Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort: Glass Igloos, Prices and Whether It Is Worth It

Updated 10 September 2026.

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Kakslauttanen has been putting heated glass domes over beds since 1999, which makes it the original and, indirectly, the reason every other glass igloo in Lapland exists. Priced on Booking.com for two adults on a midweek night in mid-March 2027, a small glass igloo is 850€ with breakfast and a three-course dinner, and 963€ in mid-December.

The verdict up front: the full heated dome is the real thing, and nothing with a half-glass roof gives you the same sky. But the premium over an ordinary aurora cabin in Saariselkä buys the dome and two meals a day, not a bigger or smarter room. A small igloo is 25 m² with two single beds. If that sounds like a lot of money for a small room with a good ceiling, you have understood the deal correctly.

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What Kakslauttanen actually is

It is not a boutique hotel. It is a large resort spread across two villages on either side of the E75, about 10 km south of Saariselkä village at the Kiilopää turn-off, with hundreds of guests, its own husky and reindeer farms, a smoke sauna, a planetarium and a brewery. The scale surprises people who booked from a photo of a single glowing dome in the snow.

It runs year-round except May. The glass igloos open from roughly the third week of August, when the nights get dark enough to be worth the glass, and run to the end of April. Snow igloos are a December to March thing only, for obvious reasons.

The igloos and cabins compared

The table below sets out what each unit is; the rate table underneath is what they cost on Booking.com.

Booking.com rates for this property, two adults, breakfast and a three-course dinner included in every one of them. Sampled for a midweek night in mid-March 2027 and one in mid-December 2026.

The most useful number here is the gap between the two columns of the same row. A glass igloo is 850€ in mid-March; the Small Chalet on the same night is 536€. You are paying roughly 300€ a night for the glass roof — and the chalet is twice the floor area with its own sauna and kitchenette. That is the actual decision at Kakslauttanen, and no brochure frames it that way.

The kelo-glass igloo is the one that changes the arithmetic. Ninety square metres, a proper log chalet with a kitchenette and fireplace, a glass-roofed bedroom attached, and a minimum rate on the official page that sat only slightly above the small igloo’s floor price. For four to six people sharing, it is a completely different value proposition to two adults squeezing into 25 m². The check-in listed on that page is 15:00, check-out 10:00.

East Village versus West Village

This is the single most useful thing to know before you book, and most booking pages will not tell you which one you are getting.

East Village is the original. Smaller, quieter, darker skies, further from everything. West Village is about 4 km away and holds the main facilities: the smoke sauna, the planetarium, the brewery, the husky and reindeer farms. It is also where the igloo rows sit closest together, which means light from a neighbour’s dome landing in your sky.

For aurora, East Village outer rows are the pick. For convenience and for families who will use the on-site activities every day, West Village saves you a shuttle ride each time. You cannot really have both.

There is a second trade-off nobody mentions, and it costs nothing to get right. At the same 850€ a night, the West Glass Igloo lists an attached bathroom and a sauna, while the East Glass Igloo is tagged as having a shared bathroom. So East buys you the darker sky and West buys you the private shower, for identical money. If you are picking East for the aurora, go in knowing that is the compromise.

What a night includes

Glass igloo rates include a breakfast buffet and a three-course dinner every day. Official and third-party sources agree on this, and it matters more than it sounds: there is no food shop on site and no village within walking distance, so half-board is not a luxury add-on here, it is the only sane way to eat.

There are two village restaurants. The menu leans Lappish, and then, for reasons nobody has ever properly explained to me, there is a full Indian menu served daily. It is a genuine oddity and a lifeline if you have been eating reindeer and salmon for four nights straight.

Each igloo has an in-room aurora alarm, backed by a mobile app, so you do not have to set your own alarm every hour and stare at the ceiling. The official site also sells packages, for example a two-night full-board winter package from 1,824€ per stay, which bundle nights and meals together.

What you do not get: WiFi or TV in the igloos. That is deliberate and most people are fine with it, but check your expectations if you were planning to work remotely or entertain children on a rainy afternoon.

Why the full dome is different

Plenty of cheaper places in Lapland sell an “aurora cabin” or a “glass roof room”. In most of them, the glass is a panel over the bed or a slanted section of the roof, and the rest is normal wall and ceiling. It works. You will see the aurora from your pillow.

A full heated dome is a different experience. The glass curves down to roughly bed level on all sides, so you get the whole sky and the treeline, not a rectangle of it. You do not need to shuffle your head into position to track a band moving across the sky. The heating keeps the glass clear at temperatures where a normal window would frost over solid.

Whether that difference is worth several hundred euros a night is a personal question. Bear in mind the aurora still has to show up. Cloud is the usual reason people leave disappointed, not the accommodation. Check the Finnish Meteorological Institute’s aurora and space weather pages before you build a whole trip around one night under glass.

Getting there

Ivalo (IVL) is the nearest airport, about 35 to 40 km away, a 30 to 35 minute drive. The resort offers an airport transfer at extra charge; the price is not published, so ask when you book. Private transfers are included only with the luxury kelo-glass igloo.

The resort sits on the E75 at the Kiilopää turn-off, 10 km south of Saariselkä village. That distance is the practical catch. You cannot stroll into the village for a beer, a supermarket run or an independently booked activity. Everything either happens on site or requires a car, a taxi or a transfer. If you want to combine the resort with the village and the surrounding fells, a hire car makes the week far easier. Visit Inari-Saariselkä covers what is around in the wider area.

Activities on site, and what they cost

Husky safaris, reindeer sleigh rides, snowmobile safaris, ice fishing, the smoke sauna, the planetarium and Santa’s home are all run on the resort’s own land. It is convenient, and for families with small children the fact that a husky farm is a five-minute walk rather than a 40-minute transfer is worth real money.

The activities are priced separately from the room. A third-party guide puts the typical spend at roughly 150 to 400€ per person per day depending on what you choose. Budget for that on top of the nightly rate, because the half-board only covers food.

What guests actually complain about

Start with the score. Kakslauttanen is the most famous glass igloo resort in the world and it rates 7.9 out of 10 from 752 guest reviews — “Good”, not “Wonderful”. For comparison, Apukka Resort outside Rovaniemi scores 9.3 from a similar number of reviews and charges less. Fame and satisfaction are not the same thing here, and the recurring criticisms are consistent enough to explain the gap:

• The small igloos are small. 25 m² with two single beds and simple fittings. Some people find the gap between the marketing photography and the actual room jarring.
• The resort is big and the signage is poor. Two villages, hundreds of units, dark for most of the day. Expect to get lost at least once.
• No WiFi, no TV, no shop. By design, but it catches people out.
• Light from neighbours. In the busier rows, the glow from the igloo next door reduces what you can see overhead.

None of these are dealbreakers if you know about them. All of them are annoying if you arrive expecting a small private hideaway.

Who it suits, and who should look elsewhere

It suits travellers who specifically want the famous full glass dome over the bed, are happy to pay for it, and want meals handled without thinking. It suits groups and families well through the kelo-glass igloos, where the per-person cost drops sharply and you get an actual chalet. It suits people who want everything on one site and do not care about the surrounding village.

Look elsewhere if you want boutique scale or a quiet, private property. Look elsewhere if walking to a restaurant, a bar or a shop matters to you. And look elsewhere if the glass roof is a nice-to-have rather than the point of the trip, because you are paying a large premium for that ceiling.

Alternatives worth comparing

Northern Lights Village Saariselkä is the obvious rival, closer to the village, with a glass-roof section over the bed rather than a full dome and a lower entry price. Star Arctic Hotel sits on top of the fell above Saariselkä, which buys you a view over the treeline rather than through it. Further west, Levin Iglut looks down a valley from above Levi, and Arctic SnowHotel near Rovaniemi combines glass igloos with snow rooms in a completely different part of Lapland. Each trades something: elevation, distance from town, dome versus panel, or price.

Booking timing

December and January sell out 6 to 12 months ahead. If you want Christmas week or the deep-dark January nights, you are booking in spring at the latest, and you will pay peak rates for the privilege.

Late March is the quiet value window. The same domes, lower rates, snow still deep, and far more daylight for activities. The aurora season runs well into April. The trade-off is that the nights are shorter, so your viewing window narrows. For most people that is a good trade.

How I researched this

Facts checked on kakslauttanen.fi, specifically the accommodation pages for the small glass igloo, large glass igloo, kelo-glass igloo and luxury kelo-glass igloo. Price bands and the reported downsides come from third-party guides published in 2026 and are labelled as such above. Nobody from Lapland Trip Planner has stayed here; the verdict 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.