When did Lapland become a checklist?

Northern Lights over our cabin in early September - you don’t need winter for the show!

Why you don’t need to fill every day of your holiday with activities

Somewhere along the way, a winter holiday in Lapland seems to have become a checklist.

Husky safari. Reindeer ride. Snowmobile tour. Northern Lights tour. Snowshoeing. Ice fishing. Ice floating. Ice hotels and igloos.

Something in the morning. Something in the afternoon. Something again in the evening.

And sometimes we find ourselves wondering:

When did simply being in Lapland stop being enough?

People used to come here for the quiet

Tourism in Lapland hasn’t always looked like it does today. In fact it was the summer season that used to be when people travelled here - not winter and the activities we offer now.

People came north because it was remote. Because there was nature, silence and space. They came to hike, to spend time outside and to experience a landscape and a way of life very different from the places they came from.

The nature itself was the experience.

Of course, tourism changes. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to try something new while you are here.

But today, it can sometimes feel as though experiencing Lapland means collecting as many Arctic activities as possible before flying home.

And the funny thing is that many of the activities sold as must-do Lapland experiences aren’t actually things most of us living here regularly (or ever) do ourselves.

That doesn’t necessarily make them bad or meaningless.

A visit with a responsible reindeer herder can introduce you to a livelihood and culture you might otherwise know very little about. A good husky experience can teach you about working dogs and the people who dedicate their lives to them. And going into nature with an experienced guide can completely change what you notice and understand about the landscape around you.

An activity can absolutely add something to your time here.

But perhaps the activity doesn't always need to be the experience.

Waking up - lighting up a fire and sipping your morning coffee or tea while watching the fire.. that’s life.

We see this in Expedition travel too

After years of guiding in Svalbard and Antarctica, there is one particular thing we have noticed again and again.

We can be somewhere extraordinary, surrounded by wildlife, glaciers, mountains or sea ice. As guides, there is an almost endless amount of information we could tell to our guests.

We can interpret what they are seeing. Explain the geology. Talk about wildlife. Tell stories. Point things out.

But sometimes we stop.

We ask everyone to be completely quiet for a few minutes.

No interpretation.

No talking.

No trying to spot the next thing.

Just listening.

And surprisingly often, guests later tell us that those few minutes were among the moments they remember most.

Not because something spectacular happened.

Nothing happened.

They simply had enough time and quiet to realize where they were.

One of our favorite ‘‘activities’’ is to walk to our forest, light up a fire and enjoy a meal with no rush around it.

It is surprisingly difficult to do nothing

We understand the temptation to fill your itinerary.

You may have dreamed about coming to Lapland for years. Perhaps you have travelled a very long way and spent a considerable amount of money to get here.

Of course you want to make the most of it.

And when there are so many experiences available, an empty afternoon can almost start to feel like wasted time.

Shouldn’t we be doing something?

But making the most of your holiday doesn’t necessarily mean doing the most.

Sometimes it means leaving enough room for the place itself.

What if you left one day empty?

If you are planning 5 days in Lapland, you don’t necessarily need five days filled with organized activities.

Try leaving some space.

Wake up without an alarm.

Look outside before deciding what you are going to do.

Take a walk simply because the light is beautiful.

Put on snowshoes or skis and see where you end up.

Stop somewhere in the forest.

Drink something warm outside.

Come back when you feel cold.

Make a fire and warm up around your fire place.

Have a sauna in the middle of the afternoon.

Soak in the hot tub.

Read a book.

Watch the light disappear.

Go outside again after dark just to see what the sky looks like.

You don’t need to turn every one of those things into an experience you booked.

Sometimes being here is the experience.

And what if there are no Northern Lights?

This is perhaps one of the clearest examples of how easy it is to start measuring a holiday by what happened rather than how it felt. Northern Lights equals the same as seeing polar bears in Svalbard.

You go outside at night.

The sky is clear.

There are more stars that you can usually see at home. Snow covers the ground. The forest is completely still.

But there are no Northern Lights.

Was it a disappointing evening?

We don’t think so.

You spent an evening outside under a dark Arctic sky in Finnish Lapland.

That is already something.

If the Northern Lights appear, wonderful.

But if they don’t, you haven’t lost an evening.

You spent an evening in Lapland.

Choose experiences because they mean something to you.

None of this means we think you should come to Lapland and do absolutely nothing.

Far from it.

There are wonderful people here offering experiences that can genuinely deepen your understanding of this place.

What we would question is the idea that you need to do all of them.

You don’t have to go snowmobiling because someone told you it is a must-do.

You don’t have to book a Northern Lights chase every evening.

You don’t have to ride in a husky sled, visit reindeer, go ice floating and sleep in a glass igloo for your holiday to count as a proper Lapland holiday.

Ask yourself what you are actually curious about.

Choose a few experiences that mean something to you. Choose operators carefully. Give those experiences enough time.

And then leave some gaps.

This is also how we think about hosting

It is one of the reasons we don’t want a stay with us to feel like an itinerary that needs to be completed.

If you want to experience something while you are here, we can help you find activities with people we know and trust.

But we also want you to have time to be here.

To enjoy the cabin.

To go outside without having somewhere to be.

To sauna.

To watch the river.

To notice that it has started snowing.

To sit around the table for longer than planned.

Even with a Fully Hosted Stay, being looked after doesn’t have to mean being entertained every minute of the day.

Sometimes good hosting means taking care of enough of the practical things that you finally have the freedom to do nothing.

Maybe we need to stop trying to experience everything

There will always be another activity you could have booked.

Another place you could have visited.

Another thing you could have squeezed into the afternoon.

You probably won’t see everything during one trip to Lapland.

And that’s okay.

We would rather see someone leave having really experienced a few things than having rushed through twenty of them.

Because after years of taking people into some of the most extraordinary landscapes in the Arctic and Antarctic, we keep coming back to the same lesson:

Sometimes the moment people remember isn’t the moment when we showed them something.

It’s the moment we stopped talking long enough for them to experience it themselves.

So when you plan your trip to Lapland, book the things that genuinely excite you.

And then?

Leave a little space for nothing.