What vaccinations do I need for Finland?

None is required for entry. Recommended for a normal tourist trip: Tetanus up to date; Tick-borne encephalitis for a summer on the coast, the archipelago or Åland. See a travel clinic six to eight weeks before you go.

Finland travel tips

Finland travel health

Q: What is the emergency number in Finland?

112 for everything. Excellent, and public. The EHIC and GHIC are accepted and visitors pay the same small fees residents do. In Lapland the distances are the issue: the central hospital is in Rovaniemi, and from the fells further north that is hours by road.

Required is not recommended: the first is what the border asks about, the second is what a clinic would suggest. Both, for Finland, then the number to dial and what care costs a visitor. Applies to every guide in Finland: Rovaniemi, Helsinki, Levi, Ylläs, Saariselkä, Ruka and 1 more.

Required to enter

Nothing. No vaccination certificate is asked for at the border.

Emergency number

112 for everything

Care for visitors

Excellent and cheap

Excellent, and public. The EHIC and GHIC are accepted and visitors pay the same small fees residents do. In Lapland the distances are the issue: the central hospital is in Rovaniemi, and from the fells further north that is hours by road.

The cold, which is the whole health question in a Lapland winter: −25°C is ordinary, frostbite on a still night at a lake comes faster than people expect, and the thermal suits the operators lend are not a formality. Ticks in summer in the south and along the coast. Mosquitoes in Lapland in high summer, in numbers people do not believe until they arrive.

The general rules — clinic timing, water, mosquitoes, insurance — are in travel health tips.

The guides in Finland

Log cabins lit for Christmas among snowy pines — Rovaniemi, Finland

RovaniemiFinlandThe capital of Lapland, eight kilometres from the Arctic Circle, with the airport ten minutes out and Santa Claus a bus ride away

Helsinki Cathedral rising above the waterfront buildings in Helsinki, Finland

HelsinkiFinlandA granite capital on the Baltic, built around the sauna and the sea, and where most Lapland trips change planes

The aurora over the snow-loaded trees of a fell outside Levi — Lapland, Finland

LeviFinlandFinland’s biggest ski resort, built around one fell, with the liveliest evenings in Lapland and an airport twenty minutes away

A snow-covered fell in Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park — Ylläs, Finland

YlläsFinlandTwo quiet villages either side of Finland’s biggest ski fell, at the edge of a national park, with 330 km of cross-country tracks

A fat bike on a snowy trail between frosted trees — Saariselkä, Finland

SaariselkäFinlandA small fell village two hundred kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, where Urho Kekkonen National Park starts at the last cabin

Ruka village under the ski fell — Kuusamo, Finland

RukaFinlandA ski fell just south of the Arctic Circle with the longest season in Finland, and the Bear’s Ring trail ending at the bottom of the lifts

A reindeer sled in the snowy forest near Ivalo, in Inari municipality — Lapland, Finland

InariFinlandThe centre of Sámi life in Finland, on a lake with three thousand islands and five weeks without a sunrise