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7 Alternatives to Tromsø for the Northern Lights (Without the Crowds or the Price Tag)
We've spent winters all over the Arctic: Alta, Senja, Tromsø & Lofoten in Norway, Swedish & Finnish Lapland, Iceland and Greenland. So when people write to ask where else to go because Tromsø is booked out, we've usually just come back from one of those alternatives ourselves.
We've even recommended Tromsø before, as a calmer, less commercial answer to Rovaniemi in our Magical Alternatives to Rovaniemi guide. The trouble is, the same thing that made Rovaniemi worth escaping has started catching up with Tromsø: sold-out hotel, tour buses queued at the same handful of viewpoints, and prices that climb every winter the city gets more popular. Here are the alternatives to Tromsø we’d recommend for the northern lights, and what you'd be trading to go there.
Car Rental in Rovaniemi: Everything You Need to Know
Rovaniemi itself doesn't demand a car. The center is walkable, Santa Claus Village is a short bus ride away, and most northern lights tours pick you up from your hotel. But the second you want to see Finnish Lapland (the true one, the one we love) beyond the city limits, on your own schedule, a rental car changes the trip. This is everything you need to know about renting a car in Rovaniemi: where to pick one up, what winter driving involves, and where to venture.
Best Northern Lights Hotels in Lofoten
We've been to Lofoten several times but we’ve watched the aurora show up over Lofoten from a hotel window exactly once, standing by the pier at Kaikanten Rorbuer in October. Most nights it doesn't work out that well, and you often need to drive for clearer skies. But some bases put you closer to that outcome than others. Cabins with the fjord right outside, villages dark enough that you don't need to drive anywhere if Lady Aurora and Mister Weather decide to join forces. Here are our favorite northern lights hotels in Lofoten. But as usual for the aurora, treat them as a bonus rather than an absolute goal.
Tromsø vs. Rovaniemi vs. Kiruna: Which Arctic Hub Should You Visit?
We've spent different seasons all over the Arctic: Kiruna, Abisko, Luleå, Alta, Tromsø, Lofoten, Svalbard, and Finnish Lapland outside Rovaniemi too. So, when people ask us to pick between Tromsø, Rovaniemi, and Kiruna, we're quite qualified to answer.
These are the three biggest, easiest-to-reach Arctic hubs in Europe, one in each country, and they're different trips wearing the same "see the northern lights" marketing and Sámi culture. I actually covered this lack of differentiation in my Master thesis on polar tourism! Here's how Tromsø, Rovaniemi and Kiruna compare, and how to get between them if you’d like to combine.
Renting a Car in Lofoten, Norway
Lofoten, Norway, looks small on a map, but it drives slow. The E10 threads through tunnels and along fjord edges, most side roads narrow down to a single lane with passing places, and the drive from Å to Svolvær takes a lot longer than the distance suggests. Plus, you’ll want to stop all the time to take photos… or just take it all in!
A rental car is how you actually see the islands beyond the villages your bus or tour drops you at, but where you rent one is worth thinking through before you arrive.
Hiking in Finnish Lapland: The Best Trails Near Rovaniemi, Plus a Few Worth the Drive
Finnish Lapland doesn't hike like its neighbors. There's no Norwegian drama here, no Sarek-style wilderness that eats inexperienced hikers alive. What you get instead is something closer to “lagom”, that Nordic idea of just enough: fells worn smooth by two billion years of weather, trails marked clearly enough that getting lost take effort, and free wilderness huts spaced out along the way in case you want to stop and boil coffee. It’s also accessible in winter, sometimes with snowshoes or cross-country skis. We've hiked a handful of these trails ourselves, in both fall and winter, and these are the Finnish Lapland hikes we can recommend, both near Rovaniemi and further.
How to Get to Lofoten: Flights, Ferries, and the Ferry-Free Drive In
Lofoten looks like it should be hard to reach: a chain of islands hanging off the top of Norway, ringed by open ocean. In practice it isn't, and you have more options than you would expect given the remoteness. You can fly straight into Svolvær or Leknes, take the Bodø ferry with your rental car, ride the Hurtigruten in past the incredible "Lofoten wall," or, and this surprises people, drive in without a ferry at all. Here is every way to get to Lofoten — we tried them all!
Best Northern Lights Hotels in Alta, Norway
Alta gets called the northern lights capital of Norway for a reason. Dark skies, low light pollution once you're a bit outside of town, and an aurora season that runs from late September through early April. And, as usual with northern lights, where you sleep matters. This is a rundown of the best northern lights hotels in Alta to optimize your chances.
How to Get to Rovaniemi: Flights, Trains, Buses, and Getting Around
Rovaniemi is Finnish Lapland's main gateway, and it's built for it: an airport that runs seasonal direct flights from all over Europe, an overnight train from Helsinki with a spot for your car, and a bus network that reaches deep into the rest of Lapland once you've landed. We've done this trip both ways ourselves, flying in for a quick visit and taking the train up from Helsinki when we wanted to visit our friend Altti. Here's how each option works, and how to get around once you're here.
Where to Stay in Lofoten: Best Areas, Islands & Villages for Every Kind of Trip
Lofoten isn't one destination; it's a chain of islands strung together by bridges and a single road. And where you sleep decides how much of it you see, especially if you have a short amount of time. Base yourself wrong and you'll spend half your trip driving back and forth for dinner. Base yourself right, and everything from the Reinebringen sunrise to the last ferry out is fifteen minutes away. This is a village-by-village breakdown of where to stay in Lofoten, built around what each area is good for.
For the full list of specific hotels and resorts across the islands, our Best Hotels & Resorts in Lofoten guide has the complete picks; this one is about choosing the right base first. We stayed at a few!
How to See the Northern Lights in Rovaniemi: With or Without a Car
Rovaniemi sits right on the Arctic Circle and is easy to reach from all over Europe, but it's still a city with streetlights, so where you stand does more work here than in a lot of Lapland towns. And whether you've got a car changes everything. Here is how, when, and where to see the northern lights in Rovaniemi with or without a car.
Northern Lights in Bodø, Norway: When and Where to See Them
Bodø sits right on Norway's coast above the Arctic Circle, which makes it one of the easier places in the country to catch the aurora. It's also the mainland's usual jumping off point for Lofoten, so plenty of travelers end up chasing the lights in both places on the same trip. Follow our guide to see the northern lights in Bodø!
22 Glass Igloos in Finland: The Best Ones and How to Choose
Every "best glass igloo" list in Finland points you toward the same photos. At Penguin Trampoline, we're not going to pretend we've slept in every one of them, because we haven't. We experienced the aurora igloo concept in Iceland, we visited the Arctic SnowHotel property (more on that below), and we dug into the rest property by property.
Here's what's different between them and what tends to move the price, and we also broke them down by region because we understand it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience and you want to get it right!
Northern Lights in Sweden: Where to Go and When to See Them
Sweden doesn't have one northern lights destination, it has three, and they don't behave the same way. Kiruna, Abisko, and Luleå, all in Lapland, each give you a real shot at the aurora, but for different reasons, and the right base depends on the kind of trip you're planning. This page is the fast version: where to go, when to go, what your odds really are, and whether you need a tour at all, based on two decades of experience chasing the aurora in the far north.
Northern Lights Tours in Sweden: How to Choose
Sweden has three real bases for a northern lights tour: Kiruna, Abisko, and Luleå, all in Lapland. Each has its own tour scene, and we've covered each in depth elsewhere. This page is the fast version: how to pick a destination, what a good tour includes, and whether you need one at all.
Northern Lights Tours in Kiruna: How to Choose
We've booked some aurora tours across Lapland over dozens of trips (including seven trips to Kiruna), sometimes to save ourselves the driving, sometimes because a friend visiting for the first time didn't want to gamble their one night on figuring it out alone. This is the breakdown we wish we'd had the first time: what each tour type gets you, what "guaranteed" tends to mean in Kiruna specifically, and how to choose between a minibus, a snowmobile, and a dog sled when you've only got one or two nights.
For the full picture on when to go, where to watch without a tour, and how Kiruna compares to Abisko, see our Northern Lights in Kiruna guide. This one is about the tours.
Northern Lights in Kiruna: Best Time, Where to Watch & How to Check the Forecast
Kiruna, Swedish Lapland, is where my Arctic obsession actually began. I first came here as a student at Dalarna University back in 2007, fell for the place immediately, and ended up writing my master's thesis on polar destinations. I’ve been back seven times since, and Kiruna was also the first Arctic destination I ever brought Jake to. So when we talk about this sky, it's not theoretical!
Kiruna sits at 67.85°N, about 145 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, which puts it well inside the auroral oval, the band of sky around the North Pole where the aurora shows up most often.
This guide covers when to go, where to watch (with or without a tour), how to check the forecast, and how Kiruna compares to nearby Abisko, since that's the question we get asked the most, and one we can answer from having tried both ourselves, more than once.
Northern Lights Tours in Lapland, Finland: How to Choose
Rovaniemi alone has well over a hundred northern lights tours listed across Viator and GetYourGuide, and a lot of them read like the same three sentences reshuffled: local guide, real-time forecasts, "guaranteed" somewhere in the title. Levi and Saariselkä add their own smaller rosters on top of that. The listings aren't lying exactly, they're just marketing, and it's worth knowing what actually separates them before you hand over your evening.
This is the type-by-type breakdown: which tour gets you what, what "guaranteed" really means in Finnish Lapland specifically, and how to pick between a minibus, a snowmobile, and a husky sled when you've only got one or two free nights.
Best Northern Lights Hotels in Finland, Lapland: Igloos, Lodges, Cabins & Resorts
Every Finland aurora hotel roundup eventually points you to the same three glass igloos. Fair enough, they're famous for a reason. But Finnish Lapland runs from Levi in the west to Nellim on the Russian border, and the right bed for watching the sky depends more on which stretch of that region you're in than on whichever photo sold you on the trip in the first place.
We haven't slept in every single property on this list. What we did do is stay in one of these ourselves, visit most of the rest, and quietly drop a few famous names that don't hold up once you look past the marketing photos. Here's what's actually worth booking, split by what you want out of the stay: a glass roof over the bed, an ice hotel experience, a proper wilderness lodge, or a resort with enough going on to fill the hours between aurora checks.
Northern Lights in Lapland: A Complete Guide to Finland, Sweden & the Arctic Sky
Lapland has a claim to the northern lights that few places can match: most of it sits inside the auroral oval, the band circling the North Pole where the aurora shows up most often and most reliably. We've chased it across the region, and the biggest decision was never really when to go. It was where.
This guide covers the two Lapland regions travelers usually book: Finnish Lapland (Rovaniemi, Levi, Saariselkä) and Swedish Lapland (Kiruna, Abisko, Luleå). Both sit well within aurora range. They just offer a different experience. If you’d rather chase the lights in Norway, we have a dedicated Arctic Norway page.