Northern Lights Village Saariselkä: Cabins, Prices and Is It Worth It

Updated 10 September 2026.

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Northern Lights Village Saariselkä is 80 small wooden cabins with a heated glass roof over the bed, lined up in rows beside the E75 just south of Saariselkä village, about 25 km from Ivalo airport. On Booking.com the Aurora Cabin is 609€ a night for two with breakfast and a dinner included, which makes it one of the cheapest ways to sleep under glass in Finnish Lapland — and unusually, that rate does not change between December and March.

The verdict in one line: good value if you understand what you are buying. The glass is a north-facing roof section above the bed, not a full dome, so the slice of sky is smaller than at the resorts that charge twice as much. But the bed sits directly under it, the glass is heated so frost and snow do not blank the view, and the village restaurants are close enough that you are not stuck with resort food every night.

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What the resort actually is

Two sites, not one. The main resort is 80 Aurora Cabins on flat ground by the main road, with a restaurant and bar, an igloo sauna and hot tub, a second sauna with an ice pool, and a reindeer farm on the property. Reception is staffed from 8am to 8pm. Then there are 16 suites, Polar Sky and Panorama, on top of Kaunispää fell roughly 3 km away, connected to the main site by a resort shuttle running about every 30 minutes for meals and activities.

The aurora season here runs September to April. Cabins are bookable in summer at a lower rate, but there is no darkness to speak of in June and July, so a summer booking is a glass-roofed cabin with a bright sky above it and nothing else. The sister property, Northern Lights Village Levi, uses the same cabin design near Kittilä airport, which matters if you find Saariselkä sold out.

Location is the quiet advantage. Saariselkä village, with its restaurants, ski slopes and the trailheads into Urho Kekkonen National Park, is a few minutes up the road. Visit Inari-Saariselkä lists what is open in the village through the winter season.

Cabins and suites compared

The suites are not offered on the nights I priced, so only the Aurora Cabin carries a sampled rate. Sizes and layouts come from the resort’s own pages.

The Aurora Cabin is the room most people book. Twin or double bed, minibar, bathrobes and slippers, tea and coffee set, safe, hairdryer and WiFi. Twenty-nine square metres is compact but not cramped for two; with four people and a sofa bed in use, it is tight.

The two suite types sit on the fell, which buys you elevation, a wider horizon and more floor space. It also buys you a shuttle ride every time you want dinner or an activity. That is fine when you plan around it and irritating when you forget your gloves in the cabin.

The way that rate behaves across the season is the most interesting thing about this property.

That is not a typo. Sampled on Booking.com for a midweek night in mid-March and again for mid-December, the Aurora Cabin is the same 609€ on both dates, half board included. Every other big aurora property I priced on the same nights climbs steeply into December: Arctic TreeHouse roughly doubles, Apukka is about two and a half times its March rate, Levin Iglut adds a third. Northern Lights Village Saariselkä does not move.

That flat pricing is what makes it the value pick of the group in December. At 609€ with breakfast and dinner it undercuts Kakslauttanen’s 850€ half-board rate on the same night, and it holds the second-highest guest score of any property here at 9.1 from 409 reviews. If you are booking a December aurora trip and the glass roof matters more than the address, this is the one to price first.

One thing to check before comparing this with anywhere else: the 609€ includes a breakfast and a dinner for two. Resort dinner runs 125 to 155€ a head, so a cheaper-looking room-only rate elsewhere is often the more expensive stay once you have eaten.

The quiet months are cheaper again, though I have not sampled them on a common night: expect the shoulder season either side of winter to sit well below the 609€ that holds from December to March.

Half-glass roof versus a full dome

This is the single thing people get wrong before arriving. A full glass dome, the Kakslauttanen style, wraps the whole room in glass: you see sky in every direction, including sideways from a sitting position. Northern Lights Village gives you a glazed roof panel angled north above the bed. Lie down, look up, and the sky is right there. Sit at the table, and you are in a wooden cabin.

For aurora specifically, that is less of a compromise than it sounds. The lights in Saariselkä usually appear as an arc across the northern sky, which is exactly where the panel points. What you lose is the 360-degree effect people have seen in photographs, plus the sense of sleeping outdoors. What you gain is a lower price, more insulation and a normal, warm, wooden room with a proper private bathroom.

Neither format changes the actual odds. Aurora needs clear skies and solar activity, and no cabin design produces either. The Finnish Meteorological Institute’s aurora and space weather pages are the sensible place to set your expectations before you book.

What a night includes

Breakfast and a three-course dinner, on the rates I sampled. That is worth stating plainly, because most of the big aurora resorts charge for dinner on top and it runs 125 to 155€ a head. At 609€ for two with both meals in, this is among the few places in Lapland where the headline figure is close to the whole bill.

Every cabin has an aurora alert. Staff watch the sky and trigger it when the lights appear, which means you can sleep instead of setting hourly alarms. This is the feature guests mention most and it is genuinely the reason to pay for a glass roof rather than a normal hotel room with a good aurora forecast app.

On site there is a restaurant and bar with breakfast and dinner buffets, an igloo sauna with a hot tub, and a sauna with an ice pool. The third-party guide notes that the buffet can start to feel repetitive on stays of four nights or more, and that vegetarian choice is limited. On a two-night stay that is not an issue. On a week, it is worth knowing.

Getting there

Ivalo airport (IVL) is about 25 km away, roughly 25 minutes by car, with connections through Helsinki from the UK and most of Europe. The resort sits directly on the E75, the main road north, which makes it very easy to find and means you are never far from a snowplough-cleared route.

A shared shuttle from Ivalo airport is included in most of the resort’s packages. On other rates the transfer price is not published, so ask when you book rather than assuming a ride is waiting. If you are hiring a car anyway, the drive from Ivalo is straightforward winter driving on a main road, and having a car makes the village restaurants and Kaunispää genuinely convenient rather than theoretically convenient.

Activities on site

The resort runs guided aurora hunts, husky safaris, snowmobiling, its own reindeer farm, an aurora photography workshop and a Searching for Santa family programme in December. All of them are priced separately from the room, and none of them are included in the nightly rate.

Two things follow from that. First, the sticker price of the cabin is not the price of the holiday: two people doing a husky safari and a snowmobile trip will add a meaningful amount on top. Second, you are not obliged to book on site. Saariselkä and Ivalo have independent operators, and comparing before you arrive is worth the twenty minutes.

Practical warnings

Cabins are reached along snow paths. Many people advice soft bags for exactly this reason: a hard suitcase does not roll on packed snow and dragging it is miserable in the dark at minus twenty. Pack accordingly, or accept a short wrestle.

Hot water is reported by some as limited to roughly 10 to 15 minutes per half hour. Two people showering back to back may run into it. Stagger your showers and it is a non-issue.

Privacy is the honest weak point. Eighty cabins in rows means some of them look onto a neighbouring cabin, and the resort is not a wilderness hideaway. It sits on a main road on the edge of a ski village, and it feels like a resort, because it is one.

Who it suits and who should look elsewhere

It suits couples and families who want a heated glass roof over the bed at a lower price than a full glass dome, with village restaurants and ski slopes a short drive away. It suits people on two or three nights rather than a week. And it suits anyone who wants the aurora alert without committing to a full-board package.

Look elsewhere if you want isolation, because this is a large resort on a main road. Look elsewhere if the picture in your head is the 360-degree dome, because you will feel short-changed by a roof panel no matter how good the panel is. And look elsewhere if you are travelling as four adults, because 29 m² with a sofa bed is not a family suite.

Alternatives nearby

Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort is 30-odd kilometres down the same road and is the full-dome comparison: more glass, more money, and a meal arrangement built into how it operates. Star Arctic Hotel sits on top of Kaunispää fell above Saariselkä if the elevated view is what you are after. Wilderness Hotel Nellim, out towards Inari, is the option for people who genuinely want remoteness rather than resort convenience.

There is also the cheapest strategy, which nobody in the business will suggest to you: stay in a normal Saariselkä hotel or apartment for most of your trip and buy a single night under glass. You get the photograph, the aurora alert and the story, and you pay peak glass prices once instead of five times.

Booking timing

December and February book out months ahead. If your dates are fixed around school holidays or Christmas, you are booking in spring or early summer for the following winter, not in October.

The cheapest aurora-season nights are at the two ends. September still has genuinely dark skies and much lower rates than midwinter, and late March gives you dark evenings plus long, bright days for skiing and snowshoeing. Midwinter costs the most and delivers the least daylight, which is a trade some people love and others regret.

How I researched this

Facts, cabin specifications and the “from” rates on this page were checked on the resort’s own website: the cabins and suites pages and the Aurora Cabin page. Peak-season price bands and the practical warnings about luggage, hot water and the buffet come from a third-party glass igloo guide, glass-igloos.com, and are labelled as such in the text above. General destination context comes from Visit Finland and the regional tourism board.

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.