Signature Winter Journey
20 to 27 Feb 2027

Finland · Sweden · Estonia

Finland,beyond the ordinary.

Eight days that start in a Kainuu forest most visitors never hear about, then head north to the Arctic Circle, the frozen sea and two Baltic capitals.

01 · Why this journey

Eight days inside the Arctic winter, living the way people here do.

What you are paying for is access rather than a bigger hotel. Quiet, wilderness, the people who live here, and enough time to make sense of any of it.

01
Access
Places and people a package trip never gets near. Quiet that is genuinely quiet, and hosts who live here all year.
02
Authenticity
Real winter skill and proper local hosting. Nothing staged for guests.
03
Time
Several unhurried days at Arctic Nest instead of a dash between activities.
04
Participation
You drive the dogs, build the shelter and light the fire. You take part in the north rather than watch it.

Arctic Nest at dusk, deep in the Kainuu forest

02 · The place

A research station in the forest, remade by one family.

“It was personally created. It was never just run as a commercial hotel.”

Arctic Nest started out as a Finnish environmental research station, out in the spruce forest of Kainuu, a long way from the Lapland resorts.

A family bought it at auction in 2022, moved north and rebuilt it themselves. The people hosting you are the people who live here.

Founded: 2022
Where: Kotila · Puolanka
Your base: Your first five days

03 · The experiences

One journey, many ways into the north.

Anyone can book a husky safari on its own. What you cannot book anywhere else is the order these come in: wilderness first, then survival, culture, the Arctic sea and two capitals, put together as one trip.

ARCTIC NEST · KAINUU

Drive your own husky team

You stand on the runners and drive. Before that you meet the dogs and learn how a team works, how to brake, and how to read the line.

You start with the dogs. How they are harnessed, who runs where, why the lead dog matters. Then you take a team out yourself with a guide alongside you.

Out in the forest there is not much to hear beyond the runners on snow and the dogs breathing. Halfway through there is a fire, something hot to drink, and time to stand about doing nothing in particular.

Where: Arctic Nest · Kainuu
You: Drive, not ride
Halfway: Fire and hot drinks

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

01 / 11

PALJAKKA · PUOLANKA

Walk a forest five centuries old

Snowshoes are slow, which is the point. Roughly two hours through the old growth spruce at Paljakka, covering a kilometre or two.

The Paljakka reserve protects old growth spruce, and some of the protected trees are around five hundred years old. Loaded with snow they bend into the shapes you see in photographs of the far north.

You cover one to two kilometres in about two hours. That is roughly two kilometres an hour, so a single kilometre can take forty minutes to an hour in snow this deep. Nobody is trying to get anywhere.

Snowshoes let you hear the forest: your own steps, wind in the crowns, very little else. Guides talk about how the trees get through winter and how people have always moved across snow like this. Hepokongas, one of Finland’s better known waterfalls, is in the same area and freezes into ice and rock.

Where: Paljakka · Puolanka
On foot: 1 to 2 km
Time: About 2 hours

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

02 / 11

ARCTIC NEST · KAINUU

Learn what winter demands

Fire from frozen wood, shelter cut out of snow, and how to keep warm when the air is far below zero. You do it with your own hands.

Rather than watching a guide work, you practise it: lighting and keeping a fire, using what the forest gives you, building simple shelter, moving through deep snow, and knowing what cold does to a body.

You will not leave a survival expert, and that is not the point. You leave with some respect for how people live and work up here, and with the quiet satisfaction of having got the fire going yourself.

Where: Arctic Nest · Kainuu
You: Light the fire yourself
Cold: Down to -38°C

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

03 / 11

ARCTIC NEST · KAINUU

Heat, then ice, then heat again

In Finland the sauna is ordinary life rather than a spa treatment. Proper heat after a day outside, then a hole in the ice for anyone who wants it.

The sauna runs after the day’s activities, hosted by the people who live here. It is how a Finnish day ends, not a treatment you book a slot for.

Heat, then cold, then heat again. The cold part is a hole cut into a frozen lake. Nobody has to get in. Watching from the steam with a drink counts as taking part.

Where: Arctic Nest · Kainuu
When: Most evenings
The ice hole: Entirely optional

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

04 / 11

AWAY FROM ALL LIGHT

Head into the dark and look up

Nobody can promise you the northern lights. When the sky looks right we drive out past the last of the light and wait.

The aurora depends on solar activity, cloud and darkness, so we will not tell you it is guaranteed. Anyone who does is guessing on your behalf.

What you do get is the drive out into proper darkness, very clean air, something hot to drink, and a sky with no town underneath it. If the lights come you will remember the night. If they stay away, the winter sky this far north is worth the trip out on its own.

Where: Away from all light
When: Any clear night
Guaranteed: Never, and we will say so

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

05 / 11

Fish through the ice, then open the throttle

FROZEN LAKES · KAINUU

Fish through the ice, then open the throttle

Drill a hole and sit with a line, or ride a snowmobile across the same frozen lake. Two ways to spend a day on ice, at opposite speeds.

Ice fishing is drilling through the lake, dropping a line and waiting. It is slow and it is cold, and most people end up liking it a good deal more than they expected to.

The snowmobiles are the other end of it. Guided routes across frozen lake and forest track, with a briefing first if you have never ridden one.

Where: Frozen lakes · Kainuu
Pace: One slow, one fast
First: A briefing, then you ride

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

06 / 11

KAINUU

Travel with the herd

Feed them, walk with them, and hear how a herd gets through a northern winter. There may be a ride, and either way you can travel with the herd.

Reindeer are part of how the north actually works, so this is not a photo stop. You feed them by hand and spend time with the people who keep them.

Depending on the day and the animals there may be a chance to ride. Either way you can travel with the herd and watch how they move through snow that would stop you.

You come away understanding the animal rather than just holding a picture of one.

Where: Kainuu
You: Feed them by hand
A ride: Possible, herd travel either way

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

07 / 11

THE FOREST, AFTER DARK

Ride the snow after dark

Electric fat bikes on packed snow, ridden at night. Your light cuts a tunnel through the trees and everything past it stays black.

The tyres are wide enough to float on snow, and the motor does enough of the work that you are not fighting the bike. Riding after dark shrinks the world down to the cone of your headlight.

It is the same forest you crossed behind the dogs and on snowshoes, met a third way. That is deliberate. Nothing on this trip repeats itself.

Where: Trails around Arctic Nest
When: After dark
Effort: The motor helps

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

08 / 11

ARCTIC NEST · KAINUU

Evenings of fire, food and folklore

Finnish food cooked by the family hosting you, kantele music, stories from the Kalevala, and ice lanterns you make yourself.

Evenings here are food and talk. Local dishes made by your hosts, music, and Finnish folklore including the Kalevala, told while it is completely dark outside.

One evening you make ice lanterns. It sounds like very little next to huskies and icebreakers, and then yours is lit and there is a row of them burning along the path in the snow.

None of this is imported entertainment. The place supplies it: a fire, food from here, dark outside, old stories.

Where: Arctic Nest · Kainuu
When: Most evenings
You: Build an ice lantern

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

09 / 11

KEMI · GULF OF BOTHNIA

Sail a ship built to break the sea

A working icebreaker through sea that stops ordinary ships. You watch the bow ride up onto the ice and put its weight through it.

The Gulf of Bothnia freezes hard enough to stop a normal vessel. An icebreaker rides up onto the sheet and lets its own weight do the rest. From the deck you get a sense of how much ship that takes.

Depending on conditions the day can include other activities on the ice alongside the voyage.

Where: Kemi · Gulf of Bothnia
Vessel: A working icebreaker
Sea: Frozen to the horizon

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

10 / 11

ARCTIC CIRCLE → TALLINN

Cross the Circle, end in two capitals

Cross the Arctic Circle, then Rovaniemi, the snow castle and Santa Claus Village, before the route turns south for Helsinki and Tallinn.

The famous north comes late on purpose. You cross the Arctic Circle at 66°33′, which is a line on a map right up until you are standing on it. Arctic Nest itself sits south of that line, so the crossing happens here and not before.

After the Circle: Rovaniemi, the snow castle, and Santa Claus Village. Then the route turns. Tornio and Haparanda, where Finland and Sweden run together as one town across a border. Oulu. An overnight train south, so you fall asleep in the north and wake up near Helsinki. The last move is across the Baltic to Tallinn.

Forest, then the Circle, then frozen sea, then a modern capital, then a medieval one. Eight days is not much time to hold that much difference, and that is the reason the route is built this way round.

Route: Arctic Circle to Tallinn
The line: 66°33′ N
Ends in: Helsinki and Tallinn

Like everything else on this trip, this one is optional. Trade it for a slow morning in the warmth of your room whenever you feel like it.

Count me in

11 / 11

04 · Your place

Twelve places. Tell us why one is yours.

Count me in Two minutes · we call you back

Every activity depends on the weather, so timings can move and some days may be swapped around. We tell you as soon as we know.

Finland,beyond the ordinary.

Eight days inside the Arctic winter, living the way people here do.

Access

Authenticity

Time

Participation

A research station in the forest, remade by one family.

One journey, many ways into the north.

Drive your own husky team

Walk a forest five centuries old

Learn what winter demands

Heat, then ice, then heat again

Head into the dark and look up

Fish through the ice, then open the throttle

Travel with the herd

Ride the snow after dark

Evenings of fire, food and folklore

Sail a ship built to break the sea

Cross the Circle, end in two capitals

Twelve places. Tell us why one is yours.