In the Finnish telling, Santa lives on Korvatunturi, a remote fell on the Russian border in eastern Lapland, and he has lived there since a children's radio programme said so in the 1920s. Nobody can drop in: the fell sits inside a border zone and is reached only on foot. What moved to Rovaniemi was the practical side, the address, the post office and the place where visitors meet him, which is why the town calls itself his hometown.
In the Finnish story, Santa does not live in Rovaniemi. He lives on
Korvatunturi, a fell in the far east of Lapland. Ask the tourist board, and the
answer is Rovaniemi. Both are Finland’s, and they arrived at different times for
different reasons.
The fell on the border
The claim is younger than most people assume. Finland named itself Santa’s home
in 1927, when the radio presenter Markus Rautio declared on air that he lived on
Korvatunturi, a fell in the far
north.1
It is a real place, 486 metres high, on the Finnish side of the border with
Russia in Savukoski, and the municipality plays along gladly: its own page says
that everybody knows Santa, Mrs Claus and a crowd of elves live there. It is
also hard to reach: 135 kilometres from
Savukoski village, inside a border zone, and the last stretch is on
foot.2
That remoteness is the point of the story, and it is also why the story could
not stay there.
Why the address is Rovaniemi
A home nobody can reach cannot take visitors or receive post. Santa’s official
postal address has since moved to Rovaniemi, a couple of kilometres from the
Arctic Circle.1
The post office is a real one, run by Posti. It gives Santa’s address as
Tähtikuja 1, 96930 Arctic Circle, Finland, and says he has received almost 25
million letters from about 200 countries.3
The office, and the Santa people meet, are both at Santa Claus Village on the
Arctic Circle; the
guide to meeting Santa Claus explains
what is free there and what is not.
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.
“Hometown” is a trade mark
Visit Rovaniemi calls the town “The Official Hometown of Santa
Claus”, with a registered-trade-mark sign after
it.4 That little symbol is worth
noticing. “Official” here is a brand the tourism board protects, not a ruling
by anyone else, and it sits comfortably alongside the story of the fell: the
home is in the wilderness, the hometown is where the visitors go.
So is Santa Claus Finnish?
In Finland he is, and the claim has been made for nearly a century. It is worth
knowing, though, that the Finnish address is newer than the poem that
gave his reindeer their names.
The reindeer names were printed in New York in 1823,
more than a hundred years before the radio broadcast.
For a family, the useful version is simple. Korvatunturi is where the story
says he lives. Rovaniemi is where you can meet him, post a letter and watch it
get the Arctic Circle stamp, and
who actually runs the Santa visits there
is the next thing worth knowing.
This page is an independent guide, written from published sources. We have no
connection to Santa Claus Village, Posti or Visit Rovaniemi.
Only as a wilderness trip. Savukoski's own page says you drive to Kemihaara, the gate of Urho Kekkonen National Park, and continue on foot along a marked trail of about 18 kilometres, with a border zone permit that is free but required. That is a serious hike, not an outing with small children, and at the top the private area of Santa and Mrs Claus is closed anyway; what a visitor finds is a guest book. The Santa a child can meet is in Rovaniemi.
What do we tell a child who asks why Santa lives in two places?
The Finnish story already has an answer built in. His home is far away on the fell with the ears, where nobody can visit, and he comes to Rovaniemi to meet people and to read his post. That keeps both addresses true to the story, explains why the office is somewhere you can take a bus to, and saves you from explaining radio programmes of the 1920s to a five-year-old in a queue.
When is the post office at its busiest?
Around Christmas. Posti says Santa receives almost 30,000 letters a day in the busiest part of the season, and the office keeps longer hours, nine in the morning to eight at night, from the first of December to the sixth of January. If sending a card with the Arctic Circle postmark matters to you, that stamp is only available at the office itself, so do it while you are there rather than planning to post from home.
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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