Breheimen

Breheimen National Park was established in 2009 in southern Norway, between the counties of Innlandet and Vestland, and protects some 1,690 km². Its name means "home of the glaciers" and describes its position: it occupies the ground between the Jostedalsbreen ice cap to the west and the Jotunheimen massif to the east, completing an almost continuous protected corridor across the high mountains of the south of the country.

The landscape combines smaller glaciers and permanent snowfields with deep valleys, high plateaux, lakes and meltwater rivers. The geological variety is notable, with marked contrasts between the hard rock of the summits and the softer materials of the valleys, which produces a diversity of soils and plant communities that is high for the latitude.

Breheimen holds a population of wild mountain reindeer, a species of which Norway shelters the last genuinely wild populations in Europe, and transhumance routes and historic paths that linked the inland valleys with the western fjords run across its territory. The seter, summer pasture huts, are still in use in some valleys and form part of the protected cultural landscape, along with prehistoric reindeer hunting traps documented in the high ground.