Erkki Parkkinen had just come in from a lovely winter day in Salla, Finland — the temperature climbed all the way to minus-10°C. After a sluggish start to the snow season, there is now plenty of white stuff for skiing and other winter activities.
“I was with my daughter outside an hour ago,” Parkinnen said when reached on Zoom on Friday evening. “It was nice.”
Parkinnen and the tiny Finnish town where he was born and now serves as mayor want to keep it that way.
Photo: AP
That is why Salla has launched a firmly tongue-in-cheek bid for the 2032 Summer Olympics, hoping to use its campaign to raise awareness about climate change.
“Maybe people will start to think a little bit more,” Parkinnen said. “If they think the Arctic areas are worth saving, maybe they will do that for their own homes and lands. That’s something that would be good for them and good for us.”
Salla loves its winters just the way they have been for centuries.
Photo: AP
Located about 32km north of the Arctic Circle, the town’s hearty residents cherish the bitter cold, the frozen rivers and lakes, and the reindeer running through the pristine, snow-covered forests of Lapland.
However, the way things are going in the world, with rising temperatures and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, the village’s 3,400 residents worry that it could all be snatched away, which is the reason for the quixotic Olympic bid — one that the town hopes never has even the slightest chance of success.
“We don’t want to have to organize the Summer Games in 2032,” Parkinnen said. “We don’t want to be the best place. Ever.”
However, if the world does not address an increasingly gloomy environmental outlook, Parkinnen frets that Salla could have the climate to host sports such as athletics and swimming and beach volleyball.
He has already noticed troubling changes in wintertime.
The snow seems to arrive later and later. The temperatures fluctuate more and more. It is getting increasingly difficult to carve out safe trails for skiing. The reindeer are having trouble finding food.
“It didn’t happen before like that,” the mayor said. “That’s why we are concerned. Also, in the Arctic areas, when climate change happens, it comes much more rapidly than other places.”
With its Olympic bid, Salla is using humor to get people to recognize a serious issue that affects everyone.
The town launched a farcical Web site that introduces their proposed Olympic mascot: Kesa the Rangifer Tarandus Reindeer, touted as the same species that pulls Santa’s sleigh and an appropriate symbol for a community where there are twice as many Rudolphs as humans.
Salla produced a two-and-a-half-minute video touting all of the supposed benefits of awarding the Summer Games to an Arctic town.
The video shows the town’s residents, decked out like they are heading to a pool in southern California, sarcastically talking about all the benefits of global warming.
“I’ll work on my suntan,” one man says.
Another, climbing into the water of an ice-covered lake while licking on an ice cream cone, says that it could soon be a venue for Olympic water sports.
“Ice will be gone and this will be a perfect lake,” he says.
A woman strings up a net at a site she says will be suitable for beach volleyball when the snow turns to sand in about a decade.
Another person scoots down a ski slope on a mountain bike, a shirtless man slides along the snow on a surfboard, and a skateboarder says that he is impatient to pull off some “gnarly tricks” in 2032.
“No more slippery ice,” he says. “Thanks global warming.”
Parkinnen said that the town has an indoor hall where sports such as volleyball are played by the locals.
“We have plenty of area,” he added. “We have 6,000 square kilometers. We can build. We have plenty of time.”
Salla has one more thing in its favor. During the summer, there are days when the sun never sets. The International Olympic Committee could schedule events around the clock.
“The midnight sun is very nice,” Parkinnen said.
Although this is all in good fun, the mayor and his constituents are dead serious about the potentially cataclysmic changes to the environment.
The world should heed the real message of this Olympic bid — that is no joke.
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