Luxury Arctic Scandinavia: Sweden and Finland

Arrive into Helsinki and transfer privately to your hotel. The city is worth getting out into immediately. Senate Square, at the centre of the city, is framed by the Helsinki Cathedral and the neoclassical buildings that make up the administrative heart of the Finnish capital.

The design district south of the square concentrates the city’s independent shops, studios and restaurants into a few walkable blocks. The covered Old Market Hall on the South Harbour has been trading since 1889 and is where the fish, cheese and produce of the surrounding region have been sold each morning for well over a century.

Helsinki sits on a peninsula surrounded by the Baltic Sea, and the city has a relationship with water that runs through everything from its public saunas on the waterfront to the fish that comes off the boats at the harbour each morning.

A short flight from Helsinki takes you across the border into Stockholm. The city sits across 14 islands at the point where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic Sea, and the relationship between the city and the water defines how Stockholm works.

The old town, Gamla Stan, occupies its own island and has been the centre of the city since the 13th century. The Södermalm district to the south has a different character, with the city’s independent restaurants, galleries and shops concentrated around Götgatan and the streets that run off it.

Your private guide covers the city over the first day, with time in the Vasa Museum on Djurgården, which houses the warship Vasa, a Swedish Navy vessel that sank on its first voyage in 1628 and was raised from the harbour floor in 1961 in near-perfect condition. The museum is built around the ship and gives a sense of the scale of 17th-century Swedish shipbuilding in a way that photographs do not prepare you for.

On the second day, Do Not Disturb has arranged a private yacht for the day in the Stockholm Archipelago. The archipelago stretches 60 miles out into the Baltic and covers around 30,000 islands.

Your skipper and crew take you out through the inner islands, stopping on Fjäderholmarna for lunch before continuing further east into the outer archipelago where the islands become smaller and the water opens up.

The last full day in Lapland is unscheduled by design. The forest around Arctic Retreat operates at its own pace and the lodge is built for those who want to sit with that rather than fill every hour.

A morning walk along the river bank before breakfast, time in the spa, a final hour in the sauna, or simply coffee on the cabin deck with the trees on three sides. The lodge’s kitchen prepares a farewell dinner that evening, with a menu built around Arctic produce and the ingredients of the surrounding forest and river.

The following morning, a private transfer takes you through the forest and back to Lulea Airport. Depending on your international routing, you may have a few hours in Stockholm on the way home. Do Not Disturb can build a stopover into the return if you want one last evening in the city, or connect you through to your home airport with as few stops as possible.

Do Not Disturb handles the full return routing from Lulea to your departure city, including any Stockholm stopover, transfers and onward connections.