The lights are why you came. Lapland is what you book around them.
Which Rovaniemi aurora chase goes out again when the cloud wins. What a team of your own costs against a seat in someone else’s sled. Reviews of every tour you can book in Finland.
An aurora chase, a reindeer yard, a snowmobile at dusk, a boat out of Helsinki.
The four bookings a first Finnish week tends to hang off. What each costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The night you flew forNorthern Lights Tour with Guaranteed SightingsRovaniemi’s most-booked aurora run, sold on a sighting guarantee rather than a forecast.
02Animals in one dayReindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus VillageReindeer, huskies and the Arctic Circle crossing in a single outing. The day most families end up taking.
03Levi, engine offSnowmobile Northern Lights Hunting TripA snowmobile out past the resort lights, then the machines shut down and everybody looks up.
04Helsinki from the waterSightseeing Canal Cruise with Audio CommentaryThe canal and harbour loop with commentary, past the shipyards and the fortress islands.
Chased by road, shot with a camera, watched from a lake or through a glass roof.
Every aurora booking in Lapland is really a decision about how you want to spend the waiting. Four different answers, what it costs to join each, and how many of them the country runs.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · Northern Lights Tour with Guaranteed Sightings
Chased by minibusA driver reading cloud maps, moving until the sky opens.
With a camera on itSomeone who sets your exposure and sends back files you would not have got.
From inside the lakeA drysuit, a hole cut in the ice, and the sky directly above you.
Through a glass roofA bed under glass, so the watch happens lying down.
All 193 ways to see the lights →
Rovaniemi for the lights, Helsinki for the water, a fell village for the quiet.
Eight towns carry almost everything bookable in this country: one Arctic Circle capital, one Baltic harbour, and six fell and lake villages strung up the map between them.
Nothing moves across Lapland the way it moves here.
A reindeer sleigh goes at walking pace and a husky team does not, which is most of the decision. The snowmobiles split the difference and cover the ground neither animal will. All three run from December until the trails go soft in April.
- 1Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Villagefrom $213
- 2Apukka Husky Adventurefrom $237
- 32-Hour Snowmobiling Experiencefrom $148
Rovaniemi’s evenings, Helsinki’s water, and the days that sell out before the snow lands.
Every Finnish tour we have reviewed →More travellers take these than anything else in the country, and each one earns the slot differently.
1
Northern Lights Tour with Guaranteed Sightings
Set out from Rovaniemi in a heated 2025 Ford Tourneo 4x4 with up to seven other people. Your English-speaking guide tracks clouds and solar activity, drives as far as needed, and may cross into Sweden or Norway. Guides such as Matteo, Alexis, Aurore, and Ondrej also take DSLR photos while you wait under the Arctic sky.
From · $164
Read our review →
2
Northern Lights Rovaniemi: Guaranteed Viewing & Unlimited Mileage
from $228
3
Lapland Northern Lights Tour with BBQ
from $81
4
Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Village
from $213
5
Small-Group Northern Lights Wilderness Tour
from $136
6
Korouoma Canyon and Frozen Waterfalls Tour
from $136
7
Apukka Husky Adventure
from $237
8
Sightseeing Canal Cruise with Audio Commentary
from $33
Lapland spends five months frozen and sells tickets to all of it.
Waterfalls that stop mid-drop in the Korouoma gorge. A hole cut in a lake so you can lie in it. Ice thick enough to drill through and fish from, and a roof of glass over a bed of snow. The cold is not the obstacle here, it is the product.
What a day out in Lapland comes to, band by band.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The cheap end is not the thin end here: a sauna session and a city walk cost less than lunch.
City walks, museum and Santa Claus Village entries, public saunas and the short cruises out of Helsinki.
The full days out: aurora chases, snowshoe mornings, Korouoma, the reindeer farms and most snowmobile safaris.
Teams you drive yourself, guaranteed-sighting aurora nights and the private photography guides.
Helsinki: a harbour, six hundred islands, and a fortress on the tram ticket.
Everything in Helsinki →
The city is small enough to walk and wet enough that most of the good days leave from a quay. Boats from the Market Square, the fortress twenty minutes out, and a sauna with a ladder into the Baltic. These three carry more travellers than anything else here.
The archipelago, or just the canal loop
Two different boats leave the same quay. The canal loop stays inside the city and its shipyards; the archipelago run gets you past the fortress and out to open water.
Suomenlinna, with someone who knows it
A sea fortress spread over six islands, still lived on by several hundred people. The ferry runs on an ordinary city ticket; a guide is what turns the tunnels and gun lines into a story.
A public sauna with the sea outside it
The harbour saunas put a swimming ladder into the Baltic a few steps from the steam room, and Finns use it in February. Sessions run to a timetable and the weekend slots go first.
Three things that happen in Lapland and almost nowhere else.
Snow and reindeer turn up all round the Arctic. A working amethyst mine inside a national park, a post office on the Arctic Circle and a hole in a lake you get into on purpose do not.
The Santa Claus Village post office
The Arctic Circle runs straight through the yard, marked in a line of light across the snow, and the post office inside answers letters addressed to the man himself from every country on earth. It sits eight kilometres north of Rovaniemi on a normal city bus, opens all year, and turns into the busiest square kilometre in Finland for the ten days before Christmas.
- 1Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Village★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,543 reviews
- 2Santa Claus Village and Arctic Circle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 355 reviews
- 3Santa’s Village & Snowmobiling to Reindeer Farm★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 272 reviews
The Lampivaara amethyst mine
Two billion years ago this fell was a mineral seam; it is now the only amethyst mine in Europe that hands visitors a rake and lets them dig. It sits inside Pyhä-Luosto National Park, reached on foot in summer and by snowcat and sledge in winter, and whatever stone fits in your palm goes home with you.
- 1Amethyst Mine Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 56 reviews
- 2Jewels Of Lapland: Visit to Amethyst Mine in Luosto★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 38 reviews
- 3Amethyst Mine Tour by Electric Fatbike★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 18 reviews
Ice floating
A drysuit keeps the cold off while the lake holds you flat on your back in a hole cut through the ice. Finns worked it out as the most comfortable way to look straight up for an hour, and it has become the one aurora booking that is still worth doing on a night the sky never opens.
- 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
Four things Lapland sells out of while you are still thinking.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast the same morning. These four run on timed slots, a fixed number of teams and a season that closes when the ice does.
- 01Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus VillageThe ten days before Christmas are the busiest of the Rovaniemi year and the sessions with Santa run on timed entry.
- 027 km Self-Drive Husky Sledding AdventureA kennel can only harness so many teams a day, and the sleds you drive yourself go well before the ones you ride in.
- 03PRIVATE Party dinner in a Glass Igloo Under Northern LightsLapland has a fixed number of glass roofs and they are sold by the night from the previous spring.
- 04Korouoma Canyon and Frozen Waterfalls TourThe frozen-waterfall season is short, the drive south from Rovaniemi is two hours, and the minibuses seat a dozen.
Cloud over Rovaniemi is not a lost evening.
The aurora forecast in Finland is really a cloud forecast, and a December week will hand you two or three nights with nothing to see. Those are the nights the saunas are hot, the kennels are running, the ice hole is cut and the fire is already lit out in the forest. None of it depends on the sky.
By town, up the map from Helsinki
By kind of day: lights, dogs, ice or water
Rovaniemi, the Arctic Circle, Korouoma, Levi, Inari, then two days in Helsinki.
Arctic Circle
KorouomaThe newest reviews out of Lapland and the south.
More new Finnish reviews →
Northern Lights Ice-Floating Experience with Transfer
Read our review →
Traditional smoke sauna experience and national park visit
Read our review →
