Lapland (Finland)

Lapland's cold and wintry climate, coupled with its relative abundance of conifer trees such as pines and spruces, means that it has become associated with Christmas in some countries, most notably the United Kingdom, and holidays to Lapland are common towards the end of the year. However, the Lapland region has developed its infrastructure for year-round tourism. For example, in 2019, tourism during the snow-free period grew more than in the winter season. In recent years, Lapland has also become a major tourist destination for celebrities as well as royalty.

Rovaniemi is the main regional center of Lapland, and the Rovaniemi Airport is the second busiest airport in Finland. Besides tourism, other important sectors are trade, manufacturing and construction. Like Rovaniemi, Inari is also one of the most important tourist destinations in Lapland for foreign tourism.

Lapland has been connected with the legendary "North Pole" home of Santa Claus (Father Christmas or Saint Nicholas) since 1927, when Finnish radio host Markus Rautio said that Santa Claus lived on Korvatunturi, a fell in the region. Later, Rovaniemi staked a claim as Santa's "official hometown" and developed the Santa Claus Village attraction to encourage tourism. However, this has brought overtourism as a mild phenomenon.

Geography

The area of the Lapland region is 100,367 km² (38,752 sq mi), which consists of 92,667 km² (35,779 sq mi) of dry land, 6,316 km² (2,439 sq mi) fresh water and 1,383 km² (534 sq mi) of seawater. In the south it borders the Northern Ostrobothnia region, in the west, Sweden, in the north and west Norway, and in the east, Russia. Its borders follow three rivers: the Tana, Muonio and Torne. The largest lake is Lake Inari, 1,102 km² (425 sq mi). The region's highest point is on Halti, which reaches 1,324 m (4,344 ft) on the Finnish side of the border and is the highest point in Finland.

The areas of Enontekiö and Utsjoki in northern Lapland are known as Fell-Lapland. The bulk and remaining Lapland is known as Forest-Lapland. Lake Inari, the many fens of the region and the Salla-Saariselkä mountains are all part of Forest-Lapland. Fell-Lapland lies in the fells of the Scandinavian Mountains. It is not made up of barren ground like blockfields but instead has the vegetation of birch forests, willow thickets or heath. Common soil types in Forest-Lapland are till and sand with conifer forests growing on top. These forests show little variation across Lapland. Compared to southern Finland forest tree species grow slower. The understory typically consists of blueberries, lichens, crowberries and lings.

The landscape of large parts of Lapland is an inselberg plain. It has been suggested the inselberg plains were formed in the Late Cretaceous or Paleogene period by pediplanation or etchplanation. Relative to southern Finland Lapland stands out for its thick till cover. The hills and mountains are typically made up of resistant rocks like granite, gneiss, quartzite and amphibolite. The ice sheet that covered Finland intermittently during the Quaternary grew out from the Scandinavian Mountains. The central parts of the Fennoscandian ice sheet had cold-based conditions during times of maximum extent. This means that in areas like northeast Sweden and northern Finland, pre-existing landforms and deposits escaped glacier erosion and are particularly well preserved at present. Northwest to the southeast movement of the ice has left a field of aligned drumlins in central Lapland. Ribbed moraines found in the same area reflects a later west-to-east change in the movement of the ice. During the last deglaciation ice in Lapland retreated from the north-east, east and southeast so that the lower course of the Tornio was the last part of Finland to be deglaciated 10,100 years ago. Present-day periglacial conditions in Lapland are reflected in the existence of numerous palsas, permafrost landforms developed on peat.

The bedrock of Lapland belongs to the Karelian Domain occupying the bulk of the region, the Kola Domain in the northeast around Lake Inari and the Scandinavian Caledonides in the tip of Lapland's northwestern arm. With few exceptions rocks are of Archean and Proterozoic age. Granites, gneiss, metasediments and metavolcanics are common rocks while greenstone belts are recurring features. More rare rock associations include mafic and ultramafic layered intrusions and one of the world's oldest ophiolites. The region hosts valuable deposits of gold, chromium, iron and phosphate.

Climate

The first snowflakes fall to the ground in late August or early September over the higher peaks. The first ground-covering snow arrives on average in October or late September. Permanent snow cover comes between mid-October and the end of November, significantly earlier than in southern Finland. The winter is long, approximately seven months. The snow cover is usually thickest in early April. Soon after that the snow cover starts to melt fast. The thickest snow cover ever was measured in Kilpisjärvi on 19 April 1997 and it was 190 cm (75 in). The annual mean temperature varies from −2 °C (28 °F) in the northwest to 2 °C (36 °F) in the southwest (Kemi-Tornio area). Lapland exhibits a trend of increasing precipitation towards the south, with the driest parts being located at the two arms. In mid-winter, it is possible that temperatures in Lapland could drop to dangerously low temperatures, even −40 °C (−40 °F); this could have an impact on, among other things, the tourist flights that prevail during the winter season.

In summer, the average temperature is consistently over 10 °C (50 °F). Heat waves with daily temperatures exceeding 25 °C (77 °F) occur on an average of 5–10 days per summer in northern Finland.