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Visit Rovaniemi, tour on snowmobiles, trek to Santa's Village, cruise on an icebreaker, and stay at a hotel made of ice, in Finland's Lapland.

Friends heading to Florida for the February winter break said we were nuts to tour Scandinavia, but Lapland's ice hotel, long one of my family's travel fantasies, was our choice. Winter is actually the most economical and magical time to visit Finland, where blizzards, saunas and ice sculpture are part of the national character. Our Norvista Tours agent Steven had advised, "All you'll need is wool socks, long johns and a good pair of boots." He was right; even the stylish Finns were elegantly dressed in layers of black wool and cashmere, accessorized with cellphones, Timberland boots and down-filled outerwear.

Visitors to Lapland, an ethnic region comprising northern Sweden, Finland, Russia and Norway, can fly into the Finnish Lapp capital of Rovaniemi (Tourist Office or call 358 16 346270), about 550m/830kms north of Helsinki. To Finns, it is best known for its city-wide Reindeer Races held each March. To design mavens, it is known as a post-war town laid out in the shape of reindeer antlers by renowned architect Alvar Aalto.

Lapland's Capital: Rovaniemi

We find it a charmless urban core of three- and four-story pastel blocks housing pizza parlors, pubs and ski or fishing tackle stores. Though souvenir shops sell the colorful wool costume of the indigenous Sámi, who founded this market town in the first millennium, nomadic peoples now hunt and farm reindeer much farther north.

For a look at some stunning architecture, we walk a mile on the frozen Ounaskoski River to Arktikum (358 16 322 3260), the region's cultural center. It is snowing lightly, about -15° Centigrade, perfect weather to enter this gleaming glass igloo. Arktikum contains artifacts, photographs and anthropological displays on the Native Americans in Alaska, Inuits in Canada and the Lappish of Norway, Sweden and Russia. Our son, Regan, grows increasingly interested when a multilingual CD-ROM explains how all Arctic peoples share many Sámi traditions. The gift shop carries photography books and artifacts crafted of reindeer horn or birch, carved with runes from the Sámi language.