“There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing,” our guide Päivi tells us. It’s a comforting proverb until you’re standing in Heathrow, watching half the terminal peel off to Mexico while you overheat in your Merino thermals.
Still, instead of joining the annual British winter pilgrimage toward guaranteed sun, I traded espadrilles for snow boots and flew the other way, to Finland’s Lakeland. With 187,000 plus lakes – a terrain so water-dense it’s called the ‘blue labyrinth’ – winter here is a map of ice. It’s an unlikely stand-in for a winter-sun escape, and yet this is the nation that repeatedly ranks as the happiest on Earth.
The contradiction rapidly melts away, as you discover that this glacial wilderness holds a warmth deeper than anything gained on a beach lounger, perhaps due to the 3.3 million saunas, or maybe the dishes made with wild berries that sweeten even the darkest days. The reason Finns are unbothered by months of minus temperatures? Sisu, the collective and instinctive cultural backbone of Finnish endurance and resilience, sharpened during the Winter War, when Finnish soldiers on skis held their ground against a Soviet army many times their size. Retreat wasn’t an option at -40°C, so what’s a little frost on your eyelashes?
Warmth in the Sauna
Photo by Julia Kivelä
For all the talk of winter-sun escapes, Finland has long had its own version of a holiday glow. The sauna is the centre of gravity here, a heated continuum stretching from pre-Christian folklore to the modern apartment block, as habitual as brushing your teeth. Before happiness rankings even existed, families lived half their lives in this warm, antiseptic room, washing, nursing the sick and even giving birth. In a nation with more saunas than cars (a statistic Finns cite with pride), moments of daily life are still conducted somewhere between 70-90°C.
The savusauna (smoke sauna) remains the sauna that Finns revere most. Wood burns for hours, filling the cabin with smoke before being vented to leave a velvety heat and soot-black walls (sitting on a pefletti avoids wardrobe casualties, but it’s Finnish custom to skip clothing entirely), ready for you to whisk your skin with a bundle of dried birch leaves, improving circulation. Modern life has, of course, brought electric saunas to nearly every building, and even hotel rooms. I spent hours steaming in my own in-room sauna at Tampere’s Lapland Hotels Arena, a novelty anywhere else, but an increasingly standard amenity in contemporary Finnish design.
Photo by Julia Kivelä
Still, it’s the public saunas that power the socialising. At Sataman Viilu in Jyväskylä’s harbour, I learned the simple Finnish sauna ritual: heat up over conversation, lake plunge together, repeat. I boldly followed local instruction and plunged directly into the frozen waters of Lake Jyväsjärvi. Once I resisted the immediate urge to leap straight back out (neoprene socks are my hindsight recommendation), the needle-prick shock in my toes was followed by a rush of internal warmth that travelled upwards until I was no longer cold. Back in the sauna, you reheat your core with the sacred löyly, the cloud of steam released when water hits the stones. It might not offer the bronze of a sun-kissed beach day, but the warmth that lives inside you for hours afterwards proves that when the temperature drops, you needn’t book a flight south, but spend a week sauna-hopping in Finland instead.
Warmth You Can Eat
Photo by Julia Kivelä
The warmth of the sun may disappear for months, but in the Lakeland, it’s been stored, thanks to jokamiehenoikeus (the right to roam) allowing Finns to forage freely. Over centuries, generations have mastered stretching summer into winter, freezing berries at peak ripeness, drying mushrooms for stews, and storing herbs to add to winter soups when the landscape ices over.
If sun-chasers knew winter could taste like this, they’d reroute to Lepomäki Farm, a family-run blueberry farm near Jyväskylä, operating since 1821. Finland’s love of pensasmustikka (cultivated bush blueberries) and mustikka (intensely flavoured wild bilberries, cousins to blueberries) is no secret, and here, guests can step in from the snow to a candlelit wooden outhouse for organic bush blueberries offered in every possible way: in a steaming cup of blueberry juice; in a pie made with blueberry jam; and in freeze-dried blueberry powder that tastes like nature’s very own sherbet. This is all whilst you’re sat under woollen blankets, looking out onto the bushes bowed under fresh snow, where those same berries grew months earlier underneath the nearly nightless nights.
Photo by Ravintola Kajo
Simple everyday dishes are born of fire and lake, so fish is, unsurprisingly, a constant on the Finnish table. Prepared in countless ways – sauna-smoked (savustettu) to name but one – its purity is guaranteed by rigorous lake conservation, making it so fresh that it needs little else in flavour, as I discovered at Niihaman Ulkoilumaja, a nature reserve outside Tampere on the edge of Lake Niihamajärvi. Chef Juha Blom grilled plank salmon over an open fire, brushed only with butter, and served with potatoes folded into garlic cream cheese and mugs of hot berry juice. Meals cooked this way, in a traditional kota (free-to-use huts in the forests, stocked with government-provided firewood), is the ordinary Sunday pastime, Finland’s answer to a hearty Sunday pub lunch. Some do choose to thaw in a less frosty setting like that of Bistro Kirkkopuisto over a satisfying bowl of lohikeitto (Finnish salmon soup), or at the century-old Kuokkalan Manor for a local mushroom risotto.
Photo by Ravintola Kajo
Fine dining in the region follows the same forest-to-plate ethos, with kitchens curating their own wild pantries of ingredients. Featured in 2025’s Michelin Guide, Kajo in Tampere, whose 11-course tasting menu is described as an ‘ode to nature’, earns the mention. ‘Kajo’ means ‘the last ray of sunshine’, and the menu is built to feel exactly that, from the dry-aged Arctic char in white soy and jalapeño to the sea-buckthorn sorbet hidden beneath lime-leaf crystals (even if it was the warm sourdough brioche with cultured butter that halted the table’s conversation). This ‘foraged-not-flown’ philosophy is met across many unique culinary experiences. Singing chef Emmi Latvanne pairs her songbird operatic vocals with a three to six-course private dinner, using ingredients like cloudberries and seabuckthorn her family hand-picks in Lapland, and steak hailed as the ‘Best in the World’ in 2025, sourced from a farmer friend just a few kilometres away.
Warmth You Can Live In
Alvar Aalto Seminaarinmäki
Finnish design might read as minimalist, but the interiors are actually winter-sun traps, coaxing warmth and brightness inside, as essential as central heating. At Jyväskylä’s Aalto2 Museum in Jyväskylä, the influence of this approach became clear as I learned how renowned Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s functional and human-centred architecture still anchors domestic life. His familiar motifs recur as staples in most Finnish homes: the curved Iitala savoy vase refracting the scarce winter light; Artek’s Aalto’s Stool 60, built to be passed through generations; and the popular and cheerful Pieni Unikko Marimekko textiles brightening homes and wardrobes beneath the ‘lonkerosää’ (endless grey skies).
This same design philosophy has migrated through the Lakeland in the form of the glass-roofed igloo cabins, a dwelling designed originally in Lapland for aurora viewing. In Hankasalmi, a pioneering location in the global study of the Northern Lights, the generous glass roofs in the All Sky Aurora Igloos at Revontuli Lakeland Village frame the landscape with generous panes of glass and little else, making winter nights here astonishing.
Despite its distance from the Arctic Circle, it sits in one of central Finland’s darkest and most reliable spots for seeing the Northern Lights. The name ‘Revontuli’, or ‘fox fire’, speaks to a folklore origin story of the Northern Lights, where a fox’s tail sweeps snow into the sky, sparking the aurora. When the sky above catches fire in a dance of electric greens and violets, you understand why Finns aren’t chasing the sun: they already have their own solar energy phenomenon burning above the treeline.
Warmth in Community
Winter can often drive people into solitude (or to a beach), but in Finnish Lakeland, winter is the ultimate companion to companionship. Tampere’s Christmas Market pops up in November, filling the central square with crowds who come together to keep warm over bowls of riisipuuro (cinnamon-dusted porridge) and cups of glöggi (Nordic mulled wine with raisins or almonds). When the festive season is over, community warmth can still be found in places like Tallipiha Stable Yards, an old Finlayson factory community turned seasonal event hub, or Tampere Market Hall, Finland’s largest indoor market since 1901, a sheltered refuge of reindeer skewers, Karelian rye pies and gossip over counters that haven’t moved in over a century.
Outside, it’s the ice that dictates social gatherings, with skate paths forming on iced-over forest trails, lakes turning into informal hockey pitches or arenas for Finland’s uniquely quirky winter contests, like boot-throwing, kicksledding, the Wife Carrying World Championship (yes, a very real thing) and swimsuit skiing. The eccentricity of these events is the only appropriate response to sub-zero degree living, channelling sisu through community and a shared belief that embracing the ice is part of survival.
Perhaps this is why Finland keeps topping the global happiness charts? When a nation swears there’s “no bad weather, only bad clothing,” the sensible next step is to remain undeterred by the Arctic weather or diminishing daylight hours, and start hurling said clothing across a frozen lake. Now, I realise that this should be the national slogan, stitched on every thermal, a reminder to heliophiles everywhere that the sun isn’t always the best at thawing the winter away. In the lake regions of Finland, I found the warmest cold I’ve ever known.
How to Get There
Finnair offers return fares from London Heathrow to Helsinki, starting at £190 in Economy Class and £503 in Business Class, including all taxes and charges, as well as direct flights from London Heathrow, Manchester, and Edinburgh to Helsinki year-round.
VR trains run year-round connections from Helsinki Airport to destinations across Finland including Tampere, Helsinki, Oulu, and Rovaniemi.
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