Nordic Explorer

Daylight in Finland

Nine cities from 60°N to 70°N, today. Everything on this page is computed from the date and the coordinates, so there is no feed to go down and nothing to be out of date — but also nothing to argue with.

Today

Utsjoki 11h 46m of daylight
Kilpisjärvi 11h 48m of daylight
Saariselkä 11h 48m of daylight
Levi 11h 48m of daylight
Rovaniemi 11h 48m of daylight
Oulu 11h 50m of daylight
Tampere 11h 52m of daylight
Turku 11h 52m of daylight
Helsinki 11h 54m of daylight

The range, city by city

CityLatitudeLongest dayShortest day Polar nightMidnight sun
Utsjoki 69.9°N 24h 00m no sunrise yes yes
Kilpisjärvi 69.0°N 24h 00m no sunrise yes yes
Saariselkä 68.4°N 24h 00m no sunrise yes yes
Levi 67.8°N 24h 00m no sunrise yes yes
Rovaniemi 66.5°N 24h 00m 2h 14m no yes
Oulu 65.0°N 22h 02m 3h 34m no no
Tampere 61.5°N 19h 30m 5h 20m no no
Turku 60.5°N 19h 04m 5h 44m no no
Helsinki 60.2°N 18h 56m 5h 48m no no

The longest and shortest days are sampled on the 1st and 15th of each month and on the solstices, so a figure can be a minute or two off the true extreme. The polar night and midnight sun columns are not approximations: they are whether the sun fails to rise or fails to set at all on a sampled date.

Rovaniemi is the interesting one, and the table above says something most guides get wrong: it has the midnight sun and no polar night. The Arctic Circle is defined as the latitude where the sun just fails to rise at the winter solstice, but that definition ignores refraction — and the atmosphere bends enough light over the horizon that the sun does clear it here. Rovaniemi gets two hours and fourteen minutes of daylight on the solstice. In June the same effect works the other way and helps, so the midnight sun is real. The Circle gives you one of the two, not both. The first latitude on this list with genuine polar night is Levi, at 67.8°N.

For the aurora, daylight is not the number that matters — astronomical darkness is, meaning the sun more than 18° below the horizon. Rovaniemi has no astronomical darkness at all from late May to mid-July, even though the sun does set. That is why the aurora pages say "too light" in June on nights when the sun goes down at half past midnight.