Stora Sjöfallet

Stora Sjöfallet National Park, Stuor Muorkke in the Lule Sami language, was established on 24 May 1909 under Sweden's first nature protection act, and is therefore one of the first nine national parks in Europe. It covers some 1,278 km² in Swedish Lapland, beside the Norwegian border.

Sweden was the first European country to give itself a system of national parks. The idea was proposed in 1880 by the polar explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, inspired by Yellowstone; the member of parliament and botanist Karl Starbäck put forward the motion in 1904 and the report in 1907, criticising "the ruthless exploitation of nature by man, driven by short-term profit". The Riksdag passed the act in May 1909 and created at a stroke Sarek, Stora Sjöfallet, Abisko, Sånfjället, Pieljekaise, Garphyttan, Hamra, Ängsö and Gotska Sandön.

The landscape is high mountain country: deep valleys, powerful rivers and a relief shaped by ice that the specialist literature cites as a textbook example of glacial geomorphology, with meltwater canyons of almost vertical walls, cirques, U-shaped valleys, outwash plains, tundra polygons and palsa mires. The park lost part of its original territory to the building of hydroelectric reservoirs, which drowned the waterfalls that gave it its name, an episode that marked the Swedish conservation debate. Since 1996 it has formed part of the Laponian Area, inscribed on the World Heritage List.