There are still a tiny number of foreigners living in Lapland despite increased immigration to Finland in recent years.

According to recent statistics from Statistics Finland, there are numerous villages in Lapland in which there are no foreigners at all.

The region’s capital, Rovaniemi, has the highest number of expats. Not including students, who do not count as permanent residents, there are 1212 foreigners living in the city, out of a population of 60,000. This is just over two percent of the municipality’s residents and about a third of all of the foreigners in the region.

In Lapland as a whole there are 184,000 people of which only 2900 permanent residents – or 1.5 percent – are from outside Finland. Lapland is the least populated and most sparsely populated of any Finnish region.

Beyond Rovaniemi there are small numbers of foreigners in the region’s larger settlements such as Kemi, which is slightly further south.

Eastern Lapland is particularly short on foreigners. In the municipality of Savukoski, which has a population of 2000, there are four people whose native language is neither Finnish, Swedish nor Saami. By contrast in the far northern municipality of Inari, which has high levels of tourism, there are about 60 foreigners from a population of 6000. They include Austrians and even a Chilean.

Though the stark numbers of foreigners in Lapland are low, they are not as low in percentage terms. In Northern Ostrobothnia there are 5900 people who have a language other than Finnish or Swedish. This is also about 1.5 percent of the region’s population of 384,000; though the region is more densely populated making meeting a foreigner more likely.