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Oulu: winter activities, tours and guides

Oulu is a city on the Gulf of Bothnia rather than a resort, and most of what it sells in winter happens on the frozen sea by its own beach.

Rocks capped with thick snow in the shallows of a calm grey sea, with a snowy shore in front and a pier far off
Illustration photo: a snowy sea shore in Estonia, not in Oulu.

Oulu is a city on the Gulf of Bothnia in North Ostrobothnia, south of Lapland, and its winter outings are the ones a city on a frozen sea can offer. The tourism office publishes a weekly programme for the season from 22 December to 31 March, and most of it starts at Nallikari, the city’s beach: ice fishing in the morning, a reindeer visit and a snowshoe walk in the day, and an evening camp on the ice after dark, every day of the week.1

The aurora tours that collect you from your accommodation are sold on GetYourGuide by two companies, and the guides below compare them with the camp and the walks. The same platform carries the one snowmobile tour, a private ride on the frozen sea sold as Oulu or Kemi.2

No husky ride is sold from Oulu in either place we read: neither the city’s programme nor GetYourGuide lists one.12 The nearest place this handbook covers where they are sold is Kemi, 106 kilometres north, about an hour and twenty minutes by car.3 Day trips to the icebreakers are sold with transfers from Oulu on Wednesdays and Saturdays.1

Guides by activity

Northern lights

Snowmobiling

Santa Claus

Reindeer

Ice fishing

Snowshoeing

More to do

Tours you can book

All 16 tours in Oulu

Articles about Oulu

Sources

  1. Visit OuluWinter's weekly programmevisitoulu.fi ↩
  2. GetYourGuideOulugetyourguide.com ↩
  3. Rome2RioOulu to Kemirome2rio.com ↩