Where to Stay in Kittilä, Lapland

Kittilä is known above all for the Levi ski resort at Sirkka, the busiest fell resort in Lapland and the reason most visitors come to this corner of the Arctic north of Finland. Skiing draws the crowds. Beyond the slopes, the municipality reaches west into Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park and north toward Lemmenjoki National Park, and the snow village at Lainio carves a winter of ice halls and sculpture from the long northern dark.

The Levi fell at Sirkka is the landmark of Kittilä, the resort that draws skiers from across Lapland to the Arctic north of Finland. The Kittilän kirkko holds the old church village. Museums fill out the rest.

The Einari Junttila -taidemuseo shows the painter Einari Junttila, the Palsa-museo keeps the home of artist Kalervo Palsa, and the Kittilän kotiseutumuseo gathers the local past, while the wild fells of Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park rise to the west of the municipality.

Kittilä grew slowly in the far fells. For centuries this was Sámi and settler country in the Arctic north of Finland, a scatter of farms and reindeer ground along the river where the Kittilän kirkko would later gather a parish out of the wide Lapland wilderness. The parish came late.

Kittilä was chartered in 1854, set on its own footing as a municipality of fell, forest and river deep above the Arctic Circle, far from the towns of the south. For most of its life Kittilä lived by farming, forestry and the reindeer of Lapland, a thin population spread across an enormous territory. Then the fells turned to fortune.

The rise of the Levi ski resort at Sirkka over recent generations remade the municipality into one of Finland's great winter destinations, and a gold mine opened in the same fell country, so the old parish around the Kittilän kirkko now sits beside a resort economy, its past kept in the Palsa-museo of Kalervo Palsa and the Kittilän kotiseutumuseo while skiers fill the slopes above the river.

Kittilä spreads across an enormous reach of fell, forest and river in Lapland, in the Arctic north of Finland well above the Arctic Circle. Rounded treeless fells, the tunturi of the north, rise over a country of taiga and bog, with the Levi fell standing above the resort at Sirkka. Water and wood fill the rest.

The municipality runs west into the fells of Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park and reaches north toward Lemmenjoki National Park, the church village gathered by the Kittilän kirkko on the river that threads this wide Lapland wilderness.

Kittilä has the hard subarctic climate of the Lapland fells, set well above the Arctic Circle in the Arctic north of Finland. Winter rules the year. Snow lies deep and long across the fells around Levi and the river by the Kittilän kirkko, the sun barely clears the horizon in midwinter, and the cold holds the country in a darkness lit only by the aurora over Sirkka.

The brief summer brings the midnight sun, light through the small hours over the wide wilderness toward Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park.

Kittilä is reached most easily by air, the only municipality of inner Lapland with its own airport, set between the church village and the Levi resort at Sirkka. Flights bring the skiers. Direct services connect the fells to Helsinki and seasonal charters reach the Arctic north of Finland from abroad, feeding the slopes through the winter.

The roads carry the rest, the main Lapland highway running through the municipality past the Kittilän kirkko, with buses linking Levi and Sirkka to the airport and the wider Finnish road network.