National Parks of Europe (Lonely Planet) by Planet Lonely

Author:Planet, Lonely [Planet, Lonely]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787010741
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications
Published: 2017-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Villa Miela offers a range of activities to its guests, from boating to hiking – and it has a hot tub.

LP/JULIAN LOVE

32

FINLAND

Lemmenjoki National Park

A candidate for the continent’s biggest expanse of uninhabited nothingness, Finland’s Lemmenjoki National Park tucks a startling array of culture into the folds of its forests, bogs and bald fells.

Gold in them hills? No, it’s in the low, rolling fells of utterly removed Lemmenjoki, Finland’s largest national park, fanning above the Arctic Circle up to the border with Norway. This was traditionally a land for rough, tough loners: the odd prospector, or scatterings of the nation’s indigenous tribespeople, the Sámi.

The few visitors who venture this far north find a region where gold glistens not solely below the surface. Summer visitors encounter gold above ground in the veins of sharp, perpetual light bathing the river valleys and the marshy, forested fell country behind them, while winter park-goers witness the colour transposed upon the heavens when some of the world’s most dazzling northern lights flit phantasmally above.

This is perhaps the continent’s greatest tract of roadless wilderness: old-growth forests, bogs and bare hilltops bisected by snaking tributaries. Yet, incredibly, Lemmenjoki’s natural beauty might not be its main allure: the human history here is equally compelling. Rare remnants of Finland’s ancient past, in the area’s reindeer-farming legacy, as well as in the traditional Sámi communities surviving hereabouts mean the cultural clout is mighty indeed.

The most inviting inroad into Lemmenjoki’s heart is by water. Voyaging by boat along the Lemmenjoki River ushers you up to the rushing, tumbling park highlight, the Ravadasköngäs waterfall, and beyond, into the core of this area. The trip is dipped in a majesty that the vistas from the trails seldom rival. But even a boatload is a crowd up here. So don your hiking boots you must in order to take to the park’s myriad pathways and appreciate the true solitude of this place in the same way the park’s other famed loner – Lemmenjoki’s emblem, the wolverine – does.

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