New Year's Vacation in Lapland: The Winter Wonderland of Polar Night

The sun can only reach just below the horizon during the Lapland winter.

Most people head south in the winter. Beach, ocean, soaking up the sun. Escape the dreariness, the darkness. But there's another option: Lapland, in a small place north of the Arctic Circle. A vacation in the dark. An experiment.

I can't quite recall if we'd had too much wine already when a few friends and I decided to spend New Year's Eve in Lapland. Everyone else was flying to Spain or Italy, if they weren't staying home. We flew north - to Kiilopää.

It's a bit like having a first date in a dark restaurant

In the Finnish winter, everything is covered under a sparkling crust of snow.

Kiilopää is located in the Urho Kekkonen National Park in Lapland, a holiday log cabin island in a picturesque sea of pines.

More importantly, Kiilopää is north of the Arctic Circle - where the sun doesn't rise between December 4th and January 8th. Never! Polar night!

It's kind of like having a first date in a dark restaurant - quite exciting and a bit absurd because you've gone to see something presumably beautiful and get to know it, but you can't see it - because it's dark.

Although in Kiilopää, it's not quite as dark as in the restaurant. Even though the sun can't get over the horizon, it crawls close from below every day for a few hours and dips the landscape in gray-violet twilight. From 11 AM to 3 PM. Before and after that: darkness!

After the second 15-hour night: too rested to keep sleeping

Let's go - with snowshoes, cross-country skis, and husky sleds out into the twilight.

We're spending a New Year's vacation in Kiilopää. You might think there's no better place to relax because it's so easy to stay in bed and make up for the sleep deficit of the past eleven and a half months. So far, so true. If it weren't for being too rested after the second 15-hour night to keep sleeping.

So, eventually, you force yourself out of bed, well-rested but reluctant - it's still dark outside - to make some coffee, and spend the time until dawn meticulously planning for the four hours of twilight. Make the most of it!

At exactly 11 AM, everything is ready - cross-country skis, snowshoes, husky sleds, whatever. The main thing is to get outside! Head into the gray-purple hue. And now, after someone has briefly switched the lights on in the dark restaurant, you finally see some of the beauty.

Kiilopää is an Ice Age fairytale land

In the Finnish Ice Age fairytale land, you can watch reindeer.

The trees are encased in a shimmering crust; the signs meant to guide us through the vast white are too. The wind drives the snow over the expansive hills, into our red-frozen faces, attaching tiny snow crystals to our eyebrows. Ice Age fairytale land. It's very beautiful. And very cold. Four hours can be very cold.

Snowed in, we trudge back during the late twilight to our log cabin with its own sauna. This is - especially in Finland - not a luxury, but a functional defrosting chamber. At least on the first round. The second actually counts as wellness.

And after the third round, you might dare, completely exhausted from the temperature shift bath, to check the clock. 4:30 PM. Seven and a half hours until New Year - five and a half hours if you subtract the extensive New Year's Eve dinner. Maybe five - you need to blow dry your hair, get dressed, put on makeup. When you have the time!

Alcohol reportedly gets cheaper the further north you go in Finland

Four hours of blue hour - that's all the light a Lapland winter day offers.

So there are five hours left. Too early for... oh, what the heck. Pop. We're back with the wine, with which - we're now convinced - everything started somehow. Cards out. Doppelkopf. Mau-Mau. Asshole. It's long since dark outside, when a mild twilight begins in the head. 6:30 PM. Half an hour until the holiday dinner.

In Kiilopää, there is an abundance of time

The first course is served. We chew particularly thoroughly - because it tastes amazing. Maybe we're also chewing time away. Second course, third bottle. Third course - and so on. Honestly: I can't remember how we spent the last three hours until midnight - not because of the wine.

Four bottles, six people: Just about falls within the enjoyment category. I think it was simply the abundance of time that made the thoughts blur. Twilight in the head. I think we rambled a bit - about the coming year, the present, especially about what was. When you have the time!

And at some point, a few New Year's Eve fireworks explode over the sea of pines - just enough to remind you that there isn't much around you. And then you have a decent nightcap, before falling asleep far too early.

And when you're lying there - more relaxed than tired - suddenly the light turns on. Not in the room. Not outside. But in the head - because you realize that the twilight in your head isn't boredom, but a bit of peace that you would've never found in the light. Vacation!

Editorial note: This article first appeared in February 2018. We updated it in November 2021.

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