What? A Parisian living in Lapland? It’s all about nature, winter and a pack of dogs

They all called me crazy. I am a Parisian living 350 kilometers above the Arctic Circle. Before we left, the French shook their heads. Now in Finland, the Finns are also shaking their heads, asking why we did not go south.

To answer them all, I explain simply: it’s all about nature, winter… and dogs.

Falling for the Arctic

My husband and I had travelled to a few Arctic places over the years, including Finnish Lapland, before eventually deciding to relocate. Each time, we left mesmerized by the surrounding nature, by the sense that there is always something to do, always something to witness. Boredom simply didn’t exist there.

The pull toward winter started long before Finland. In my twenties, travelling through Quebec, I discovered that people would happily gather outside in the deep cold, and I was hooked. This is when I learned about the art of the right equipment and the appropriate number of layers. A trip to Northern Norway then introduced me to dogsledding, and what began as a deep connection with our family labrador quietly evolved into looking after a whole pack of huskies.

So, when the urge to escape Paris grew stronger — the greyness, the rush, the metro, the noise — we decided to leave our apartment for a cabin in the taiga where spruces and birches dominate the landscape. Five years ago, we drove from Paris to Partakko, a small village 350 kilometers above the Arctic Circle, where we had found a house on the internet – with electricity but no running water. The closest supermarket and health center were 50 and 100 kilometers away, respectively. We packed the car, with a kayak and a canoe on the roof. Three thousand kilometers later we arrived to our new life.

We also adopted a pack of huskies. I know sled dogs are not a traditional way of life in Northern Finland, but they are the finest companions for a remote life and the best way I have found to explore this wilderness.

A landscape that never repeats itself

Nature here gives everything. The same view from our window, vast Lake Inari, becomes thousands of different landscapes during the year. The many colors of polar night, the endless brightness of midsummer. The shiny red foliage of autumn. And with each shift in season, a new set of activities: chasing auroras, dogsledding on the frozen lake, fetching water from the lake, heating the sauna. Then, months later, hiking, picking berries, fishing, roaming the forest.

Winter remains my favorite season, and the polar night shines as its most extraordinary chapter. Behind the snowy wonderland scenes, winter up here is an unforgiving teacher. My husband learned this early. Stuck with the snowmobile on the lake one December afternoon at -27°C, in complete darkness, he was rescued by a reindeer herder and his daughter from the village. In remote communities, your decisions can put others at risk.

And yet the magic is real. To me, the Arctic magic is that one moment you feel sadness about winter coming to an end, and the next you are caught in the spectacle of the sun returning. And so it goes, season after season.

Daily thoughts of happiness by simply looking at the surrounding nature and my dogs made it a no-brainer when I had to let go of my job in Paris. The question that followed was a practical one: how do you build a life this far north, this remotely?

More than a land or a job: finding a place

What I had not anticipated was how intellectually captivating this region was. A place widely described as “the middle of nowhere” turned out to be central to some of the most pressing questions of our time: international governance, resource access, sovereignty, the climate. For the first time in my professional life, I felt genuine alignment between where I lived and what I wanted to work with.

The reality for foreigners in Finland, as many will recognize, is that the language barrier often pushes you toward self-employment. So I stepped outside my comfort zone and learned new fields, building networks with Arctic specialists all over the world — largely without leaving my cabin. This led to a career built around two activities which, on the surface, look very different.

On one hand, I work on Arctic communications and strategic partnerships, including for the very publication you are reading, helping connect stakeholders across the Arctic nations and beyond. On the other, my husband started MatSo huskies, opening our home and our dogs to visitors, offering private husky rides (initially at the request of some villagers). It was another opportunity for me to meet people from across the world and tell the story of the Far North.

Belonging and questioning that belonging

One of the genuine surprises was discovering how strong a sense of community exists. For the first three years, time would be spent working during the week and dogsledding on the weekend. Then came an invitation to the village general assembly. It took a bit of courage to enter this room filled with locals, a meeting conducted entirely in Finnish, which we had only started to learn. I have been part of the village administration ever since, contributing with the modest Finnish I have managed to acquire, showing up to monthly Nordic walking, gathering at neighbors’ houses over coffee.

Still, while the community is real, the welcome genuine, there are days when remoteness takes its toll. Both culturally and professionally, it is demanding to stay connected to a wider world, beyond digital interactions. And the economic precarity of building a sustainable life this far from any town is a quiet, persistent pressure — one that only the view of Lake Inari from my office window, and a few dogs snoring on the couch, can lower. As in most remote areas, the lack of healthcare facilities nearby is another reality check.

Beyond remoteness, my feeling of belonging also comes with honest questions I try not to avoid. I live in Sápmi, in the municipality of Inari, where Finnish is just one of four official languages alongside Northern Sámi, Skolt Sámi and Inari Sámi. The region’s Indigenous communities and their rights are at the center of local and global conversations, and rightly so. Am I, in some small way, part of a longer history of outsiders arriving and extracting, be it through tourism, through storytelling, through simply being here? What legitimacy do I carry?

I have not resolved these questions. What I have settled on, for now, is this: show respect to people and care for the land. It is how we have tried to live since we arrived — and perhaps it is working. Neighbors occasionally drop off fish for the dogs, staying for a chat. Small gestures, but up here, they mean a lot.

And what now?

Living here has reshaped not only my daily routine, but the lens through which I see larger questions — rural development, migration, and the role of remote Arctic places in global conversations.

Last winter, I sat in a neighbor’s kitchen brainstorming — still with my broken Finnish — on the organization of a reindeer and fish market in our small village. I then drove home in the dark with 14 dogs to feed and an international call about innovation in Arctic food to get ready for. This is what the Arctic has to offer, and what makes perfect sense to me.

It is a privilege to be calling this place home. I do not take it for granted.