Outdoors in the winter time

Background: In below 0 Celcius degrees there is always the danger of body parts freezing, the bigger danger the colder it is. Moisture and wind affect like colder weather.
When a body parts freezes, you lose it. And if it is also other parts than just the skin, you lose that body part and become a handicapped person.
As far as I know Finns do not know any way to cure freezing injuries. Most vulnerable are body parts without cover, especially the skin and small body parts, mainly the face, nose, ears, fingers and toes. But also other parts if they get too cold.
The body should always be kept in it's normal temperature, also the skiun and surface parts of the body should be aimed at well over 30 degrees Celcius always.
All Finns always avoid danger of freezing with outmost care, also beforehand on other seasons with very serious concern. Almost no Finns ever ger freezing injuries, but only because they recognize the danger all the time. Foreigners do not take the danger seriously enough. Avoiding freezing goes before other concerns except fitting into the society.

"The Finnish winter is cold and bearing cold demands skill, even though after one has learned it it becomes an everyday routine.
The main things is that no part of the body frozes in the freezing cold. The most vulnerable to freezing are cheekbones (if you wear eyeglasses), the tip of your nose, the lowest parts of your ears, fingers and toes. If some part is in danger of freezing one must immediately warm it, typically with bare hands. One recognizes the danger from the part of body being numb. After warming the part one needs to remember to warm hands, for example bare hands against the warm skin of the throat or one's sides under the coat and sweater, and after that immediately put mittens on.
Warm indoors need to be always so close that you can get in at once when you neeed warming. And you need to be able to open the door, even if your fingers are very clumsy from cold. In cold fingers often go clumsy.
The main thing in bearing cold are warm clothes: a warm winter coat, which at least in the middle of winter is a bird feather coat, a sweater (a woolen shirt), long underwear trousers or thick cotton (not nylon, that is for autumn and spring) sockings, winter trousers, winter boots, (if you are long outdoors, warmth trousers), woolen or furry hat, thick Thinsulate mittens or warm leathery "mittens" plus a long woolen neck"scarf" to protect your face and throat.
It is essential to avoid windy places like large open spaces and long straight streets.
In the winter when you are outdoors you often get cold and always then you have to IMMEDIATELY go in to get warm for a long time. (You must not stay out if you are cold. If you need to, you have to go to the nearest house to warmth just inside the outdoor and ask for hot tea or the like to drink.)
When you come in, you have to take immediately away your outdoor clothes (that means coat, hat, mittens and shoes) so that warmth can affect without obstacles. - If you are a stranger asking for possibility to warm yourself, just open your coat once indoors and take of your mittens, hat and maybe the neckscarf. - Once home, wear immediately dry warm loose woolen socks, and if the apartment is cool, curl a blanket around your feet. In addition put immediately tea water to boil! Maybe go to toilet (you relax when you come in, so it makes sense to go there.) and wash hands with warm water. Drink hot tea and eat maybe warm food. You should not drink hot water because that lacks salts that your body needs and during the winter you need to drink lots of hot tea, juice, honey water, meat soup or the like. It is essential to warm thoroughly.
If you were really cold, you soon in warmth feel sleepy and maybe fall asleep for a half an hour (or two hours) under a warm blanket (check like outdoors that nowhere are air holes, even though that is not so iumprtant indoors). Then you have time to warm well and as you wake up you feel better. The changes in temperature need attention from the body, so it is good to rest if you feel sleepy in warmth. After waking up you are clumy like in the morning and with a balnket around yourself you walk around with a tea cup in hand, woolen socks ofcourse on feet! After some two hours starts normal life and you can go out again if you wish.
So cool is not dangerous if it does not last long, but very cold one outdoors slows down, changes to very clumsy and very stupid and so saving oneself from freezing to death can become impossible even if warm indoors are there right by one's side, and those left so in the cold die quickly. But that is dangerous if you don't warm yourself well right after getting cold. If you catch a cold, some two days in warmth only typically cures you. If you get a flu you maybe need to spend most of the time indoors for some two weeks but recover fully. In the winter time too it is important to eat fruits and vegetables. Also daylight time is important to enjoy getting as much light as possible.
Outdoors a suitable state of mind and way of doing is sporty and active (not hinking but for warming's sake) and at the same time admiring the wintery beauty of the nature. Cold air is considered as something somewhat nasty: not relaxedly but somewhat refusing to be with it, so blood circulation or the evaporation of heat is less by the skin (even though skin must be warm!) and so the middle parts of your body don't get so cold. When it is really cold, avoid large movements which bring cold air close to the body and the clothes. Always remember taht in the winter time going the same distance against the wind takes tenfold time and is alot colder tahn going along the wind. Typically when it is freezing and windy, avoid being outdoors more than going to work or to shop by car. In a shelter from wind it is warmer tahn on a windy place.

About winter clothes
Winter clothes are used when it is below -1C so that the snow is no longet wet. Moist winter clothes do not warm, but snow in below zero temperatures is not wet (like snow at 0C is) and so it does not make clothes wet even if you would fall to a pile of snow or sit in snow.
Of winter clothes all are absolutely necessary. One wears them indoors just before going out and takes them away only after one has come in again.
Winter coat should be warm and in the middle of the winter a superwarm bird feather coat. It is closed with a zip that is protected from the wind by a fastened narrow strap like piece if cloth. Winter coat should not be tight like a tube, instead it should have some air inside it. The sleaves should be long so that they protect the wrists well. The coat should protect throat well without letting cold air inside from any holes there. The coat should have a quite loose hood that one can with a strong smallen so that it protects from the wind and preferably so that one has only a quite small space to see and breathe from. One cannot wash a bird feather winter coat, but snow is clean and the coat is worn only outdoors.
Furry gloves and Thinsulate-insulated mittens are warmer than ordinary mittens and gloves.
Winter shoes need to be warm and protect the ancles well from cold and from snow if one needs to step roadside. Snow melts to water and brings the cold. That is why best winter shoes are warm winter boots or woolen boots. Winter boots' bottom bears water but wooles shoes you cannot use indoors, in shops, busses or the city centre but they are good for children spending time outdoors in below -1C. Woolen socks inside winter boots bring warmth, likewise some room around the toes so that one can move one's toes to make the blood circulate in them and to so stay warm. So do not buy too small boots.
A thick woolen sweater brings lot of warmth and it is worn also indoors.
There are also thick woolen hats. A winter hat should protect all of one's ears so that ears' parts do not freeze in the cold. Ordinarily one uses a hat and has the hood ready for need of extra shelter from the wind or for a need of warmth.
Each season's clothes are sold only when they are used, or a little bit earlier. You know the right time to buy winter clothes from that you present clothes are turning too cool.
A fat person feels the weather maybe 20C warmer than a slim, and a rou´nd persons feels them almost hot I guess. "

In the winter outdoors if you get really cold you become clumsy and stiff. Then you know that it is high time to go indoors to get warm, to avoid frozen front sides of one's thights in the freezing cold. Clumsiness is often a sign of clothes being too thin: especially trousers, mittens or shoes.
After you have come in, you should get thoroughly warm also the cold parts of your body. That is why you need to take care that you are warmly dressed, for example curled inside a warm blanket with woolen socks on feet, and drink hot tea and eat something so that your body gets energy with which to create heat. Tea warms from the stomach and a warm blanket keeps the warmth near your body.
Slowly you relax and get a warm good feeling, unifying, when the surface of your body tingles unifying and curing the tiny cold damages like cold fingers like being drown in warm water. Keep yourself warmly dressed until you have a normal calm sovereign good mood and start to feel the need for something to do, and that's when you can say you have mostly recovered. Indoors and tea, food, blanket and woolen socks give warmth which feels like the same kind of taking care of your own needs as comfortable warm nice looking winter clothes of nice colours.

A quotation from the Finnish version of this blog, from it's Warming instructions:
"I guess that one who bears cold well, keeps one's hat at the outdoor so that a large part of the forehead is left bare, so that one so feels the cold and knows to be prepared for it, knows the situation already and is not going to ber careless, and after a momen one meter from the door the hat is already moved to be well in the head. I guess that someone who is skilled in bearing the freezing cold weinter weather slightly plays with his/her survival with the weather so that sometimes is the coat a little bit longer open and notices that it will be cold if I keep my coat like this, so one shuts it carefully and arranges one's clothes warmly: one notices the weather amnd the effects of the clothes, knows how to variate according to the situations, one has reserves left, one senses the atmoshphere of living wisely with the weather, one is familiar with the clothes and can with them compensate cooling very near home or during the pause of a skiing trip when it is good to ventilate sweaty air away from moistening the clothes (just a few seconds) so clothes stay dryer and so warmer."