A bucket-list road trip in the world’s happiest country

Steam hisses off hot rocks. Barely clad bodies shuffle to make space on packed wooden benches. There’s a growing din as at least five languages jostle for air in the clamping heat.

It’s Friday night in the cultural melting pot of Helsinki, and Löyly public sauna is quite literally the hottest place to be.

“There are no rules to sauna in Finland,” Helsinki local of 15 years, Kathrin Deter, is telling me.

“Some international visitors come here assuming sauna must be a quiet, solemn experience. But as you can see, it’s quite the opposite. Finnish people go to sauna to socialise instead of going to a bar. It’s also common for important business and political discussions to occur in a sauna.”

Newer public saunas like this one require swimwear. However, Deter says, it’s more traditional to go nude. It brings a whole new meaning to “open negotiations”.

There are three million saunas across Finland, according to the country’s national tourism organisation Visit Finland, for a population of 5.5 million. Over the centuries they were used as a cure-all for illness, a place for women to give birth, and even a disinfectant for food preparation (using smoke from the fire to cure meat or fish). These days we know the science-backed benefits of sauna include relaxation, reduced inflammation and respiratory tract and heart health.

Less scientific is Deter’s theory that sauna could be the secret to happiness in Finland. The country was named the happiest on Earth for the seventh year in a row in 2024 by the UN’s World Happiness Report. As I bliss out in steam-induced zen states on a two-week road trip across the country, the connection does start to make sense.

The capital of calm

Just 5550 Australians visited Finland in 2022, according to Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That’s about one third of the 14,500 Australians who visited Iceland or the 14,060 to Sweden in the same year. And it’s a shred of the 155,000 Australians to Bali. Travel writers love to slap “hidden gem” on just about any destination, but statistics don’t lie. You are far less likely to recognise ocker Aussie accents here.

I fly into Finland from Greece, where masses of European school holiday crowds swarm with chaotic frenzy in August. In contrast, the halls of Helsinki airport hum with calm efficiency, are virtually empty and sparkling clean. Signs outside the bathrooms encourage me to fill my water bottle with some of the world’s cleanest tap water and breathe the world’s cleanest air, officially verified by the World Health Organisation.

A train from the airport underground station is faster than any Ubers or taxis to the city and costs just over $4 for a one-way ticket. Helsinki Central Station is a jewel of Finnish art nouveau architecture, and strolling over criss-crossing tram tracks offers a new history lesson on every street. From colourful 18th century apartments that were built during Swedish rule to the outlandish Russian cathedral domes of the 19th century. Many street signs come in three languages, too. Finnish, Swedish and Russian are all spoken widely even though Finland gained independence from its former overlords in 1917.

Ferries, trams, trains and buses run like clockwork, but I find myself losing track of time while spinning a set of bicycle wheels under pink skies when the light lingers past 10.30pm. In the world’s happiest country, car drivers will actually stop and give way to bikes.

White nights and summer daze

I’ve arrived in late summer when an air of adventure crackles in Finland. Lapland becomes the “land of the midnight sun” when daylight simply rotates around the skies above the Arctic Circle. The sun does dip below the horizon briefly in Helsinki, but light dwindles without ever becoming truly dark across a 24-hour period, during what are known as “white nights”.

“One night I was hosting a barbecue with friends. I realised it was 2am and I hadn’t put the meat on yet,” laughs Felipe Diaz, a Chilean-born Helsinki resident who runs walking tours under Happy Guide Helsinki.

Diaz shares a box of fried vendace (small fish like anchovies) from the market, before introducing us to the ubiquitous combination of Finnish filter coffee and cinnamon rolls (korvapuusti). The Finns drink more coffee per capita than any other nation in the world – another possible explanation for their exorbitant happiness. Lounging in an emerald velvet armchair at Robert’s Coffee in Helsinki, he also adds ei tässä olla jäniksen selässä to my vocabulary, which literally translates to “relax, you’re not on the back of a hare”.

It’s good advice most Finns follow by migrating north for their summer holidays to the green central region of Finnish Lakeland. We do the same and pack our luggage into a rental car, taking to the beautifully smooth highways surrounding the regional city of Jyväskylä. We stop to feed the enormous antler-clad residents of Moose Manor in the backwoods of Mount Himos. It’s the first and only moose park in Finland, where 750-kilogram orphan Sauli nudges his furry nose through the fence to grab more leaves from the willow branches I hold.

Arriving late to Himos Golf Course is no issue when we don sunglasses to tee off at 7pm. Afterwards, we head to our A-frame cottage in Himos Holiday Village to plunge into the crisp lake then thaw out in our basement sauna.

Cottage life - mökkielämä in Finnish - is associated with slow living and treading softly on the land. It’s the quintessential way to explore Varjola, then coastal Oulu, four hours north. Paddling kayaks out to sea on the Oulu River delta is a summer treat we enjoy before the sea freezes and locals don ice skates for six months.

Oulu will be the European Capital of Culture in 2026 and is committed to showcasing two of Finland’s contrasting dynamics. Those are the natural beauty of the lakes and forests, plus its flair for modern, occasionally weird, art culture. Our visit coincides with the annual Air Guitar World Championships. Watching a face-painted “Young Angus” perform in heavy-metal pantomime to ACDC is a hilariously bizarre insight into Finland’s less-demure side.

The land of Everyman’s Rights

As we head north, the tall forests dip to the height of bushes and lichen, where keiju (fairies) surely live in the undergrowth. It’s still berry season here, and we regularly pause our driving to pick and eat wild blueberries. The uniquely Finnish law of “Everyman’s Rights” protects every resident or visitor’s right to forage for wild-grown (not farmed) berries or mushrooms or fish with a line and rod, even on private land. David Cohen, the founder and winemaker of Ainoa Winery in Lahti tells me it’s why he has never bothered putting fences up. Locals know his land has the best wild berry bushes and will come there to pick them.

Paired with Everyman’s Rights is a nationwide commitment to sustainability and cooking with local produce. Sokeri-Jussi tavern in Oulu plates up delicious chanterelle mushrooms, pike, mashed potatoes and rye bread. At Roka Street Bistro in Rovaniemi, we slice into perfectly pink reindeer steak culled from local farms, drizzled in jus from Lapland raspberries. Coveted golden cloudberries grow exclusively in the north and make for a mouthwatering, jammy orange tiramisu at Rakas Restaurant.

Arriving in Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland, we are wary of tourist traps. This town balloons in winter with visitors to Santa’s Village and the “official” North Pole Post Office. Many come to hunt the northern lights through windows of glass-encased luxury accommodation like the forest cabins of the Arctic Treehouse Hotel. Our summer visit means there are zero lines to see Santa, and we have plenty of daylight to feed reindeer at a local farm on a tour with Sieriporo Safaris. We spend the evening cruising around forests on fat bikes, which are free for guests at the Arctic TreeHouse.

Chasing the lights

Nearing the end of our two-week tour, the sun begins setting closer to 9pm. Expert photographers from Beyond Arctic, who run tours to capture the northern lights, tell me aurora season begins at the end of August. Their hot tip is that spring can be the best time to hunt when skies are clear of snowstorms. Lahti, a quaint lakeside city with sporting venues that hosted the 1952 Olympics, presents our final destination and last chance for a sighting.

A night train affectionately dubbed the “Santa Claus Express” careens us southward from Rovaniemi back toward Helsinki. The journey that can take two days by car becomes 12 hours in a sleeper carriage with cars parked aboard in a vehicle carriage. It’s aurora-free but bookmarked by a delivery of warm berry porridge and coffee to our bunk bed cabin in the morning.

We are nearly out of hope when the locally recommended “My Aurora Forecast” app pings. It’s predicting high auroral activity and clear skies in Lahti at about midnight on our second-last evening. We take a stab on Google Maps and drive out of the city seeking unpolluted darkness. Our viewpoint is nothing more than a muddy lake beach, where we stand gazing north.

Sure enough, a green alien-like ring appears. It dances slowly above the horizon’s black silhouette. The aurora morphs out of its oval shape then spills into long fading streams of purple and green.

Shrieking with thrill into the night barely conveys my excitement. Bucket list encounter ticked off; I’m left to pick up my jaw from the happiest country on Earth.

The details

Fly
Qantas operates daily Finnair codeshare flights to Singapore from Australia, with a short stopover you can fly Finnair to Helsinki from there. See qantas.com.au

Travel
Trains run regularly from Helsinki airport to Central Station for €4.60 one way, and you can hire a car from Hertz Suomi nearby. You’ll need to show your Australian licence, be ready to drive on the right-hand side of the road and watch the signs for constantly changing speed limits.

Stay
The NH Collection Grand Hansa is Helsinki’s newest luxury hotel and serves a Finnish breakfast buffet to remember. It also boasts the best location, right across the road from Central Station, a short walk from the Market Square, and with free bikes for guests to borrow. See nh-collection.com

Further north, the Radisson Blu in Oulu might be one of the most underrated gems in the country. On the water, walking distance from everything and with access to a commercial gym downstairs. Splashing out on the Presidential Suite buys you a sauna in your own bathroom. See radissonhotels.com

More
visitfinland.com

The writer travelled with assistance from Visit Finland.