Rovaniemi if you are not skiing, want a town around you and want the shortest possible transfer; a fell resort if you are. Rovaniemi Airport is ten kilometres from the city centre, and the city is a place with its own life rather than a resort that exists for visitors. Levi and Ylläs sit fifteen and thirty-five kilometres from Kittilä Airport, and Ruka half an hour from Kuusamo. The activities barely differ – the same husky, snowmobile and aurora tours are sold at every one of them – so choose on what surrounds you between tours, not on what the tours are.
Most of the argument about where to stay in Finnish Lapland is conducted as if
the places were competing on scenery. They are not. The forest looks much the
same from Rovaniemi to Saariselkä, the activities on sale are the same
activities, and in several cases they are sold by the same companies.
What actually differs is duller and more decisive: which airport you land at,
how far it is from your bed, and what is around you on the afternoon you are
not on a tour.
The airport decides more than the map does
Finland’s airports publish their own distances, and they are the most useful
numbers in this whole comparison. Rovaniemi Airport is ten kilometres from the
city centre. Levi is fifteen kilometres from Kittilä Airport and Ylläs about
thirty-five; Ruka is a thirty-minute drive from Kuusamo. Kittilä also serves
Olos, Pyhä-Luosto, Kolari, Muonio, Sodankylä and Enontekiö, which is a polite
way of saying that some of those transfers are long.1
None of these is a bad transfer by the standards of winter travel. But a
ten-kilometre run into town at the end of a delayed evening flight is a
different arrival from ninety minutes in a minibus, and with small children it
is a very different arrival indeed.
The second-order effect matters more. A short transfer means the airport is
close enough to use twice: you can land at midday and be on an afternoon tour,
or take a morning tour on the day you fly home. A long transfer eats both ends
of the trip, and on a four-night stay that is most of a day gone.
Rovaniemi is a town; the others are resorts
Rovaniemi had 65,285 residents at the end of 2023 and grew by 766 people that
year.2 That is not a large city by
most measures, and it is the single most important thing about it here.
It means there is a centre with shops that are not gift shops, restaurants that
are open in April, a public library, a bus network, a hospital and a university.
When a tour is cancelled – and in winter tours are cancelled – there is
somewhere to go. When somebody in the party has had enough of being cold, there
is an indoor afternoon available that nobody has to pay a hundred euros for.
Levi, Ylläs, Saariselkä and Ruka are resorts. They exist because of the fell
and the slopes, and their centres are built around lifts, rental shops and
restaurants that serve visitors. That is not a criticism: a resort is extremely
good at being a resort, and if you are skiing it is obviously the right choice.
But a resort in the dark half of winter, with a party that does not ski, can be
a small place to spend six days.
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.
The tours are the same tours
This is the part the destination marketing does not say out loud. A husky
safari from Levi and a husky safari from Rovaniemi are the same product: a
transfer, a thermal suit, a briefing, a run on a sled, a fire. The
husky safari guide sets out the three
numbers that actually separate one from another – trail distance, group size
and who drives – and none of those three is a function of which resort you are
standing in.
Two things are genuinely tied to place. Santa is one: the
year-round Santa operation is at
Rovaniemi, and nowhere else in Lapland has the equivalent. Skiing is the other,
in the opposite direction.
The aurora is not the tiebreaker people think
Latitude does change your odds, and the further north you go the better they
get. But the thing that ends an aurora night in Finnish Lapland is cloud, not
latitude, and cloud does not respect the difference between Rovaniemi and
Saariselkä on any given evening. The
northern lights guide works through what
that means in practice; the short version is that a few hundred kilometres of
latitude will not rescue a week of overcast, and will not be needed in a week
of clear skies.
If the aurora is the whole point of the trip and you are willing to plan around
it, go north – and where else in Finland to see the northern lights
compares the odds properly. If it is one of several things you want, the choice
of base is not what decides whether you see it.
Which one is actually right
Not skiing, travelling with children, or short on days: Rovaniemi. The
transfer is ten kilometres, there is a town to be in when the weather is wrong,
and Santa is there rather than a flight away – though where in Rovaniemi is its
own question, and
how far out is too far to stay is
the transport arithmetic behind it.
Skiing as well as everything else: Levi or Ylläs. Kittilä Airport serves
both, the transfers are short by Lapland standards, and the activity operators
are the same ones.
Wanting the emptiest version: Saariselkä or further, via Ivalo. Fewer
people, longer nights, and a smaller centre – which is the point rather than a
drawback, as long as everyone in the party agrees that it is.
Coming for a long weekend from central Europe: whichever has the direct
flight. Two connections to save fifteen kilometres of transfer is a bad trade,
and the schedule will decide this for you more honestly than any comparison
will.
Can we do the same activities from any of these places?
Very nearly. Husky safaris, snowmobile safaris, reindeer farms and aurora tours are sold from Rovaniemi, Levi, Ylläs, Saariselkä and Ruka alike, often by operators with bases at more than one of them. What changes is the price and the detail – how far you are driven, how many share a sled, whether a child fare exists – rather than whether the activity is available at all. The one thing genuinely tied to a place is Santa: the year-round Santa infrastructure is at Rovaniemi and the others do not have an equivalent.
Is it colder further north?
On average, yes, but not by enough to decide a trip on. The bigger difference for a visitor is daylight rather than temperature: the further north you go, the shorter the midwinter day and the longer the polar night, and Rovaniemi sits at the southern end of that range among the places compared here. If you are coming in December and want usable daylight for a half-day tour, being further south helps more than being warmer does.
We are flying into Helsinki. Does that change the answer?
Only in that every one of these places then needs a second flight or a train. Rovaniemi is the one with a night train from Helsinki as well as flights, which matters if you would rather not fly twice or want to arrive with the morning. For the fell resorts the realistic route is a connecting flight to Kittilä, Ivalo or Kuusamo and a transfer from there, and the transfer is short in every case.
Written by
Lapland Handbook Staff
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 says so when a competitor is the better choice.
Book while the date you want still exists
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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