Hi guys. I have been thinking about doing a bike trip from Lapland to Helsinki.
Initially, I would go alone but my girlfriend decided she wants to join…
Did anyone do this trip or something similar? Any tips you could provide?
Maybe she won’t be able to ride the full length of the trip and we might need to take small trips on train, etc, I am really open to any tip possible.
Cheers.
Lapland is a huge tract of land that expands on the territories of several countries. You might need to be a bit more specific on your place of departure. 
Do you want to dodge tourists in their cars or ride endless empty gravel roads?
It seems like that will be a problem. We want to go when it’s warm… so we will eat mosquitos
Yeah… true. We will probably try to go as far north as the night train would take us.
I was hoping to go on my fixedgear, so I would like to avoid gravel But empty endless roads sound romantic 
The farthest you could get by train is Kemijärvi. If you’d like to see and enjoy endless roads, nice scenery, good food, wilderness and historic places you could ride relatively close to the border all the way down to Joensuu and take a train back to Helsinki. If I had the time and company I would plan on riding thru something like:
Places where you could take a train: From Kuusamo take a bus to Oulu where there are good connections. After Kuhmo you could ride towards Kajaani to take a train to Helsinki. Next possibilities are in Joensuu, Imatra and Lappeenranta.
Other people might disagree with my route suggestions.
Thank you so much. I will check this route later tonight. Awesome!!!
Actually, you can get farther noth by taking a train to Kolari. However, E8 (Highway 21) road could boring to cycle.
In general - try to avoid roads with single digit numbers (1…9), also especially in the South even the two-digit-roads (10…99) can be pretty busy - and focus on three-digit-numbers (123 etc), they’re usually paved and carry you through more interesting scenery. usually. Even the 4-digits may be paved, but be ready to check it from Google Streetview or similar- just in case. In North the distances between i.e. shops/gas stations might be longish, in central/southern it should not be a problem.
Kolari to Kemijärvi is not a bad idea to cycle either. 
I wouldn’t necessarily want to ride E8 up north, it’s a beautiful road but also rather narrow and a lot of large trucks use it.
Two digit roads can be pretty hazardous in Lapland aswell. I drive daily 100+ km on the kantatie 79 / kittiläntie (by car) and let’s just say I have little to no intentions of riding that road by bike (at least past certain point). The space for cyclists on the edge of the road is miniscule and the cars go by 100+ km/h on roads which might be filled with potholes that will brake the car or your bike.
Depending on the road there might be loads of big trucks, which makes it much more sketchy.
In certain areas the gravel roads are getting destroyed by melting snow, water and big trucks so if you are planning to ride those, first check if those roads are going to be under maintenance this summer. It’s called kelirikko and it’s pretty bad this spring.
Hey, did you go? Did you like it?
Unfortunately no. The lady decided that instead, she wanted to go on a car trip to Croatia… not that I was complaining about that…