Abisko
or Kiruna?Which to choose, and when to do both

The same sky, 93 kilometres apart

Abisko and Kiruna sit on the same road, the E10, 93 kilometres apart, and at almost the same latitude: Abisko’s research station stands at 68.35° north, Kiruna at about 67.86°. That half a degree makes no difference to the northern lights. Both lie beneath the auroral oval, and the Swedish Institute of Space Physics treats a radius of about 300 kilometres around Kiruna as one area for its aurora alerts. No published study shows the lights are more frequent over one than the other.

What differs is everything around the sky. Abisko is a village of 149 people at the edge of a national park, on the shore of Torneträsk. Kiruna is a working mining town of about 18,000, with the region’s airport fifteen minutes from the centre. One gives you the landscape at the door. The other gives you choice.

The weather, honestly

On SMHI’s 1991–2020 normals, Abisko gets 347 mm of rain and snow a year, the lowest in Sweden, against 561 mm at Kiruna airport. It sits in a rain shadow from most wind directions, and its April is remarkably dry, at 11 mm. In midwinter Abisko is also slightly milder: a January mean of −9.6°C, against −11.3°C at the airport.

Dry is not the same as clear. Kiruna records about 177 more hours of sunshine a year than Abisko.

Sunshine hours are a daytime measure and say little about a winter night, so neither figure settles the argument. What they do rule out is the claim, repeated on many sites, that Abisko has the clearest skies in the world. Nobody has measured that, and the sunshine record, if anything, points the other way. The “blue hole”, a gap in the cloud said to sit fixed over Abisko, comes from tour operators rather than from SMHI or the research station. Local gaps in the cloud are real. A guaranteed one is not.

Darkness, and how far you go for it

In Abisko a dark foreground is close: the lake and the edge of the park are a short walk from most lodges, and on a clear night the evening can start on foot. The Aurora Sky Station on Nuolja runs its night visit from 19 October 2026 to 27 March 2027, from 20:30 until 01:00 at the latest, for up to 40 guests. In bad weather the chairlift stops and the evening moves to a lavvu at ground level.

Kiruna is brighter, but not hopeless. Kiruna Lapland, the town’s own visitor board, says the lights can be seen from the centre on good nights, and points to darker ground on the Luossavaara side, beyond the street lights. Kiruna’s larger advantage is mobility: with a vehicle and someone watching the cloud map, it is a good base for driving to the gap. That is what our private aurora night is for.

Getting there, and between them

Kiruna airport is about ten kilometres, or fifteen minutes, from the centre. On the schedule published for winter 2026–27, almost every flight comes from Stockholm Arlanda, with a few direct flights from Copenhagen in midwinter. Abisko has no airport: from Kiruna it is 93 kilometres by road, a little over an hour in normal conditions. In winter, allow an hour and a half or more, and never build a tight connection to a flight.

SJ’s night train from Stockholm stops at Kiruna and at both Abisko stations, and from December 2026 it is contracted to run every day. Kiruna’s station is temporary, about six kilometres out of town, with a free shuttle timed to the trains. In Abisko, get off at Abisko Östra for the village, the shop and Abisko Mountain Lodge, or at Abisko Turiststation for the STF lodge, the national park, the Kungsleden and the chairlift. The two are about three kilometres apart: an easy walk in summer, a long one with luggage in the dark.

The regional bus between Kiruna and Abisko runs only in parts of the year, roughly February to May and June to September. In early winter, plan on a private transfer or the train.

What each one actually has

Abisko is small, and in winter it comes down to a few addresses. In peak season there are three main restaurants, in two lodges: Restaurant Kungsleden and Bistro Storstugan at STF Abisko Turiststation, and Brasserie Fjällköket at Abisko Mountain Lodge. There is one small grocery by Abisko Östra, and an outdoor shop with ski and snowshoe hire at the STF lodge. That is not a complaint. It means dinner is booked ahead, and that one closed kitchen on a given night matters.

Kiruna has the range: a much wider choice of restaurants, cafés and bars across the town, and hotels from Camp Ripan’s cabins and spa to Elite Hotel Frost and Scandic in the new centre. About twenty minutes from the airport at Jukkasjärvi, ICEHOTEL 37 opens on 11 December 2026, and ICEHOTEL 365, its year-round building, stays open through the summer. Add the LKAB mine tour, dog teams, snowmobiles and Sámi herding families, and a cloudy day in Kiruna has more ways to still be a good day.

The town that is moving

The iron ore mine beneath Kiruna is deforming the ground above it, so the town is being moved, district by district. Formal planning between the municipality and LKAB, which runs the mine, began in 2004. The new City Hall opened in 2018, and the new centre, with its shops and culture house, on 1 September 2022. In the phase now under way, LKAB counts about 6,000 people and 2,700 homes affected over the next decade.

The most famous move is done. On 19 and 20 August 2025, Kiruna Church, all 672 tonnes of it, was moved about five kilometres to its new site in one piece; its bell tower followed on 26 August. It is closed while the restoration is finished, and until it reopens it is a building to see from outside. The rest of the change shows as new blocks in one part of town, cleared ground in another, and works around the growing centre. Few places let you watch a town relocate itself.

What Abisko really is

Abisko was a place of science before it was a place of tourism. A research station opened at Katterjokk, near the Norwegian border, in 1903, burned in 1910, and was re-established at Abisko, where measurements began in 1913. Its weather station is one of the World Meteorological Organization’s centennial observing stations. The national park is older still: it was founded on 24 May 1909, covers 7,700 hectares, and is where the Kungsleden begins. It is the valley our One Hundred Winters journey is built around.

Its name in Northern Sámi is Ábeskovvu, “the forest by the great water”, and with Torneträsk stretching away from the village it is easy to see why. It is not wilderness at every step: the railway, the E10 and the lodges run through the valley. But the park begins where the buildings stop.

Children, and anyone who would rather not walk far

Kiruna is usually easier. The airport is close, the hotels are full-service, and the indoor sights work in any weather; the mine tour takes children from six years and 110 centimetres. Abisko is lovely for snow play and short walks, and naturum and the canyon path have adapted routes and places to rest. But the evening most people travel for, the Aurora Sky Station night visit, has a minimum age of twelve, and sixteen for its dinner.

For reduced mobility, make Kiruna the base and check each excursion. The mine tour can take a folding wheelchair if the guest can board the bus on their own or with a companion. Abisko can work well when the lodge, the transfers and the routes are arranged in advance, though winter snow narrows what is really usable.