Northern Lights Forecast for Ivalo

Northern Lights in Ivalo

Ivalo is the main village of Inari municipality in northern Lapland, on the Ivalojoki river where Highway 4 (the E75) crosses it, about 230 km north of the Arctic Circle. Around 3,000 people live here, which makes it the biggest village in the municipality and the one with the shops and the airport. Most aurora visitors who land here carry on to Saariselkä, 30 km south, or Inari, 40 km north.

Ivalo Airport at Törmänen

Ivalo Airport (IVL) is in Törmänen, a 10-minute drive south of the village, and is the northernmost airport in Finland and the EU. Finnair flies here from Helsinki all year, and winter adds direct flights from several European cities. An airport bus runs to Saariselkä and Kiilopää in connection with the flights.

Without flying, take the night train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi and the bus from the station, about four hours up Highway 4.

The Ivalojoki, Lake Inari and Nellim

The street lights follow the main road, and the dark starts a few minutes’ walk from the roundabout.

• The Ivalojoki banks. The river runs through the village and its banks are the nearest open sky to the center.
• Lake Inari. The Ivalojoki empties into the lake a little over 10 km north-east of the village. Finland’s third-largest lake normally freezes from November until early June, so for most of the aurora season it is one flat, unlit horizon.
• Nellim. A Skolt Sámi and Inari Sámi village on the south-eastern shore of Lake Inari, about 42 km north-east of Ivalo by road and 9 km from the Russian border, with a small wooden Orthodox church.
• Kaunispää. The fell above Saariselkä, 30 km south, has a road to its 438 m top, which puts you above the valley mist.

Kaamos, and Lake Inari before the ice

The polar night in Ivalo lasts about 40 days, from the start of December until the sun comes back around 9 January. At the other end of the season the nights are dark enough again from late August, and the lake stays open until November, so September and October give reflections that the frozen months do not.

Gold on the Ivalojoki and a village rebuilt after 1944

The Ivalojoki had a gold rush in the 1870s, and a few panners still work the river upstream. Retreating German troops burned the village in 1944 and the center was rebuilt after the war, so there are no old buildings to look at. Spruce stops growing about 10 km north of the village, and the land toward Inari is pine, birch and open bog.