9845 km to the Arctic Circle in 20 days

Our route started and ended in Madrid, Spain followed by Metz- France and Puttgarden-Germany, where we took a 45-minute ferry trip over to Rodby, Denmark. From there we drove by Copenhagen up the Swedish coast to Uppsala and Skelleftea to our planned destination Rovaniemi in Lapland, Finland. On the way back we visited Helsinki and Stockholm where we boarded an overnight ferry which brought us back to Rodby – the ferry and Puttgarden. Next stop was Frankfurt and from there we arrived home after 18 hours on the road.

Metz on the Moselle River is a beautiful and historic city in northeastern France, near the borders with Germany and Luxembourg, the Moselle department in the Grand Est Region full of charm, history, and culture.

Uppsala is one of Sweden’s most historic and charming cities famous for its university, cathedral, and Scandinavian scholarly atmosphere. It’s located just 70 km north of Stockholm.

Skelleftea is a charming, fast-growing town in northern Sweden’s Västerbotten region, about halfway between Umeå and Luleå on the Gulf of Bothnia 800 km north of Stockholm. With its sustainable design, wooden architecture, and being a rising hub for green tech and Arctic living  it is still keeping that cozy, small-town Lapland feel.

Rovaniemi is the “The Official Hometown of Santa Claus” why we have all the reindeer around to get strong and train for Christmas so that the children of the world receive their gifts.

The Northern Lights should be seen between September and April why October seemed a good choice for us. But October also means rain and staying 6 days we actually had 6 days for rain and clouds. This combined with a low KP index - a scale that measures geomagnetic activity, the main indicator to predict Northern Lights visibility – made it so far impossible to achieve our goal. Leaving at midnight for Helsinki (a 8-hour drive) some 3 hours south around 3  the morning the sky illuminated above us and the result can be seen now here.

Helsinki, located in Southern Finland, on the Baltic Sea with a Population of some 660,000 is a modern, design-oriented, green, and very walkable as you see at the harbor area.

 Stockholm, the capital of Sweden in Eastern Sweden, on the Baltic Sea is a place where modern design meets royal history, spread across 14 islands linked by bridges and ferries.