About four hundred kilometres north from Arctic Circle lies one of the most fascinating sceneries of Finland, Arctic lake of Kilpisjärvi and its holy mountain of Saana.

On Western shores of the lake Kilpisjärvi lies a Tripoint, the Three Country Cairn, land-mark between northmost Sweden, Norway and Finland while European Route E8 passes the lake using the eastern side lower altitude passage on its way to Tromsa, Norway. E8 is an important part of goods transport route in Northern Europe and a part of Nordic Way, a new Intelligent Transport System test in arctic conditions called Aurora.

Aurora enables testing connected and automated driving as well as intelligent infrastructure asset management tests and trials on cross-border corridor E8. The ecosystem facilitates testing in all conditions. A part of E8 modernization and road upgrade project is the im-provement of the bridges in Kilpisjärvi region. A Keller company, Sotkamon Porapaalu, carried out all bridge foundation work by drill-ing 8 pieces of 406 mm casing and 14 pieces of 813 mm casing with average depth of 18 meters having 4 meters rock sockets in solid granite.

Drilling was performed during the winter months offering very little ambient light . During the drilling period, in the middle of January, there was only 1-2 hours of daylight temperature being -10 – -30 degrees C°.

All drilling work was done with Mincon overburden systems. Sotkamon Porapaalu uses Mincon Spiral Flush casing advancing tools, as the trouble free and environmentally safe drilling is the key to maximum productivity, even in toughest ground and environment like this mid winter arctic ambiance.