Coronavirus makes Santa Claus Village a rare quiet spot

There has been an exceptional calm in the Santa Claus Village, a famous tourist attraction in Lapland, in the absence of tourists during Covid-19 times although normally half a million tourists visit the place every year.

The Santa Village in the Arctic Circle, about eight kilometers north of the center of Rovaniemi, is now open, but the presence of visitors is very thin because of travel restrictions on entry into Finland.

The village had been closed for about three months when only online events could be held. “Travelers usually come from across the world — Europe, Asia, Australia, or the United States. The number of travelers made a record as 2020 began. But there were no travelers in mid-March because of the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Sanna Kärkkäinen, Managing Director of Visit Rovaniemi, told the Daily Finland.

The conditional ease of restrictions on entry into Finland from EU and Schengen countries beginning on June 21, 2021 has, meanwhile, created slight hopes for a normal situation.

“It was a total shock to both travelers and the tourism industry,” she said, adding that a complete recovery will probably take years.

Even though the high season of October-April is still far away, Kärkkäinen hopes that the summer will play an important role once the borders are fully open.

The Daily Finland correspondent recently spoke to Santa Claus, tourists, local traders and employees to know of the situation. The village is quite empty now. A few international tourists were there. Even local tourists can be rarely noticed.

Ville from Turku, visiting the village along with the family, said, “the coronavirus situation is pretty balanced in Finland. I think it is just not the season for us to come here. But I enjoy it with my family anyway. It is nice that the place is not crowded.”

Carsten and Helge from Greifswald in Germany, who stood out from the group of local visitors, are taking a motorcycle trip through Scandinavia. Having planned to go to the North Cape, they realized on their way that the Norwegian borders are still closed to tourists from Germany.

“As we had been so close to the Finnish border already, we wanted to check out if it was possible to come here for some time,” they said. The official answer from the border guards was a “no”, but guards suggested a trick to make the entry possible.

“They basically asked us to say that we were on a transit to catch the ferry from Helsinki back to Germany and we were let in,” said Helge, adding that they anyway caught some grumpy look in Finland because of their German license plates. They both are, however, thankful for this opportunity.

“We are going back to Sweden today. So, it was only one night here in Finland. But we appreciate that we could come here, take photos and have a small chat with Santa,” Carsten said.

Päivi Yazaoui, the owner of the LOFT Cafe in the Santa Claus village, said that the losses she incurred prompted her to open a second business in the pandemic to somehow earn money. “I don’t have any expectations this year. I just hope that it is enough for me to keep going.”

Many shops in the village remained closed and Yazaoui said that the reason was too few customers. Last spring when the pandemic was breaking out, she had to lay off her employees and she is worried about the future of the business because she does not know how long she would be able to continue running the cafe.

Yazaoui, however, said that some local people visit the café regularly to buy something as takeaway.

Oskar Majava, a shop assistant in a store for reindeer products, said that it was bad for business last winter because only local people, and some tourists from border regions, visited the place.

Majava said that they lost about 90 percent of their customers. “The atmosphere was bad because even though everyone was happy that at least some people were coming, we were afraid that it might not be enough or could suddenly stop as well,”

Santa Claus, however, expressed hopes for the future of the village. “This is just my character,” he said. “It has been an exceptional time — this year and the one that went by. Because of the pandemic, we had fewer people traveling and visiting me and that is sad. But I believe that we are getting better slowly and the world will be less miserable.”

Describing togetherness as one deep value of Christmas, he misses speaking in person to people from all over the world. “The pandemic was a big topic also for those who were speaking to me. I think that good health and happiness are on the top of the wish list for Christmas.”