We drive 800 km towards the south from Kuusamo to Helsinki. It’s dark, sun sets at 3pm. The lights shine a few meters ahead just reaching the tree trunks. The bus drives at 90km/h over the frozen road. The drivers are so skilled that it feels completely safe. We stop at petrol stations every few hours. People curl up in their seats or sleep on the small aisle. The treetops are hardly separable from the sky. Every 20km 2 or 3 houses appear, and sometimes we pass a village where the streetlights disrupt the landscape. If there hadn’t been snow the darkness would have been complete.