Welcome to Finland! My name is Erika, and I am an archaeologist. I study how people used to live in the past by looking at their clothing. I am so happy to have you along for the ride!
Finland is located in northern Europe, and shares borders with Norway, Sweden and Russia. Due to the fact that Finland is so far north, the winters can be very cold. It can also be very dark in the winter, particularly north of the Arctic Circle. In Oulu, where I live, the sun is only up for a few hours on the shortest day of the year. Up north, in cities like Rovaniemi, there are actually days when the sun does not even come up in the winter! In the summer, it is almost the opposite – the sun does not set until around midnight, and the sky is barely dark before the sun starts coming up again.
It is a good thing I am not afraid of the cold. I grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, where we also have cold, snowy winters. (In fact, a lot of immigrants moved from Finland to Wisconsin because it is so similar. There is even an Oulu, Wisconsin!) As a kid, I loved knitting and sewing, which is part of the reason I love studying fabric now. After I graduated from high school, I went to college at Marquette University in Milwaukee. While I was there, I started to study Anthropology.
