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Kerry Walker

Taisto Illikainen is known locally as the cloudberry ‘cloudberry professor’ and can be sought out at Ranua’s cloudberry market. Taisto announces the official start of cloudberry season, records how many kilos are picked and determines the market price.

A cloudberry is the size of a raspberry but less sweet and has all the thick, syrupy lushness of a peach.

Ranua in Finnish Lapland offers the best cloudberry swamps in the country, but finding the right spot takes practice. Local guide Kristiina Lehtonen lives and breathes cloudberries, and is eager to show travellers the foraging ropes.

While the cloudberry grows elsewhere in Scandinavia, Russia and Canada, no country reveres them like Finland. During cloudberry season, Ranua gets swept up in 'cloudberry fever', which climaxes at the cloudberry festival in August.

Born of snow and native to the Arctic, the cloudberry is a rare and precious thing. When its amber hue lights up the swamps for a few brief weeks in July, it signals the height of summer, stirring the hunter-gatherer instinct in Finns.