away from his lake­side summer cottage come June. Amazingly, Finland in summer is extremely dry. This year it received the lowest rainfall anywhere in Europe during August and September. Temperatures ease into the upper twenties, and the weather is so stable it‘s tempting to think that winter has gone for good, or at least until late September, and the return of the wind and rain.

Finnish is commonly regarded as being Europe‘s most difficult language. Not content with stylistic niceties such as verbs which conjugate to indicate the speaker, 脿 la Spanish and Italian, Finnish declines nouns and adjectives into no fewer than 15 cases. Added to this, Finnish has no future tense, no verb for work, no word for please and that a common expression for yesis no and you have a challenge ahead of you.

Subsequently, Finns are mightily impressed if you can utter more than a single word correctly, so it is well worth learning a couple of standard phrases such as Olen pahoillani, en ymm盲rr盲 suomea(I‘m sorry, I don‘t understand Finnish.

Most discussions about Finnish people and culture begin and end with words like glum, introspective and aloof. Like all myths, there is some truth in the idea of the silent Finn. To anyone not used to Scandinavia it can be startling to be in a place where chit­chat is regarded as largely superfluous, and even intrusive. Finns are friendly, but they can be friendly in silence. Conversation is expected to fulfil a function, and in the absence of a function, one might as well concentrate on something more productive, like drinking.

Travellers often miss the subtleties within cultures, and Finland is a place of subtleties. Inspired to study by either the chilly weather or the post­Soviet era depression, Finland boasts the world‘s highest concentration of master‘s degrees. Most young people speak at least three languages, and frequently four or five. Helsinki is not only the home of Nokia, but also of vast and usually unknown corporations producing banking software, timber, sports equipment and high technology. Even in business, it seems, the Finnish taste for understatement reigns supreme.

Helsinki itself is hardly a tourist Mecca. Alongside gorgeous Stockholm or cosmopolitan Copenhagen, the sights are low key and somewhat subtle in their appeal. With the architecture of Aalvar Aalto, the music of Sibelius and thriving art galleries, Helsinki does offer a lot, but for a visitor to Finland to really get a sense of place, one has to leave town and see Finns in their naturalhabitat.

Close to Helsinki is an astonishing number of tiny islands, to which Finns stream every summer weekend to swim off the rocks, bask in the sun and feast on giant picnics. Elsewhere in summer, Pori hosts one of the world‘s great jazz festivals, and Savonlinna is the setting for a beautifully staged outdoor opera festival, which uses a castle, lake and islands as backdrops. Perhaps best of all, west from the old capital of Turku stretches the giant chain of the Swedish­speaking 脜land archipelago, which is best seen with bike and tent, and is connected by a flotilla ofocal ferries.

Of course, no one leaves Finland without spending some time in a sauna. The only word in English that comes from Finnish, sauna still defines day­to­day life here. All apartment buildings provide shared facilities, and virtually the entire country enjoysne at least once a week. Alongith sauna comes sauna beer, still occasionally 15 percent alcohol and home­made, and usually some grilled sausages or makkarato round off the evening.

As a proud resident of Helsinki, even I must admit that Finland hardly packs the tourist punch of France, Italy or Spain. But coming here is an opportunity to experience something special and rare, and a place remarkably unaffected by mass tourism and its accompanying flotsam. Perhaps not everyone dreams of skiing through pristine forests where you may not hear a human voice or see a house for hour after hour. But for those in search of empty forests and endless rivers, and who are not afraid of a little silence, Finland may be just the place.