Jono's blog posts

Driving your own team of loyal and eager huskies across the Arctic wilderness is a dream for many.

Imagine standing on a frozen lake some 200km north of the Arctic Circle with your closest friends, family or work colleagues as the multi-coloured Northern Lights dance across a pitch black sky.

Picture yourself driving a team of eager dogs through the snowy forests of Lapland. Here at Artisan Travel, we don’t do ‘ordinary’ because our passion is for the ‘extraordinary’.

Our knowledge and love of experience travel has always been at the heart of everything we do and we’ve been doing it for years and years. Along the way, we have created countless unforgettable experiences to share with our guests.

Your group can go in search of the Aurora in the Arctic, snorkel with dolphins in the Atlantic Ocean, whale watching in Iceland or explore some of the most remarkable UNESCO world heritage sites in the Mediterranean.

Looking for something more leisurely? Why not chill out with a drink in an ice bar or sail from island to island on a small ship cruise?

©Asaf Kliger & ICEHOTEL®

In many of our locations it is possible to meet reindeer, experience a reindeer safari, and find out more about the ancient and important tradition of reindeer herding.

Iceland  may be a fairly small country but the landscape is rich with geological wonders - boiling mud pools, spurting geysers, glaciers, waterfalls and active volcanoes.

Midnight Sun – the light that never dies

The tilt of the Earth’s axis towards the sun during the summer months causes the 24 hours of daylight north of the Arctic Circle that is known as the Midnight Sun. Essentially, if you are standing on the Arctic Circle (66°30ʹN) the sun does not drop below the horizon from 12 June until 01 July.

As you go further north that period extends. For example, in Northern Norway, the sun doesn’t set on Tromsø from 20 May until 22 July and in the far-flung wilds of Svalbard, the residents have 24 hours of midnight sun from 20 April until 22 August.

It’s a remarkable thing to be awake at midnight and find oneself in broad daylight. Even stranger for those of us who live in more southerly locations is the sight of the Sun still in the northern sky at 2 am. When you are used to our star rising in the east and dutifully descending into the western horizon, you could almost imagine yourself on another planet with a differently positioned sun.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the Midnight Sun can be seen from Northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Canada, Greenland and Iceland. We offer summer month holidays in all these countries so there’s an excellent range from which to choose.