It is a chain of glass-roofed cabin resorts, not a village and not a single address. One sits on Rovaniementie at Saariselkä, in the far north; the other is at Sirkka, beside Levi, about 250 kilometres south-west. Both sell the same core product, a heated cabin with a laser-heated glass roof over the bed, published from €229 a night at Saariselkä and €239 at Levi, with suites from €329 and €439. The roof is a comfortable way to watch a strong display. It does nothing about cloud, and it sits inside a lit resort, so a faint aurora will be washed out whichever site you choose.
The name is the problem. “Northern Lights Village” reads like somewhere you
could put on a map, and people search it as though there were one of them.
There are at least two, they are a long way apart, and the first useful thing
to know is which one a package is quoting you.
Two resorts, two ends of Lapland
The Saariselkä site is at Rovaniementie 3222E, in the far north, the country’s
main road running past it. The Levi site is at Kulkuvuomantie 24 in Sirkka,
beside the Levi ski resort (not to be confused with
Northern Lights Ranch, a separate cabin
hotel outside the resort), roughly 250 kilometres to the
south-west.12
That is not a detail. They are served by different airports – Ivalo for
Saariselkä, Kittilä for Levi – and they sit in different holidays. Levi is a
ski resort with lifts, restaurants and a village around it. Saariselkä is a
smaller place at the edge of Urho Kekkonen National Park, with far less around
it and far more dark.
Which of those two you want is a bigger decision than which cabin grade, and
Rovaniemi or somewhere else in Lapland
is the page that weighs a resort against a town on everything other than the
sky.
What the cabins are
The core product is the same at both: a heated cabin with a laser-heated glass
roof that opens onto the northern sky directly above the bed. Saariselkä
publishes its Aurora Cabin from €229 a night and a Polar Sky Suite from €329,
with a stay-and-dine package from €114 per person per night. Levi publishes an
Aurora Cabin from €239 and an Aurora Suite from
€439.12
The laser heating is the part worth understanding, because it is what makes the
format work at all: without it the glass frosts over from the inside and you
are looking at nothing. It is also why these are not igloos in any meaningful
sense, and our page on
glass igloo, aurora cabin or ice hotel
sets out how the three categories actually differ – this is squarely the middle
one, sold as a night rather than as an evening.
Tripadvisor ratings, 18 Rovaniemi operators
Highest first
Snowtrail Safaris 5.0
Nordic Odyssey 5.0
Nordic Adventures 4.9
Arctic GM 4.9
Book Lapland 4.9
Bearhill Husky 4.9
Arctic Attitude 4.9
StayLapland 4.8
Wild About Lapland 4.7
Wild Nordic 4.7
Lapland Winter Park 4.6
Safartica 4.5
Nordic Unique Travels 4.5
Apukka Resort 4.4
Lapland Welcome 4.3
Arctic Circle Snowmobile Park 4.3
Arctic Circle Husky Park 4.2
Raitola 3.4
<44.04.55.0
Ratings read from Tripadvisor. The shaded compartment left of the divider holds any score below 4.0. We record the score only; review counts and review text are not part of our comparison.
What the roof cannot do
Two things, and both are worth knowing before paying the premium.
It cannot move. Cloud ends most aurora attempts in Finland, and a fixed roof
over a fixed bed has no answer to a night when the overcast is sitting on the
resort. The published odds for the region both sites are in – roughly half of
dark and cloudless nights, on the Meteorological Institute’s own figures, as
set out on
northern lights in Saariselkä –
are a ceiling that assumes the sky is clear in the first place.
And it cannot make the site dark. A resort has outdoor lighting, and light
pollution washes out a weak display long before cloud does. A strong aurora
will show through anything. Most of them are not strong.
Who it suits
Two people, two or three nights, the sky as the point of the trip. This
is the case the format was built for, and it is a good one: every hour in bed
becomes an attempt rather than a wait.
Anyone who will not go outside at midnight in serious cold. Perfectly
reasonable, and the roof is the honest solution.
A family doing four activities in four days. Probably not. The money goes
further on an ordinary warm room plus
one guided chase, which buys the thing the
roof lacks, which is the ability to drive to where the sky is clear.
If the appeal is being somewhere warm with the sky in front of you but you do
not want to pay for it by the night,
an aurora cabin evening is the same idea sold by
the hour from wherever you are already staying.
This page is an independent guide. We have no connection to Northern Lights
Village or its owners, we have not stayed at either resort, and nothing here
has been seen by them.
Saariselkä, marginally, and less than the map suggests. The Meteorological Institute groups Saariselkä, Levi and Ylläs together at roughly half of dark, cloudless nights, so the two sites sit in the same bracket rather than on either side of a line. Saariselkä is further north and its surroundings are darker, which helps on faint displays. If that difference is what you are choosing on, choose on the flights instead: Ivalo for Saariselkä, Kittilä for Levi, and the schedule will decide it more honestly.
Do we still need to book a tour if we are staying there?
Not necessarily, and this is the genuine argument for the format: you can watch from bed, at no extra cost, on every night of the stay. What you cannot do is move. If the cloud is over the resort and clear forty kilometres away, the roof is a window onto grey and a chase is the only thing that fixes it. Guests who book one tour and rely on the cabin for the other nights tend to be the happiest with both.
Is the glass roof worth the premium over an ordinary cabin?
It depends entirely on what else the trip contains. On a three-night stay where the aurora is one of several things you came for, an ordinary warm room and one guided chase usually costs less and delivers more. On a two-night stay built entirely around the sky, being able to look up without dressing is worth real money, because it converts every hour you are in bed into an attempt. Neither answer is wrong; the mistake is paying for the roof and then booking nothing else.
Lapland Handbook is written by its editorial staff in Rovaniemi. Every price, age limit and group size in a comparison is read from the operator's own page and marked "Not stated" when the operator does not publish it. Each guide names who should not book, and names the operator that suits each kind of group, whichever it is.
Rovaniemi's winter tours do sell out – December and the week around New Year first, and the small-group ones before the rest. Booking here goes straight to the operator at their own published price, and the code LH10 takes 10% off it.
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