What to wear in Lapland

Three layers, each with one job

Visit Finland’s own advice is the advice Finns give: layers, starting with wool. Every layer does one job, and the person who is cold is nearly always the person who skipped one.

Next to the skin goes a base layer, and it must not be cotton. Visit Finland names merino wool, bamboo or silk, and says wool “stays warm even when wet”. Cotton does the opposite: it holds your sweat against you, which is how a cotton t-shirt under an expensive coat still leaves you shivering on a husky sled.

In the middle goes insulation you can take off. A wool jumper or a fleece, plus a second thin one for the coldest day, so that walking into a warm room means shedding a layer instead of sweating into your base layer.

Outside goes windproof and waterproof, with a hood. Visit Finland says a coat should be windproof and waterproof, names down and feathers among the fillings, and calls a hood “a must-have feature in any good coat”. Wind is the variable people underestimate, and it is strongest on the open fells and along the coast.

Feet, hands, head, face, eyes

Nobody’s day outside ends because their torso got cold. It ends at the extremities.

What a tour lends you, and the hours it does not cover

Safari operators list what each tour includes on its own booking page, and warm outer clothing is a common inclusion. Check that line before you buy anything, because it varies by operator and by tour, and we found no single rule covering all of them.

Borrowed kit covers the safari. It does not cover the rest of the day, and the rest of the day is longer. You will stand waiting for a bus, walk to dinner and watch the sky from outside your accommodation in your own clothes. That is when people get cold.

If buying a winter wardrobe for one week appeals to nobody in your party, Visit Finland points to winter clothing rental, including pre-ordering a set to collect at the airport. We have tested no rental company and we recommend none.

How cold it gets, and how cold that feels standing still

Visit Finland puts the average Lapland winter temperature at -14 °C, with occasional dips to -30 °C. The month-by-month figures we use come from the Finnish Meteorological Institute’s 1991 to 2020 normals for Rovaniemi airport, and they are averages: a normal January day runs from about -14 °C to -7 °C, and the coldest reading at that station in those thirty years was -38.1 °C.

Two things follow from that, and both are about how you dress. Dress for standing still, because you will be: the aurora is watched from one spot for an hour at a time, and walking-around clothes are not standing-still clothes. And remember that the coldest nights are the clear ones. The night you most want to be outside is the night the extra layer earns its place in the suitcase.

When to go sets out the months, and each month page carries its own figures, for example Lapland in January and Lapland in March.

What people get wrong

Buying a heavy coat and thin socks. The coat is rarely the problem.

Packing one pair of gloves. Wet gloves stay wet all day, and a second pair is the least expensive comfort on the whole trip.

Jeans. They soak up snow, hold it against the skin and take a day to dry.

Dressing for the activity and nothing else. The suit comes off when the safari ends, and the walk back to the car happens in your own clothes.

And overdressing indoors, which is the subtle one. Finnish buildings are warm. Sweating into a base layer before you have even gone outside is the most common way to spend the evening cold.