Flying to the far north of Finland you will cross into the arctic circle and find yourself in the wild beauty of Lapland.

Home to Santa Claus, reindeer, huskies and snow, snow, snow!! Naturally a dream holiday for children, but with snowmobiling, dog sledding, skiing and the northern lights there is also plenty for adults to get excited about too. In fact, put all of this with the beauty of the nature you will see then a trip here ranks as one of our best Christmas vacations ever.

We took our trip in the week of Christmas 2018, having booked an all inclusive tour with the Dutch operator Kras; so we could take some time off from planning and coordinating and let someone else do all that for us…it is Christmas after all!

What to wear

Prepare Yourself – Warm clothing is a must, the temperature sits around -20 on average, so trainers and jeans are just not going to keep the cold at bay! But you don’t need to go overboard with the arctic gear as most tours will provide you with a thermal suit, socks, gloves, balaclava and boots…warm, but lacking in the latest fashion sense… like we stepped out of the 80s skiing team!

Your own gear is to get you from the airport to the hotel, as stepping off the plane into -21 will have you coughing with your first few lungfulls of the pure dry and freezing air. Plus you’ll get some nicer, more fashionable pictures once in a while!

The tours will also take you to a number of local teepees for a warm drink and open fire…but this also means that your clothes will smell of smoke until cleaned – so use the tour gear unless you like the smell of stale smoke.

Camera – a must! A good camera, or minimum a tripod is needed for the northern lights…more about that later…

Where to stay

The Christmas capital of Lapland is the city of Rovaniemi, right on the border of the arctic circle; but for a wilder, more natural experience we chose a couple of hundred kilometers further north at Yllasjarvi (Yllas)…the adventure hotspot of Lapland.

To get here, you can fly direct from Amsterdam to Kittila with Tui, avoiding any lengthy stop overs on the way.

Yllas is a tiny village on the shores of a lake, a couple of restaurants, a supermarket and that is pretty much it. 10 minutes drive from the Yllas ski resort with multiple options to pick up your tours. Our package had us booked into the Yllas Lake Hotel, a simple place in a rustic setting, also the base of the Safartica tour company for all your snowy activities.

Other accommodation options are Snow Village, for an Ice Hotel like stay (more about that later); and for a larger-sized group you can get your own private cabin in the woods, complete with sauna and snow shoes to pop down to the shops – see the Yllas website.

The lake hotel has simple rooms that are well heated, eclectic buffets with interesting combinations of dishes, salmon, reindeer, picked herring, warm berry juice and cold baked beans…all to remind you that you are in Finland.

Just remember to pick up a few bottles of alcohol from duty free for your stay as you will not find more than beer in the supermarket and the hotel (as all hotels here) is a bit pricey….plus you can make your own ice bar in the snow outside!

If it’s related to snow, then Safartica does almost everything you will want to do on various days of the week (see timetable and prices for 2018/19 – Here).

Snow Mobiling

Snow Mobiling is a great introduction to the outdoors, you’ll get a quick instruction…basically rev and go and you’ll soon be speeding along the snow covered lake into the wilds.

Pay attention to how you grip the handlebars though as if you accidentally hold on too tight you’ll be diving into big snow drifts as Lyssa did to us when driving us both.

The trips we did were combined with ice fishing during the day (and the day only lasts 6 hrs at the end of December) and seeing the northern lights at night. If it has just snowed then you will be gliding along, but a few days without snow early on in the season will have you bouncing all the way along the route with all the bumps and jumps created by the snow mobiles. If you’re the passenger, hold on tight.

Ice fishing is a novel experience whilst you are drilling a hole through the ice and first drop the hook and line into the black abyss below. After 10 mins the novelty wears off as the fish are rather sleepy during winter and you have to practically dangle the bait right in front of their noses to get a bite.

This had Lyssa going off to make some snow angels and Matt some yellow pictures in the snow.

Snow Shoeing & Aurora Hunting

Snowshoeing trips can be done by day or night, this time we just did the night tour, chasing the aurora. Out of the village there is little light, but your eyes will soon adjust and the surrounding snowscape of trees and distant fells is stunning.

Take a tripod for your camera and just enjoy the beauty of the Finnish nature.

Some essentials for aurora hunting:

You can get an inside track on what the aurora is doing by downloading the aurora app (here) this will give you the probability of seeing the aurora – the KP scale goes to 10, but basically in this part of the world you will have a chance to see the lights from 2 and above.

but even if the % is low, don’t give up, as often the aurora will be there, not visible to the naked eye, but hiding in the background ready to be picked up by the optics of a good camera on a steady tripod…just as we found out!

Cameras & Settings – many articles will give you all the details for your camera settings, basically lower the aperture to the smallest number, set the shutter speed to ~15 seconds and start the ISO at around 1200, and set the manual focus to infinity – play around with the settings but the minimum is to have a tripod to keep everything steady.

GoPro 7 – not so common in the aurora hunting tips is to use the latest GoPro 7, it has a night timelapse setting, so you can just plant your selfie stick in the snow and let the GP do it’s magic…very simple.

For pictures of people with the aurora we found out (near the end of the trip !) that our Sony A6000 has an automatic setting for night portrait that pops the flash just before taking a long shutter speed picture that lights the subjects perfectly whilst also capturing the aurora…perfect for those disco pictures! Just make sure you can keep the pose for 20 seconds.

One final ingredient for the perfect aurora is to go with a crazy, fun group of fellow light spotters…in our case our wonderful Dutch friends who were on the trip with us marveling at the beauty of nature in the north.

Jingle bells with Rudolph

More sedate, but no less beautiful is a little tour through the forests on a sleigh pulled by reindeer; at midday in the heart of winter you’ll be treated to beautiful colours in the skies, pinks, reds and purples, almost as if one half of the sky is going through sunrise and the other half through sunset. But prepare to have numb toes at the end of the trip due to the cold.

After the tour you get some time with the reindeer farmer to answer all those questions you were dying to ask..all reindeer are owned, in the summer they are left to wander off into the countryside and will come back on winter of their own accord that their antlers will fall off every winter to grow back again the following year, plus lichen is like reindeer chocolate for them.

Dog Sledding

Dog sledding is one of the most fun activities of the trip. Arriving at the kennels you will find the dogs raring to go, literally straining at their leashes and howling with excitement to go for a run in the snow.

Just 6 dogs are enough to pull two people along at a respectable 30kmh and they could probably go much faster if we didn’t keep our foot on the break so much!

Once you glide back into the home point the dogs will be a bit calmer to stop and pose for pictures and to have a little bit of a scratch behind their ears.

Skiing

There’s all types of skiing to be done whilst here: Cross country ski routes criss cross the countryside and are well maintained along with street lights to keep you going until 10pm at night. So once you have figured out the technique by watching other skiers and stop falling over sideways on these super skinny skis then take a tour….

A similar motion of walking / skiing comes from Forest Skiing, although somewhat easier as the skis are a bit wider and more manageable (even though it feels like the skis are from the 70’s with Fisher Price straps!)

And finally some classic downhill skiing at one of Finland’s largest resorts in Yllas. Big for Finland that is, but good enough to keep you entertained for a day. Be prepared for a lot of T-Bars and biting winds, but if you are lucky to get some views of the plains, and a run through the trees down below.

Snow Village

20 mins outside of Yllas is the aptly named snow village. Where 20 million kilos of snow are used to build a hotel that will stand for just 4 to 5 months of the year.

Even if you don’t spend the night here then a visit can be made for a few hours. The hotel is simply amazing and the attention to detail is so great that you’ll be captivated. The theme of the hotel this year is Game of Thrones, so you’ll find:

Dragons

Thrones

A working chapel to the seven

More dragons

White walkers

A weirwood tree

The queen of dragons

Lyssa even got to have a go on an ice slide

And to catch up on missed episodes from the series in the ice cinema.

There are some traditional lodgings to stay if you don’t fancy being on ice for a night, so this hotel is definitely on our list for the next visit.

Santa Claus

Of course no visit to Lapland would be complete without seeing Santa.

Originally from Turkey all those centuries ago Santa now has official residence in one of four places…in Canada, Norway, Sweden and Finland. His Finnish home is at Santa Village on the outskirts of Rovaniemi…just on the line of the arctic circle.

His home is a bit like a Christmas shopping centre, but when it is Christmas day, it is snowing and elves are walking about then you can overlook a bit of commerciality!

Naturally you can meet Santa, either in his office or next door at Christmas world; you can send a letter or postcard from the arctic, along with half of Asia that has descended on this post office and are keenly writing to friends and family back home;

take a husky and/or reindeer ride and kids even get a mini snow mobile to ride on. Don’t forget a walk across (and back again) the arctic circle line.

A few hours is enough here, but if you do come then make sure you visit Santa first Before midday), otherwise the queue turns into several hours wait.

Hopefully you have made it all the way through this blog, it’s been a long one, but Lapland so deserves it! Merry Christmas and Enjoy!