Hetta's Hotels

Jussan Tupa sits opposite the supermarket in the village centre, with 32 en suite rooms and 58 beds. Expect lobby wifi, an evening bar with pool table, a small pool and public and private saunas, plus a Lappish restaurant seating 192. The hotel is open most of the year but tends to close just after Xmas. Larger groups can book Vuollikka, its wilderness venue on the shores of Lake Ounasjärvi.

Hotel Hetta has 39 double rooms, 16 hostel rooms, 9 apartments for 2-6 persons and 2 rooms with their own sauna. Guests can use the sauna, Jacuzzi and small indoor pool year round for a EUR4 spa evening, plus an ice swimming hole in winter. The dance restaurant and bar seats 352, the auditorium 100, and the restaurant looks across the lake to the 711m Pyhäkero Fell.

Ounasloma Luxury Cabins has 13 high-level cottages near the crossroads for Alta, sleeping 6 or 10, each with sauna and full kitchen, and with rowing boats, bicycles and kick sledges free of charge.

Hetan Lomakylä offers rooms, cottages and log cabins with sauna for 2 to 5 people, plus electric pitches for trailers and mobile homes on the Närpistöjoki. Hetan Kota Oy, c. 4km from downtown, has camping grounds and huts for 43 people, bookable saunas and a restaurant.

Family-owned Paavontalo Holiday Village sleeps 44 in camping huts near Lake Ounasjärvi and Jyppyrä, one of the best-value options in the village. Cabins sleep 2-4, with showers, a communal kitchen, two saunas and a heated bath tub in the main building, and spring guests can take full board and simply ski. Majatalo and Hotel Hetta also have hostel-level rooms with communal bathrooms in their older wings.

Hetan Lomakylä takes camping trailers and mobile homes on the Närpistöjoki, and Hetan Kota sleeps 43, 2km from the centre of Hetta.

Private cottages include Ounistieva (55m2, 6 beds, by lake Ounasjärvi 1.5km from Hetta Huskies), Villa Mäntyniemi (sleeps up to 7, 3km from the village) and Närppä Cabin (48 m2, sleeps 8 but best for 1-4, no electricity or running water, via Ounasloma).

Hetta's Snow Castle rises each December and lasts until the May sun melts it. Redesigned yearly with ice sculptures and fairy-tale lights, it draws c. 5,000 visitors, and from roughly January through April, 20 people a night sleep in its custom rooms on beds of the purest snow, with reindeer skins, mattresses and warm sleeping bags.

A twin costs 110 euro/person, a single 149 euro, including a castle tour, sleeping instructions, thermal sleeping bags, warm drinks, transport within 10 km and the Certificate of the Polar Night.