Lapland is like a world unto itself, a place that seems to exist beyond the usual laws of nature. It’s a land of vast wilderness, where the sun blazes all day and all night in summer, the northern lights dance across the winter sky, and autumn turns the landscape into a blaze of russet and gold. The scale of Lapland is almost impossible to grasp: the Finnish part of it alone covers an area larger than Hungary, yet is home to only around 175,000 people.
You’re really far north here – on the same latitude as the coast of Hudson Bay in Canada. And yet, Lapland’s climate is surprisingly mild for its location, thanks to the Gulf Stream, which carries warm air from the Atlantic. Without it, life – and tourism – would be almost impossible this far north. Still, ‘mild’ is relative: winters can be fiercely cold, with temperatures regularly plunging to –30°C, and in extreme cases even –50°C.
In the south, around Rovaniemi and Kemijärvi, Lapland is still a kingdom of forests. But the further north you travel, the smaller and sparser the trees become, until they’re reduced to stunted dwarf birches that look more like shrubs. Higher up, on the fell tops, even those disappear – leaving nothing but bare rock, emptiness and a silence so deep and omnipresent you could almost hold it in your hands. In winter the snow blankets everything in a heavenly white gown.
In Lapland, everything feels bigger: the sky, the silence, the sense of space. Distances too. A two-hour drive here barely counts as a detour – it’s just down the road. But the journey is always worth it. Lapland carves into your soul a memory of northern magic.
