The cabin that began all of this was raised in 1950 for a single guest. Eleanor Roosevelt wished to see the Arctic Circle, so Finnish authorities built her a modest log hut at Napapiiri, eight kilometres north of Rovaniemi. She stayed barely two hours. The hut remained. Photographs from that visit show her in a heavy coat beside the unpainted logs. Around it grew the settlement travellers now search for as Rovaniemi Meet Santa Claus Reindeer Sleigh Ride & Huskies tours, a permanent village at 66°33′ north where the Circle is marked in a painted white line across the ground. Rovaniemi itself is a reconstruction. In October 1944, retreating German forces burned roughly ninety percent of the town during the Lapland War. Alvar Aalto drew the new street plan in 1946, its avenues fanning out in the shape of a reindeer's head and antlers. The sports stadium forms the eye. Reconstruction ran through the 1950s, financed in part by international aid. The Santa Claus Main Post Office opened at Napapiiri in 1985, the same year Joulupukin Pajakylä — the Santa Claus Village — was formally inaugurated. It has since handled more than twenty million letters from over 190 countries. Postmarks stamped there carry the Arctic Circle mark. The animals predate the tourism by centuries. Reindeer herding across Finnish Lapland is a regulated livelihood, organised into fifty-four cooperatives and overseen by the Reindeer Herders' Association in Rovaniemi; some 4,300 herders keep roughly 200,000 animals. Every reindeer in the country is earmarked and owned. Herding predates the Finnish state; Sámi families in the north still work the same calving grounds, moving animals between summer pasture and winter lichen. The sleigh, or pulkka, was a working vehicle long before it carried visitors on a Rovaniemi reindeer farm and husky sled tour. Sled dogs arrived later. Most kennels near the Arctic Circle run Alaskan huskies, bred for endurance rather than show, harnessed in teams that read the trail more accurately than any driver. The Circle itself is not fixed. Its latitude drifts north and south by about fifteen metres a year, following the slow oscillation of Earth's axial tilt, so the painted line is a convention rather than a coordinate. Rovaniemi has built an entire economy on that convention. The town of some 65,000 people is the administrative capital of Finnish Lapland, set where the Ounasjoki meets the Kemijoki, with Arktikum's glass tunnel pointing north toward the river. Napapiiri sits at Tähtikuja 1, a short run from the airport runway. What began as a courtesy shelter for an American visitor now anchors the Rovaniemi Meet Santa Claus Reindeer Sleigh Ride & Huskies tour that carries the region's name abroad, and the herding economy that long preceded it.