FOR THE LAST three years, I've been staring at a webcam of northern Finland. Sitting in my home office in the French Mediterranean city of Marseilles, I've kept tabs on Rovakatu Street, the major thoroughfare of Rovaniemi, a town of 30,000 right on the Arctic Circle.
I first stumbled upon the site (http://www.rovaniemi.fi/moduls/360/rovakatu.aspsek10) when I was surfing online for weather forecasts for Lapland, in preparation for my first trip there to shoot a photo essay inspired by Arto Paasilinna's novel, "The Year of the Hare." What started as intelligence-gathering soon became a kind of exotic obsession.
Not because there's anything particularly attractive or rock 'n' roll about Rovaniemi; quite the opposite. The view down Rovakatu Street is bland and lifeless, to the point that Marie, my girlfriend, refuses to look at it. "How gloomy!" she says, making a face. The town's main claim to fame, not visible online, is that it's the hometown of Santa Claus.
I initially assumed that everything on camera would somehow reflect Lapland's identity. I imagined that a herd of reindeer might show up from around the corner, or that in winter, sleighs would replace cars.
No such luck: just normal-looking automobiles, blurry people and this never-ending gray light. After a while, I found this reassuring. Rovaniemi, in the end, has the same texture as any other European town.
Refreshing the site as many as three times a day became a kind of therapy, an escape from the urban pressure and chaos of Marseilles, with its narrow streets choked with cars and people, often under crushing summer heat. It was comforting to know that there is a place, somewhere, calmer than where I live all year long. We had two small children, and I couldn't travel as before, so the webcam allowed me to transport myself a little each day.
But in May of this year, the serenity became too seductive to resist. I decided to take a reality tour of the place I had only known virtually.
Rovaniemi was immediately familiar. Though it took two connecting flights to get there, I felt like I had walked directly through the computer screen without a layover. I was a time traveler, a character or extra on a theater stage with scenery I know by heart.
Rovakatu Street crosses the city center and is lined with stores, restaurants and the usual things you find in European cities. On one side: the familiar Fotox sign. Blue on the computer screen, it turns out to be green in real life.
