Where is Lapland?

Is Lapland a country?

No. Lapland is a region of Finland, not a state of its own. Its regional body, the Regional Council of Lapland, is a joint authority owned by the region’s 21 municipalities and based in Rovaniemi, which Visit Rovaniemi calls the capital of Lapland.

So what country is Lapland in? Finland. Visit Finland describes Lapland as the northernmost region of Finland, and the Regional Council calls it the most northern and the most geographically extensive region in the country.

Is Lapland in Finland?

Mostly, yes, but the name travels further than the region’s borders. You will meet two wider uses.

• Swedish Lapland. Sweden’s Arctic north uses the name too. Its tourist board describes Swedish Lapland as a shared brand for the destinations of Norrbotten county, and says it works with Finnish Lapland and Northern Norway under the name Arctic Europe.
• Sápmi. The Sámi homeland, Sápmi, does not follow national borders. The Sámi Parliament in Finland says the Sámi have lived in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland and the interior of Russia’s Kola Peninsula since well before today’s borders were drawn. In Sweden, according to its tourist board, Sápmi covers the northernmost half of the country.

So when someone says “Lapland”, they usually mean Finnish Lapland, and sometimes the wider Arctic north described above. This site covers Finnish Lapland unless a page says otherwise.

Where Finnish Lapland is on the map

Picture Finland as a tall country: Statistics Finland gives its greatest length as 1,157 km, from Hanko to Utsjoki, and its greatest width as 542 km. Lapland fills the top. The Regional Council gives its area as 100,366 km², almost one third of Finland. It runs more than 500 km from Simo, on the shore of the Bay of Bothnia, to Nuorgam in Utsjoki at the very top of Finland.

It shares land borders with three countries. The Regional Council lists more than 700 km of border with Norway, more than 600 km with Sweden and almost 400 km with Russia.

VR, the Finnish railway, gives the distance from Helsinki to Rovaniemi as about 820 km, and Visit Inari puts Inari 1,150 km from Helsinki. Inside the region, Visit Inari gives the distance from Inari to Rovaniemi as 340 km. On a map, Lapland is not one place, and where you stay decides most of the trip.

Where the Arctic Circle is

The Arctic Circle is a line of latitude at about 66.5°N. Visit Rovaniemi defines it as the southernmost latitude where the sun can stay below or above the horizon for a full 24 hours: the polar night in winter and the midnight sun in summer. In practice the air bends sunlight over the horizon, so the sun still rises every day in Rovaniemi, if only for about two and a quarter hours at the winter solstice. The Finnish Meteorological Institute says the polar night begins about half a degree of latitude further north.

Rovaniemi’s centre sits about 6 km south of the line, and the line is marked on the ground at Santa Claus Village, which Finavia places about 3 km from Rovaniemi Airport. Why the marker and the true line are not the same spot is on the Arctic Circle. If you are coming in the dark months, Lapland in December explains what short days mean for your plans, and when to go compares the seasons.

What time is it in Lapland?

Time in Lapland is Finnish time, two hours ahead of the UK all year. The Finnish Standards Association states that Finland’s standard time is two hours ahead of GMT and its summer time three hours ahead.

The gap stays at two hours because both countries change their clocks on the same Sundays. The European Commission says EU countries switch on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. GOV.UK says UK clocks go forward at 1am on the last Sunday in March and back at 2am on the last Sunday in October, and SFS gives the autumn change across the EU as 01:00 UTC, the same instant as 2am in the UK that night. In 2026 that last Sunday in October is 25 October.

In practice: when it is noon in London, it is 2pm in Rovaniemi. Timetables print local time at each end, so a flight north looks two hours longer on paper than it is in the air. Flights to Lapland works through the timings.

What currency Lapland uses, and what language people speak

Lapland uses the euro, because Finland does: “The currency of Finland is the euro,” in InfoFinland’s words, and the Bank of Finland dates euro cash from 1 January 2002. One detail catches visitors out at the till. The Bank of Finland says cash payments in shops are rounded in principle to the nearest 5 cents, so 1 and 2 cent coins are not widely used, although they are still legal tender.

If your trip crosses a border, the money changes with it. Swedish Lapland uses the Swedish krona: the Riksbank lists 1, 2, 5 and 10 krona coins as legal tender. Northern Norway uses the Norwegian krone, in the notes and coins Norges Bank lists as legal tender. This site prices each country in its own currency, EUR, SEK or NOK, and never converts.

Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. InfoFinland says 85% of people in Finland speak Finnish as their native language and 5% Swedish, and that in northern Finland people also speak Sámi. In the Sámi homeland, the Sámi Language Act gives Sámi people the right to use Finnish or Sámi with public authorities, and the Sámi Parliament says the authority must serve them in Sámi if they wish, even if they also speak Finnish. Which Sámi languages are spoken in Finland is in the section below, and Sámi people and culture goes further.

The Sámi, the Indigenous people of the north

The Sámi are the only Indigenous people in the European Union, and the Sámi Parliament in Finland notes that their status is written into Finland’s constitution. The Sámi Parliament is the representative self-government body of the Sámi in Finland.

In Finland, the Sámi homeland covers the municipalities of Enontekiö, Inari and Utsjoki and the northern part of Sodankylä. Rovaniemi is outside it; Inari is inside it. About 10,000 Sámi live in Finland, and more than 60% of them live outside the homeland. Three Sámi languages are spoken in Finland, Northern Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi, and the Sámi Parliament lists all three as endangered.

The Sámi Parliament adopted guidelines on the ethics of Sámi tourism on 24 September 2018, to stop tourism that exploits Sámi culture and spreads wrong information about it. Its visitor guidance asks you to meet reindeer only with the guidance of their owner, and notes that frightening reindeer is against the law. Visit Finland puts the number of reindeer in Finnish Lapland at about 200,000.

What people get wrong about where Lapland is

• It is not a country. It is a region of Finland, so you do not cross a national border to get there from Helsinki.
• It is not in Iceland. Finnish Lapland is on the mainland of northern Europe, with land borders with Norway, Sweden and Russia. Iceland is a different country.
• It is not one small area. Visit Inari puts Rovaniemi and Inari 340 km apart, so treat them as separate bases, not a day trip. Choose your base first, then the airport: the flights page matches the two.
• Not all of Lapland is the Sámi homeland. The homeland in Finland is the four northern areas listed above, and more than half of Finland’s Sámi live outside it.

The fifth is worth a paragraph of its own. Lapland is not the North Pole. NOAA points out that there is no land at the North Pole, only sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean. Lapland is land, with towns, villages and fells, and Rovaniemi is on the Arctic Circle, not at the pole. Rovaniemi calls itself the Official Hometown of Santa Claus; that is a title, not a location.

If you are still deciding where to base yourself, start with Rovaniemi or the overview of Lapland holidays. If the aurora is the reason for the trip, read the Northern Lights page next.