An Evening Walk Along the Ounasjoki River in Rovaniemi
We arrived in Rovaniemi in the early evening, after almost 12 hours on the road from southern Finland, winding our way up through the small towns of Ostrobothnia. There’s an easier way to get here — the night train will take you from Helsinki straight to Rovaniemi without you lifting a finger — but our trip was continuing further north to Suomussalmi and Hossa National Park in the Kainuu region, so a car was really our only option.
Our hotel for the night was close to the banks of the Ounasjoki river. After checking in, the evening was so beautifully clear that we couldn’t resist heading straight back out for a walk along the water.
Our walk at a glance
- Jätkänkynttilä on a map
- Distance: 2.4 km
- Loop from Jätkänkynttilä Bridge via Ounaskoski Bridge and back
- Time: about 30 minutes
- Route: entirely on paved pedestrian/cycle path
- Highlights: sandy beach for swimming, great river views
We followed the riverside path down to Jätkänkynttilä Bridge, which is easily Rovaniemi’s most recognizable landmark. My own memories of it go back to childhood, since my family has been coming to Lapland on caravan trips for decades. It was a nice feeling to cross it on foot this time and look out over the wide sandy beach below — where, oddly enough, there were only a handful of people around.
A quick fact about the Jätkänkynttilä Bridge
The Finnish name Jätkänkynttilä translates literally as “Lumberjack’s Candle”. In English, this same type of fire log is usually known as a “Swedish torch”: a section of log with vertical cuts sawn into the top, stood upright and lit so it burns like a tall candle. Rovaniemi’s Jätkänkynttilä is a 320-meter bridge, and the tops of its pylons are shaped to resemble these angled, sawn log-candles, complete with an electric “flame” glowing at the top of each one.
We continued down onto that same beach and into the small park beside it. The campground next to the river, on the other hand, was completely full: caravans and cars from Finland, Norway, and Germany were parked in every direction.
We crossed another bridge and found ourselves back on the same side of the river where we’d started, walking the rest of the way back to the hotel at an easy pace, right along the water’s edge. Wildflowers grew thick on the riverbank, with sand martins swooping low over them.
Rovaniemi is a nice city, but if I were a foreign visitor coming to Lapland for the first time, I’d point myself further north. Rovaniemi has, unfortunately, earned something of a reputation as a tourist trap, with prices to match. Personally, I’d head for smaller places like Muonio, Inari, Ylläs, Saariselkä, Salla, or Pyhä-Luosto. All of them have real, proper fells and a much stronger sense of Lapland’s wild character, without tourism dominating the scene quite as much as it does in Rovaniemi. I’d dare say I know what I’m talking about, as I lived in various parts of Lapland for 8 years. Some Finns even joke that Lapland doesn’t really begin until you reach the latitude of Sodankylä.
That said, if you’re lucky enough to be exploring by car, it’s still worth stopping in Rovaniemi — wherever your journey takes you next.
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