People are queuing in the town of Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland on the Arctic Circle to meet Santa Claus.
With a shy smile on her face, Inés Aceituno from Valencia stands in line for Santa’s office with her parents and brother. She is holding a letter in her hand. A pair of Jordans is what she wants most.
When an elf swings open the door and welcomes the family, the big moment has arrived. Santa Claus kindly asks if it isn’t a bit too cold for her here on the Arctic Circle. And whether Inés has behaved well over the past year. She nods. Satisfied, the Spaniards go outside again. Inés’ father knows what he has to do. The sneakers will probably be there.
Inés Aceituno belongs to a generation of children for whom the dream of visiting Santa Claus in his own environment has become reality. Just like the German Nill Landwehr; his mother calls it “an expensive, but an unforgettable once-in-a-lifetime experience.” She is about to return to Düsseldorf from the airport in Rovaniemi after a short holiday with her husband and son.
There is little mention of the magical Finnish silence
We still have to wait a while until a new load of warmly dressed families with whining children has left the plane. When a British mother fails to quiet her crying son with a warning to Santa, she threatens to cancel his upcoming trip to Disneyland. That works audibly better.
From November to May there is little of the magical Finnish silence in Rovaniemi. There is a constant coming and going of scheduled flights to the official airport of Santa Claus. They come from all directions to the town on the Arctic Circle, which has been called The Official Hometown of Santa Claus by the European Union since 2010. The mix of guaranteed snow, icy dark days with Northern Lights and a meeting with the ‘one and only’ Santa Claus is a great attraction for wealthy tourists. A record number of almost 600,000 foreign visitors is expected by 2023.
The enormous economic boost also has a downside. Rovaniemi must ensure that it does not succumb to success. That Santa Claus doesn’t become too much of a cash cow. The demand for accommodation this December is three times higher than the supply.
And that drives up prices. For overnight stays during the Christmas month you pay from 200 euros for a simple hotel room in Rovaniemi to more than 1000 euros for a luxurious stay in Santa Claus Village. An hour’s walk with an alpaca costs 55 euros, you get a hug from a husky for 15 euros and a photo with Santa Claus costs 35 euros. And that at temperatures of fifteen to twenty degrees below zero.
Everything is fully booked, there are lines everywhere. The temptation is great for entrepreneurs to take the turnover of 75 million euros to an even higher level. As ‘development director’ of the Santa Claus Cooperation, Antti Nikander must ensure that the business model of the sixty member companies is not at the expense of the message that Santa Claus stands for: ‘Caring and giving’. “We must hold Santa Claus’ standards and values of paramount importance. It shouldn’t all be about money here,” says Nikander alias Busy Elf. “At a certain point a limit on the maximum number of visitors has been reached. We don’t want to become the Venice of the North.”
Workshop for ‘Joulupukki’
The recent history of Rovaniemi resembles a contemporary Christmas story. At the end of the Second World War, the Germans destroyed almost everything when they left. Only eleven buildings were preserved. Most residents, including Antti Nikander’s family, left.
Five years later, help came from an unexpected source. Eleanor Roosevelt announced on behalf of the UN organization UNRRA, the predecessor of Unicef, that she wanted to visit the affected area. The population hastily decided to build a cottage on the Arctic Circle where the former American first lady of the United States could be received on June 11, 1950. Roosevelt donated 10 million German marks (more than 5 million euros) and tons of food, clothing, medicine and other material items on behalf of the organization.
After the visit, Rovaniemi became a stopover for tourists, who in the summer months drank coffee at the Roosevelt cottage, rode around with reindeer and sent a postcard home from the Arctic Circle. Until more than three decades later it was decided to give Santa Claus his workshop there. According to legend, Joulupukki, as the Finns call him, lived two hundred kilometers northwest of Rovaniemi with his wife and a group of elves on the Korvatunturi. This mountain is shaped like an ear, so they can hear if children were behaving properly.
From the moment Lapland was labeled ‘Santa Claus Land’ by its own governor in 1984, a growing flow of tourists started. Initially, it was mainly British people who made a day trip from London with the Concorde. That quickly turned into several days, after which it was decided to build the Santa Claus Village. Three ‘professional’ Santa Clauses have now been trained. Santa Claus is big business.
Among the pine trees, guests imagine themselves in a fairytale environment. From their rooms, houses or glass igloos they walk over the crackling snow past the crackling fires to Santa Claus’ office, that of his wife, the Roosevelt cottage, the track where the reindeer are ready to make a journey of four hundred kilometers for 25 euros per person. meters, or to the only post office in Lapland. At 21 places outside the village, tourists can walk, fish or swim in ice water.
Half a million letters and cards for Santa Claus every year
The ‘development’ director leads a tour of the park. While waving, Nikander squeezes through the crowd in his elf suit and red pointed hat. He stops at a wall in the post office full of containers for different countries. From Colombia to Hungary and from China to New Zealand. Half a million letters and cards addressed to Santa Claus are received every year. The official address is: ‘Tähtikuja 1, 96930 Arctic Circle, Finland’. Although letters addressed to ‘Santa Claus, North Pole’ also arrive.
Nikander points out the other side of the coin, which brings with it the official status of Santa’s village. “We see it as Santa Claus’s moral duty to provide everyone with a written answer in their own language. We employ numerous translators for this purpose and, in collaboration with the local university, we conduct research into how children around the world view Santa Claus. The story must remain authentic, but we also want to radiate the message of ‘caring and giving’.”
For example, Santa Claus visited boys and girls in Ukraine and two hundred sick or less fortunate British children were allowed to come for free this December.
The group of entrepreneurs in Rovaniemi will sit down in January to develop a master plan in which the balance between ‘caring, making money and protecting nature’ must be monitored. Because the climate on the Arctic Circle is also changing. More snowfall and less cold winters.
Nikander realizes that the north of Finland, in addition to Santa Claus, also lives from nature. The Christmas park wants to be climate neutral in two years. There is ‘green’ LED lighting everywhere, there are solar panels on the hotel roofs and the cars and snowmobiles are electric. A solution will have to be found for the polluting kerosene from the planes that constantly land and take off in Rovaniemi.
And there will be more NATO fighter planes and other aircraft now that Finland has joined the alliance. Rovaniemi, located 190 kilometers from the Russian border, has suddenly become an important summer destination for army troops: they can train endlessly in an area where the sun hardly sets. Santa Claus would like to welcome the soldiers to his area, where they each play a role in their own way to contribute to a better world.