Late Nov/Early Dec Hol in Scandinavia

roxalana

Hi all,

Me & my other half will be going to Scandinavia at the end of November for a friends wedding in Helsinki. We are not terribly well travelled and although I've looked at the lonely planet guide, it is not really geared for winter travel - presumably because everyone else sensibly visits there in the warmer months!

Ideally, we'd like to start in Stockholm, travel by boat to Tallin, then to Helsinki, hopefully manage Tampere and then up to near the Arctic Circle to visit the Santa Claus village (we may be late 20s, with no kids, but we can't pass that up!).

To some extent we are constrained by finances, so the order and extent of our travel is flexible at the moment, but before I start pricing things up I want to check if there are any recommendations on this board and also whether there is anything pressing I need to know before I start planning - i.e. if the ferries don't run, are prone to cancellation at that time of year, taking a train from Tampere to the Santa Claus Village is madness - much better to fly etc.

All help appreciated!

roxalana

Just bumping this up!

Let me know if I need to give more information or anything.

poe.tuesday

santa claus village is in Rovaniemi (I believe) which is a large city and it also probably won't have any snow so the whole experience may not be what you were hoping for, you also need to ensure that you don't end up in the santa park which is real tat

TBH with you at that time of year you are probably not going to see any snow, not unless you go north, even in the ski resorts such as Yllas and Levi there may not be any snow, if you fancy going north then I recommend Yllas, it's a traditional Lapp village with lots of log cabins in the woods, very beautiful, lots to do and see but it all depends on the snow, you really have to have to snow to do the acitivies, if you wanted to go there you can get the overnight sleeper train to Kolari and Yllas is about 40km away, you could also fly with Blue1

If you wanted to go even more north then head upto Saariselka, you can either fly or take the coach (it's a hell of a long way away), there are no trains that go that far north

It's a real shame you are going at that time of year as if you go later you can go to the ice castle at kemi, go on the icebreaker cruise and do all the santa stuff whilst it's snowing etc

If you do fancy lapland etc later on in the year, let me know etc

roxalana

Thanks Poe.

Thanks for letting me know there is likely to be no snow. Do you know how cold it is likely to be at the time of the year?

Yllas sounds nice, but I doubt we'll get that far. Rovaniemi is a bit of a way!

If we can, we will probably go to Rovaniemi for the Santa Claus village (every Xmas is a battle in our house as I insist that decorations don't go up until December else OH would have them up in September! Against our better judgement we are lovers of Santa Claus tat!)

Do you think it is worth getting the train to Rovaniemi rather than flying? I thought it might be more of an experience, as we are quite limited to the number of days we can spend places.

poe.tuesday

I think the train would be lovely, as for the temps, it could be anything but I would say it would be above freezing, where as at christmas up in yllas last year the coldest it got was -15 for one day then in feb just gone it was -22 - its amazing being in those temps