Finland spends half the year in the dark. That is the entire point.
Which Rovaniemi aurora hunt keeps driving until the cloud breaks. What a husky team costs for the morning. Whether Levi or Saariselkä is the better base when you only get one week of winter. Reviews of every tour you can book in Finland.
A reindeer morning, a snowmobile hour, a sauna, and one day on the water in Helsinki.
The four bookings a first Finnish winter hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The Lapland dayReindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus VillageReindeer, huskies and the Arctic Circle in one run out of Rovaniemi. The day most people fly north for.
02The machine hour2-Hour Snowmobiling ExperienceTwo hours on a snowmobile through the forest tracks. Short enough to sit inside a morning, long enough to get out of town.
03The heat afterwardsTraditional Sauna and Ice Swimming ExperienceA wood-fired sauna, then a hole cut through the lake ice. Finns do this weekly and it will be the best hour of the trip.
04The Helsinki hourSightseeing Canal Cruise with Audio CommentaryThe capital read from the water, past the shipyards and out towards the fortress islands.
The aurora is a forecast, not a timetable. Book the hunt that moves.
This far north the sky is usually doing something. The cloud is the problem, so the only thing separating one aurora night from another is how far the guide is willing to drive to get out from under it. Three ways to spend the evening, and what each costs to board.
Rovaniemi for the Arctic Circle, Helsinki for the sea, the fells for the snow.
Six towns carry almost everything bookable in the country. The capital on the Gulf, the Circle town most winter trips land in, three fell resorts strung up the north, and the icebreaker port on the Bothnian Bay.
Rovaniemi: the Arctic Circle, and everything that leaves from it.
Everything in Rovaniemi →More than half of everything bookable in Finland departs from this one town on the Kemijoki. Santa Claus Village sits on the Circle at the north edge of it, the husky and reindeer farms are twenty minutes into the forest, and the aurora minibuses pull up at the same hotel doors every evening at eight.
Santa Claus Village, eight kilometres north
The post office, the reindeer pens and the marked line of the Arctic Circle itself. Almost every tour pairs the village with a husky or reindeer farm rather than leaving you there for a whole day.
Korouoma, and the frozen waterfalls
Two hours south by road, then a hike down into a rift valley where the cliff seeps freeze into columns of blue ice tall enough to climb. The one Rovaniemi day out that asks something of you.
A hole in the ice, and a fire on the bank
You drill, you sit, you mostly catch nothing, and that turns out to be the point. Usually sold with a snowmobile ride out to the lake and a fire to thaw beside afterwards.
The Finnish days out more travellers take than any others.
The full Finland list →The tours that sell out first each winter, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Northern Lights Tour with Guaranteed Sightings
You’ll hunt the Aurora with a certified guide such as Matteo, Hugo, or Aurore in a heated 2025 Ford Tourneo 4x4. Groups stay under eight people, and the route can stretch into Sweden or Norway when clouds block Rovaniemi. Thermal gear, drinks, snacks, and DSLR photos are included.
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
Three ways to cross a frozen forest in Finland.
A snowmobile covers ground and makes a noise doing it. A husky team is faster than you expect and stops when it feels like stopping. A reindeer sleigh moves at the pace this forest was always crossed at. Most Lapland days out are one of the three, and the good ones end at a fire.
What a day out in Finland actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Lapland is not a cheap winter, but the short experiences and the capital days come in a long way under the headline numbers.
City walks, park and museum entries, sauna sessions and the short rides at Santa Claus Village.
The standard half-days: aurora minibuses, husky and reindeer farms, ice fishing and snowshoe hikes.
Guaranteed-sighting aurora chases, private drivers, and the combination safaris that fill a whole short day.
Three things that only happen in Finland.
Snow and cold are sold all across the north. A working post office on the Arctic Circle, a canyon of frozen waterfalls and a suit that lets you float through a hole in a lake are not.
Santa Claus Village
The village grew up around a cabin thrown together in 1950 for a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt, right where the Arctic Circle crosses the road north out of Rovaniemi. The post office answers letters in a dozen languages and postmarks them on the Circle, the reindeer pens sit behind it, and the line itself is painted on the ground so that everybody photographs the same six metres of tarmac.
- 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 Korouoma Waterfalls
Korouoma is a fault valley south of Rovaniemi where groundwater seeps out of the cliff faces all summer and then freezes where it stands. By January the seeps have built into columns of blue and green ice tall enough for climbers to hang ropes on, and the walk in runs a couple of hours through old forest, downhill on the way there and less amusing on the way back.
- 1Korouoma Canyon and Frozen Waterfalls Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,489 reviews
- 2Korouoma Canyon & Frozen Waterfalls Tour with BBQ★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 654 reviews
- 3Korouoma Canyon & Frozen Waterfalls Tour with BBQ★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 261 reviews
Floating in a Frozen Lake
A drysuit keeps you warm enough to lie back in water a degree above freezing, in a hole cut through lake ice. There is nothing to do and nothing to hold on to, which is exactly why people book it after dark and lie there waiting for the sky to turn green over them.
- 1Ice Floating in Forest Lake with Aurora Borealis★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 614 reviews
- 2Daytime Ice Floating Rovaniemi, Frozen Lake Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 252 reviews
- 3Aurora Arctic Ice Floating in Rovaniemi, Small-group★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 109 reviews
Four Finnish bookings that run on the calendar, not on your plans.
Most of a Finnish trip can be arranged the night before from a hotel desk. These four cannot, because the sky, the ice and the season decide whether they are possible at all.
- 01Northern Lights Tour with Guaranteed SightingsThe aurora needs a dark sky and Lapland has none in summer. The season runs roughly late August to early April, and nothing sails outside it.
- 02Korouoma Canyon and Frozen Waterfalls TourThe waterfalls have to be frozen solid before anyone can walk in under them. That is deep winter only, and the ice-climbing weeks are shorter still.
- 03Midnight Sun Forest Lake FloatAbove the Arctic Circle the sun stays up from late May to late July. Outside that window there is no midnight sun to float under.
- 04Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus VillageDecember is the month everyone wants, and the reindeer and husky slots inside the village are counted in sleighs rather than seats.
In December the sun never clears the horizon over Lapland.
Rovaniemi gets a few hours of blue twilight around noon and no direct sun at all for a fortnight either side of Christmas. It is not a problem to be solved, it is the reason the aurora works up here. Put the outdoor hours around midday, and everything else somewhere warm and lit.
By place, capital to the far north
By kind of day, machine, dog, ice or table
Helsinki, then the night train north: the week almost everybody does first.
Santa Claus VillageThe newest Finland tour reviews.
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Northern Lights Ice-Floating Experience with Transfer
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Traditional smoke sauna experience and national park visit
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