01The one everyone booksNorthern Lights Tour with Guaranteed Sightingsfrom $164
Rovaniemi goes dark at three. That is when Lapland starts.
Which aurora tours hand your money back when the sky stays shut. What a husky team costs once the transfer is in. Whether Levi or Saariselkä earns the second base. Reviews of every tour you can book in Finland.
02Daylight, dogs and reindeerReindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Villagefrom $213
A night, a dog team, a frozen canyon and the sauna after it.
The four bookings a first Lapland week is built around. What each costs, and what the people who came back in the minibus said about it.
- 01The night oneNorthern Lights Tour with Guaranteed SightingsA guaranteed-sighting chase out of Rovaniemi. If the sky closes over, you go out again.
02The dog dayHusky Safari on a Snowy TrailYour own team and your own brake, on a trail through forest nobody has ploughed.
03The daylight oneKorouoma Canyon and Frozen Waterfalls TourA rift valley two hours from town where the waterfalls freeze standing upright.
04And afterwardsTraditional Sauna and Ice Swimming ExperienceHeat, then a hole cut through lake ice, then back to the bench. In that order.
Three ways to stand under the aurora over Rovaniemi.
The forecast is the easy part. What decides the night is how far the driver will chase the gap in the cloud, whether the tour runs again free when it closes, and how long you are expected to stand still at minus twenty.
Dogs, reindeer and a two-stroke engine: Lapland by daylight.
Three ways across a frozen forest and they are not interchangeable. A husky team runs at your nerve. Reindeer move at walking pace, which is the whole point. A snowmobile reaches ground the other two never see.
- 1Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Villagefrom $213
- 2Apukka Husky Adventurefrom $237
- 32-Hour Snowmobiling Experiencefrom $148
Rovaniemi first, then whichever fell you can reach before dark.
The town sitting on the Arctic Circle, the capital eight hundred kilometres south of it, two ski fells with kennels at the bottom, a herding village near Lake Inari, and the icebreaker port on the Bothnian Bay.
The tours Finland fills before anything else.
The full Finland catalogue →The days out more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Northern Lights Tour with Guaranteed Sightings
Review of Rovaniemi’s small-group Northern Lights chase, with 4x4 transport, professional photos, cross-border routing, and refund terms.
From · $164
Read our review →
2
Lapland Northern Lights Tour with BBQ
from $81
3
Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Village
from $213
4
Small-Group Northern Lights Wilderness Tour
from $136
5
Korouoma Canyon and Frozen Waterfalls Tour
from $136
6
Apukka Husky Adventure
from $237
7
Sightseeing Canal Cruise with Audio Commentary
from $33
8
2-Hour Snowmobiling Experience
from $148
What a day in Lapland actually costs.
Arctic days out are not cheap and the spread is wide, so the money decision comes first. Every tour on the site, grouped by what you pay to get on it.
Canal cruises, museum and Santa Claus Village tickets, reindeer farm visits and the walking tours in Helsinki.
The standard Lapland day: an aurora chase, a snowmobile safari, a husky run, the canyon hike.
Private guides, days that stack two activities on one transfer, and a table under a glass roof.
From late May to late July, Lapland has no night to hunt in.
The aurora is still up there. The sun simply refuses to set, and nothing can be seen against a bright sky. Rovaniemi runs about two months without a sunset. It is not a dead season, it is a different one: the rivers open, the fells go green, and at midnight the light is still gold.
- 1Small-Group Northern Lights Wilderness Tourfrom $136
- 2Hiking and Snowshoeing Adventure in Laplandfrom $104
- 3Guided Wilderness Snowmobile Ridefrom $121
The Arctic Circle, the avanto and a canyon of frozen waterfalls.
Snow and darkness are everywhere in the Arctic. A surveyed line painted across a courtyard, a hole sawn in a lake at minus twenty, and a rift valley where the seeps freeze upright are not.
Santa Claus Village
The Arctic Circle runs through the yard, painted across the concrete and lit at night, and you can stand with one boot either side of it. The village grew out of a cabin built in 1950 for a visiting American guest, kept its post office, and now works every month of the year rather than only December. Eight kilometres north of Rovaniemi, on the airport road.
- 1Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Village★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,543 reviews
- 2Snowman World Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 755 reviews
- 3Santa Claus Village and Arctic Circle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 355 reviews
Sauna, then the avanto
There are more saunas in Finland than cars. The ritual has an order: heat until you cannot sit still, then out to the avanto, the hole cut through lake ice and kept open all winter, in for a count of ten, then back to the bench. The smoke saunas take most of a day to heat and have no chimney, so the walls are black and the air tastes of birch.
- 1Ice Floating in Forest Lake with Aurora Borealis★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 614 reviews
- 2Traditional Sauna and Ice Swimming Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 431 reviews
- 3Daytime Ice Floating Rovaniemi, Frozen Lake Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 252 reviews
The Korouoma icefalls
Korouoma is a fracture in the bedrock north-east of Rovaniemi, and the springs that seep out of its walls freeze into towers thirty and fifty metres tall, tinted blue and dirty amber by the rock they came through. The trail down to them is a snowshoe walk; the biggest of them, Jaska Jokunen and Mammuttiputous, are climbed with axes by anyone who books a guide.
- 1Korouoma Canyon and Frozen Waterfalls Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,489 reviews
- 2Korouoma Canyon & Frozen Waterfalls Tour with BBQ★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 654 reviews
- 3Korouoma Canyon & Frozen Waterfalls Tour with BBQ★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 261 reviews
Four Finnish bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of a Lapland week can be arranged over breakfast. These four cannot. Kennels, ice and the Christmas calendar all run out months before you land.
- 01Daytime Husky SafariA kennel owns a fixed number of teams and each one runs a set number of times a day. There is no overflow.
- 02Snowman World Entrance TicketSanta Claus Village is open all year, but the fortnight before Christmas has no spare seats in it and the ice slides run on timed entry.
- 03Korouoma Canyon and Frozen Waterfalls TourThe falls only stand frozen for a few weeks and the trailhead is a long drive from Rovaniemi on one fixed departure.
- 04Snow Hotel Tour and Ice Restaurant DinnerThe hotel is carved again every winter and melts in spring. The season is short and the rooms are counted.
By place — Lapland and the south
By kind of day — dark sky, dog team, or a hole in the ice
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