Christmas in Northern Europe 2023 – Part Two: Lapland

I didn’t know much about Lapland or what to expect when I landed at Rovaniemi airport. I knew we had to get a bus into the city, I also knew from Google maps that the city was small, but I didn’t know how easy it would be to get around or even how well I would survive doing activities in the cold weather.

Fortunately, my worries were overblown. Yes it was -8c when we landed and that was the warmest day we had in the next week! Yes it was dark 22 hours of the day because we arrived less than week after the shortest day of the year but there was still easy to get around on the public buses and there was plenty we saw and did.

One thing we quickly learned in Rovaniemi is that you need to ensure you have dinner bookings made ahead of time. We didn’t and we spent a lot of time going from restaurant to restaurant until we eventually found a place which was able to accommodate us.

On our first full day in Lapland we headed to the Santa Claus Village. We arrived as it opened and fortunately the lines to visit Santa were short at that time. The visit with Santa was very quick but still very fun. After visiting Santa we went on a reindeer sleigh ride. It was cold and slow but still very enjoyable.

In the afternoon we visited the adjacent Snowman World. This was an absolute highlight of the day and easily the best value spent in the Santa Claus Village area. The admission fee covered lunch a restaurant made of ice, tunnels and mazes of ice sculptures to explore, the ice bar with drinks poured into ice glasses and the outside sledging area.

The next day we spent the morning at the Arktum Museum before dragging our suitcases for 1km through soft snow to the Rovaniemi bus station. At the bus station we were expecting to be able to buy snacks and lunch, however, there was no stores. From Rovaniemi we caught a bus north to stay in a glass igloo at Luosto with the hope of seeing the northern lights.

In Luosto we unfortunately didn’t see the northern lights as it was cloudy our entire visit. It was also cold, -20c which was much colder than the previous day’s -9c in Rovaniemi. Despite the cold we still spent a day driving Husky dogs, riding snowmobiles across frozen lakes, drilling holes into the ice and failing to catch fish. As we rode the snowmobiles back through the forest in the dark my ski googles froze on the inside making my vision near blind – fun!

Returning to Rovaniemi on New Years’ Eve we briefly saw the sun for the first time in five days and captured a beautiful dusk while snow shoeing on a hill above the town.

Dusk after snow shoeing up a hill above Rovaniemi
Dusk after snow shoeing up a hill above Rovaniemi

At midnight I watched fireworks with thousands of other tourists on the banks of the frozen Kemijoki river before awaking the following morning to the coldest day I ever experienced. From -22c at midnight I watched as every hour the temperature dropped another 1c. By sunrise just after 11am it was -28c. We went out for a short walk and discovered when it is this cold, every part of your body which is not covered freezes in less than 15 minutes.

In the evening, determined to see the northern lights, we joined a aurora hunting tour. Traveling north in a van where we could feel the cold coming through the floor and ice formed on the inside of the van’s passenger windows. Finally we had the clouds clear and on the side of the highway, at -33c we saw dancing aurora. It was a great way to end our week in Lapland and we left with great memories and literally frozen shoes.