[2][3] Lapland's cold and wintry climate, coupled with its relative abundance of conifer trees such as pines and spruces, means that it has become associated with Christmas in some countries, most notably the United Kingdom, and holidays to Lapland are common towards the end of the year.

[9][10] Lapland has been connected with the legendary "North Pole" home of Santa Claus (Father Christmas or Saint Nicholas) since 1927, when Finnish radio host Markus Rautio said that Santa Claus lived on Korvatunturi, a fell in the region.

It is not made up of barren ground like blockfields but instead has the vegetation of birch forests, willow thickets or heath.

[19] Common soil types in Forest-Lapland are till and sand with conifer forests growing on top.

[20] It has been suggested the inselberg plains were formed in the Late Cretaceous or Paleogene period by pediplanation or etchplanation.

[22][B] The hills and mountains are typically made up of resistant rocks like granite, gneiss, quartzite and amphibolite.

[24] The central parts of the Fennoscandian ice sheet had cold-based conditions during times of maximum extent.

This means that in areas like northeast Sweden and northern Finland, pre-existing landforms and deposits escaped glacier erosion and are particularly well preserved at present.

[25] Northwest to the southeast movement of the ice has left a field of aligned drumlins in central Lapland.

[26] Present-day periglacial conditions in Lapland are reflected in the existence of numerous palsas, permafrost landforms developed on peat.

Granites, gneiss, metasediments and metavolcanics are common rocks while greenstone belts are recurring features.

[27] More rare rock associations include mafic and ultramafic layered intrusions and one of the world's oldest ophiolites.

Permanent snow cover comes between mid-October and the end of November, significantly earlier than in southern Finland.

Lapland exhibits a trend of increasing precipitation towards the south, with the driest parts being located at the two arms.

Heat waves with daily temperatures exceeding 25 °C occur on an average of 5–10 days per summer in northern Finland.

During the Interim Peace and beginning of the Continuation War the government of Finland allowed the Nazi German Army to station itself in Lapland as a part of Operation Barbarossa.

Ninety per cent of Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, was burned to the ground, with only a few pre-war buildings surviving the destruction.

Large hydroelectric plants and mines were established and cities, roads and bridges were rebuilt after the destruction of the war.