Rauland has already played the part of the perfect Norwegian Christmas once. Much of Netflix’s Christmas as Usual — Så var det jul igjen — was filmed here, using a private house in Rauland for most of the production.
The film follows Thea as she returns to her home village for a traditional Norwegian Christmas with her family. The setting works because Rauland already looks like the kind of place international audiences imagine when they picture Christmas in Norway: snow around dark timber houses, blue winter light, ski tracks, wood smoke and long evenings indoors while the weather moves outside.
The Rauland behind Christmas as Usual
The film was released by Netflix in December 2023. Rjukan Arbeiderblad reported that most of the filming took place in a privately borrowed house in Rauland.
Christmas as Usual brought this landscape to an international audience, but the setting was not created for the film. Snow-covered timber houses, low winter light and mountains rising behind the village are simply part of December here. That is probably why Rauland works so naturally on screen.
What Christmas actually feels like here
December is one of the quietest-looking months in the mountains. Daylight is short, the sun stays low and the colour of the snow changes quickly from pale morning grey to blue afternoon shadow. On clear days the cold can make everything look unusually sharp; in snowfall, the landscape can disappear almost completely beyond the nearest cabins and trees.
The rhythm of the day becomes simple. Ski when the light is good. Come back before everyone gets too cold. Dry gloves and boots. Make something warm. Light the fire. Go outside again after dark if the sky is clear.
A mountain Christmas rather than a city Christmas
The appeal is not a calendar full of organised attractions. It is the setting around ordinary Christmas things: breakfast while snow falls outside, skiing before lunch, children spending half the afternoon building tunnels and jumping into fresh snow, candles and warm food in the evening, and the feeling that nobody needs to leave again once the door is closed.
Rauland also has the practical parts of a winter holiday close by: alpine skiing, cross-country tracks and family winter activities. But Christmas here works best when those things remain part of the background rather than a schedule that has to be completed.
Dark skies, and sometimes northern lights
During the darker part of the year, Rauland can occasionally experience strong displays of the aurora borealis — the northern lights — on clear nights. When they appear above the mountain landscape, they turn an already quiet winter evening into something much harder to forget.