Lapland with Kids: Day 3 - Amethysts, Wilderness and Green Fire
- Dec 16, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Today, on the day of my 40th birthday, we were up early for the two-hour drive from Levi to Luosto to visit the amethyst mine.
The drive itself was extraordinary. Northern Finland, it turns out, is empty. We passed perhaps 15–20 vehicles in the entire journey, driving through what felt like one endless pine forest, broken only occasionally by a solitary building. One thing that had struck us throughout the trip - as a family of nature lovers - was the total absence of birds. Not a single one. So when a small herd of wild reindeer appeared, casually strolling along the roadside, it felt like a gift to people who love spotting animals out and about.
Parking at the base of a mountain, we were hauled up to the summit in a trailer on skis, pulled by a giant snowmobile on caterpillar tracks. From the top, the views were nothing short of staggering: frozen rivers, dense forests, rolling hills disappearing into the distance. I’ve been privileged to see many outrageous landscapes over the years, but this genuinely ranked among the most beautiful views of my life.
Our guide told us we were exceptionally lucky. December is usually misty, foggy, or cloud-covered, but the sky and view was crystal clear. Recent snowfall had bent the trees under its weight and piled snow into metre-deep drifts. It felt unreal.
The tour began with a talk about the mine itself. Despite being only around 40 years old, it operates almost entirely with hand tools, no heavy machinery, partly for environmental reasons, and partly economic. Labour costs in Finland mean they can’t compete with large-scale mines in places like Brazil or South Africa. We learned about Finland’s topography too: a remarkably flat country, shaped by millennia under ice sheets, meaning the mine isn’t an especially deep trek down, because we’re already at low elevation (despite being on top of a large hill/small mountain. Madness!). The rock we’d be digging into, we were told, is 2.6 billion years old, which completely blew my mind. considering the Earth itself is only around 4.5 billion years old, this is very old ground we’re treading!
Then it was time to dig.
Armed with small rebar hand “axes,” we were given an hour to scrape, chip, and dig to our hearts’ content. The guides drifted between groups, chatting and offering tips. Quinn and I were pointed towards a hole where a visitor had found a fist-sized deep purple gem just the week before, and within ten minutes, Quinn started uncovering tiny 1cm fragments of amethyst. She was astonishingly good at it. Max found a 2–3cm piece almost immediately but quietly kept it to himself, waiting to surprise us later.
Top tip: bring a head torch. I’d packed several for sledging and nighttime walks but completely forgot to take them into the mine. The guides’ torches made the purple crystals sparkle and stand out instantly; rookie error.
After about 45 minutes of finding absolutely nothing, I squatted down to rest, slipped backwards on the uneven rock, threw my hands out to steady myself… and landed directly on my best specimen of the day. Completely by accident. Pure chance. It was almost poetic. It ended up being my only real find, but by then our shared bucket was filling nicely with everyone’s efforts combined.
When time was called, we tipped our haul onto the examination table one family at a time. Officially, you’re allowed to take one piece each that fits in your hand, but our guide let us take several small pieces each, either because they were tiny, or because he just seemed like a kind and generous man.
Semi-precious gems in hand, we snowploughed back down the mountain and Andrew instructed me to drive five minutes to a “surprise location”: the mine’s shop. Inside, baskets of raw, polished, and cut amethysts were arranged by size and colour, alongside handmade jewellery and artisan pieces. I was told to choose anything I liked as my birthday gift.
This felt especially meaningful. Andrew once bought me a pair of wavy-edged amethyst earrings wrapped in pewter wire on one of our very first trips together (a hippie music festival in Wiltshire). I’d lost one years ago. Here, I found something almost identical. I also may have been persuaded to buy a polished gem for €20 and a larger raw chunk of rock. The family jewels, as they’re now affectionately known.
We drove the two hours back to Levi, with the kids looking forward to a play outside while we did a birthday dinner of fajitas, complete with a supermarket gâteau-style cake. Andrew had decorated the house with balloons, and we opened the cards from friends and family we’d brought from home, ate some cake and drank some wine - a simple but deeply lovely moment.
After dinner, we took one last walk around the frozen lake and forest in the dark. We deliberately threw ourselves into metre-deep snowbanks, lay down in the drifts to make ridiculous photo poses, and launched our youngest into plough piles amid hysterical laughter. The atmosphere was magical. One final family sauna, and then bed.
We’d all but given up on seeing the Northern Lights. We’d avoided expensive tours and child-unfriendly late-night safaris, relying instead on the My Aurora app, which had gone off nearly daily in the weeks leading up to the trip but offered nothing but poor forecasts all week due to cloud cover. You can’t have snow without clouds, unfortunately. We’d resigned ourselves to catching them another time, Iceland, Norway, Sweden - perhaps for Andrew’s 40th. Still, I did quietly remark how perfect it would be if they appeared tonight.
Around 10pm, while packing and taking the bins out, I noticed the sky had cleared. I mentioned it casually to Andrew, who decided to wrap up properly and stand outside while I made lunches for the next day.
Then my phone exploded.
“QUICK. QUICK. NOW. ITS HAPPENING!!”
I threw on my boots and ran to the top of the road. Fifty steps from our house, facing north, the sky was dancing - wisps of green magic moving across the darkness. I ran back inside, dragged Max out of bed, half-dressed him, and hauled him back up the street. I missed the most intense part while making sure he didn’t freeze to death (still in pyjamas), but what remained was still utterly breathtaking.
It lasted five, maybe ten minutes. As Max started to freeze, we took him back inside. The girls slept through it, but were surprisingly consoled by the promise of another Arctic Circle adventure one day.
And so ended the best 40th birthday I could ever have wished for.
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