17-Jun-2002 -- 67N 24E It all began when a Finnish newspaper wrote about the confluence project. I (Matti) got interested: I like walking in the nature, and getting my name recorded as the first visitor to a confluence point adds some excitement and challenge to it.

Unfortunately for me, also many others had read the article, and the competition for the remaining confluence points in the Finnish Lapland seemed hectic.

About five points were conquered in June alone, and only few were left.

The confluence point 67N 24E is located about 95 km north-west of Rovaniemi, the capital of the Lapland province, and about 9 km east of the Swedish border. My friend Antti was spending a holiday in Rovaniemi, so I invited him to join me.

Judging from the map, the area seemed pretty swampy. This time of the year there would be plenty of mosquitoes.

We decided to approach the point from north-north-west from a forest road about 2.2 km away. We could have driven closer or alternatively started walking at a main road about 2 km east of the point, but we believed our chosen path would be less wet.

The day was warm, 22 degrees C. We left Rovaniemi by car at 9:30 AM armed with two GPS navigators, a map, a compass, lots of soft drinks, and some insect repellent. We had some 100 km of driving in front of us.

It turned out that our "dry" path was not so dry, but the alternative paths seemed somewhat wetter still.

Walking on marsh in the sunshine under mosquito attacks was tiring. Because of mosquitoes, we wore clothes with long legs and sleeves, so we were sweating a lot.

The confluence point is in stunted swampy forest, with both dryer and wetter places in the neighborhood. The dominating species of trees are birch and spruce. The undergrowth consist of moss and dwarf birch. This kind of terrain is common in Lapland, but also elsewhere in Finland.