Every design for Rovaniemi

Rovaniemi is known the world over as the capital of Lapland: a city just south of the Arctic Circle that is, with Helsinki, one of Finland's two great magnets for foreign visitors. It has even been named one of the best places in the world to spend Christmas.

For those who live here, though, the feeling of Rovaniemi is something quieter. It is the confluence of the Kemijoki and the Ounasjoki, the hills of Ounasvaara and Korkalovaara on either side of the centre, and the knowledge that the town was almost entirely destroyed in the Lapland War and built again from the ground up. Its name comes from the Sami word for a forested ridge or the site of an old forest fire, and people have lived on these riverbanks since the Stone Age: a carved elk's head found at Lehtojärvi is the oldest wooden sculpture ever discovered in Finland. Arktikum, Tiedekeskus Pilke and Lapin Metsämuseo hold those northern stories today, while Jätkänkynttilä and the Jätkä-patsas, the lumberjack statue, honour the forest workers of the north.

If you grew up where the two rivers meet, the map shows the rivers, the hills and the streets between them, exactly where you left them.