Over the last few years in the US, I often saw social media travel articles about Finland: photos of igloo housing in the middle of Lapland in the winter were drawing hundreds of thousands of likes. Apparently just this year one of the Kardashians took fer family there and posted all about it. Maybe it was even on their reality tv show? Gordon Ramsey and a few chef buddies also televised a visit to Lapland during Corona times. Well, what I can say - if Kardashians are doing it...I better put this "in my own backyard" experience on my "bucket list" too. As it is, I've never actually seen Aurora Borealis i.e. Northern Lights and these pictures look really awesome to me too.
It seems these new trendy glass roof huts seem to be popping up all around Lapland now. I'm happy Northern Finland has finally discovered marketing and is managing to attract tourists there beyond the cliche Santa Claus angle. The lure is what a lot of Finns take for granted but which must seem pretty exotic to someone flying in from smoggy LA... There is the pristine winter snowscape that stretches late in the year, (very touristy but) fun activities such as reindeer or husky sleigh rides, snowmobiling, ice go carting, skiing, snow shoeing, ice fishing, tobogganing etc. Heck you can even get dressed in a dry suit and float down an icy cold river. There is also exotic food like reindeer stew, fried "muikku" i.e. vendace (see related post), leipäjuusto (dense, flat baked cheese) and delicious, somewhat rare cloudberries. And foremost there is the romantic notion that you get to lay in bed, look up at the night sky and possibly be amazed by an unforgettable, once in a lifetime light show as electrons from the Sun hit the strong magnetic fields close to north pole and radiate light in all kinds of cool colors.
We planned to go to Kuusamo in northern Finland to visit my mom for Easter and saw the opportunity to finally execute on the bucket list "igloo" dream. We sucked up the exorbitant (over 400 euros/night for the 5 of us, cabin meant for 4) cost and booked a glass roof cabin in Rovaniemi just before Easter. Rovaniemi is on the arctic circle and is considered the capitol city of Finnish Lapland.
To get to Rovaniemi we and our car took a night train (more on that in another post) from Helsinki. The plan was to stay in Rovaniemi in the "igloo" one night and then drive about 2 hours south-east to Kuusamo (close to Russian border), stay there for a few nights to visit family and go downhill skiing at ski-resort called Ruka and then eventually drive >9 hours back south to Helsinki area. All this in the middle of Covid which of course perked up just before our trip and caused restaurant and some indoor activity closures. Other than that, Covid didn't really impact us since we stayed mainly amongst ourselves, wore masks, ordered food in/got takeout or cooked it ourselves and met outdoors or socially distantly with masks with the few relatives we saw.
The igloo cabin turned out to be awesome. It was nicely furnished with local Finnish design Pentik home decor, it had wonderful large windows and best of all an outdoor hottub. During the day we walked to the nearby Santa Village and went to see Santa's workshop which is basically a free walk through a few rooms that end up in a visit with Santa. (Joel made sure to ask him for a Lamborghini of course!) The visit is recorded and photographed and the results are offered to you at the bargain basement price of 45€! (I think they'd make more by lowering the price point and going for volume sales...) After visiting Santa we walked a few hundred yards to a place offering reindeer sleigh rides. Again not cheap but hey, how often do California kids get a chance to play with reindeer!
After a bit of touristy fun we retired back to our "igloo" and took advantage of the outdoor hottub. In fact we sat in it on two occasions through the evening. Kids even jumped in the snow from the hot tub which is a pretty shocking experience especially if you do it barefoot and end up buried thigh high as happened to our 11 year old.
Then it was time to go to sleep. I was really anxious to see some Aurora Borealis action. I'd even gotten a phone app that alerts you if any activity is detected. I spent couple of hours checking up on various websites that record the sky in different places around Finland and when it looked like something might be going on, I ran around checking the view out the window in all directions and even ran outside a few times in my pyjama. Nothing... I'd almost lost hope when the alarm finally went off at 2:30am. I jumped out of bed like a jackrabbit and woke up Joel and our oldest. We all saw a bit of green glow very low on the horizon partially obscured by the tree line and the local lights. The "show" only lasted a few minutes. Our 13 year old was thoroughly unimpressed he got woken up for that. My husband tried to act interested for my sake but quickly fell back asleep. I laid in bed trying to decide whether that even counted as having seen the Northern Lights. In the end whether it did or not kind of didn't matter. We'd had a really fun day as a family and managed to knock off a bucket list item in the middle of the Covid epidemic. We woke up to an epic breakfast basket being delivered to our "igloo" and then happily headed onwards to Kuusamo. p.s. My recommendation would be to find an "igloo" hotel further away from civilization. I thought there was too much "light pollution" at this place close to other hotels and the Santa Village. Actually probably the best plan to observe the Northern Lights, and save money, would be to skip the fancy "igloo" and instead go adventure outdoors by a lake so you'd have an unobstructed view of the horizon. (Although staying in the "Igloo" was fun in itself.)
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