Where is Lapland?

Lapland makes up about one third of Finland’s total area, and it’s a region, not a country. It covers northern Sweden, Finland, Norway and part of Russia’s Kola Peninsula. To put its size into perspective, Lapland is as big as Belgium, Holland and Switzerland all put together.

It’s hard to believe that the air in Lapland is extremely dry and is the same as the Sahara desert so keeping hydrated is important. The winter season is long but followed by spring which lasts around two weeks until it is officially summer.

Some interesting facts about Lapland’s most famous residents:

• The reindeer are semi-domesticated and there is a national register of reindeer. There are approximately 200000 reindeer in Finland
• Each reindeer will have a cut in their ear so that it can be identified who owns them.
• In the summer the reindeer are turned loose to run wild and can end up to 100 km from home and then migrate back to where they are from in the autumn.
• Reindeer eat mushrooms in the autumn
• In Finland one of the sports is reindeer racing. The reindeer are usually about 3 to 5 years and are bred solely for this purpose. The race has a reindeer pulling a person who is on skis. The reindeer can reach the same speed as a horse.

We have visited three times February and March in 2010 and 2011, January 2014, December 2022 and December 2023. On all occasions we stayed in Levi in Northern Finland at the Levilehto apartments, for the first 3 visits, Levi Spa Hotel for the 4^th trip and Levi Log Cabins on the 5^th trip.

Levi is great as there are many wintry activities, such as snowmobiling, skiing and reindeer rides, to do and it is only 20 minutes from Kittila airport. There is also the Elves Village close.

Kittilä Airport

When you first arrive in Kittila airport, especially with freezing temperatures of -25, it’s just amazing how planes land and how much snow there is and everything doesn’t come to a halt.

This is a road? There’s no gritter in sight. We were expecting all cars to have snow chains but they didn’t just standard winter tyres and drove normally, whereas we would be doing 15 miles an hour.

Levi

Levi is the largest ski resort in Finland. The resort is located in Kittilä municipality and is served by Kittilä Airport. At a latitude of 67.8° north, it is located approximately 170 km (110 mi) north of the Arctic Circle.

This is our home for the duration of our stay in Levi, the Levilehto Apartments. Every time we have been to Levi we have stayed here and the twice in exactly the same chalet.

Collecting wood for the fire from the wood shed, awesome.

At the end of the day coming home to a log fire and a bottle of local Finnish vodka, other spirits are available.

Instead of a cosy cabin with a log fire, this was one of the alternatives. It was probably very cheap, but we’re not sure that a caravan in -20+ was a good idea for us Brits.

It’s so cold that the first stop after arriving is to pick up our thermal suits and boots.

Here we are both modelling the latest fashions. They may not look flattering but when the temperature is below -15 who cares.

How to clear you roof of excess snow, it’s a possible challenge for the show An Idiot Aboard. Fortunately this is not one of the excursions available.

In and around Levi

We have so many photographs that we can’t really do it justice.

Looking over to the lower ski slopes. Above this there are more slopes.

The village from the top of Levi fell

This is ideal if place if you want to getaway from it all.

Late afternoon and the sun setting and just catching the top of the trees in the forest.

It looked odd just seeing the top of the bridge which leads in to the wilderness.

Midday in early January. The daylight hours were from 12:00 to 12:50, this is about as light as it gets.

Levi at night

The three pictures below are all of the ‘High Street’ at night.

Just outside the village at night with the moon behind us and it starting to snow.

Temperature

It is easy to get obsessed with the weather when you have never been anywhere so cold. In the picture below it was -32 degrees. In fact it actually got to -34 during our stay in January 2014. Once you add on the Windchill factor it got to -47. We were out in it for about an 1 hour and Keith got frostbite and Heather’s eyelashes stuck together, oddly enough all excursions were cancelled that day.

Light Pillars

When we saw the light shining like it was below we had to google it to find out what was going on and found out it was a light pillar.

A light pillar is an atmospheric optical phenomenon in which a vertical beam of light appears to extend above, in this case, a light source. The effect is created by the reflection of light from tiny ice crystals that are suspended in the atmosphere. Light pillars can also be caused by the Moon or terrestrial sources, such as streetlights.

Excursions

There are a number of things do in Levi the main of which is Skiing. If your not a skier then you can try your hand at snow shoeing (absolutely knackering), Husky or Reindeer Safari, Ice Karting, driving a snowmobile across a frozen lake or go further a field to the original ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi in Sweden.

Elves Village, Tonttula Elämyskylä

The Elves Village, Tonttula Elämyskylä, is in the wilderness about 8km from Levi which has log cabins hidden among the snow-laden pines. There are a lot of activities that are included in the entrance fee including making gingerbread cookies with the elves, make a Christmas decorations and visit Elf school to learn Finnish words such as Hyvaa Joulua (Happy Christmas). There is also the chance to meet Santa himself, but you need a special ticket which only children have. It’s amazing festive fun without being over the top.

Santa’s Post Office

In December Santa has his very own post office where all the letters to Santa go before being delivered to him by the reindeers.

Reindeer Safari

One of the most popular trips is a reindeer safari which is well worth a try. Unlike dogs reindeer’s have a mind of their own and are hard to predict.

Here are the reindeer resting before the going down to the starting gates.

Getting ready for the reindeer race to start, our qualifying time wasn’t very good as we were on the second row of the grid.

Keith, pensive at what’s going to happen next, and Heather smiling because she’s got a reindeer touching here forehead.

The reindeer we had went in to deep snow and we ended up having to be rescued, so we were well and truly at the back of the race however we started to catch-up.

Snowmobile

Another popular choice is a snow mobile excursion.
Word of advice, check your travel insurance to make sure you are covered as you have to sign a disclaimer.

Snowmobiles ready and waiting.

Keith posing on our snowmobile.

It’s hard to see from the photograph but across the lakes and in the woods there are snowmobile tracks which have the same rules as the road. In the picture below the speed limit is 60kph. We never managed to get above 40kph. As the same laws apply to you have to carry your driving licence at all times.

View from the snow mobile, it doesn’t get any better than this.

ICEHOTEL

This is the original ICEHOTEL which was founded in 1989 in the village of Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. When the winter suites have melted back into the river in the spring, a part of the hotel still stands. This is then rebuilt each year as a hotel and art exhibition. This ever-changing art is created in a new guise every winter, completely made out of natural ice from Torne River, one of Sweden’s national Rivers and last untouched waters.

The hotel is like a mini town with a bar, church and accommodation.

Icebar

The ice bar as it’s name suggests is a bar made of ice with drinks served in an ice glass. An ice cold vodka in an ice glass is just what you want when it is -4, just have to make sure that you don’t keep it in contact with your mouth to long otherwise it will stick..

Ice Church

We could have arranged to get married in the church but a strappy dress under a snow suit wouldn’t look good on the wedding pictures.

Bedrooms

This is one of the bedroom’s, although the room looks nice we didn’t fancy staying here. We didn’t want to start our married life with a frosty start.

One of the amazing sculptures solely from ice, apart from the glass eyes. There are so many beautiful sculptures unfortunately we cannot include them all.

Outside the icehotel there are a number of ice sculptures which never passed the selection process.

Snow Village

Following on from the success of the Ice Hotel Levi has created it’s own snow village.

The last time we visited this was in 2011 and it has expended dramatically to include a church etc on similar lines to the original icehotel.

An ice version of the great wall of China, at least the steps are much smaller and in better condition.

Not actually sure what this but we are guessing that this is a Chinese dragon boat, if this is wrong

Stunning sculptures of Elephants

Santa with Dancer, the rest of the reindeers are either resting or have been eaten by the locals.

Playing in the Snow

We don’t ski so the next best thing is to regress back to childhood and go sledging.

Keith looking cool sliding down the hill.

Now looking totally uncool in a heap in the snow.

Heather showing flying down the hill.

This is how you should at the bottom.

Dog Walking

This is our idea of taking the dog for a walk, although we would definitely end up on our bottoms.

Northern Lights

We have been three times and only seen the northern lights once. The night this was taken there was a show of yellows, reds and blues unfortunately we were in bed as it happened at 3:30 in the morning. We stayed up late the following night and didn’t see anything.

Time to go home

Final beer the night before we head home.

This is not a frozen lake it is in fact the airport runway we were expecting the runway to have been cleared but no, the planes taxi off on snow.

And to prove it here is a plane boarding.

Lapland Videos

Some videos from our February 2025 trip, known as the Laughter in Lapland tour. Lapland Videos

Finally

We love Lapland so much that we have decided to get married there early in 2022. We wanted a white wedding so we went for something totally different. Why get married in a church/chapel, hotel or on a beach when you can have the ceremony in a typical Finnish Kota.