A northern lights tour with children in Rovaniemi

A northern lights tour is built for adults: it leaves after dark, goes where the sky is clearest, and ends when the guide calls it. Most of what makes one right for a child is somewhere else — where the child waits, when they get back, and what the family pays for them. Why the sky itself is out of anyone’s hands is explained in the northern lights guide, and the tour to book for a group of adults is in the best northern lights tour.

Where the child waits decides the evening

Most of an aurora tour is waiting. For an adult that is part of it. For a four-year-old it is the whole evening, and the tours that take small children differ most in where that waiting happens.

Snowtrail’s evenings end at its Aurora Cabin, where the page promises a warm fire and hot drinks. It does not say whether guests wait inside or around a fire outdoors, and that is the question to ask for a small child. StayLapland is the clearest on this: one of its evenings waits by a campfire inside a teepee, the other in the warmth of an old cottage, the one place on this page where the wait is plainly indoors. Lapland Royal Adventures carries the family in a heated, covered sleigh and stops at a campfire, so the warm place moves with you.

The long hunt waits wherever the clear sky is, which may be far from town. That is the right trade for adults and older children who want the best chance of a display, and a hard evening for anyone who is cold and tired before the lights arrive.

Work out the finish before you book

Two operators publish their times. StayLapland’s evenings leave at eight and are back in town at eleven, which is late for a small child but a known quantity. From December to March, Beyond Arctic leaves at eight or half past, and a tour of five to seven hours brings a family home somewhere between one and half past three in the morning. That can suit a twelve-year-old on holiday; younger children are not accepted anyway.

Snowtrail and Lapland Royal Adventures give the start as the pickup time in your confirmation. Ask for it before booking, add the tour’s length and a little for the drive back, and decide whether that finish suits the youngest in the group. A three-hour evening from a seven o’clock pickup is a late night; the same tour from nine is a very late one.

Getting there is part of it

Some evenings reach their stop on a snowmobile trail, with small children in a sleigh behind the guide: Lapland Royal Adventures’ sleigh evening, and Snowtrail’s four-hour snowmobile safari to its Aurora Cabin at €149, on which children under 145 cm ride in the sleigh. On a cloudy night that ride is what the children remember, and it is a real reason to choose one. Snowtrail also sells an electric reindeer evening to the same cabin, where under-fifteens ride in the sleigh while adults drive.

Where exactly a child sits, and whether an adult has to sit with them, follows the same rules as a daytime safari, set out in the family snowmobile safari guide.

What the children cost

Assume the full price for every child. Beyond Arctic is the only operator here with a lower fare for children, and it starts at an age when the long tour is open to them.

Clothing is the cost that catches families out on Snowtrail’s cabin evening, because it is rented per person rather than included, as it is on the other three. For a family of four that is sixty euros on top of the tickets, or a reason to bring your own if the children already have proper winter gear.

When to leave the aurora tour out

If the youngest is under two, none of these evenings will take them, and a parent who wants to see the lights can go on a tour while the other stays behind. If the children are tired from a day of activities, book the aurora evening for a quieter day rather than squeezing it in, because the night is long whichever tour you choose.

Where Snowtrail wins and where it loses

Snowtrail supplies this site. For a family with a three-year-old it has a three-hour evening with a cabin to wait at, and the snowmobile version adds a ride the children will talk about.

It loses on most of what a parent can check. StayLapland’s evenings are the same length and take the same ages, cost the same or less, include clothing in child sizes, publish their times and say plainly where the waiting happens. Lapland Royal Adventures takes younger children for less. On the cabin evening Snowtrail also charges for the clothing the others include, and on none of its evenings does it publish a child fare or a start time.

If the cabin is the part that decides it — somewhere warm to put a child while the adults watch the sky — that evening has its own page, and the Aurora Cabin is where the difference between waiting in one place and driving to find clear sky is set out in full.