Northern lights and polar night – Lapland in a 3D pop-up card

It is twenty-five degrees below zero. The snow creaks under your boots, and everything else is so quiet you can hear your own breath. Then a green streak lights up at the edge of the sky. It grows, curves and starts to move like a curtain in the wind.

For some, this is the winter of their childhood. For others, it is a dream they have not yet seen with their own eyes. Either way, a Lapland winter stays with you, and it is the story behind the Magical Finland Christmas card.

Kaamos – blue light at midday

North of the Arctic Circle, the sun doesn't rise above the horizon at all in midwinter. Finns call this time kaamos, the polar night. In Utsjoki, Finland's northernmost municipality, it lasts about two months.

Many imagine the polar night as darkness, but anyone who grew up in the North knows better. At midday the sky glows blue and pink, and the snow reflects the light back. From the window, the whole world looks for a moment as if it had been painted in blue watercolour. After years of living somewhere else, this is the light people miss the most.

Revontulet – the fire fox in the sky

The Finnish word for the northern lights, revontulet, means "fox fires". It comes from an old tale: a fire fox runs across the fells and sweeps the snow with its tail, and the sparks fly up into the sky as green and violet flames.

Science explains them as particles from the sun that make the atmosphere glow, but the explanation takes none of the magic away. Many people still remember their first northern lights years later: cold fingers, a coat zipped up to the chin, and not being able to bring themselves to go back inside. In Lapland the lights can be seen on many clear nights. When they reflect off a frozen lake, the sky seems to continue beneath your feet.

A red cottage in the snow

Finland has hundreds of thousands of cottages, called mökki, and many of them are painted in traditional red ochre. In a Lapland winter, the cottage is where time slows down. A fire crackles in the fireplace, you walk barefoot from the sauna across the snow to a hole in the ice, and through the window there is nothing but snow and spruce trees.

In the dark, a lit window can be seen from far away. It tells you someone is home.

Reindeer at the forest's edge

In Lapland, reindeer are not fairy-tale creatures but part of everyday life. Finland has around 200,000 reindeer, all living in the northern reindeer herding area, and every single one has an owner.

A first-time visitor stops the car to take a photo. A local simply waits until the reindeer decides to move off the road. In winter they dig for lichen beneath the snow and move quietly along the forest's edge, as if they had always been there.

When the card opens

On the cover of the Magical Finland winter card, a map of Finland glows in the colours of the northern lights. Open this 3D pop-up card and a Lapland winter rises from the table: a snowy spruce forest, a red cottage with lit windows, reindeer at the forest's edge and the northern lights reflected in a frozen lake.

For a Finn living abroad, it is a piece of home in the mailbox. For someone who moved south from the North, it is a reminder of what a real winter looks like. And for someone who has never been north of the Arctic Circle, it is an invitation to go and see.

It is a Christmas card that takes its recipient north for a moment, even if they live on the other side of the world. After Christmas, it can stay on a shelf as a decoration all winter long.

Wishing you a cosy polar night, wherever you are. ✨