Napapiiri, Rovaniemi — Area Guide & Where to Stay

This is the quarter with the sights. Joulupukin Pajakylä gathers the shops and the line of the Arctic Circle, the indoor caverns of Santa Park sit nearby, and Joulupukin Pääposti handles the letters that arrive from across the world. Roosevelt once stopped here.

The log Rooseveltin maja recalls that visit, and together these draw far more of Lapland's travellers to this north-eastern edge of Rovaniemi than to any other quarter of the city in the Arctic north.

The line drew people first. Where the Arctic Circle runs through this ground, the north-eastern edge of Rovaniemi became a marker long before the village rose, and the log Rooseveltin maja was raised for a visit that fixed the spot on the map of Lapland. A Christmas village followed.

Built around the crossing of the Circle, Joulupukin Pajakylä and its post office grew into the draw that gives Napapiiri its place in this city in Lapland, in the Arctic north.

Napapiiri lies on the north-eastern edge of Rovaniemi, where the Arctic Circle crosses the land. The district spreads across flat forested ground beyond the city centre, the point in Lapland where the line itself runs through the visitor village and the road north. The Circle gives it its name.

From here the highway falls back south-west toward the heart of Rovaniemi and the fell quarter of Syväsenvaara, all part of this city in Lapland, in the Arctic north.