Sylvie Claire / February 28, 2021
For several days, a team in Finland is trying to break the world record for the largest ice carousel on a frozen lake by clearing snow and using chainsaws to cut a huge circle of ice more than 300 metres in diameter.
On the vast Lake Lappajärvi in the west of the country, the small group is led by Finnish inventor Janne Käpylehto, who claims to be behind the concept in a viral video released in 2017. How does it work? Once its route is cleared of snow and cut, a boat engine connected to the immense circle of ice makes it turn on itself, like an enchantment in the middle of a beautiful frozen landscape. he idea has since been copied elsewhere with increasingly larger rides, to the point that a category has been created by the Guinness Book of Records.
It's pretty crazy, says the whimsical Finn, whose team had to start by removing 40 cm of snow from a circle with a perimeter of over 900 meters.
While Janne Käpylehto has held the record four times, the record is currently held by an American in Minnesota, with a diameter of 228 meters. To confirm the performance, the ride must complete at least one full lap on itself, which its designers hope to be able to do this Sunday or Monday. The main difficulty is to form a perfect circle so as not to block the rotation. If it is not perfectly circular, the merry-go-round doesn't rotate, explains Thor-Fredric Karlsson, one of the assistants on the project.
Inside the Lappajärvi riding arena, the team cut a smaller circle, which is powered by an electric boat motor when the large arena requires a petrol engine. The municipality supported the project to warn of shorter northern winters due to climate change, meaning that the lakes freeze less often. In fact, positive temperatures have reigned over the last few days in this remote corner of the Finnish forest.