Things to Do in Lapland: 15 Activities Ranked and Priced

Updated 15 September 2026.

Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend services I genuinely trust for Lapland travel.

Three things in Lapland are worth the money and the flight: a husky safari where you drive the sled yourself, a genuine attempt at the aurora somewhere dark, and a sauna followed by a hole in the ice. Everything else on this page is bonus. Good bonus, some of it – but if you only did those three and spent the rest of the time sitting in a warm room looking at snow, you would go home happy.

The mistake first-timers make is cramming. Most guided activities run 2 to 4 hours, the cold adds a fatigue you don’t expect, and darkness in December closes the day early. Three activities in three days plus one late aurora night is a full trip. Six is a slog you paid four figures for. Prices below come from the site’s 2025-26 activity research and operators’ own August 2026 figures where dated; 2026-27 rates are being published through the autumn, so check operator websites for current rates.

Every activity at a glance

Rankings are my judgement. The prices are not.

1. Husky safari

A team of dogs, a wooden sled, and a brake that is a metal claw you stand on. The dogs scream before you leave and go silent the second you move. That switch from chaos to nothing but runners on snow is the thing people remember, and no video prepares you for it.

The critical question when booking: do you drive, or do you ride? Short musher-driven rides of 2 to 2.5 km run 50 to 65€ around the Santa Claus Village area – fine for small children, forgettable for adults. Self-driven 2 km safaris including a kennel visit run 110 to 125€ over 1.5 to 2 hours.

A half day into actual wilderness with lunch is 150 to 250€. Multi-day expeditions exist too: Hetta Huskies runs 45 to 70 km over two days with a night in a wilderness cabin from 600 to 830€ per person, up to 200 km over five days at 1,875€.

Muonio and Enontekiö have the best farms overall; Rovaniemi has the most operators, including Bearhill Husky and Huskypoint. Check the dogs when you arrive – excited at harness time, healthy weight, proper kennels rather than short chains. A group of fifteen sleds shuffling around a loop is a different business from a farm running two.

2. A real aurora attempt

The aurora is free. It is above you whether or not you paid anyone. The season runs from late August to mid-April, and at Lapland’s latitude a KP index of 2 is usually enough – cloud cover is the enemy, not solar activity. Roughly half of January and February nights are clear; September and October sit around 45%, with the longest usable dark windows before the deep winter cloud arrives.

What a 145 to 210€ guided hunt buys you is a driver who watches the cloud maps and will keep driving until he finds a gap in them, plus warm clothing, a fire and hot drinks. That’s genuinely worth it once. What it does not buy is a guarantee, whatever the success-rate claims on the booking page. Drive 20 minutes out of any Lapland town and the light pollution is gone; the Finnish Meteorological Institute aurora forecast is the tool locals actually check.

3. Sauna and ice swimming

This is the one activity Finns genuinely do every week, and it costs almost nothing. A municipal swimming hall sauna is 7 to 10€. Premium complexes run higher – Sauna World in Rovaniemi is 185€ direct and around 65€ through booking platforms, for eight saunas, pools and ice dipping.

Löyly is the water thrown on the stones and the wave of steam that follows; it is the whole point, and asking for more of it is polite. Don’t fill the silence with conversation. Sit, sweat, cool down, repeat.

The ice dip afterwards – avanto – is voluntary no matter how encouraging the Finn next to you sounds. Thirty seconds is plenty. The feeling afterwards is the reason people do it.

Nearly every cabin and hotel in Lapland has a sauna already included. That’s standard here, not a luxury feature. You pay for a public sauna only when you want something the cabin can’t give you: a smoke sauna, a riverside location, or a hole cut in a frozen lake.

4. Reindeer farm visit

Reindeer are not huskies. There is no speed, no adrenaline, and the sleigh moves at roughly walking pace through a forest. That’s the appeal. It’s the slow version of Lapland, and it’s the activity where you actually learn something – herding families have been doing this for generations and most guides are from one.

Short feeding visits start from 35€. A proper farm visit with a sleigh ride runs 125 to 139€ for adults and 85 to 95€ for children, depending on the farm – SieriPoro near Rovaniemi has been herding since the 1800s. The 400 m loop at Santa Claus Village is a different thing entirely: 17€ adult, 13€ child, and it’s over in a few minutes.

Sleigh rides need snow, so December to March. Farm visits run year-round at most places, though some close in late March and April for calving. In Inari the farms are Sámi-run and the cultural side is the actual content of the visit.

5. Snowmobile safari

Two hours on a shared sled runs 128 to 160€, longer tours climb to 240€, and riding solo instead of two-per-machine adds 60 to 65€. Self-liability insurance is typically another 20€ and worth taking. To drive you need a physical EU category B licence – the card, not a photo of it on your phone – and to be over 18. Passengers need nothing.

Two-hour tours mostly circle near the resort. Half a day is the minimum to reach anything that feels like wilderness, and that’s where the price jump earns itself. Levi and Rovaniemi have the biggest fleets. In Muonio, Aurora eMotion runs electric snowmobiles, which are dramatically quieter – better for wildlife and for actually hearing the guide.

6. Santa Claus Village

Free to enter. Free to cross the Arctic Circle line. Free to meet Santa and talk to him – the elves will tell you which languages are covered on the day. The paid part is the photo package at 55€ for up to five people.

With believers in tow it’s a half day and genuinely good. Without children, an hour covers it: the line, the post office, one coffee. Go at opening or late afternoon in December – the midday queue in Christmas week is the worst hour of the year to be there. The village’s own site lists current opening hours, which shift by season.

7. Downhill skiing

Lapland fells are gentle. Ylläs is Finland’s largest resort with 63 slopes across two fell sides and 464 m of vertical; Levi has 43 slopes and the best infrastructure, plus a World Cup slalom venue. Adult day passes run 53 to 58€ (Saariselkä 53€, Levi, Ylläs and Pyhä 58€), children 35 to 36€, under-sixes generally free with an adult.

Expert skiers will be bored by day two. Families and intermediates will have a very good week. Night skiing under floodlights in the dark season is the local speciality worth trying.

8. Cross-country skiing

Cross-country is the better value by a distance. The tracks are free and enormous: 230 km at Levi with 28 km lit, 200 km at Saariselkä connecting into Urho Kekkonen National Park, 200 km around Rovaniemi’s Ounasvaara with 50 km lit. Rental runs 20 to 45€ a day depending on the resort. Classic style is far easier for beginners than skating.

March is the month for it – peak snow depth around 75 cm, sunshine climbing to four hours a day, and daylight stretching from under nine hours to nearly thirteen across the month. Levi’s resort site publishes daily grooming reports.

9. Ice fishing

An auger, a hole, a short rod, and a lot of sitting. Ice fishing is meditative, not exciting. Finns sit on a frozen lake in silence for hours and consider that a good afternoon. Bring a thermos.

Basic jig fishing – pilkki – needs no licence at all in Finland. It’s covered by jokamiehenoikeus, everyman’s right, which lets anyone fish with a simple jig, walk on any land and pick berries, private property included. Lure fishing does need a permit. Guided trips from 89€ for three hours include the gear, a campfire and hot drinks, which is the sensible option if you’ve never drilled a hole through lake ice. Lake Inari is Finland’s third largest and the best water for it.

10. Snowshoeing and winter walking

The cheapest way into the silent forest. Marked trails are free, snowshoe rental is around 20€, and guided walks cost less than almost any motorised safari. You move slowly enough to notice things – tracks, the way snow sits on spruce, how completely sound disappears. Saariselkä, Ylläs and Luosto sit at national park gates, which makes them the obvious bases. Trail maps for all of them are on nationalparks.fi.

11. Snow hotels, ice restaurants and the snow parks

Rovaniemi has a cluster of built-snow attractions and they overlap heavily. Snowman World sells a 35€ all-day wristband for its 2026-27 season, 6 December to 17 March. SantaPark, the underground cavern, runs from 42€ adult and 37€ child, open 31 October 2026 to 23 January 2027.

Lapland Winter Park’s area ticket is 69€ from 1 December 2026. Pick one, maybe two. Doing all three in one trip is paying three times for variations on the same idea.

Ice bars and ice restaurants are the part where I’d hold back. A drink served in a hollow ice block at hotel-bar prices is a photograph, not an evening. If the snow hotel is somewhere you’re staying anyway, walk through it. Building a day around one is not money well spent.

12. Arctic floating

Arctic floating – a drysuit, a frozen lake, and you bobbing on your back looking up – is sold by the sauna and safari operators rather than as a standalone product, so prices vary and you should ask the operator directly. Reckon on roughly one to two hours at a resort lake, and it suits people who want the story and the photograph rather than exertion; it asks nothing of you physically. There is nothing wrong with that.

13. Museums and Ranua Wildlife Park

For a cold snap or a dark afternoon, Rovaniemi’s museums are the honest answer. Arktikum is 30€ adult, 10€ for children 7 to 17 and 65€ for a family ticket, and covers Arctic science and Sámi history properly. Korundi and Pilke are nearby. Ranua Wildlife Park, 80 km south of Rovaniemi, is from 24.50€ adult online and from 20€ for children 4 to 14 – the polar bears carry it, and with the drive it’s a half to full day.

14. Summer: midnight sun and hiking

The Christmas weeks take most of the year’s visitors, which leaves the rest of the calendar almost to yourself. June to September is a completely different place: green, warm enough (July averages 20°C highs and can hit 25-30°C), and lit around the clock. Midnight sun runs from roughly 30 May to mid-July, and in mid-June there are over 23 hours of daylight. Sleep becomes optional and the light is strange for the first two nights.

Hiking is free and the networks are serious. Urho Kekkonen National Park covers 2,550 km² with 200 km of trails and free wilderness huts, reached from Saariselkä or Kiilopää. Pallas-Yllästunturi is Finland’s most visited park, 1,020 km² and 350 km of trails, including the Hetta-Pallas route: 55 km, four days, the country’s oldest marked trail from 1934. Guided day walks run 80 to 150€ if you’d rather not navigate. Autiotupa huts are first-come, so carry a sleeping bag and a tent as backup.

One warning: July is peak mosquito season and Lapland does not do this by halves. Repellent and a head net, seriously. August is the sweet spot – most actual sunshine of the year at around 8.5 hours a day, mosquitoes fading, berries peaking. Blueberries are everywhere in the forest; cloudberries are the prize and locals will not tell you where they grow.

15. Ruska, the autumn colour

Then September. Ruska is the two weeks when the fells turn orange and red, roughly the second half of the month. No mosquitoes, no crowds, accommodation far below winter rates, and the aurora season has already reopened with around ten dark hours a night and clear autumn skies.

It’s the most underrated fortnight in the Lapland calendar. Head north to Saariselkä, Inari or Kilpisjärvi, where the colour is strongest. Inari-Saariselkä’s tourism site tracks the ruska progress each autumn.

What’s overrated, and what’s free

Overrated at the price: booking two short husky loops at two different farms because they were on different package pages – you’re paying twice for the same twenty minutes. Ice bars charging hotel rates for a novelty drink. And joining the Santa photo queue at midday in Christmas week, when the same photo costs the same 55€ at nine in the morning with nobody in front of you.

Underrated, mostly because it’s free: the Arctic Circle line and meeting Santa cost nothing at all. Marked trails cost nothing. Municipal town saunas cost pocket money. Ice fishing with a borrowed jig costs nothing. Berry picking costs nothing. And the sky – the single most photographed thing in Lapland – has never charged anyone.

The paid versions buy you three things: transport to somewhere you couldn’t reach, gear you don’t own, and a guide who knows where to go tonight. When you need all three, pay. When you need none of them, don’t.

Which activities suit which traveller

Families: huskies with a family sled, a reindeer farm, Santa Claus Village, one snow park, and Ranua if you have a full day. Keep it to one activity a day with small children – the cold shortens everyone’s patience, adults included.

Couples: aurora nights, sauna and avanto, one night under a glass roof, and snowshoe trails where nobody else is. The quiet stuff outperforms the engine stuff here.

Adventure-first: multi-day husky or snowmobile expeditions, ice fishing at first light, and the far-north bases – Enontekiö, Kilpisjärvi, Inari. The two-hour resort loop is not what you came for.

Booking, briefly

Book huskies, reindeer and anything at all in Christmas week before you fly – December husky slots go by September. Leave the rest flexible and book on the ground around the weather, which is genuinely how locals do it. Which channel to use is a separate question with a real answer, and it has its own page below.

If you’re combining Lapland with Helsinki or arriving by rail, Omio is the easiest English-language way to compare trains, buses and flights in one place. VR’s overnight train prices are dynamic and rise sharply as the date approaches: the 23€ seat is an early-booking fare and the same seat runs 70 to 90€ close to departure.

How I researched this

Prices here come from the operators’ published 2026-27 figures where they’re dated August 2026 (Snowman World, SantaPark, Lapland Winter Park, Arktikum, Ranua, the Santa Claus Office photo), and otherwise from the site’s 2025-26 activity research, labelled as last winter’s. Weather, daylight and aurora figures are from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The ranking is my editorial judgement. Nobody from Lapland Trip Planner has done the activities compared here or booked with the operators named; this is a researched comparison, not a review.

Common questions

Written by Ville Laukkanen

Ville is a Finn who runs Lapland Trip Planner. The site is a researched planning guide: hotel rates come from Booking.com listings and activity prices from the operators' own pages, each dated, and nothing is presented as a personal stay or trip unless it was one.