Danish family uses horse-drawn wagon to travel around Baltic Sea region

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Residents in the city of Kemi in Northern Finland take a second look and pull out their camera phones when they see a Danish family’s wooden wagon drawn by three cream-coloured horses. The sight is something of fairy-tale: the driver’s seat is decorated with gingerbread house ornamentation, and the window shutters have heart-shaped carvings on them.
     
Danish family man Finn Husted Nissen, 43, built the vehicle by himself as a mobile home for him and his family. The family of six set off in June last year to realize a life-long dream, and has now travelled from Southern Denmark through Sweden and across the apex of the Gulf of Bothnia, the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea.
      The family has crossed into Finland and is now travelling down he West Coast towards Helsinki at the leisurely pace of five kilometres per hour. After Finland, they will travel south therough the Baltic States before turning west through Poland and Germany to reach home.
      To finance their effort, which will take over a year to complete, the family sold their house, their car, and both their firms in Denmark.
      "Once we retired, Finn and I were supposed to do this trip, just the two of us. My father’s sudden passing on made us think that realizing a dream is not something one should put off", explains the family’s mother Helle Husted Nissen, 44.
      The two older sons, Nick, 17, and Stig, 16, take care of their studies in the wagon via the Internet. The younger children, Michelle and Schalaco, are taught by their parents.
      “We read, play board games, and do our homework”, the children list their daily activities.
     
Two bicycles and Mini the dog add to the entertainment. During the journey the three oldest children have learned to speak fluent Swedish.
      "People are so friendly. We receive dinner and overnight-stay invitations from strangers constantly", Helle Husted Nissen marvels.
      And just as a confirmation, Kemi resident Paavo Leskinen appears next to the ride with four bars of chocolate. "With all that sitting, surely the children could use something sweet", he says.
      There have been some mishaps as well. In Sweden a protection of animals report about the horses slowed down the travellers. Local farmers helped the family by using a tractor to pull them to the Finnish border.
      In Kemi, the horses escaped from an enclosure built for them. The local police helped to search for the animals, which are dressed in blue quilted vests, in the middle of the night.
      With their 20 kilometre a day rate of progress, the family expects to reach Helsinki by the beginning of June.


Links:
  Waggoners´ website (English pages not responding on 26.4.)

Helsingin Sanomat