For more information

Finnish Tourist Office (based in Helsinki)
For further information, please contact www.visitfinland.com
Inari: Inarintie (at the Siida museum)
Tel :+358 40 168 96 68 - Internet : www.inari.fi

How to get there

Finnair offers one flight a day between Paris CDG and Ivalo, in the north of Lapland, with a change of plane in Helsinki. With a total journey time of 6 hours 20 minutes and a departure at 10.50 am, you can appreciate the quality offered by the Finnish airline, recognised as the best in Northern Europe. Business and economy class, meals with Nordic accents served in elegant crockery designed by the Marimekko design house.
Tel: 0821 025 111 - Internet: www.finnair.com

Hotels

Ivalo

Aurora Village

As long as the snow has fallen freshly and swaddles the scattered cottages that make up the establishment like a Christmas story; as long as the night lights up with an aurora borealis... then you really do have the strong feeling of being in a white paradise. The cottages? There are 25 in all, like dolls' houses set in a circle in a birch forest and surrounding a reindeer enclosure. They all have a glass roof over the bed, so you can watch the Northern Lights from the comfort of your own home. The building housing the reception and restaurant - a little way off - is built around a central fireplace where a large wood fire crackles. It doubles up as a lounge in the evening, a charming, ultra-cosy room where you can play old-fashioned games in peace and quiet, adding to the atmosphere: cards, mikado, dominoes, etc. Note that Aurora Village is perfectly suited to business tourism, with an auditorium seating 70 people and three meeting rooms for 10 to 15 people. Activities include dog sledding, reindeer harnessing, snowmobiling, ice karting, hole fishing, aurora borealis viewing and snowshoeing.

Aurorakuja 38. 99 800 Ivalo. - Tel: + 358 40 04 18 881 - Email: info@auroravillage.fi - Internet : www.auroravillage.fi

Saariselkä

Star Arctic Hotel

Firstly, there's the view, a magnificent overhang from the heights of a hill overlooking the village of Saariselkä. Then there's the proximity of an alpine ski resort with all the necessary lifts, but from which snowmobile and cross-country ski excursions also depart. Finally, there's comfort, with semi-detached bungalows whose interior design, curiously very urban, is clearly Scandinavian. Blond wood, large picture windows opening onto balconies, a living room with designer furniture and a delightful mezzanine bedroom. The most recent bungalows are half-covered by glass roofs for watching the northern lights. The public area is also very contemporary, completely open plan, with large picture windows opening onto a large balcony overlooking the landscape and running the length of the building. It houses the reception, the restaurant and a cosy lounge with a fireplace. As is customary in Finland, the hotel has two large communal saunas, plus an individual sauna that can be made as private as you like. 57 rooms and a meeting room for 20 people. Activities: snowmobiling, husky and reindeer sledding, hole fishing, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.

Ylämajantie 1. 99 830 Saariselkä. - Tel: +358 44 419 4000 - Email: reception@stararctichotel.com - Internet : www.stararctichotel.com

Inari

Wilderness hotel Inari

Right on the shores of Lake Inari, which is completely frozen over in winter and, at 100 km long and 92 m deep, is the third largest lake in Finland. During the day, from the restaurant's wide windows, you can watch the incessant ballet of snowmobiles on the trail, as well as cross-country skiers and other snowshoe enthusiasts. At night, it's the turn of the lights of curious cabins on skates in search of the Northern Lights. The hotel, just five minutes from the town of Inari, is a veritable village in itself, with different areas each with its own characteristics: one is made up of glass-roofed bungalows, another of log cabins overlooking the lake and the third of rooms scattered around the forest, decorated in a Sami style. The same applies to the public areas, reception, restaurant, bar and lounge. The result is pillars made from gigantic debarked tree trunks, chandeliers and lamp bases made from reindeer horns, a giant fireplace and Sami drums hanging on the walls. Tasteful yet ultra-warm. 60 rooms, sauna, bar, lounge, restaurant. Activities: snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, vehicles for watching the Northern Lights...

Inarintie 2. 99870 Inari. - Tel: + 358 50 4477 887 - Email: sales@nellim.fi - Internet : www.nellim.fi

Wilderness hotel Nangu

All logs, inside and out, but elegant logs, particularly in the lounge-restaurant, one side of which is entirely glazed. As usual, the design is Scandinavian, sophisticated and precise, in chic beige or grey tones. Sami culture is everywhere, but discreetly present, even on the napkins, where it is beautifully expressed. The hotel is located half an hour from Ivalo, in the middle of the forest, on a hill with a breathtaking view over the lake. All the rooms are grouped together in a separate building, opposite reception, on the other side of a vast snow-covered esplanade that you cross when you come out of the sauna - it's great fun - barefoot and in very little clothing. Of course, the hotel offers every possible activity in the Lappish winter, including snowmobiling and husky sledding. But if there's one thing you've got to try, it's this new-look sledge, a kind of heavy-duty plastic tub that lets you go down slopes at high, even very high, speeds. In fact, the hotel has a breathtaking track that runs down to the lake practically from its lobby. Moguls and falls guaranteed. 25 rooms. Bar, lounge, restaurant, two saunas, including a smoke sauna.

Veskoniementie 1320. 99800 Inari. - Tel: +358 50 380 0010 - Email: sales@nellim.fi - Internet : www.nellim.fi

Restaurants

Aanaar

The Aanaar restaurant, undoubtedly one of the best in the region, is located within the walls of the Kultahovi hotel, the oldest hotel in Inari, opened in 1937 on the banks of the Juutua river rapids. Headed by chef Heikki Nikula, it serves cuisine made exclusively from local produce, from fish from the lake to reindeer meat, as well as dishes based on angelica, the Sami's favourite herb. The presentation is simply marvellous, sometimes steaming like molecular cuisine and at other times embellished, again in true Sami style, with lichen gathered from the tundra. It's what you might call an artist's kitchen.

Saarikoskentie, 2. 99 870 Inari. - Tel: +358 (0)16 511 7100 - Email: Inarin.kultahovi@co.inet.fi - Internet : www.hotelkultahovi.fi

Activities

The Inari tourist office offers a host of options and activities for discovering the Lapland landscape: aurora borealis viewing, dog sledding, reindeer sledding, snowmobiling, hole fishing, fat biking, ski touring, snowshoeing, reindeer farm visits, sledging for adults, ice karting, ice cars, safaris...

Visit Inari
Inarintie 38 - Tel: +358 40 179 6069 - Email : sales@visitinari.fi - Internet : www.visitinari.fi

Museums and conference centres

Siida

To better understand the culture of the Sami, how they lived and survived in this extreme climate, through 20,000 items, archives and photographs on their habitat, art, costumes and jewellery... outside, an eco-museum made up of buildings that escaped the scorched earth policy during the German debacle at the end of the last world war. They have been brought back here and reconstructed into a village that is truer to life: houses, farms, storage huts, etc.
and even a courthouse with period graffiti.

Inarintie 46. 99 870 Inari. - Tel: + 358 (0) 400 898 212 - Email: siida@samimuseum.fi - Internet : www.siida.fi

Sajos

A Sami cultural centre and the seat of Finland's Sami parliament, this ultra-contemporary building has an auditorium seating 254 people. Conferences are held here, as well as shows and concerts. Adjacent are three meeting rooms for 10 to 25 people.

FI-99870 Inari - Tel: +358 10 839 3109 - Email : sajos@samediggi.fi -
Internet : www.sajos.fi

Automobile test centre

Opened in 1991 next to Ivalo airport, this car testing centre is a real treat for incentive participants. It's here that manufacturers from all over the world - around a hundred in all - test their prototypes for driving on snow and ice in the greatest secrecy. They do this on both outdoor and indoor tracks, where extreme conditions are reproduced, even in summer. All of this can be visited, as long as you show your credentials. The centre has dedicated rooms for organising events, and participants can take test drives themselves.

Test World Oy
Nellimintie 569, P.O. Box 167. 99 801 Ivalo - Tel : +358 (0)44 778 8800 - Email : office@testworld.fi  - Internet : www.testworld.fi

Design

Design House Idoli

Hanneli and Pekka Sillfors welcome guests by appointment to their loft house on the shores of the lake; a contemporary house brimming with architectural finds - metal, wood and raw concrete - which also serves as an exhibition and sales venue for the best of Finnish design. On request and for exclusive groups of a minimum of six and a maximum of 26 people, they open their table where a chef prepares succulent regional cuisine.

Ukonjärvi, 99 800 Ivalo - Tel: +358 40 0197 181 - Email: idoli@idoli.fi -
Internet : www.idoli.fi

Practical guides

Traveller's library
Finland; Le Routard, Finland; Petit Fûté, Lapland.