Sitting around a large wooden table with Toivo, the owner of Ylläshumina Hotel, with cups of coffee in hand, the conversation naturally wanders to the hours of daylight in Finnish Lapland.
“Is it not just really dark in December?” we ask. Toivo’s response is something that is the essence of real Lapland: a landscape, a feeling, submitting to a rhythm that’s intrinsically linked to nature.
“The body lives its own life, you sleep when you need to in your heart”, he says. And that’s when it dawns on me: you can’t force anything in Lapland – here, you’re a small part of this vast, frozen landscape, letting nature take the lead.
Toivo shows us around their hotel, which has been in the family since 1945, firstly as an inn reachable only by reindeer or horse from the nearest town 40km away. This remote Lappish wilderness has over the decades evolved to become a small family hotel where people in the know come for virtually guaranteed skiing from November to May (there’s 330km of skiing trails from the doorstep). The beauty of Ylläshumina is that it’s not a typical hotel – instead, the rooms, suites, and apartments are dotted in log cabins towards the lake, each housing two to four rooms. All in sympathy with the landscape.
Look closer and the details are impressive. Toivo and his wife designed the cabins themselves and chose all the interiors. Ninety-year-old Lappish wood is everywhere – a slow-growing birch made even more compacted from the cold conditions, ideal for insulation and soundproofing. Wooden planks form the footpath to take you between cabins. Plus, its beautiful hue glows, amber-like, as the sun sets or log fire roars. The suites, apartments, and superior rooms have their own log fires and even the iitala cups showcase classic Finnish design. Wool blankets are everywhere, as are details like hand-painted Lappish wildflowers on the key boxes painted by a local midwife.
At the heart of it all is family. Community. There’s the Finnish sauna and open-air Arctic Jacuzzi (a surreal experience as the snow falls around you), and while the apartments have their own saunas, Toivo explains that community is a big part of the Finnish sauna experience. A place to unwind, catch up, and warm up after a day on the ski trails.
Speaking of community, we head to the restaurant where the Qvist family welcome guests for a lavish buffet breakfast and dinner. Local specialities like salmon soup, cured salmon, salads, roasted beetroot, herring, braised elk, apple and cinnamon crumble are especially tempting after being out in the cold, while warm breakfasts, including waffles with cloudberry jam (my personal favourite) were perfect for setting you up for the day. Look out for the Lappish dinner, served every Wednesday…
Toivo’s favourite part of the hotel is the wine bar as you enter the restaurant. “Here you can catch up with guests, find out about their day, and see what they’d like to do while they’re here. A lot of guests come every year, sometimes even twice a year, so we can really get to know everyone and their interests”.
Not only do the thoughtful details come out in the design, the family remember everyone, what they like, and think of new things to keep people happy every year. They even added baths to the suites as guests said it’s what they like.
We then make our way to the hotel’s own ski service and activity centre, right beside the main building. Here you can rent everything – cross-country skiis, snowshoes, thermal coats and trousers, boots, gloves, socks – there’s no need to worry about bringing anything. And if you book more than three activities you have all the thermal clothing included for the week. They even designed and built their own ski waxing stations where guests can get their skis waxed or can do it themselves.
Michael, who will be our activity guide for the week, is there to take us out on our first winter walk in the Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park. Our forested trail (all trails are well-marked, too, with clear signage) leads us to Kotamaja about 6km away (Kota is Finnish for hut), which is the oldest in the national park, open since the 1970s. We stop along the way and Michael shows us the bearded plant – an indicator of very clean air – as well as tracks made by reindeer and rabbits. At one point he muses “there are trees here that are maybe 100 years old – I would love to know the stories they could tell”.
My favourite part is when he puts down his bag, places traditional cups in the snow and pours out hot berry juice. Guests also get cinnamon rolls and cheese rolls, so you don’t need to carry anything.
There’s a stillness in nature. Almost overwhelmingly so. And our snowshoe walk the next evening reveals Lapland’s secret at. As the sun sits on the horizon, its golden rays breaking through the trees, shimmering in last the snow, there’s not a sound to be heard. You could pay a small fortune for a spa experience, but the nature here heralds an inner peace that at times I find quite emotional.
As we pause our walking to take in the views, Michael says “I like to come out early in the morning or in the evening – it’s just you and nature, the wind in the trees, the birds. Complete stillness.”
Stillness.
We stop.
We breathe it all in.
Listening to the water bubbling beneath the ice, the trees swaying, shaking themselves off. The sun – just peeking out above the treeline – the orange rays, stretching, yawning, enveloping this vast landscape.
The sky, an endless painting above that makes way for the stars. We make our way to a kota where Michael lights a fire and hands out hot berry juice, listening to the crackling of the flames, we all seem to be deep in thought. The Kukastunturi fell holds special significance for Samí people, a place where loved ones enter the underworld and where they also come to remember them.
We’re here at the end of March, when the days are light until around 9pm, but even in the darker months of December and January, you’re able to head out into the forest under the stars. Each month is special in its own way.
Earlier that day we visited a small local reindeer farm, Poro-Pilko, about a 20-minute drive away, where Sanna welcomes us warmly. Jaybirds dance in the trees above, while the falling snow is causing her small herd of around 80 reindeer play and run like puppies experiencing their first snow. It’s an incredible and delightfully innocent sight.
Sanna is softly spoken, reflecting the peacefulness of her small corner of the Lappish wilderness. She talks about the different reindeer and how their names came about, including one called ‘Legend Boy’, who defied the odds and is now one of the tamest reindeer who comes to greet us. We’re taken to where some of the mother reindeer and their babies are and given some lichen to feed them. They come up to us tentatively at first then readily take the lichen from our hands, their soft noses brushing against our fingers. You can hear them breathing, these beautiful, shy creatures that add to this Narnia-like setting.
Afterwards, we head to one of the log cabins where Sanna deftly lights a fire and pours out homemade hot berry juice from a copper kettle sitting atop the fire as well as homemade cookies. We warm our hands and hear about modern-day reindeer farming and how it remains unchanged from generations before.
I sit back trying to take it all in. This place, the people, the landscape – there’s nowhere on Earth quite like it. The sheer vastness of it all with forested fells stretching for what seems like endless miles, the big open skies, and the way humans have made their mark sympathetically with the landscape.
And yet, Lapland has one last surprise up its sleeve for us. As we step out from the hotel bar into the inky-black night, the sky is suddenly ablaze with a green arc of light. We all gasp at the sight and crane our necks to watch the ultimate natural spectacle.
I hesitate to call it magical – everything we’ve experienced and felt in Lapland is real. Its authenticity lies in nature, held above everything else, a feeling like we’re a million miles from anywhere. In this moment, Toivo’s wise words come to mind – “it’s in your heart”.