The Aurora Borealis is awesome, and I can imagine this would be the ultimate way to see it. In Kakslauttanen, Finland, you can stay in the glass igloo village and have a full view of the incredible Northern Lights. ‘The Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?!’ BYO steamed hams.

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This stunning short video features footage taken of underwater ice fishing in the beautiful Lake Saarijärvi in Vaala, Finland. If the soundtrack isn’t mesmerising enough, the surreal watery imagery will literally have you melting in your seat.

There is a few things we all seem to know about Finland: it is in the cold North, people are depressed, and their music is heavy. Just look at Nightwish, Children of Bodom or HIM. But if you dig deeper, you’ll find that at least the latter is not the only truth. Historic traditions, Russian influence and a captivating melancholy. Or simple beauty. That’s what Jalava embodies, with haunting folk melodies and heart-breaking lyrics. In Finnish, of course.

Santa eating kids. Santa torturing kids. Santa mutilating kids. I don’t know about you, but I hate Christmas. Okay, hate is a very strong word. I really hate Christmas. Everyone gets stressed out, then eats too much and whinges about being fat. Also, the amount of presents a kid gets has nothing to do with being naughty or nice — it’s how rich their parents are, and how much guilt they feel.

So this Finnish film about the ‘real’ Santa Claus provided welcome light relief. You see, Santa was really a devil type dude who used to cook all the naughty kids, until hundreds of years ago when he was frozen by some angry villagers. Which was all fine, until he’s unearthed by an archaeological dig, and the kids again start disappearing. It’s not actually that gruesome and probably suitable for teenagers. However, it does the suspense well, is a hilarious and refreshing take on the ‘real’ meaning of Christmas, and comes with an awesomely twisted ending.

There’s an obvious play on the Spinners original here, but that doesn’t mean that these folks don’t create a serious stomper all their own. I first got hipped to Myron & E through Chris in my current DJ collective.

The unstoppable beat of northern-tempo soul turns me on like nothing else, and quite frankly, gets the kids shakin’ like few things do these days. The Finnish Timmion label is putting out tracks that are befuddling and euphoric for the same reasons. I can hardly believe that these recordings are not mid-sixties. It’s almost scary to me the way the Soul Investigators provide quality, legit sounding soul tunes resonating in the same manner as many of my old crusty 45s.

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Finnish photographer Ville Varumo is as selective with his palette as a painter. Some of his images even look like paintings with their psychedelic lighting or almost Impressionistic backgrounds.

Finnish illustrator Rikka Sormunen’s sexually charged and often hallucinatory images have a cinematic quality to them, evoking the stylishness and hedonism of French New Wave and old noir flicks.

This annual event has taken place in Heinola, Finland since 1999 and attracts competitors from around the world (twenty countries were represented at this year’s event, which started on August 6). Entrants must assume all risks, so they have to fill and sign a form that states that they will not sue the organizers of the event in case of an accident. The championship starts with the preliminary rounds, with competitors eliminated, until six of them get to the final, where they have to show their strength and endurance in a period of time to decide who will be the winner. The winner is the last person to remain in the sauna and then get out of there with no external help. Finland tends to dominate. Surprise, surprise.

Who says the Swedes have got a monopoly on seasonal ice hotels? This one in Kemi, northern Finland, is the world’s largest snow castle, standing seventeen metres high and with walls that are 1,100 metres long. It has restaurants, an art gallery, a hotel and a chapel. In fact, since opening in the early 1990s, it’s been quite a hit for tourists to get married at the snow chapel. Hmmm, now that would be a frosty start to any marriage.

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Finnish illustrator Rikka Sormunen’s sultry figures are simply stunning in their ability to convey a powerful sense of mystery and dense ambiance. I simply can’t get enough of them.

Kusta Saksi is a Finnish Illustrator and graphic designer. We met with him while he was preparing for a recent exhibition and followed him to Utrecht, a city in the middle of The Netherlands, where he used a special printer to create 3D versions of his 2D designs.

I love the ominous, moody atmosphere of young Swedish-Finnish photographer Martina Lindqvist’s landscape shots. She’s only just graduated from university, but already has the Jerwood Photography Award 2008 under her belt and a spot in the prestigious UK Portfolio Magazine. Much of her work is done in Finland: there’s a real dream-like surreality to the images she captures and a great use of light against dark backdrops.

Wow, here’s some work that just made my Friday all the sweeter. Finnish artist Ville Savimaa creates the most clean, beautiful, and bizarre images, filled with chunky, abstract characters and creatures, as if viewed through an old fashioned grainy, black and white lens. It feels a lot like the trippiest noir film you never saw. Even when colour occasionally comes into the mix, Savimaa manages to gracefully maintain that sculptural sensibility, leaving the viewer feeling as suspended as the characters themselves.

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Finnish artist Marja Hakala makes site-specific environmental art out in nature — parks, reserves, mountainsides — as well as in gallery spaces and interiors using materials she finds in the environments she chooses. Her repetitive forms impose human order as a sort of meditation on human absence. Just as Thomas Cole and J. M. W. Turner emphasized the puniness of humanity before God and the natural world, Hakala draws out the futility of human endeavors in a 21st century context.

Why should the devil have all the good music? Finland’s Holy Blood is a great folk-black metal band by any standard, but its horn-raising tunes are all for the glory of the Good Lord rather than Satan or Odin. What would Jesus do? According to Holy Blood, he’d ride through the forests drinking mead and slaying non-believers.

I am immediately drawn to anything that reminds me of my childhood, so I was taken with this photo of Keren, a subject in Dina Kantor’s quirky and playful series, Finnish & Jewish. We caught up with her recently to discuss the photos. What made you embark on this series? ‘I began photographing the Jewish community in Finland a few years ago as a way to explore my heritage, but also to delve into the issues of making a portrait of a group of people. I also wanted to think more critically about how photography helps define our ideas of identity and community. My mother was born in Finland and emigrated to America as a child in 1947. Almost thirty years later, when she married my father, she converted to Judaism. I am not related to anyone in the community who I am photographing, though we share certain cultural characteristics’.

Is there something unexpected that you found all of your subjects have in common? ‘I’’ve photographed about 300 people, so it would be difficult to generalize and say that they had something besides the community walls in common. I guess they have themselves in common. The community is small enough that they all seem to know each other fairly well –even those people who live in other cities and many of them are related. Everyone was amazing –they were all incredibly nice and hospitable, and they seemed to be just as interested in learning about me as I was in learning about them. Many of my photo shoots turned into dinners and drinks and even a weekend away. I am lucky to have spent so much time getting to know such a remarkable group of people’.

Do you read photography blogs? ‘I do read a handful of blogs, but try to keep it to a minimum. If I read them all I’d never get any work done! Amy Stein and Cara Phillips are good friends, so I tend to check their blogs fairly regularly. Right now, I am helping my friend Kate, who started The Girl Project, with her blog. The Girl Project is an organization that gives teenage girls disposable cameras to photograph anything they like. The photographs are then collected and will be turned into an exhibition and a book. The Girl Project Blog is a great resource for teenage girls to get introduced to photography, and it showcases some of their amazing photographs’.

Are you working on a new project that you can talk about? ‘Honestly, I still have about 100 rolls of film from my last trip to Finland that I am working on, so I’’m not quite ready to move onto the next body of work yet. When Finnish & Jewish is published, I’’ll let you know about the next project!’

Finnish folk band Gjallarhorn is named for the horn that the Norse god Heimdall blows to announce Ragnarock — the end of the world. The bands music is far from dark, however: their brand of Scandinavian folk music incorporates mouth harps, fiddles, flutes, and even didgeridoo in a melange of cheerful, but ethereally beautiful tunes sung in Swedish.

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I needed a good reference of a dandelion for an illustration I’m working on, and then I bumped into the website of Naoji Ishiyama, a Japanese printmaker who lives and works in Finland. You can feel the zen-like quietness and coldness of the north mix together just perfectly. His dandelion is great, but I fell in love even more with his other works. Especially those from 2004. His small piece Kazamidori is something I would love to hang on my studio wall.