When snow falls here in Ireland, we get scared because it's slippery. Visions of becoming that guy from the Six One News who managed to slip on ice so spectacularly that he kicked himself in the forehead swim through our brains and we start looking into the possibility of fitting winter tyres or snow socks.
Snow isn't scary because it's slippery. Snow is scary because it's quiet.
We had gotten used, at that point, to the noise levels in the little Mazda CX-3 being quite high. The CX-3 tends to be a noisy car at the best of times, but add chunky winter tyres fitted with aluminium snow spikes into the mix and the effect was often like being sat in a biscuit tin while someone continuously drummed their fingers on the lid.
Maybe that exacerbated the effect when you stopped. Pull in and get out to survey the white vastness of it all, somewhere near where the Finnish border meets the Norwegian one. And suddenly you're plunged into silence. Snow absorbs noise, even when it's falling. All around there is a deep quiet, as if someone just popped a pair of noise-cancelling headphones onto the world itself. It's really quite spectacularly unnerving - you feel as if, even if you screamed at the top of your lungs, you wouldn't hear it yourself.
Probably better to get back in the car, so. We've got a long way to go, 900-odd kilometres to be exact, in a trans-polar journey the purpose of which seems to be to simply demonstrate to us that the Mazda CX-3, in spite of being a small Japanese hatchback (forget the chunky styling and extra ride height - under the skin it's a Mazda2), could actually tackle this kind of deep-frozen terrain.
They were properly equipped mind you. We found them first in the Swedish town of Lulea, perched on that littler north-eastern armpit of Sweden that sweeps over the Baltic Sea and brings you unnervingly close to Russian territorial waters (Good morning to you, Mr Putin. Is that polonium in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?). It's a town that mixes old-school steel industry and a shiny new Facebook office, so while it looks a little unprepossessing, it actually has one of the best steak restaurants it's ever been my privilege to visit.
Hang on, where was I? Oh, yes, the Mazdas...
Each of our CX-3s had the aforementioned studded winter tyres, plus Mazda's optional all-wheel drive system. Mazda says it's not just a reactive system (one that shovels as much as 50 per cent of the power to the rear wheels when it detects the front ones slipping), but a predictive one, which takes millisecond readings of the throttle, steering and more to decide that maybe now might be a good time to adjust the available traction levels, before something happens. Other equipment included some jerry cans of petrol in the boot, a walkie-talkie to call for help if the worst happened and the all-important packet of Werther's Original without which no long journey, regardless of terrain, should be attempted.
My co-driver for the day (and a full day's driving it would most certainly be - more than 12 hours by the time we got finished) was a Scotsman who, thanks to growing up in Edinburgh, had at least a fair idea of what snow looked like. As a once-native of West Cork, I was on less sure ground, and surveyed Lulea's white-covered streets expecting at any moment to hear a Garda announcement telling people to stay at home.
I needn't have worried. With its trick tyres and that clever four-wheel drive system, the CX-3 operates at a level way, way beyond what you would expect from such a small, affordable vehicle. I'm old enough to remember a time when, if you wanted a 4x4, it came with a Land Rover, Toyota or Jeep badge. A time when SUVs and crossovers didn't exist. So this kind of multi-role capability (by day, a school-run hatchback, by night a snow-bothering Arctic crosser) still seems slightly alien to me. I spent the first few miles driving ever-so gently, expecting the Mazda to lock up and slide at any second. Of course, it didn't, and a quick trip into a snow-covered lay-by soon revealed that even if you tried to provoke the car with teenager-levels of idiocy, it would quickly and smoothly correct itself and straighten up.
Picking up the pace, we soon crossed the Arctic Circle (there's a handy sign telling you you've done so) and the border into Finland. This CX-3, in spite of using Mazda's 2.0-litre petrol engine, remained stuck to both the road and a seemingly unmovable 39mpg fuel economy figure. And it was fun thanks to sharp steering, a firm but not uncomfortable ride and excellent body control. All of these were useful when swerving around wandering reindeer and trying to avoid the oncoming lorries, all of which seemed to be travelling at Warp 1 and determined to use all the available road width, including several inches that only exist in a parallel dimension known solely to truckers.
Even so, with all of that and with snow blowing and drifting across the road, with patches of sheet ice as big as some counties and with the Werther's running low, the Mazda remained planted, secure and reassuring. Comfy too. It's not the biggest car, and is actually quite tight in the back, but the front seats are supportive and comfortable even when you've got a 12-hour shift to do.
Crossing out of Finland and into Norway the landscape changes almost instantly. Where Finland was mostly low-lying and rolling, Norway seems instantly more rugged and lofty - like someone put Connemara on steroids and then liberally dusted it with icing sugar. Our route book took us up high on to a vast plateau. Ahead we could see the first glimpses of the Arctic Ocean coast and the craggy mountains and fjords. The road, spectacularly well-surfaced and sighted, meant we could keep up near motorway-pace even in the frozen conditions, before plunging back down to the coast at the Alta Fjord, the last resting place of the German battleship Tirpitz.
Now, the scenery really was impossibly rugged looking, as if we had wandered on to a set from Lord of the Rings made real. The road, narrower and a little slower now, wound around fjords and inlets, the frigid, deep waters reflecting a clearing sky.
We raced through tunnels cut deep and raw into the living rock that take you under the sea and out onto the most northerly drive-able point on the European continent - Norway's Nordkapp, the North Cape. It's home to the town of Honningsvåg, not unlike Inishbofin but with more buildings and more snow - a really remote community who, had someone not been mad enough to lay the road and build the tunnels, would be utterly reliant on the rugged De Havilland Canada DHCs that daily brave the landings on the town's tiny, aircraft-carrier-like runway.
Here then was our goal - the Nordkapp itself. There's the inevitable coffee and gift shop (closed and shuttered against the cold and darkness by the time we arrived) and a vast bronze globe sculpture on a plinth. And then, you're at the fence on the edge of the cliff-top and below you is the Arctic Ocean. Nothing between you and the North Pole, but empty sea and pack ice for 2,000km. This, then, is as far as you can get in Europe by car. Spitzbergen lies further to the north, but you need a plane or a boat to get there. Nordkapp, to which we've just driven in a relatively humble, affordable Japanese car, sits at 71 degrees north - further up the globe than Reykjavík in Iceland or Anchorage in Alaska.
And it couldn't have been easier, really. Kudos to the Swedes, Finns and Norwegians for laying a road network that can function even when Elsa from Frozen has been on a busman's holiday, but bigger kudos by far to Mazda for making an 'ordinary' car like the CX-3 operate so easily in such conditions. Against drifting snow, sheet ice and a wind chill factor that would bamboozle even Jean Byrne, the diminutive CX-3 stood tall and did the whole 4x4 thing with utterly calm aplomb. Even rounding those last few kilometres of road to the Cape, where we actually had to have a snowplough escort lest we become stranded, the Mazda remained sure-footed and reassuring in the manner of a car twice its size.
Remember that the next time a snow flurry closes the M1...