Rovaniemi ( , ; ; ; ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Lapland. It is located near the Arctic Circle in the northern interior of the country. The population of Rovaniemi is approximately , while the sub-region has a population of approximately . It is the most populous municipality in Finland, and the 11th most populous urban area in the country.
Rovaniemi is the administrative capital and commercial centre of Finland's northernmost province, Lapland, and its southern part Peräpohjola. The city centre is situated about south of the Arctic Circle and is between the hills of Ounasvaara and Korkalovaara, at the confluence of the river Kemijoki and its tributary, the Ounasjoki. It is the second-largest city of Northern Finland after Oulu, and, together with the capital city Helsinki, it is one of Finland's most significant tourist cities in terms of foreign tourism.Lapin Kansa: Rovaniemen ja Helsingin johtajat saivat ministeriltä tehtävän miettiä, miten matkailu nousee korona-ajan mentyä ohi – Rahaa on luvassa EU:n elpymispaketista (in Finnish) In 2024, CNN listed Rovaniemi as "one of the best places in the world to celebrate Christmas."
The city and the surrounding (Rural municipality of Rovaniemi) were consolidated into a single entity on 1 January 2006. Rovaniemi municipality has an approximate population of . The urban area of Rovaniemi has a population of 53,361, in an area of about . Rovaniemi is a monolingual Finnish-speaking municipality, and unusually for larger Finnish towns, it is also known by its Finnish name and spelling in the Swedish language.
The coat of arms of Rovaniemi was designed by Toivo Vuorela. Its explanation is "in the green field, a silver pall with light-height upper branches; accompanied by a golden flame in the upper corner". It was approved on 15 August 1956 by the Rovaniemi Rural Municipal Council and confirmed on October 26 at the Ministry of the Interior as the coat of arms of the Rovaniemi Rural Council.
Name The rova part in the name Rovaniemi has often been considered to be of Saami origin, as in Northern Saami denotes a forested ridge or hill or the site of an old forest fire. The niemi part of the name means "cape". The name of the town in the Saami languages spoken in Finland are , and and .
History Periodic clearance of new land for agriculture and the practice of slash-and-burn cultivation began around 750–530 BC. Artifacts found in the area suggest that an increasing number of travellers from Karelia in the east, Häme in the south and the Arctic Ocean coast in the north must have come there from 500 AD onwards. The Sami are indigenous to Sápmi.
Rovaniemi is first mentioned by name in official documents in 1453, existing as a set of small villages whose inhabitants earned their living mainly in agriculture and animal husbandry—with fishing and hunting the most important offshoots.
The exploitation of Lapland's natural resources in the 1800s boosted Rovaniemi's growth. Extensive logging sites and gold fever attracted thousands of people to Lapland. As the mining of natural resources was increased, Rovaniemi became the business centre of the province of Lapland.
The township decree was promulgated on 27 June 1928, as a result of which Rovaniemi seceded from the old rural municipality as its own market town on 1 January 1929.Tällaista oli elämä Rovaniemen kauppalassa ennen kuin siitä tuli kaupunki – lapsia oli niin paljon, että koulut olivat tupaten täynnä, teiden kunnosta naristiin ja ulkopaikkakuntalaiset rötöstelivät – Lapin Kansa (in Finnish)
World War II Following the Winter War of 1939–1940, Finland increasingly developed military cooperation with Nazi Germany. Under a transit agreement concluded in 1940, German troops and military supplies were permitted to travel through Finland to German-occupied northern Norway. The transit route passed through Rovaniemi, where German logistical, communications and intelligence units began establishing facilities before Finland again entered war with the Soviet Union. A German Luftwaffe command organisation, Fliegerführer Nord, transferred its headquarters to Rovaniemi in December 1940, and by February 1941 the Germans had begun expanding the existing transit organisation into a major military supply centre.
After the outbreak of the Continuation War in June 1941, German forces were given operational responsibility for much of northern Finland. Rovaniemi became the headquarters of the German Mountain Army command in Finland, later the 20th Mountain Army, and developed into the principal German military and logistical centre in Finnish Lapland. The army headquarters, field hospitals, supply organisations and more than 60 German staffs were located in the town and surrounding area. The resulting military presence increased the population present in Rovaniemi from approximately 7,500 to 13,500. Historian Pekka Kujamäki has described wartime Rovaniemi as the "most significant German centre in all of Finland".
Rovaniemi Airport also became an important German military installation. The recently completed Finnish airfield was placed at the disposal of German forces from 1 July 1941, although Luftwaffe personnel and reconnaissance aircraft had already been operating in the area before that date. The Germans greatly expanded the airfield, building hangars, barracks, workshops, ammunition stores, aircraft dispersal areas and anti-aircraft positions. By January 1943 the airfield complex contained at least 31 aircraft hangars, about 120 accommodation and office barracks and 24 large storage buildings.
The German military presence also included prisoner-of-war and forced-labour systems. Alongside paid Finnish civilian workers, German construction, forestry and logistical operations in Lapland used Soviet prisoners of war and labourers brought from German-occupied Europe. A branch of the German Stalag 309 prisoner-of-war system was established at Rovaniemi in September 1941, and other prisoner and labour camps operated in the area. A Finnish liaison report from January 1943 recorded approximately 500 prisoners of war available for work at the Rovaniemi airfield, in addition to Dutch labour-service personnel and paid Finnish workers.
Relations between the German military and Finnish civilian authorities were generally organised as cooperation between the two countries rather than as an occupation: Finnish civil administration remained in place, while German forces maintained their own military command and legal structures. The large German presence nevertheless had a considerable effect on local life and employment. German units employed thousands of Finnish civilians in northern Finland in construction, transport, forestry, maintenance, hospitals, kitchens and other support work.
Finland agreed to a ceasefire with the Soviet Union in September 1944 and signed the Moscow Armistice on 19 September. Under its terms Finland was required to remove German forces from its territory, leading to the Lapland War. Anticipating fighting, the Finnish authorities ordered the evacuation of Lapland. Evacuation from Rovaniemi began on 16 September and was largely completed by 22 September.
As German forces withdrew north towards Norway, they adopted a scorched earth policy intended to deny roads, bridges, buildings and other infrastructure to the pursuing Finnish forces. The German destruction of Rovaniemi began in October 1944. By the time German forces withdrew, 548 homes, 96 private commercial buildings and nine public buildings had been destroyed, amounting to an estimated 90 per cent of the town's property. Fires and the destruction of the largely wooden town left relatively few pre-war buildings standing.
Reconstruction began soon afterwards. In 1945 Alvar Aalto, working through the reconstruction office of the Finnish Association of Architects, prepared a new town plan for Rovaniemi. His well-known Poronsarvikaava ("reindeer antler plan") arranged the principal roads and green spaces in a pattern resembling the head and antlers of a reindeer.
Geography Climate
Due to its location near the Arctic Circle, Rovaniemi has a subarctic climate (Köppen Dfc) with short, pleasant summers, while the winters are long, cold and snowy. The city lies just south of the mean annual isotherm, but freezing in the soil is very limited even during the winter due to typical heavy snow cover. Its extreme northerly location combined with frequent overcast skies leads to very low levels of sunshine in the winter months; December averages just under six minutes of sunshine daily. The "midnight sun" is above the horizon from 7 June to 6 July (30 days).
Winters are somewhat modified by marine air from the North Atlantic Current that ensures average temperatures are less extreme than expected for an inland area at such a northerly latitude. Nevertheless, Rovaniemi still has colder winters than areas at similar latitudes in Norway or Sweden.
On 26 April 2019, Rovaniemi recorded its warmest April day on record with .
The average annual temperature in Rovaniemi is . Snow stays on the ground 175 days a year on average. The lowest temperature ever recorded at the airport is , recorded on 28 January 1999. However, on the same day temperatures as cold as -47.5 C were recorded at nearby weather stations. The highest temperature ever recorded is , recorded on 18 July 2018 at the railway station.
Despite the fact that Rovaniemi experiences polar day between 7 June and 6 July (30 days) it does not experience polar night. However, the sun barely gets above the horizon in the winter.
Populated places Some of the neighborhoods are former rural villages, and the longest distance from said neighborhoods to the city center (a.k.a. "Rovaniemi proper") can be estimated to almost a hundred kilometers apart:
Alakorkalo Ala-Nampa Auttinseutu Hirvas Jaatila Juotasniemi Karvonranta Katajaranta Kauko Kiiruna Kivitaipale Kolpene Korkalovaara Koskenkylä Lehtojärvi Leipee Lohiniva Marrasjärvi Marraskoski Meltaus Misi Muurola Narkaus Niesi Nivankylä Nivavaara Norvajärvi Oikarainen Ojanperä Olkkajärvi Ounasrinne Paavalniemi Patokoski Pekkala Perunkajärvi Petäjäinen Pisa Pullinranta Pöykkölä Rantaviiri Rautiosaari Ruikka Saarenkylä Sinettä Santamäki Sonka Syväsenvaara Tapionkylä Tennilä Teollisuuskylä Tiainen Tuhnaja Vaarala Vanttausjärvi Vanttauskoski Vennivaara Viiri Vikajärvi Välijoki Ylikylä Yli-Nampa
Demographics
Population
The city of Rovaniemi has inhabitants, making it the most populous city in Finland. The Rovaniemi region has a population of .
Languages
Rovaniemi is a monolingual Finnish-speaking municipality. The majority of the population, persons (), spoke Finnish as their first language. In addition, the number of Swedish speakers was persons () of the population. Foreign languages were spoken by of the population. The number of Sámi speakers was persons () of the population. As English and Swedish are compulsory school subjects, functional bilingualism or trilingualism acquired through language studies is not uncommon.
At least 40 different languages are spoken in Rovaniemi. The most common foreign languages are Ukrainian (0.8%), Russian (0.8%), English (0.5%) and Chinese (0.4%).
Immigration
Population by country of birth (2025) Country of birth Population % 61,330 92.6 802 1.2 333 0.5 242 0.4 217 0.3 200 0.3 143 0.2 135 0.2 92 0.1 Other 1,798 2.7
, there were 3,778 persons with a migrant background living in Rovaniemi, or 6% of the population. The number of residents who were born abroad was 4,367, or 7% of the population. The number of persons with foreign citizenship living in Rovaniemi was 2,886. Most foreign-born citizens came from Sweden, Ukraine, China and Russia.