Tourists visit the Santa Claus Village during a rainy day, on November 16, 2024, near Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland. With a month to go until Christmas, Santa Claus is busy preparing, but the warming climate and lack of snow in his Arctic hometown have him worried.
| Photo Credit: AFP

With a month to go until Christmas, Santa Claus is busy preparing, but the warming climate and lack of snow in his Arctic hometown have him worried. By this time of year, the town of Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland — marketed by tourism officials since the 1980s as the “real” home of Santa Claus — should be white and pretty.

But on a recent visit, rain poured down from a gloomy slate sky and the temperature was well above freezing, with the thermometer showing 2C.

“My reindeer can fly, so that is no problem,” said the man in the red suit and long white beard, resting his weary legs after a long day of meeting excited children and adults. But “we can see that climate change is real. And it is affecting the reindeer. It is affecting life here in the Arctic,” added the man, whose employers declined to identify him by his real name.

Herders say milder and more unpredictable winters have left reindeer struggling to dig up their main food, lichen. Snow and ice have melted and refrozen, burying it under layers of packed ice.

The Arctic is warming faster than other parts of the world due to climate change — nearly four times as fast, according to research published by Finland-based scientists in the journal Nature in 2022.

Several European countries are advising their residents to be ready for war even as Russia and Ukraine witnessed a grim milestone recently – the 1,000th day of conflict. Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark have issued advisories that ask citizens to make sure they sustain themselves in case of a crisis.

While Sweden started sending out millions of pamphlets on Monday that contained information about how to prepare for war, natural disasters and cyber or terror attacks, Finland launched a website gathering information on preparedness for different crises.

The Swedish pamphlet says: “Military threat levels are increasing. We must be prepared for the worst-case scenario — an armed attack on Sweden”.

The 32-page booklet ‘If Crisis Or War Comes’ contains tips such as stocking up on non-perishable food and water, keeping cash on hand and growing fruit and vegetables in gardens.

“If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will never give up. All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false,” reads a line in the booklet.

It is an updated version of a pamphlet that Sweden has issued five times since World War II.

The new version doesn’t mention Russia, Ukraine or any other country by name.

The brochure is available in print in both Swedish and English and digital versions are available in several other languages — including Arabic, Farsi, Ukrainian, Polish, Somali and Finnish.

Finland’s website asserts authorities are “well prepared for self-defence”.

The country shares a 1,340-kilometre border with Russia and it has maintained a higher level of preparedness.

After Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland announced plans to build a 200-kilometre border fence – 10 feet tall and topped with barbed wire – with Russia which is due to be completed by 2026.

Both Swedish and Finnish checklists include easy-to-cook food. Finland has also asked its citizens to arrange for a backup power supply.

Meanwhile, Norway has urged its citizens to be prepared to manage on their own for a week in the event of war and other threats.

“We have sent out 2.2 million paper copies, one for each household in Norway,” BBC quoted Tore Kamfjord, responsible for the campaign of self-preparedness at the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (DSB), as saying.

Tins of beans, energy bars, pasta, and medicines – including iodine tablets in case of a nuclear accident – are included in the list of items to be kept at home.

The Nordic neighbours Sweden and Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment to join the US-led defence alliance NATO in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Norway was a founding member of the Western defensive alliance.

Denmark’s emergency management agency, as per a BBC report, emailed its citizens details on the water, food and medicine they would need to get through a crisis for three days.

On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin eased Russia’s rules for nuclear strikes days after the US allowed Ukraine to fire long-range American-made missiles into Russian territory.

Twenty-three of the 32 NATO members – up from just three a decade ago – have now agreed to reach the target of spending two per cent of gross domestic product on defence.

The growing consensus, however, is that Europe will have to do more to make sure it can stand on its own.