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Rovaniemi, in northern Finland, is a town like no other. For a start, it has fewer people than reindeer. Dozens of men folk sport big white beards. And it has an enormous post office: a great log cabin in the middle of nowhere. But then the town is, theoretically, the home of Santa Claus, the destination to which thousands of children are brought to indulge fantasies of flying reindeer, sleighs and a red-suited giver of gifts.
What makes this place different from the other Santa-theme park in northern Scandinavia is that Rovaniemi does tourism without tackiness, offering old-fashioned sleigh rides, husky races, and visits to reindeer farms and craftsmen in picture-perfect countryside. Even more appealingly, now that there is an overnight sleeper from Helsinki that whisks travellers into Rovaniemi in time for breakfast, it is possible to take a long weekend break to the Arctic Circle, and do it in style.
husky sled
At Rovanimi train station, a driver from Lapland Safaris picks you up, and in a chain-wheeled four-by-four takes you to a log-cabin house, before a snowmobile ride through the hills, whizzing over the countryside and icy lakes. There’s a chance to stop at the Arctic Circle Reindeer Farm, a sweet log-cabined working farm within a snowy forest, where you can drive the furry creatures from a fur lined sled. Then lunch is on offer of, er, reindeer, at the folksy Nili restaurant, followed by a visit to the spellbinding Arktikum museum, with its displays of Sami life, Arctic creatures, icebergs and igloos. Best of all are the husky sled rides, which involve guests driving their own eight-dog sleighs through forests and over frozen lakes.
Black Tomato (0207 426 9888) organises three-night stays in log cabins, with return flights and trains, transfers, and husky and snowmobile safaris, from £1515.
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