Making the most of your time in Äkäslompolo!

If you’re here on a package trip, you might not have much time for exploring and finding out what you can do in and around the village.  There are loads of options!

I hope you will find the notes here useful in making the most of your time here.  I would have included pictures, but I’m sure you’ll be busy taking your own!

Any comments, suggestions, feedback, questions etc. very welcome! 

* Adventures

* Skiing

* Eating Out

* Souvenirs

* Fire and Light

Adventures

If you want to look beyond the options offered by your tour reps, or prefer to explore in a smaller group, relax, it’s easy!  

There are local safari companies that will be delighted to help.  

On the way up Sivulante, the road that heads off to the right as you walk up the hill from the Supermarket, you will see Destination Lapland on your left with the giant lit-up kick sledge outside. 

There are several safari companies further up the same road on the left.  These are staffed by lovely people who all speak good English and will happily organise tours for you.

Husky drawn sled tours (something everyone should do once), exploring in groups on snowmobiles or even hiring snowmobiles to go off exploring on your own with clear maps and instructions.

You might have heard of the Lainio Snow Village.  It’s absolutely worth a visit to see all the snow and ice sculptures.  The best way to get there is to hire snowmobiles for a few hours and follow the map at your own speed, but it’s an easy taxi trip too.   

Skiing

You’re probably aware that there is a ski slope here.  Even if you didn’t plan on skiing, or indeed you’ve never been on skis before, if you head up the Scenic Road (Maisematie) to Y1 on one of the Ski Buses that run regularly from all the hotels, you can hire all the equipment you’ll need.

The instructors are fantastic with all levels from absolute beginners upwards, and even a one-hour lesson will get a non-skier you to a surprisingly reasonable and confident level. It’s also a great family activity. 

Less well-known to many UK travellers is that Äkäslompolo is one of the best places for cross-country skiing.  You might have seen some of the tracks (two parallel lines a few inches apart that head off into the countryside often starting under wooden arches). 

There are more than 300km of ski tracks in this area, with quite a few lit until 10pm for the more enthusiastic skier.

Cross-country skiing is really quite easy to get started with, and skiing off into the woods in the twilight is lovely experience. 

The Äkäslompolo Sport Shop and Sportia both hire all the equipment you’ll need to get started and organise lessons too.  If you have the time, this really is a great way to spend a few hours.  This was what kept us coming back here originally.

You might see ski maps for sale in the shops and supermarket. These pay for the upkeep of the ski trails for everyone, and keep them free for use.  As well as being nice souvenirs, you can really help the area by purchasing one of these.   

If you find yourself getting quite confident and want to venture a bit further away, you’ll see lots of rustic wooden signs pointing to wilderness cafés out on the ski trails.  Never did hot chocolate and doughnuts taste better than after an hour of skiing!

Eating Out

With many package trips, all food and accommodation is included.  Even so, it’s worth exploring the local cuisine further at one of the local restaurants, especially if you like trying local food like reindeer and arctic char.  (Tip - pretty much everyone that isn’t vegetarian likes reindeer)

Poro Restaurant is up past the Yllaskaltio hotel.  Take the right fork in the road and it’s about 250m down the road on the right.  It’s a lovely setting and fantastic Finnish food.  There’s also a nice gift shop there.

To get to Restaurant Rouhe, the newest restaurant in Äkäslompolo, you need to go down the main road past the supermarket to the T-junction, there you can’t miss it on your left at the far side of the junction.  As well as a range of local foods, they also do fantastic pizza!

Eväskori is a nice pub which sometimes does karaoke, and serves great pizza.

Ylläksen Kaivohuone (The Sport Bar) has a good range of sport channels and also serves food.  (Can’t say much more as not been there yet.)

Julli’s has long been a favourite here with tourists.  It’s more of a pub/restaurant, but also does lovely burgers, where you can even chose one with antlers! (a delicious smoked- reindeer topping ).

The Selva pub (Selvä Pyy) is just in front of the supermarket on the main road and also serves great local burgers. 

Tower Restaurant and Nightclub is another very new restaurant in town, also just in front of the supermarket.  It’s excellent quality and, if you have any energy left after a day in the snow, and the pubs close too early for you, has a nightclub that’s open from 10pm to 4am.

Souvenirs

On the main road there are several shops selling lots of Lappish products, many made by local craftspeople.  If you can’t find some good souvenirs in those, you’re really not trying!

Jounin Kauppa is the fantastically large supermarket here.  Pretty much anything you need you’ll find there, as well as lots of gift options.  There is also a well-stocked chemist, a café and a post box there.

Navettagalleria is a lovely little arts and culture wilderness café open from 10am to 3pm Mon to Friday.  Here you can be sure to meet the magical gnomes of the forest.  Easiest to ski or drive/taxi to.

Fire and Light

As you move around the village, you'll probably see lots of candles and torches burning outside shops and cabins.  

On special occasions, (3pm on Christmas Eve and 8pm on New Year’s Eve) the villagers place candles along the sides of the main streets and switch off the street lighting.  There can’t be many better times to see the village.

At around 11pm on New Year’s Eve, down near the supermarket car park, there will be a Fire lantern event, where you can buy and launch your own lanterns to celebrate New Year. 

On “normal” days, the village street lights are switched off at 10pm to make it easier to see the Northern lights (Aurora Borealis) when they make one of their unpredictable, but spellbinding, appearances. 

Have a wonderful time in Äkäslompolo!

Arctic Chills

Since we arrived in Lapland, it's been, not surprisingly for winter, a bit chilly.

Of course, it's all relative, and having the temperature moving between about -5 and -15C is great for cross-country skiing, and isn't at all like the bone-chillingly damp cold that we were used to in UK winters. 

Yesterday, all that changed.  The temperature dipped below -20C and then started plummeting!

Getting a little chilly!

This is how it looked last night... By then, all was calm.  

Earlier, in the afternoon, just as the numbers hit the -30s, we had a power cut, leaving us scrabbling for candles and head-torches by the flickering light of the log fire.

Sitting around the roaring fire in candlelight, is a lovely winter setting, only, in our case, slightly tinged with worry as to how long the remaining logs (and furniture if necessary) will burn for, and how long that will keep the winter chill outside. 

Using the video camera to record the dark stillness outside, my wife wondered out loud if we should keep the remaining four minutes of battery life to record any "last messages"!

Fortunately, the power cut lasted only ten minutes or so, but it was a timely reminder of just how vulnerable we are at the mercy of potentially severe Arctic weather.  

Roadtrip to the Arctic

I've never really understood what "Quantity Surveying" was all about, but the concept came to mind as I looked at the stacks of boxes, wrapped furniture and bags of clothing in the middle of our living room on a morning in September.

Without being too precise, it looked like a heck of a lot of stuff!  More importantly, it looked like a lot more stuff than would fit in the Transit van that we had just hired to take all our stuff to Lapland. 

Ah, yes, we have taken the decision to give up our jobs, house, and life in West London and relocate to the North of Finland, but more on that later.

Fortunately, packing is one of my wife's special skills and,  even though it looked a bit touch and go at the halfway stage... 

We soon had a van full, even (just) finding space to fit in the trolley and headed off around the M25 to Harwich to catch the overnight ferry to Esbjerg in Denmark. 

As we arrived at the port, "Cargo" side rather than "Passenger, it became apparent that we were amongst some "Proper" cargo, with some lorries shipping items that were far bigger than our van, possibly even bigger than the house we will be moving to!

And it didn't look much more impressive when we finally loaded our Tonka toy Transit van on to the ferry!










Once in Denmark we took off in the direction of Sweden, passing over the mightily impressive Øresund Bridge and towards Stockholm and the North.

All was going well until the light started fading.  As it became gradually darker, the number of cars, vans, buses, in fact everything but bicycles, heading towards us, were flashing their lights.

Realising that this was not a traditional welcome to foreigners, we quickly realised that we had yet to adjust our headlights, or at least attach the fairly pathetic and ineffective looking strips we had purchased on the ferry.  

Bingo! Despite our skepticism, we didn't dazzle any further Scandinavians from that point on.  

Maybe just as well, since it's a long old drive from Denmark to Lapland!

Most of our route was through Sweden, and, while the scenery is lovely, the roads are relatively quiet and the Swedes have some of the largest and most picturesque lakes in Europe, we found out, at 6:30pm on Sunday, that some of the petrol stations have sharp kerbs too!

Just as we had filled up, and were about to head off for a last driving stint for the day, there was a popping noise and suddenly the van was listing significantly to Port.  

A quick look around the back confirmed that, not only was the tyre flat, but had a four inch tear in the sidewall.  Stuck in the middle of nowhere with a flat tyre and a van so heavily laden that the basic jack provided would have no chance of lifting it.  This was not part of the plan.  

But, it was a good time for a reminder of why we are heading for Lapland.  It does seem that the further North you get, the more people are keen to help each other out.  

After a chat with the filling station team, and some help from a local Swedish chap, we soon had the local tyre specialist heading our way in a converted ambulance.

Half an hour later, and some serious testing for his jacks, we were on the way again.

(Special thanks to Tobias and his girlfriend for listening to the foreigners ramblings and taking it all in their stride) 

Fortunately, even at this time of year, there are more hours of daylight, in the Arctic than in Blighty, so it was quite easy to see that we were getting close, even at 7:30 pm. 

Another hour or so, and we made it to Ylläs and started loading our worldly goods into our cabin.

Stage one complete.  Now we need to get ourselves and the van back to the London, work out a couple of weeks work notice, then get ourselves to Lapland before winter really arrives...