Sure, summer sun is great, but have you ever tried bundling up to play in freshly fallen snow? The season of hot cocoa, warm mittens, and snowball fights is nearly here, and it’s time to plot out your winter wonderland adventure. And, according to the travel experts we spoke to, there’s nowhere better to experience the true magic of winter than in Finland.
“It just feels so serene, so peaceful, with a pristine blanket of snow covering thick forests for several months of the year,” Chris Brunning, the co-founder of Untold Story Travel, told Travel + Leisure about Finnish Lapland. “The seemingly perpetual sunsets and the magical winter nights—there’s nowhere quite like it. There’s also a rich indigenous heritage that often goes overlooked, wonderful local people with that famously dry Scandinavian sense of humor, and some of the cleanest air in Europe.”
There’s also plenty to see and do for every kind of traveler here in the winter, according to our pros.
“It is truly spectacular to see in winter, as it is located inside the Arctic Circle, making it possible to see the Northern Lights fairly easily from this location,” Michelle Jensen, editor at Travel HerStory, told T+L. “It is also a wonderful place to enjoy a variety of winter-based activities, such as reindeer sleigh rides, dog sledding, ice floating, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, and the world’s only snow sauna, located at the Arctic Snow Hotel.”
As Jensen added, it’s great for families with small children (or really for kids at heart too) thanks to “Santa’s Village, where you can meet the big man himself, visit Santa’s post office, eat at a snow restaurant, snow tube, and do other activities.”
Want to make that visit to Santa even more spectacular? Consider booking with Brunning. “Through our contacts with the man himself, we can arrange a private sleigh ride through an enchanted woodland at dusk,” he said. “Before long, you’ll happen upon some frantic elves lost in the forest. The light from a roaring fire glows in the distance, and together you enter a small log cabin, where none other than Santa Klaus himself is waiting to welcome you.”
And according to Jozef Verbruggen, the founder of Untamed Travelling, the entire region is a sensory treat. “[It’s a] place with a thick blanket of snow and deep frozen lakes,” he said. “Put on your snowshoes for a walk and only hear the snow crunching under your shoes.”
With all that snow, you might expect it to be a place where things get cancelled and moved around due to the weather. Not so, said Riderly CEO Carlos Nasillo. “What makes Lapland special is the fact that winter isn’t just a season, it’s an entire way of life and an operandi in which the locals have learned to thrive in situations that would simply shut down most other destinations,” he told T+L. “The reality of true winter survival culture is ages ahead of a manufactured winter resort.”
Of course, you could always make a winter visit to Lapland a double feature by pairing it with a nearby city escape, just as Claire Riley, a travel advisor with Duende Travels, recommends. “Pairing a few days in Finland’s capital of Helsinki with the rest of the week in the arctic part of the country is a perfect combination: great cuisine, culture, design, and nightlife in Helsinki, followed up with a pure shot of nature in the north,” Riley explained.
She noted that there are plenty of great lodges up near Ivalo or Rovaniemi that offer the glass igloo accommodations everyone is after with a visit to the region, plus an array of outdoor activities. “On my visit to Ivalo, I learned to snowshoe, cross-country ski, and snowmobile, and that was all before the sun went down and Aurora activity started,” she said.
