Discover Finland through its wellness traditions on this 8-day tailor-made journey featuring smoke saunas, cold plunges, forest bathing, lakeside retreats, and Northern Lights experiences from Helsinki to Lapland.
8 days
|From £5,570 pp
Discover Finland through its wellness traditions on this 8-day tailor-made journey featuring smoke saunas, cold plunges, forest bathing, lakeside retreats, and Northern Lights experiences from Helsinki to Lapland.
Helsinki to Finnish Lapland, by way of the lakes. This journey explores the Finnish approach to wellbeing through smoke saunas, lakeside retreats, forest bathing, cold-water immersion, Arctic wellness rituals, and some of Europe’s cleanest natural landscapes.
There are over three million saunas in a country of five and a half million people. Here, the sauna is not a spa amenity but a way of life, used for physical restoration, social connection, and mental wellbeing for centuries. This itinerary is built around that culture, taking you through three distinct regions, each offering its own take on Finnish wellness.
The journey begins in Helsinki with two nights at a hotel selected for its wellness facilities, sauna access, and central location. From there, travel to Finnish Lakeland for a stay at an adults-only retreat overlooking Lake Saimaa, complete with a private sauna, opportunities for cold plunges, and breakfast delivered each morning.
The final stage takes you above the Arctic Circle to Lapland, where a lakeside retreat on Lake Norvajärvi provides a base for Arctic wellness experiences, sauna rituals, forest walks, and Northern Lights viewing.
Every element is tailored to your pace, with carefully selected properties and seamless transfers throughout.
Arrive into Helsinki and transfer privately to your hotel in the centre of the city.
Helsinki offers an introduction to Finnish wellness culture, where saunas, cold-water swimming, and daily time outdoors remain part of everyday life. At Allas Sea Pool on the harbor, outdoor pools, saunas, and Baltic Sea plunges provide a modern take on a longstanding Finnish tradition. A private guide introduces the city on the first full day, combining wellness and culture.
Helsinki now has multiple Michelin-starred restaurants built around Finnish produce, game and coastal seafood. Reservations will be arranged according to your preferences for both evenings, although availability at the most sought-after restaurants cannot always be guaranteed.
A private transfer north takes you into Finnish Lakeland, where your property sits in a pine forest above the shore of the Lake Saimaa system, the largest lake in Finland and the fourth largest in Europe.
The stay in Finnish Lakeland is centreed around an adults-only retreat surrounded by pine forests and lakes. The days in Lakeland are built around guided wellness sessions, cold water swimming, kayaking and paddleboarding on the Saimaa system, alongside the sauna ritual that defines life here, heat and cold alternating until the body and the mind arrive at the same place.
The lake is also home to the Saimaa ringed seal, one of the rarest freshwater seals in the world with a total population of around 400 individuals. A guided boat safari through the Saimaa Archipelago offers a chance to explore the lake system and spot the rare Saimaa ringed seal.
On the final evening, dinner is reserved at one of the Lake Saimaa region’s leading restaurants, such as Restaurant Solitary, Restaurant Tila, or Restaurant Niinipuu, where menus showcase seasonal ingredients sourced from the forests, lakes, and farms of eastern Finland.
A private charter flight takes you north to Rovaniemi and into Finnish Lapland. Lakes, forests, and the Arctic sky shape this stage of the journey, where Finnish wellness traditions are experienced through sauna rituals, cold-water immersion, and time spent outdoors.
The first evening is reserved for rest after the journey. Begin with a sauna session before dinner, then spend time by the lake as darkness falls. If conditions allow, the Northern Lights may appear overhead.
The day begins with morning yoga and a guided forest walk through the boreal forest surrounding the property. In winter the boreal forest is almost completely silent, and the walk is designed around that stillness as much as the route itself.
In the afternoon, a snowshoe hike through the forest to a wilderness camp in a clearing among the trees, where lunch is cooked over an open fire. The hike covers terrain that is inaccessible on foot in any other season and gives the first real sense of the scale of the Lapland wilderness.
That evening, a Finnish folklore sauna ritual led by a sauna host, covering the ceremonial greeting of the löyly, the steam, alongside birch-whisking and a guided cold plunge into the lake. Your guide monitors the KP index after the ritual and takes you to the best position on the lakeshore if conditions are right for the Northern Lights.
A morning excursion to one of the frozen lakes outside Rovaniemi, with a local guide who drills the ice and teaches the technique over two hours before cooking the catch at the lakeside. Ice fishing has been practiced in this region for centuries and the combination of the frozen landscape and the open fire is hard to find a comparison for elsewhere in Europe.
In the afternoon, a reindeer safari with a local Sami herder covers the relationship between the Sami people and the reindeer that has defined the culture of northern Finland for over a thousand years. The safari is as much a cultural encounter as it is an outdoor activity.
The last morning follows the Lapland rhythm. Morning yoga, a forest walk and the afternoon pullakahvit, traditional Finnish pastries and coffee served at the property each day, which is the right note to end on before the transfer to Rovaniemi Airport.
If the previous night brought Northern Lights activity, the lake ice hole and the open sky above Norvajärvi will have given you the best possible position to see it. If the forecast shows a final display before the early morning departure, your guide will call.
All transfers are arranged throughout the journey, including onward travel from Rovaniemi to your departure city.
Experience traditional Finnish smoke sauna and ice immersion at Lake Saimaa with a master sauna practitioner.
Spend time with Sami hosts in Swedish Lapland, learning about reindeer herding, seasonal migration, and a culture that has shaped life across northern Scandinavia for thousands of years.
Tromsø sits beneath the Auroral Oval in northern Norway, giving it some of the most consistent Northern Lights conditions in the world. A private boat charter departs when conditions are right, moves to the darkest available fjord and stays as long as the display warrants.
A multi-day dog sledding expedition on the Finnmarksvidda plateau in northern Norway covers 25 to 40 kilometres a day through terrain that has no roads and no artificial light. Guests drive their own sled, stay overnight in wilderness cabins and spend several days covering ground that is otherwise inaccessible in winter. The season runs from December through March.
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