Northern Lights of Scandinavia - Small Group

You’ll arrive in Helsinki, where the low hum of harbour ferries passes museum galleries and pale seaside buildings. At Home Hotel Jugend, a 1903 Art Nouveau stone castle in the Design District, you step beneath arched ceilings and warm lamplight before settling into your room. Over a drink, introductions begin as you meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers, unfamiliar faces who will soon share the journey north.

Flying north, you’ll reach Ivalo in Finnish Lapland, 250 km above the Arctic Circle, where the river passes land once searched for gold during the 19th-century rush. After dinner at Aurora Village, you slip beneath the covers in your boutique cabin, the cool glass roof separating you from the vast Arctic darkness. From bed, you can watch for the Northern Lights as pale arcs gather, fade and flare across the black sky, a private spectacle shared with the person beside you. As this is a natural phenomenon, sightings cannot be guaranteed.

Further north, you'll cross from Finland into Norway, travelling through Lapland’s winter landscape towards Honningsvåg, Norway’s northernmost and smallest city. The road follows the broad rippling waters of Porsangerfjord, the country’s fourth-largest fjord, before you descend through the Nordkapp Tunnel to 212 metres below sea level. From beneath the sea, you climb towards the widening tunnel mouth and emerge onto Magerøya, where treeless tundra and rugged slopes run beneath an Arctic sky. In this small fishing community, you wander beside the waterfront past moored boats gently rocking beside the quay, with the northern horizon unfurling beyond. Dinner waits at your hotel after a day spent moving towards Europe’s far north.

With Honningsvåg yours to explore, you can visit its 19th-century church, one of the few buildings in Northern Norway to survive the destruction of the Second World War. On an Optional Experience, you learn about the king crabs found in these northern waters before sitting down to a freshly prepared sea-to-table lunch, its delicate sweetness lingering between each bite. Weather permitting, continue to North Cape, where the land falls away towards the Barents Sea at Europe’s northernmost point. With fellow travellers beside you, raise a glass of bubbles and taste caviar, its clean saltiness bright on your tongue as sea and sky stretch beyond the cliffs.

Across Finnmark, you'll travel from bare uplands to the shores of Altafjord, where dark water lies between snow-streaked slopes. High above Alta, the old Northern Lights observatory stands on Mount Haldde, once a solitary post for scientists watching the aurora ripple across the Arctic night. At an ice hotel, you wander through sculpted chambers, frozen arches and an ice chapel lit in shades of blue and white, with coloured light gliding across carvings remade each winter. With your fellow travellers beside you, you raise a chilled drink served in a glass carved from ice. Your hotel stands beside the modern Northern Lights Cathedral in the heart of the city, its spiralling form reaching skyward.

At Alta Museum, you may choose an Optional Experience to study prehistoric carvings of reindeer, boats and hunters, lines cut into stone thousands of years ago. Later, the Lyrek family welcome you to their working husky farm, where the savoury aroma of an oven-baked lunch fills the room. As you eat, the Lyrek family share what it takes for mushers and their champion Alaskan huskies to cross the Arctic together in races that last for days. After lunch, the Lyrek family lead you outside to meet their champion huskies. You may even get the opportunity to run a hand through their warm, thick coats, while their fur ripples softly in the breeze.

As Tromsøya nears, you watch northern Norway’s largest city spread along the island shore, with snow-capped mountains beyond and narrow sea passages winding between them. Perhaps dusk has fallen by the time you arrive, and you linger at the window as city lights tremble across the water in long strokes of gold. As you continue into Tromsø, you pass painted houses beneath deep folds of snow, their steep roofs and slender chimneys rising against the mountains.

Beside a Sámi guide, you’ll enter the camp and help feed the reindeer, huddled together with their thick winter coats and broad, branching antlers. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience continues inside a traditional lavvu, where the scent of woodsmoke lingers above the fire and a hot drink warms your hands. Over a traditional meal, you listen as members of the Indigenous Sámi community share stories of life in Arctic Norway. Folk songs fill the tent as you spend an intimate evening with the people who have called this northern land home for generations.

Leaving Tromsø behind, you’ll fly south to Oslo, where the Oslofjord threads among islands beneath wooded hills. On your orientation through Bjørvika, you pass the Opera House, its white marble roof sloping towards the water, and Deichman Library, where broad panes of glass catch fragments of sky and city. At a local restaurant, you raise a glass of wine with your fellow travellers, trading favourite moments over dinner.

After breakfast, you say goodbye to your fellow travellers as your trip comes to an end.