Lapland Winter & Christmas tour
Our founders, Tietse and Jayde, spent Christmas with their family in the Finnish village of Äkäslompolo, the trip that shaped our Lapland Christmas Magic and Lapland Winter Magic tours.
A family Christmas in Lapland, in the village of Äkäslompolo
Some winters ago, my husband Tietse and I took our family to spend Christmas in the heart of Finnish Lapland, in a village most people have never heard of. It remains one of the best things we have done together, and it is a large part of why our Lapland Winter Magic and Lapland Christmas Magic tours looks the way they do.
If you are already planning a family trip to Europe or the UK and have been toying with the idea of adding a visit to Santa in the far north, let me make the case for a short week in Äkäslompolo. It sits 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, deep in Finnish Lapland, ringed by the old forests of the Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park, and it is about as far from a crowded Santa attraction as a family can get.
Downtown Äkäslompolo, with a maintained toboggan hill near the shopping centre
You stay in a cosy log cabin, each with its own fireplace and sauna, and the days fill themselves: husky and reindeer sledding, ice fishing, snowmobiling, and good local food to come home to. The village lies in the aurora zone, so in the evenings you learn to check the forecast on your phone and step out of your own cabin door when the sky looks promising.
A snow hotel visit, and husky and reindeer activities
Our Lapland Christmas Magic tour, which runs over Christmas week, filled up so quickly each year that we added a second week just before Christmas, so more families could join us. That is Lapland Winter Magic: a five-night stay in the same village, in the quieter days as the season gathers. Having spent this time in Äkäslompolo ourselves, we think these dates are one of the loveliest ways to give a family a Lapland Christmas, with the option of adding downhill skiing at Levi, a short drive away, on either side of the trip.
The heart of it is the moment each family is invited, on their own, to visit Santa in his cabin, carried there through the snowy forest by reindeer sleigh. It is a private visit, your family and Santa alone, unhurried and quiet, which is exactly how we wanted it. What I remember most from our own Christmas here is the children: shown into the cabin, they fell completely silent, caught somewhere between disbelief and wonder, watching Santa as though the whole year had been leading to this.
The parents are usually the quiet ones too, standing back with cameras and the particular look adults get when something they planned has landed even better than they hoped.
We think we are onto something with our family holidays in Äkäslompolo, and I would love for you to see it for yourselves. You can read more about the Lapland Winter Magic tour, or, if you would rather be there for Christmas week itself, the Lapland Christmas Magic tour.