Private Northern Lights Holiday in Lapland, Finland

Northern Lights Holiday Asgard

Northern Lights tour locations in 2020-2021

In these corona times, who wants to go on holiday, wear a face mask 24/7 and be paranoid about the person sat next to you coughing? Not us and we are pretty sure you don’t either. So in these unique times we are living in, we have decided to create a private dedicated northern lights holiday. When you book a holiday, we will allocate one guide and minibus to you for the whole week. There will be no other people. Your guide will wear a mask of course, but as it is just you and your family with you, you don’t have to (except when you visit the supermarket etc, we’d recommend it then). The majority of our time, we are in the vast beautiful sweeping landscapes of Lapland, totally alone. It is absolutely safe. It will feel very much like a normal holiday and you can largely forget about corona for the week you are here.

For the private tour, we require a minimum of 3 people and a maximum of 16. So whether you have a small family or a large family, we can accommodate you. You can decide whether you want to stay in the Asgard A or Asgard B cottages after you have booked. The default price is for the Asgard A cottages, but you can upgrade to the premium Asgard B cottages if you so wished. More info on the cottages is here.

In these crazy times, this is the closest thing you will get to a normal holiday. So come and enjoy the sound of snow crunching underfoot in the pristine arctic landscape. Leave your stresses at home and switch off.

Asgard is our original dedicated northern lights chasing holiday. We have been running our tours here since 2014. Over the years we have been able to expand the site with new cottages. So now it consists of 10 cottages, which is split into two sites, 5 cottages in each. Site A is our awesome original 5 cottages which have served us excellently over the years and site B is 5 newer cottages.

Both sites run mostly independently of each other, so each site has their own guide and their own minibus, so there is absolutely no cramming loads of people onto a big bus like other tour companies do. Splitting our sites up keeps the group sizes very small, around 10 people per week in each site! It’s very personable, very peaceful and very relaxed.

At both Asgard A & B sites we offer our very special 4 night/5 day aurora holidays which run Monday to Friday and shorter 3 night/4 day aurora chasing holidays over the weekend. Yes, both Asgard A and Asgard B sites have access to our amazing watch tower 🙂

This page applies to our 4 night tours. The 4 night and 3 night tours are exclusive of each other and can be booked in their own right whether you want to spend the week with us, or just have a quick weekend getaway. However, a lot of our guests fall in love with the place and say they wish they could have stayed here longer, so it is totally fine to book both 4 night and 3 night tours back to back to make a 7 night aurora holiday if you so wished!

Asgard A, northern lights village

Asgard A | Our original five Asgard cottages | €1195 pp

Asgard B, northern lights village

Asgard B | Our five newer cottages | €1245 pp

Our Asgard and Midgard tours being at almost 70° North and surrounded by official wilderness areas means  we have absolutely pristine clear skies with zero light pollution. Once you get this far north combined with being in these wilderness areas, your chances of seeing Northern Lights sky rocket. This is statistically the best place in Finland (and the best place in the EU!) for Northern Lights.

At the time of writing, we have 100% record for the current aurora season. Meaning every week since our tours started, we have seen northern lights. Yes some weeks it has been touch and go whether we would keep that record, it hasn’t all been plain sailing, but with a slice of luck (and sometimes you need that) we have got an aurora show even right up to the last night. Some weeks we have epic northern lights every night of the week!

It is a 2 hour drive to the nearest airport we are so remote, but ask any of our guests in past winters was the drive worth it and I am sure you will get a resounding YES. In fact, many of our guests come back year after year. Some of them have been coming every year since our inception in 2014! The beauty of being this far out is that it’s not touristy. You will see real Lapland as it lives and breaths. There are no gimmicks, no mass tourism and no false advertising. You’ll likely see Reindeer beside the road on the drive up here and even the occasional Moose. You get what we advertise, a lovely cosy cottage, set in beautiful scenery on the periphery of civilisation. True peace and quiet. As such there are not so many “touristy” things here. Forget designer outlets you find in other Lapland towns, there is one shop, one pub and one fuel pump. It is perfect.

If that is not enough, how about being with the people who run an aurora information service, who have all the very latest aurora information (including real-time solar wind data) and have been forecasting  auroras (www.aurora-service.eu/aurora-forecast/to thousands of aurora chasers all over Northern Europe? Our Asgard tours have won a certificate of excellence for 5 years straight on Tripadvisor. Indeed, we as a company, are ranked #1 out of 200 tour companies in Lapland on Tripadvisor. If this is a once in a lifetime trip for you, why choose anyone else than the best?

Here is a video from one of our aurora tours, this was filmed on 3 nights of the same tour:
We can’t promise weeks are always that good 😉 but when the Earth weather and Space weather play ball, that really is what you can expect here.

Incredible northern lights shows directly over the Asgard cottages :)

Incredible northern lights show directly over one of our original Asgard cottages 🙂

Our motto “it’s all about the lights” has never been truer, because we hand picked every single thing about this northern lights holiday ourselves entirely from an aurora chasers perspective. It is 100% dedicated to Northern Lights and about maximising the chances of seeing them. We go chasing the lights to some of the most beautiful and northern locations in Finland such as Utsjoki and Nuorgam. But we don’t stop there, we also cross the border into the Finnmark region of Norway and chase the northern lights around the town of Tana and many of the fjords on the Barents Sea itself! We tap into our knowledge from running the aurora information service, and use all the tools we use for that (and many others we have at our disposal) to help get you under the Northern Lights.

Northern Lights/Aurora Borealis

Our responsibility for you seeing northern lights is not just when we are driving round in the evening trying to find them. Our responsibility of helping you see Northern Lights begins when you step off the plane, until when you step back on it! So even if we are not with you at the time, we want to maximise your chances of seeing the lights! For this reason, we have chosen not to put you in a hotel, instead we have personally selected some cottages that you will be staying in that hugely maximise your chances of seeing the lights, even if we aren’t with you at the time. If we aren’t with you when the aurora kicks off, no worries, we have put a tablet in each cottage and we’ll send you an alert. You can also use the tablet to chat with your guide if you have a problem or need anything. All of our tour locations are in contact with each other, so if one location has clear skies and aurora, we’ll pile in the bus and make a beeline there.

Aurora over our new Asgard cottages :)

Spiral Aurora over one of our new Asgard cottages 🙂

So you will have 4 nights accommodation in your own cottage situated a stones throw from the banks of the famous river Tenojoki. You can watch the Northern Lights all night from your cottage, from the kota (wooden teepee with fire inside – super warm!) or from our Massive Watch Tower! Both our Asgard sites have access to the watchtower (it’s in between both sites), you can wander up there as much as you like.

Our epic northern lights watch tower

Our epic (not to mention MASSIVE) Northern Lights watch tower. Situated right in the middle of both sites, walk up it whenever you like!

This tour is exclusively just for you and your family. You will not be sharing transportation with any other people. You have the same guide and vehicle allocated to you for the duration you are here. You have your own cottage with your own kitchen and sauna too, so it is a really comfortable system, you can wake up when you like, eat when you like, and have a sauna when you like all in the comfort of your own cottage with your own privacy. We have put a tablet in your cottage whereby we can communicate with each other.

Itinerary

The 4 night aurora holiday is Monday to Friday. On the Monday afternoon when you arrive, we’ll pick you up from Ivalo airport (all the details on which airport to fly to, which flights to get and lots of other useful information is here). Depending on the road conditions, it is about a two hour drive back to your cottage through beautiful snow capped pine forests and past frozen lakes.

Before we get to your cottage, we’ll stop at the supermarket so you can get some groceries etc for the week (remember your cottage is self catering). The supermarket is pretty big and it has everything you need for breakfast, lunch and dinner all week. It also has beer/cider. Your cottage is only 3km from the main village so you are always within reasonable distance should you need anything.

Once at your cottage you’ll be shown around, instructed how to use the sauna etc. The cottages are nestled in a small pine wooded area which helps shelter you from the arctic wind. There are 2 kota’s (fire huts) in the grounds of our cottages where you and the other aurora service guests can warm up on cold nights and you can stay out watching northern lights for as long as you like. Your cottage also has a terrace you can sit on and watch the lights from, or you can even sit inside the cottage and watch the auroras from the window. It’s entirely up to you.

warm up by the fire

It will be around 5.00 pm by the time we get you to the cottage and you will have been travelling non-stop all day, so we’ll leave you to settle into your cottage and have an evening relaxing after a hard day’s travelling. We’ll just show you the kota, where you can watch the Northern Lights from on your first night. The aurora chasing begins on Tuesday evening. It’s important you relax the first night so you are fresh for the rest of the week, because we will be out chasing the light for 3 nights straight, and depending on the the aurora show, we could be out quite late each night, well into the early hours.

You have the daytime to yourself. Whether you want to go for walks, take up some of the activities we offer or just relax at your cottage reading a book. You can do anything you like, at your own pace. It’s especially good if you’re a photographer you can use the daytime to work on your previous nights aurora footage 🙂

Starry skies in Northern Lapland

If the weather isn’t playing ball over the site, we’ll jump in the bus and head out in search of clear skies.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7.30 pm each evening (purposefully just after dinner time so your not chasing the lights on an empty stomach), our aurora chasing tours begin. We will come and collect you from your cottage and go out chasing the lights for 4-5 hours or more (depends how good the show is) each night. When we get back to the cottage, you can put some wood in the kota/fireplace and carry on watching the northern lights into the early hours at your own leisure, with a beer or a glass of wine in your hand.

Not your average drive to the airport...

Not your average drive to the airport…

On the Friday morning we’ll come and collect you at 9.00 am and take you back on the beautiful 2 hour drive to Ivalo airport.

Husky adventure in the Lapland wilderness

There is no better feeling than being pulled silently through nature by huskies!

Snowmobiling in Lapland

Our snowmobiling adventure is a nice gentle drive down frozen rivers and across frozen lakes, which often produces a few Reindeer sightings. It’s a great way to get off the beaten track and sample the Lapland wilderness. On the private tour, again, it will just be you and your guide snowmobiling, no other people.

If you want to do some of our optional winter activities in the day time, you can add-on to your holiday. Click here for more details.

The Price

4 nights €1195 per person

Kids under 11 are half price.
Minimum amount of people 3

Only €100 deposit (per person) is required now to secure your place and the remainder payable 1 month before arrival.

What you get:

  • 4 nights accommodation in your own cottage with your own sauna.
  • 3 nights aurora chasing 4-5 hours.
  • Free collection to and from Ivalo airport.
  • Free hot drinks and snacks while out aurora chasing.
  • Free snow suits, snow boots, hats and gloves.
  • Free help and advice with your own camera.
  • Free aurora pics and video on a free pen drive we give you that we have taken on our pro cameras.
  • Free firewood for both your cottage fire and the fireplace outside.

What isn’t included:

  • Flights are not included.
  • Travel insurance is not included. Due to the nature of our holiday, travel insurance is a requirement.
  • Meals are not included. Your cottage has a fully equipped kitchen so you can eat what you want, when you want (we visit a supermarket on the way up from airport).

 


Asgard  Tour Dates 2020-2021 Aurora Season

Tour 1 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 2nd November – Friday 6th Nov 2020

Tour 2 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 9th Nov – Friday 13th Nov 2020

Tour 3 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 16th Nov – Friday 20th Nov 2020

Tour 4 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 23rd Nov – Friday 27th Nov 2020

Tour 5 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 30th Nov – Friday 4th December 2020

Tour 6 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 7th Dec – Friday 11th Dec 2020

Tour 7 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 14th Dec – Friday 18th Dec 2020

Christmas Break

Tour 8 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 28th Dec – Friday 1st January 2021

Tour 9 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 4th Jan – Friday 8th Jan 2021

Tour 10 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 11th Jan – Friday 15th Jan 2021

Tour 11 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 18th Jan – Friday 22nd Jan 2021

Tour 12 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 25th Jan – Friday 29th Jan 2021

Tour 13 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 1st February – Friday 5th Feb 2021

Tour 14 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 8th Feb – Friday 12th Feb 2021

Tour 15 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 15th Feb – Friday 19th Feb 2021

Tour 16 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 22nd Feb – Friday 26th Feb 2021

Tour 17 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 1st March – Friday 5th March 2021

Tour 18 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 8th March – Friday 12th March 2021

Tour 19 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 15th March – Friday 19th March 2021

Tour 20 | Weekday (4 nights) Monday 22nd March – Friday 26th March 2021


 

Secure your place on one of our tours now with only €100 deposit:

Book your northern lights holiday now!

If our tours are sold out and you have your heart set on coming, we recommend registering on the waiting list, where you will get advanced booking priority and notice of any cancellations. 

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