The Kingdom of Ice (And Some Make-Up)
The weather in Estonia has been strange. Black Christmases can and do happen, but roses blooming in December? That is extremely rare. Then, just after the warm and humid Christmas, it turned cold overnight. There was no snow, but everything, and I mean everything, was suddenly covered in ice and frost. And it looked stunning.
My father lives on the Northern coast of Estonia, where you can see the most dramatic (relatively speaking, of course) natural feature of the country – the limestone klint. Valaste waterfall is about 10 kilometers from his home, falling to the sea from the Ontika cliff. The 26 meter fall is not going to impress my kiwi readers, but the freezing of the waterfall is an event every year and it was especially spectacular this time around. The waterfall, the trees, the bridge, the ground – everything was covered in thick ice, gleaming in the cold, sharp winter sun.
I thought nothing could beat that this winter, but we travelled through several counties before the New Year and the whole country looked breathtaking. When the sun was out, the fields seemed to be covered in diamonds, as the frost sparkled and hurt your eyes. All trees, bushes, plants were white, even the greenness of firs and pines hardly visible – but it looked entirely different from the thick snow cover that usually does the trick, more elegant and more cruel somehow, with all those slender, graceful branches exposed to the bitter cold. In some places, the still-warm earth created milky-white mists that turned the sun into a ghostly disk and everything else into a mysterious landscape of pale grays. At some point when the mists cleared, we saw two wide rainbows, raising almost straight to the sky.
It is difficult to capture any of this on one’s iPhone: when the sun is out, the light is too harsh, when it’s cloudy or misty, it’s too dark. I tried anyway, hopefully it gives you an idea what it’s been like (it’s -15 degrees Celsius as I write this). For those who come here for beauty and make-up, not some sentimental nature crap, I have also included the main elements of my New Year’s Eve look: very pale, highlighted skin (Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector, not pictured), silver eyes (Armany Eyes to Kill in 12), big lashes (YSL Shocking) and red lips (Tom Ford Luciano). Very Ice Queen, no?
Some pictures by J.
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Happy New Year!
These pictures are so beautiful, and you have captured that mood perfectly in your prose. There really IS something cruel and stark about that particular type of winter scenery. It’s so different from the soft hush of snow, and I find it rather daunting. Even the sound in that type of atmosphere is sharp and piercing, the steely tinkle of ice needles and the crack! of branches and footsteps.
We have had a similar winter season here in the Washington, DC area. Christmas Eve was 22 degrees (Celsius) with our lanes of cherry blossoms blooming and roses as well. It’s certainly more comfortable than the norm, but of course concerning since I wonder how nature will recover when spring arrives. The annual flyover of the winter geese has not occurred yet, and birds and squirrels are still frolicking outside.
I always loved the ice queen fairytale – for some reason I found it more frightening than the usual hobgoblins and ogres. Perhaps the landscape itself contributed to the thrill!
Happy New Year, Holly! There is an Estonain TV adaptation of The Snow Queen that came out when I was little and is now a classic. I always found it very uncomfortable and I think it’s scary because it acknowledges that the bad stuff doesn’t just come from the outside. Fighting the ogres can be frightening, but it’s morally unambiguous. Being seduced by the Snow Queen is a much more complicated matter – I guess very similar the White Witch in the Narnia stories? I’m not very familiar with these, but I’ve read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and remember that the episode with Edmund and the witch had a very similar feel to me.
Happy New Year. Thank you for the beautiful photographs and depiction of the icy fairytale land you travelled through. It is true that ice has a whole different feel to the softness of snow (I especially love the summary of snow in Dubliners last book). I have always wanted to travel in the proper north and this has added to my conviction that I really must do this.
Happy New Year! I’ve been to Lapland twice and enjoyed it very much, despite my general aversion to cold. It can be very romantic in that harsh, Nordic, somewhat primal way. But cold is not easy for everybody and if the sun is not out, it might not be quite as magical as people expect. Still, I very much recommend experiencing seirous winter at least once.
What stunning sentimental nature crap Anniky! 😉 I try to travel as much as time and finances allow, but I have to confess I’ve never been in snow nor seen the world in it’s beautiful, austere, white winter coat. I can see I need to be brave and resolve that, and plan to head far north somewhere where I can see such beauty for myself. (I’m a desert baby. I can handle 45°C although I don’t love it. But even just reaching freezing is like a slow death for me, frozen to the bone. I obviously need to toughen up 😉 )
Thank you 🙂 I generally much prefer warmth to cold, but proper winter has its special charm that I think is worth experiencing at least once in a lifetime. Estonia unfortunately isn’t a reliable source of that experience any more: it can be -20 degrees in January, but it can also be +5. You’d need to go to Northern Finland or Canada or Siberia to be completely sure the snow is there. The key is to forget one’s vanity and have proper winter clothing, -20 is no joke. The other thing people often struggle with is the absence of light: the further North you go, the less light there is, December can be pretty difficult in that regard. Then again, in Lapland you’ll have snow in March and April as well and the days will be back to decent length.
Just beautiful photography, thanks for sharing Estonia with us. Happy 2016!
Thank you and a very happy new year to you too!