A Special Word For Children:-

 Father Christmas lives in the Finnish part of Lapland on a hill called Korvatunturi, which means ‘the hill with ears’, because of its shape. It is from there that he listens to wishes from children all over the world and, if they have been good, tries to make them come true.
A few American children think that Father Christmas lives at the North Pole which is rather silly, because if he did, what would Rudolph, Prancer and Dancer have to eat - there is only snow and ice at the North Pole!

He only shows himself to children who believe in him and who are lucky enough to be taken to see him. Some grown-ups never see him because they don’t really believe he exists. In December his elves make him move to different villages because it gets very cold in Korvatunturi. Nobody knows for certain how old Father Christmas is because in Lapland birthdays are only recorded on reindeer driving licences and a long time ago, Father Christmas lost his whilst out in the forest!

Sometimes you see people in department stores or high streets dressed as Father Christmas - they work for the real Father Christmas when he has a cold and his hearing is bad, or there is so much snow that the echo in Korvantunturi makes it difficult to hear what children are saying.

Our boss is one of the few grown-ups to have met Father Christmas who, just like a Mummy or a Daddy, doesn’t look exactly the same every day. If his elves have been naughty, or Mrs Christmas grumpy, he can be grumpy himself. He has to clip his beard just like everybody else - so sometimes it can be short and sometimes long.

He wears different boots depending on whether he is driving his sleigh or a snowmobile. And he is very bad at doing his own washing, so sometimes his coat looks faded and small if he has cleaned it himself.

Everything else about him is a secret until December.

Use our trip search to find:-

Before Christmas in Harriniva

Harriniva lies in the beautiful, rolling fell land of Western Lapland where the hills and forests typify a Lapland untouched for 1,000 years. The setting of your hotel is alongside the Muonionjoki River and is also home to the largest group of huskies in Lapland.

Dancing with Elves (3days)

Father Christmas Adventures (4days)

Fun with Father Christmas

Y llas’s seven fells lie east of Europe’s longest free streaming river, the Tornio-Muoniojoki, just over a 100 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. Dominated by its eponymous fell and with two original Sami villages, Akaslompolo and Yllasjarvi, this unique fell area is renowned for its subtle landscapes and awesomely dramatic scenery.

Fun with Father Christmas (4 days)

Christmas in Kakslauttanen

Set close by a national park amidst beautiful Lapland scenery, Kakslauttanen is one of the most special retreats in Finnish Lapland. As well as providing the perfect fairytale setting for Christmas, the area has excellent facilities for safaris and skiing.

Christmas in Kakslauttanen (5 days)

New Year Kakslauttanen

The unique charm of Kakslauttanen, set in the pine forests and rolling fells of Western Lapland, provides a special backdrop for a New Year away from it all. As the Old Year gives way to the New, fortunes are told in the traditional Sami manner and fireworks along with (hopefully) the Northern Lights illuminating the night sky.

Chrismas By Lake Inari (5 days)

Lying on the shoreline of frozen Lake Inari, whose islands are the ancestral burial grounds of the Sami, is the tiny village of Nellim. The tranquility of the setting and the genuine warmth of your welcome lends a Christmas here an almost mystical charm.


New Year By Lake Inari (5 days)

The kaleidoscopic mix of cultures in Nellim with its Inari, Skolt and Northern Sami roots and the possibility of the Northern Lights swirling around over the pine forest, make a New Year here something of a culinary & festive riot. Being close to the apex of 3 zones also means celebrations go on quite a bit! .

What the Papers say...

In December 2004 David Wickers of The Sunday Times, along with his son Jonah,
 travelled with us to Finnish Lapland. This is what he had to say

It has been calculated that on Xmas Eve Father Christmas would have to cover more than 100 million miles, travelling at 1000 miles per second, in order to be able to make all his promised deliveries. Now, either that means the Santa thing is a complete load of rubbish or it's a complete load of magic. Personally we favour the latter. And that's because we - me and son Jonah, age six - went to see him. The real one that is, at his home in Finnish Lapland, not some department store sales assistant cross dressing for a silly season. Here's how.

THE FLIGHT

We flew first to Helsinki, where the pilot had to go into a holding pattern because of air traffic congestion. Too many reindeers training for the big event, I explained to the boy. Then on to Kittila. 'Cor, look down there Dad,' he called out, nose pressed against the plane window. 'There's snow on top of the control towers'. It was 1.30 pm and already beginning to get dark. Or not beginning to get light. Although more famous as the summer land of the midnight sun, in winter Lapland is the land of the midday dark

We boarded a coach, nice and snug, and drove into the black and white night.

THE HOTEL

The family-run Harriniva is a wilderness holiday centre on the edge of a national park. Originally built as a stopover for German adventurers on their way to the North Cape, it looked like a log cabin that had swallowed Alice's 'drink me' potion, the one that makes her enormous. It stands on the banks of the river Muoni, which we couldn't really see because it looked just like more snow. Sweden begins on the opposite side.

On the inside Harriniva looked like the innards of a sauna, all pine fresh and with more layers of insulation than a pass-the-parcel package. It was so cosy and comforting that I half thought I might spend the next couple of days without bothering to venture into the wickedly cold world beyond the sextuple glazing, where even breath from a whisper rises like a steam train.

We checked into our room and found a wardrobe full of clothes belonging to a giant and his big son. The monster outfits - outer thermal shell suits, moon boots, gloves and top mittens, tea cosy woolly tophats and Johnny English balaclava underhats - were for us, handpicked from the Harriniva stores according to the measurements that we had posted ahead. Our wooden room even had a mini sauna ('but what I thought was funny was that it didn't have a bath'). We had dinner ('better soup than in London Dad'), went to bed and sleep like well honeyed bears.

THE ACTION

Grown ups should really turn the whole 'visit to Santa' experience on its head and think not short break to see the bearded one, with a few snowy things on the side, but a package of soft adventures in the snow with Santa as a celebrity bonus.

We rode, swaddled beneath deer skins, on a sleigh pulled by a reindeer who I passed off as Rudolph, explaining how his nose only shines for night flights (little known Finnish Aviation Authority regulation). We mush-mushed a sled pulled by a team of huskies - Harriniva has its own husky farm - following tracks though an empty, silent, duvet world of snow, ice and a million and one conifers. I snowmobiled across frozen lakes following Jonah who was huddled together with the other children on a trailer sleigh and sliding down really fast and you get to feel really sick. 'We drank mulled rose hip tea around a fire inside a Sami teepee while a charismatic old Shaman dressed in furs told us a meaningful tale about a little Lapp and a reindeer (J: 'I liked the biscuits'). We were offered the chance of a swim in the ice hole but said no thanks, some other time perhaps.

After a dinner, of salmon pinned on board and roasted on an open fire, we layered up again in our suits stepped outside to meet a man.

THE MAN

Santa was the star turn. Jonah and I were bundled up in elkskins in a sled pulled by 'playmoblie' (snowmobile) and were driven to the heart of darkness. Ice sparkled in the pines like fireflies, snowy meadows radiated a ghostly blue light. Even buried deep beneath our layers of Ranolf Fiennes wear you have a sense of the wild, icy fangs of death licking across the valley floor, we looked for the Northern Lights, those magical wisps of fluorescent trails fanned by the solar wind, but cloud obscured the sky.

For the last half mile or so, the track through the forest was lined with 'lights with fires inside them' (flaming torches). We saw a lonely cabin, lights radiating from within like an advent calendar. Elves greeted us at the door and took us into Santa's home for a private audience. The interior was like a glowing womb of good tidings, a scene so exceedingly perfect, a pair of elves busy wrapping presents to the side while the man himself sat in a big throne of a chair.

I was half dreading the encounter, imagining all sorts of naff jollity, with giveaway glimpses of hush puppies and M&S ankle socks peeking from the bottom of the red robes. But here was a real pro with homespun fireside words on the spirit of Christmas instead of the usual "ho ho ho, been a good boy" patter. I was impressed and so was the boy who, for a rare moment in his waking life, was reduced to silent gawping. When he shook his hands I thought he was about to teeter over backwards like a Coldstream Guard during a Trooping the Colour heatwave. Afterwards all he could recall was 'He was very old, about 69. His house was nice and warm and his bed was very long.'

Santa also turned up after supper on the last night. He pulled up in his reindeer sleigh and all the children charged across the dinning room. Had we been a ship we would have instantly capsized. He staggered in with the help of a cane, sat encircled by kids and opened his sack giving each child exactly what they had written to ask for. Now there's magic for you.

If you don't want to spoil things, shut your eyes now. I brought the present in a suitcase, hidden in a black bin liner, and sneaked it to the tour operator's rep on arrival. And Santa? He is a local special needs teacher who does it all for fun.

SANTA'S LITTLE PACKAGES: A TRAVEL BRIEF

Although it has cornered the market in Santa short breaks, Finland has not quite reached the state of a New York department store that advertised "six Santas. No Waiting." But with several UK operators flying around 40,000 people from around twenty UK airports the impact is handled light.

There are lots of packages to choose from but the Santa business is a classic in the 'you get what you pay for' school of economics. Be sure to check exactly what's included in the price; those that seem expensive might well work out cheaper in the longer run once you cost in the price of meals, winter wonderland activities, thermal clothing etc. The only way to economise is on a day trip but because of the travelling time you may find you are unlikely to venture beyond the boundaries of Rovaniemi, the main Santa hub on the Arctic Circle and home to both Santa's Village and a Santa theme park complete with deli-style tickets for Santa audiences.

Despite some of the brochure photographs, showing Santa basking in sunshine, Lapland in winter is gloomy, the sky never really blossoming into proper daylight and the lifeless orb of the sun barely managing to rise above the horizon. And it will be bone cold, dipping to minus 20 degrees or even further- not a 20 degree Fahrenheit nip-in-the-air, but 20, bone chilling degrees below centigrade. Who'd be a Finn? Who'd be Santa? And who'd be a child if you happen to hit a seriously cold snap that can reduce them to tears of numbed misery rather than beaming smiles of excitement (take plenty of warm clothes for your arrival and departure, i.e. before and after you get swaddled in your thermal gear).

But one good point: whatever the weather, Lapland airports rarely close.

 '

EAST Anglian Daily Times journalist MIKE BACON took his young family on a four-day break to Harriniva,  in Lapland to experience what proved to be the wonder of a Scantours holiday

NOW I'll be the first person to admit I wasn't 100 per cent on the money about going to Lapland.

Don't ask me why. I felt sure the kids, five and four, would have a great time, I certainly knew the wife would.

However we were part of a large group of friends consisting of four adults, four children aged 10-16 and three little'uns (five, four and four). That's quite a range of ages, could we all be kept amused on our four-day trip?

Christmas was just around the corner and we were going 10 days before the 'big day', the excitement was building, could it build anymore? The answer quite simply was yes.

Our four-day break to Harriniva, with Scantours, was quite simply as good a break as we could have wished for. Husky safaris, ski-doo rides, tobogganing, reindeer rides, good food, good drink, 10 feet of snow - this holiday had the lot - oh and of course the small matter of meeting Father Christmas.

You see that was the beauty of this magical break in picture postcard Harriniva. It wasn't all about the great man in red with his white beard, this was a holiday for us all - from four-40 - and boy was it good

FRIDAY

WE flew from Heathrow with everyone, including the adults, wearing Santa Claus hats - there was no disguising where we were going.

Our flight to Helsinki was about two-and-a-half hours and then, smooth as clockwork, we walked through the terminal to catch an internal flight north to Kattila It was another hour in the air.

At Kattila airport we were met by Tommy, who was set to become a regular and popular sight over the next three days or so.

It was snowing gently and there were metres of the white stuff everywhere. This was Lapland, northern Finland and it was cold (-9 degrees centigrade), but our coach was warm and our trip to Harriniva was a beautiful ride, past the ski resort of Levi and into the countryside.

Hotel Harriniva is in a glorious setting and bright lights set amid ice sculptures, greet visitors who were by now looking forward to dinner -it's almost 8pm.

Firstly up to our rooms where our jackets, boots, hats and gloves, pre-booked by Scantours, are waiting for us to put on. After dinner it's nearing 9pm, but everyone wants to go out and play.

The toboggan run, fully lit, is in full use, the kids and youngsters love it - so do the adults!

SATURDAY AM

WE were down for the ski-doo rides on Saturday morning.

Tommy took all the adults through the basics of how to ride and stay on these hugely powerful machines, while the little'uns were tucked in a long sleigh and were to be driven ahead of us by Tommy.

Ski-doos are noisy, but are the only way to really see anything of the breathtaking countryside around Harriniva. There were two to a machine and we stopped at regular intervals to check we had lost no-one.

The ski-doos were easy to ride but only those with a driving licence are allowed to do so. The little'uns and Tommy kept stopping ahead of us, waving as we went by before we all stopped for a break in the middle of the forest around a roaring fire.

Hot coffee, tea and biscuits were a treat and we were in the middle of no-where. It was peaceful and still and had stopped snowing now. The art of playing 'snow angels', where you stand up and fall back into the deep snow, hands and legs apart in a star fashion, was perfected by all, although we nearly lost Harrison, the youngest at four, who had made an indentation deeper than he was tall!

After our break we were off again, picking up a bit more speed as the confidence rose. The little'uns were happy at the front, enjoying Tommy's ride and as parents we felt reassured by the responsible attitude he was portraying to us.

PM

AFTER dinner it was time for play-time around the hotel and later in the afternoon we were going to see Santa Claus. Scantours booked everyone in for different times, we weren't going until 4.45pm, so we had time for a long lunch and afternoon tobogganing.

Our trip to Santa was by ski-doo, again Tommy the driver, but this time we were all in the sleigh.

"Follow the lights, follow the lights", Tommy kept telling us as we headed off into the countryside. There were poles with candles lit especially for the journey and the little'uns loved shouting out they had spotted a light.

Eventually, after about a 15 minute ride, we were deep, deep in the forest and ahead of us was Santa's house. The great man was clearly busy as he moved backwards and forwards across the windows so the little'uns could just make out his red coat.

A knock at the door and we were in.

I won't spoil it anymore and tell you what type of house he has. Let's just say the fire was roaring, the elves being a bit on the naughty side and the faces of our little'uns were a picture.

Lists were read out, songs to Santa sung, and promises to be good made. We were there almost 20 minutes before returning to the hotel.

That night we went to the restaurant next door to the Harriniva where the most beautiful smoked salmon were cooking over an open fire in the middle of the room.

This was a quality occasion with the whole Scantours group feasting on a terrific meal. While the wine flowed for the adults, the youngsters sung "Jingle Bells", "Santa got stuck up the chimney" (not one of his favourites apparently) and everyone had a great time.

Late into the night with the little'uns in bed, the youngsters carried on playing outside, while the adults relaxed in the bar.

SUNDAY AM

IT was a safari husky riding for us today.

The husky farm was just 500 metres from the hotel, which was strange because we had never heard the dogs at all during our stay.

We walked there and on our arrival at the kennels the huskies were in full voice.

Apparently they know when they are about to go out and they don't stop barking and I mean don't stop. Be prepared for this, it's great but loud. Again the little'uns were fastened up on a sleigh ahead and as they zoomed off into the countryside we, in pairs one sitting, one riding, got ready to go.

Still the huskies were barking, but literally 30 seconds into the Safari, they were silent, happy to get on with the job of taking us on a ride. This was a completely surreal and breathtaking part of the weekend.

Again our little'uns stopped every mile or so as we shot past. We were all waving as we raced through the countryside with the stillness of the ride unreal and the contrast to the noisy ski-doos very evident.

PM

AFTER lunch it was reindeer rides in the afternoon.

Firstly however it was a tale round the camp fire from an Indian chief who told us the story of Rudolph and how he came to be a flying reindeer. The reindeer ride itself was short but sweet and the little'uns and youngsters enjoyed a ride back in Tommy's sleigh ski-doo while the adults made the half-mile walk back to the hotel.

During dinner that night in the hotel we had a visitor. Yes, the great man in the red coat pulled up outside the window of the restaurant, reindeer and all, to deliver us - adults included - a present.

His elves danced for us and invited us to all join in before Santa delivered his gifts and afterwards rode off into the distance with everyone waving him goodbye.

It was late now and we were going home tomorrow.

By this time we were at the stage where we could rather get used to this as the youngsters enjoyed another play in the snow late into Sunday night.

MONDAY

SOME of us took up the optional extra of a ski-doo ride with Tommy early Monday morning.

We went across a frozen lake - and fast - while the little'uns stayed at the hotel with one of the adults to enjoy a final bit of tobogganing and playing in the snow.

There is little sunlight in northern Finland at this time of year, although in the summer temperatures reach 30 degrees centigrade, with all the snow having melted by April.

The little'uns had formed quite a bond with Tommy and they waved him goodbye enthusiastically as we left the hotel. The reverse journey home was as smooth as the one coming, with Finn Air covering themselves in glory with fine service and good leg room on their planes.

It had been a fantastic and magical four-day break.

Christmas Day was now just six days away, but our Christmas was already in full swing. Our memories of Lapland remained with us throughout the holiday period.

Our memories of wonderful Lapland are with us forever.

Departure Board 2007 
Full trip Information can be found using trip search

	Dep. Date	Days	Destination	Return Date	Status	Spaces
	Sat Dec 6	3	Harriniva	Mon Dec 8	Booking Now	OPEN
	Sat Dec 13	4	Harriniva	Tue Dec 16	Booking Now	OPEN
	Sat Dec 13	3	Yllas	Mon Dec 15	Booking Now	OPEN
	Mon Dec 15	4	Yllas	Thu Dec 18	Booking Now	OPEN
	Tue Dec 16	4	Harriniva	Fri Dec 19	Booking Now	OPEN
	Wed Dec 17	4	Lake Inari	Sat Dec 20	Booking Now	OPEN
	Thu Dec 18	4	Yllas	Sun Dec 21	Booking Now	OPEN
	Fri Dec 19	4	Harriniva	Mon Dec 22	Booking Now	OPEN
	Sat Dec 20	4	Lake Inari	Tue Dec 23	Booking Now	OPEN
	Tue Dec 23	5	Lake Inari	Sat Dec 27	Booking Now	OPEN
	Tue Dec 23	5	Kakslauttanen	Sat Dec 27	Sold Out	Full
	Mon Dec 29	5	Lake Inari	Fri Jan 2	Booking Now	OPEN
	Mon Dec 29	5	Kakslauttanen	Fri Jan 2	Sold Out	Full

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All the above information and pictures are supplied by Scantours www.scantours.co.uk

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