5 Days in Rovaniemi

Arktikum is the regional museum of Lapland and a science center about the Arctic, in a building from 1992 with a 172-meter glass corridor running out towards the Ounasjoki river. It's the one museum in Rovaniemi you shouldn't miss. The science side explains the northern lights, the polar night and life in the cold, and the history side tells the story of Lapland: the Sámi, the settlers, the logging and, above all, 1944.

In 1944 Finland made peace with the Soviet Union and had to drive out the German troops who had been its allies. In the Lapland War that followed, the retreating Germans burned the towns and villages of Lapland behind them, and about 90% of Rovaniemi was destroyed. The photographs of the ruins, and of the families coming back to nothing, explain everything you see in town today.

It's also the best place in town to learn about the Sámi, the indigenous people of the north. Rovaniemi is outside the official Sámi homeland, which lies further north around Inari, Utsjoki and Enontekiö, but most Finnish Sámi now live outside it, and Rovaniemi has one of the largest Sámi communities in the country. Sámi National Day, 6 February, is celebrated here too.

The old church burned in 1944, and the new one was finished in 1950. Inside, the whole altar wall is a huge fresco by Lennart Segerstråle from 1951, The Source of Life, which sets the struggle between good and evil in a Lapland landscape, painted in the shadow of the war that destroyed the town.

Walk to the main square, named Lordin aukio after Lordi, the masked hard rock band from Rovaniemi that won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006. There are handprints of the band in the square.

A few blocks west is the civic center Alvar Aalto designed after the war: the City Library from 1965, with its fan-shaped reading hall and Aalto's lamps, Lappia Hall, a theater and concert hall finished in the 1970s, and the Town Hall, completed after his death. The reindeer-antler plan is hard to see from the street, but look at a map: the main roads fan out from the center like antlers, and the stadium is the eye.

Walk along the riverside path, Rantakatu, to the Jätkänkynttilä, the Lumberjack's Candle, the bridge from 1989 that has become the symbol of Rovaniemi. Its pylon is topped by a light that looks like a flame, a nod to the jätkänkynttilä, the split-log campfire the loggers who floated timber down the river used to keep warm. In winter the river freezes, but stay off the ice here: where the two rivers meet below the bridges, the current keeps it dangerously thin all winter, and the rescue service warns people every year. Watch from the bank or the bridge.

The bridge is at its best at blue hour, when the light on top glows against the dark blue sky, and on clear nights it's also a good spot to watch for the aurora without leaving town.

For dinner, have Lapland's classic: poronkäristys, sautéed reindeer, thin shavings of meat slowly stewed in butter, served with mashed potatoes, lingonberries and pickled cucumber. Nili, a log-walled restaurant on Valtakatu, is the place locals send visitors for Lapland food: reindeer, Arctic char, and leipäjuusto, the squeaky baked cheese, with cloudberry jam for dessert.

Santa Claus Village is a collection of log buildings, shops and restaurants on the Arctic Circle, open every day of the year and free to enter. A white line on the ground marks the circle, and everyone takes a photo straddling it, though the real Arctic Circle moves a little every year and now lies about 2 km to the north. At the Santa Claus Main Post Office you can send a postcard with the Arctic Circle postmark, and in his office Santa himself sits and chats with visitors for free. The professional photos are what you pay for.

It's a commercial place, the shops sell the same souvenirs, and in December the queues are long. Finnish tradition, launched by a children's radio show in 1927, actually places Santa, Joulupukki, on the fell of Korvatunturi on the Russian border, not here. But it's cheerful, children love it, and the Arctic Circle line is a real thing to stand on.

The Village has several restaurants, from cafeterias to kota restaurants, round wooden huts with a fire in the middle where you can grill sausages and eat salmon soup, lohikeitto, with rye bread. It's not cheap, but it's warm, and the salmon soup, creamy, with potatoes and dill, is good everywhere in Finland.

A husky safari is one of the great Lapland experiences. At the farm, the dogs howl and leap as they're harnessed, then the brake comes off and they run in silence through the snowy forest and over frozen lakes. You drive your own sled in pairs, one steering and braking, one sitting, and swap halfway. It's easier than it looks, but you have to brake on the downhills and help on the uphills.

Choose a family-run kennel with a reasonable number of dogs and time to meet them afterwards. A short ride at Santa Claus Village is cheaper, but a farm safari of 10-20 km is the real experience. Huskies aren't a Lapland tradition: they came with tourism, and the boom has raised real welfare questions about huge kennels, dogs left idle all summer and what happens to old dogs. Ask how many dogs the farm has, how they spend the summer and what happens when they retire, and choose a smaller kennel that answers openly.

Around Rovaniemi the northern lights appear on roughly every other clear night from late August to early April, and more often further north. The trouble is clouds. An aurora tour takes you out of the town's lights to a lake or a hilltop, with a campfire, hot berry juice and a guide who knows where the gaps in the clouds are. Some tours go by bus, others by snowmobile, sled or on snowshoes.

You can also try on your own: watch from the riverbank behind Arktikum or from the Lumberjack's Candle bridge, or go up Ounasvaara. Don't walk out on the river ice in the center, which is thin where the rivers meet. Check the cloud forecast and an aurora forecast app, and be patient. The best displays often come between 9pm and midnight.

There are nearly 200,000 reindeer in Finland, and every one of them belongs to someone. They graze free in the forest most of the year and are rounded up in autumn. Around Rovaniemi most herders are Finnish families, and herding has been their way of life for generations. At a farm you feed the reindeer, which are calmer than you'd expect, learn how the herd is managed and marked, and take a sleigh ride through the forest, slow and quiet, behind a single reindeer.

Don't expect a long ride: for the price, the sleigh ride itself is often only a few hundred meters to a couple of kilometers, and the time with the herders is the real value. Afterwards, warm up in a kota, a wooden hut with a fire, with coffee boiled over the fire in a sooty pot, nokipannukahvi, and leipäjuusto. Some farms offer "reindeer driver's licenses", a joke certificate, and some stage "Lapland baptisms" with fake shamans. Skip those: the Sámi Parliament has asked tourism companies not to use Sámi culture as a show.

Ounasvaara is the fell, a rounded hill of forest, that rises just across the river from the center. In winter it's where the town goes outdoors: a small downhill ski area, ski jumps where Finnish athletes train, about 100 km of cross-country ski tracks, half of them lit, and a 6 km winter walking trail with a viewing tower and a lean-to with a fireplace. From the top, the view takes in both rivers, the town and the endless forest.

Rent cross-country skis and try a lit loop, or walk the winter trail. In summer, the hiking and bike trails take over, and in June you can watch the midnight sun from the top.

The sauna is the most Finnish thing there is, and in Lapland in winter the full ritual is sauna and avanto, the ice hole. On the bank of the Kemijoki below Ounasvaara, WNTR Sauna (called Kesärafla in summer) lets you sweat in the heat and then climb down a ladder into a hole cut in the river ice. The cold is a shock, and then a warm calm spreads through your body. Back in the sauna, repeat. If the ice hole is too much, many companies also offer ice floating: you lie in the river in a survival suit, looking up at the sky.

Bring a swimsuit, a towel and wool socks, and keep your hat on outside. If your heart isn't strong, skip the ice and enjoy the sauna.

Rovaniemi is small but it has a nightlife, mainly thanks to its university. Roy Club has been the town's karaoke bar and nightclub since 1985, and Finns take karaoke seriously. Paha Kurki is a rock bar in a town that gave the world Lordi, and Kauppayhtiö, a café, bar and vintage shop where everything is for sale, is good for an early beer (it closes at 9pm on Thursdays).

Ranua Wildlife Park is Finland's northernmost zoo and the only place in Finland to see polar bears. Its 2.8 km path of boardwalks winds through the pine forest past about 50 species of Arctic and northern animals in large enclosures: polar bears, brown bears, wolves, lynx, wolverines, moose, musk oxen, snowy owls and Arctic foxes. In winter, when the animals have their thick white coats and the forest is buried in snow, it feels like a real Arctic walk.

The polar bears are the stars. Go early, when the animals are most active, and check the feeding times.

Have lunch at the park's restaurant before you leave. Ranua is also the cloudberry capital of Finland, and cloudberry jam is the thing to buy. In Lapland the berry is called hilla, and Ranua proudly calls itself the cloudberry parish. Next to the park is Fazer's candy shop, where you can stock up on Finnish chocolate and the salty liquorice called salmiakki, an acquired taste.

Back in Rovaniemi, Lapland Brewery, Lapin Panimo, a craft brewery founded in 2016 on the edge of town, opens its doors for a public tour on Friday evenings, with tastings of its beers. Finland's best-known Lapland beer, Lapin Kulta, has not been brewed in Lapland since its brewery in Tornio closed in 2010.

For the evening, go back to the center for a drink at Pub Pisto, a pub since 1960 and a favorite of the Finnish writer Jari Tervo, who grew up in Rovaniemi. Try a lonkero, the Finnish gin and grapefruit long drink, or a shot of Koskenkorva, the Finnish grain spirit. Strong drinks are sold only at Alko, the state shops, and bar prices are high, so Finns do much of their drinking at home.

On a snowmobile safari you drive your own machine along marked trails through the forest and across the frozen river and lakes, stopping for hot drinks by a fire. You need a driving license to drive, and passengers ride behind. It's noisy and thrilling, and on a sunny day in March, with the snow glittering, it's one of the best things in Lapland.

For something quieter, go ice fishing: you drill a hole through half a meter of ice, sit on a reindeer skin and wait for a perch or a whitefish to bite, which may or may not happen. Many tours combine it with a snowmobile ride and grilling the catch over a fire.

Back in town, have lunch and a pullakahvit, coffee and a bun, at a traditional café like Antinkaapo, in business since 1984 (on Saturdays it closes at 2pm). Order karjalanpiirakka, Karelian pies of rye crust with rice porridge, warm with egg butter, a korvapuusti, the cinnamon bun, and in summer and autumn mustikkapiirakka, bilberry pie. If you see kampanisu, a comb-shaped sweet bun from the north of Finland, try it: it's getting hard to find.

Korundi, the house of culture, is in a red-brick building from 1933 that served as a garage for the postal buses, one of the few buildings that survived 1944. It holds the Rovaniemi Art Museum, with Finnish contemporary art and art from the north, and a concert hall that is home to the Lapland Chamber Orchestra. Check the program: a concert here is a good winter evening.

For the last dinner, try modern Lapland cooking: Arctic char, reindeer fillet, game, wild mushrooms and berries. Locals recommend Gustav in the center and Sky Kitchen & View on top of Ounasvaara; book ahead. Then, if the sky is clear, walk down to the riverbank one more time and look north.