Grocery shopping

From looking at the forum it seems that purchasing food in Levi will be extremely expensive. Most of the comments are from people from England...well I am from Australia and our dollar is worse, we get 57c Euro for every 1 Aussie dollar!!! We are staying in Helsinki the night before we depart for Levi. Would it be cheaper to purchase some items in Helsinki before we depart or are prices pretty much the same.

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Prices are pretty much the same throughout the country. Some fresh produce may be a bit more expensive in Lapland due to transportation costs, but those you would not be able to transport from Helsinki anyhow.

Imported goods are naturally more expensive than corresponding Finnish brands or the private or store brand products (e.g. Pirkka, Rainbow, Eldorado etc.). You can save money by choosing the cheaper brands instead of the familiar imported ones.

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it%26#39;s not outrageously expensive and as long as you are savvy with your shopping you will be fine - for some reason things like soup are expensive where as other stuff is not

half the fun is trying to identify what is what out there and if you make things like stews etc you can keep the costs down

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Soups? Do you mean creamy soups like mushroom or shrimp soups and/or the bouillon based soups that are sold as dried or ready-made in the shops?

If those are the ones you mean, the reason for their prices might be that they do not actually belong to traditional Finnish diet. In Finnish homes soup is often prepared to be an every day main course (e.g. for lunch). The most traditional examples of these are e.g. salmon soup and meat soup. Sea recipes e.g. %26quot;kalakeitto%26quot; (fish soup) at finland.fi/Public/default.aspx… and lihakeitto (meat soup) at www.finnguide.fi/finnishrecipes/recipe.asp… .

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creamy soups - they come in a carton and were something like 8 euros for a tiny carton that would only feed 1 - I was amazed at the cost of soup as it%26#39;s something we eat often and it%26#39;s cheap - when we were in levi they were giving out some soup (a finish brand) that was nice but when I went to buy it I didn%26#39;t bother due to the cost

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there are lots of things that the supermarkets sell that are not traditionally Finnish however, these do not cost the earth like soups do (it%26#39;s a bit of a bugbear of mine - the cost of soup in Finland)

;-)

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Ah, I think I know what you mean. Kelda soups sold in cartons - made by Arla-Ingman ( www.arlaingman.fi/static/kelda/… )? I agree, they are outrageously priced. Don%26#39;t know why. The brand Kelda is Swedish like Arla, too.

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ah yes - they are the ones - they were the only soup option at the supermarket in yllas and in saariselka and they were tiny for 8 euros

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Thanks everyone for your advice, we might just pass on the soup!!!!

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Does anyone have any information on the prices of other products like meats / drinks etc in the supermarkets. We are looking at staying at the Levi Cabins over New Year and are a little frightened about potential expense.

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By using the search function above with search index %26quot;price%26quot; in Lapland forums you will find e.g.

tripadvisor.com/…15204771

Key word %26quot;cost%26quot; will bring out tripadvisor.com/…15545347

All in all this matter has been covered in a number of threads over the years.