Advertisement
Advertisement
Travel pros and cons
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
Santa Claus and his reindeer in Rovaniemi, Lapland, in Finland. Photo: AFP

Visiting Lapland: the good, bad and ugly sides to Santa Claus Village, Rovaniemi

  • Not only do you get to meet the big man himself, you can also take in the Northern Lights under Finland’s stunning night skies
  • But day-tripping tourists have turned a trip to the grotto an environmental disaster

The good

It’s not quite the North Pole, which lies 2,570km to the north, but for children young and old, Napapiiri, 96930 Rovaniemi, Finland, is near enough. The post office in Santa Claus Village, which lies right on the Arctic Circle, receives about half a million letters from well-behaved children annually. The sorting room is open throughout the year but the elves go into overdrive as Christmas approaches, responding to requests from around the globe. Youngsters from Poland, Italy, Britain and Japan used to be the most prolific writers but they’ve all been overtaken. In 2018, a record 100,000 letters arrived from China.

Rovaniemi’s festive foundations date back to 1950 and a visit from Eleanor Roosevelt. A small log cabin was built to welcome the by then already former United States first lady to the capital of Lapland and the letter she addressed to the serving president of the US, Harry Truman, was the first to be sent from the Arctic Circle.

The cabin still exists, surrounded today by Santa Claus Village. In a shrewd move some years ago, Rovaniemi trademarked itself as “the official hometown of Santa Claus” and has never looked back. Throngs of excited sightseers pour in from around the world. In 2018, airports across Lapland – the largest and northernmost region of Finland – welcomed 677 Christmas charters, including 280 to Rovaniemi. Last week, Turkish Airlines introduced a symbolically significant service from Istanbul. St Nicholas, the third-century saint who inspired Santa Claus, was from the Turkish city of Antalya.

The Northern Lights over Lapland. Photo: Shutterstock

Many visitors come on day trips. After riding a snowmobile 8km from Rovaniemi city to Santa Claus Village for a one-to-one with the Big Man, there’s the chance to experience husky-sledding, ice fishing and reindeer sleigh rides. Winter-sports enthusiasts can hone their downhill skills or try out the 800-metre toboggan run at the Ounasvaara ski resort, in the middle of town. A museum might sound like an odd way to pass time in Lapland but the excellent Arktikum science centre offers a crash course in Arctic ways of life, with exhibitions on issues affecting the region, such as climate change and the status of the indigenous reindeer-herding Sámi people.

Another must-see is the Snowman World Ice Restaurant and Bar, which serves up Lappish dishes in rooms carved out of snow and ice. No wonder it’s known as the “coolest place in the Arctic Circle”.

More than 90 times the size of Hong Kong, Lapland is one of the best places in which to witness the Northern Lights – on a “safari” perhaps, or from your glass-roofed igloo accommodation. But whether you catch a glimpse of the dramatic solar wind spectacular or not, be sure to round off the evening by thawing frozen limbs in that most wonderful of Finnish inventions, the sauna.
Lastly, if you’re worried that it’s too late to send Santa a letter this year, here’s the good news. You can contact him by email. His address is [email protected].

The bad

Tourists watch a Christmas show in Rovaniemi. Photo: AFP

In Finnish folklore, Santa hails not from the North Pole but from Korvatunturi, a rock formation shaped like an ear that enables him to hear children’s wishes, no matter how far away they are. Problem is, Korvatunturi is inconveniently situated in a remote region of Finland, near the border with Russia, hundreds of kilometres from any­where. Rovaniemi, by comparison, has its historical (Roosevelt) hut, a railway station and an airport built during the second world war by the Luftwaffe. It’s easy to see why it was chosen as the official hometown of Santa Claus over the isolated original.

It’s not so much the rapidly increasing number of flights to increasingly commer­cial­ised Rovaniemi that concerns environ­mentalists, but that so many seasonal sight­seers book 24-hour trips. These conveyor-belt tours provide little opportu­nity to absorb the beauty of the Arctic or learn about the lifestyles of the Sámi people. It’s a three-hour flight to Lapland from, say, London or Amsterdam, but would you fly the equivalent of Hong Kong to Tokyo and back for an afternoon’s sightseeing?

Forget the ski resort, museum and ice fishing, there’s just about enough time for a quick dogsled ride, a chance to buy some cheesy gift shop souvenirs and a few moments with Santa. The use of personal cameras, phones and other recording gadgets is prohibited of course, so you’ll have to pay through the nose for an authorised photo of the fleeting encounter.

Sámi men in traditional attire. Photo: Shutterstock

Tourism activists, Responsible Travel, describe the fly-in, fly-out visits as “not beneficial socially, environmentally, or, crucially, economically”, suggesting instead that we spend “four or five days in Lapland with Santa being a part of a bigger cultural picture”. Furthermore, winter visitors to Rovaniemi can expect as little as an hour or two of sunlight a day. Granted, long periods of darkness are an advantage when it comes to spotting the Northern Lights, but the odds of nailing the bucket-list favourite are much reduced when you have limited time.

The Sámi rely ever more on tourism as a source of income, working as Northern Lights tour guides or by providing sleigh rides and arranging visits to reindeer farms. They are less than happy about the exploitation of their culture, though. The people formerly known as Lapps say their way of life is being appropriated and ancient customs belittled, leading to prejudice and stereo

­typing. To make matters worse, climate change is deci­mating their livestock. Huge temperature swings are causing snow and ice to freeze, melt and freeze again, hampering reindeers’ ability to get at the lichen on which they graze. The Arctic has lost 2.6 million reindeer over the past 20 years.

Oil, gas and mining have also had a profound impact on Sámiland, polluting water supplies and scarring pristine land­scapes. Supporters claim the industries provide employment in a region that desperately needs investment.

The ugly

Snowmobiles in Lapland, Finland. Photo: Shutterstock

Talking of the environment, gas-guzzling snowmobiles produce significantly more carbon monoxide and unburned hydro­carbons than cars, but without them, tourism, and thus livelihoods, would suffer. Besides, if you’re happy to fly thousands of kilometres for a brief audience with a bearded man in a red suit, then a snowmobile ride isn’t going to dent your green credentials much further.

In 2018, the first all-electric “e-sledges” arrived in the frozen north of Finland. The silent, emission-free machines rely on local water power and energy from other renewable sources. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll be flying to Lapland aboard electric planes within a decade. Don’t sneer – you used to believe in Santa!

Post