Lapland, Republic of Finland — Towns & Travel Guide

Lapland is the Arctic north of Finland. Its name carries the whole far north in the popular imagination, the land of the Northern Lights and the Midnight Sun, of reindeer and open fell country, and Rovaniemi at its centre is the best-known way in. The region is the Finnish part of Sápmi.

That is the traditional land of the Sámi, a homeland that reaches on across the border into Northern Norway and east toward Murmansk Oblast.

Lapland is the Arctic north of Finland, the largest and emptiest of the country's regions. It runs from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, where Tornio and Kemi sit on the coast, far up into the open fell country where the boreal forest thins and finally gives out toward the treeless tops. This is high, cold ground.

Beyond the lake belt of the south the land rises into the fells that mark the Finnish part of Sápmi, the broad homeland that carries on across the border into Northern Norway and east toward Murmansk Oblast. The region borders two countries along its long edges. Sweden lies to the west across the Tornio river and Norway to the north, while the Arctic distances stretch out toward Inari and Sodankylä in the far interior.

Rovaniemi sits near the centre. From there roads and a single rail line fan out across a region of forest, fell, and water far larger than many whole countries, the place where Finland reaches its northern limit.

Lapland's culture is the culture of Sápmi. The region is the Finnish share of the Sámi homeland, and reindeer herding, the old livelihood of the north, still shapes the year across the fell country far more than it does anywhere to the south. The Sámi keep their own languages here.

Their traditions run on across the same open land into Northern Norway and east toward Murmansk Oblast, a single people divided by later borders rather than by the country itself. The rest of the region's life turns on the Arctic year. The long swing between the Midnight Sun of high summer and the dark, aurora-lit winter sets the rhythm of work and travel alike, and Rovaniemi has built much of its name on the season of snow.

Inari, far to the north, is a centre of Sámi life. From the coast at Kemi up to the inland fells, Lapland holds together a thin, scattered population bound by reindeer, distance, and the turning of the Arctic light.

Lapland was the land of the Sámi long before any border crossed it. For centuries the open north of Sápmi was lived in by reindeer-herding people whose range ignored the lines later drawn between Finland, Sweden, Norway, and the lands toward Murmansk Oblast. Settlement came slowly from the south.

Towns grew first on the coast at Kemi and Tornio, and the inland centres at Rovaniemi, Sodankylä, and Inari rose later as the Finnish state reached north into a region it had long held only thinly.

Lapland has a hard Arctic climate. Winter is the long season here, with deep snow that lies for much of the year and the polar dark broken by the Northern Lights over the fells. Summer is brief and bright.

The Midnight Sun keeps the light unbroken for weeks across the far north around Inari and Sodankylä, while the southern coast at Kemi and Tornio thaws a little earlier off the Gulf of Bothnia, and the cold sharpens with every step inland and north.

Rovaniemi is the main gateway. Its airport is the busiest in the Finnish north and the usual first landing, with a rail line running up from the south of Finland to meet it. Roads carry on from there into the fells.

Routes climb north toward Sodankylä and Inari and cross the western border into Sweden at Tornio, while the coast road links Kemi and the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, and the far north opens toward Northern Norway.