Archipelago (Saaristomeri)

The Archipelago National Park, Saaristomeren kansallispuisto in Finnish and Skärgårdshavets nationalpark in Swedish, was established in 1983 in south-western Finland, east of Åland and south of the main islands of Korpo, Nagu, Pargas and Kimitoön. Its 500 km² of land comprise some 2,000 of the 8,400 islands and islets within the park's cooperation area, almost all of them under a square kilometre; the larger islands remain the property of their inhabitants.

The Archipelago Sea is one of the densest island groups in the world, a labyrinth of granite skerries polished by ice, channels and shallow bays. The habitats are at once terrestrial and marine: coniferous forests, wooded meadows, heathland, rocky grassland, rock or sand islets, farmland, shores and open sea. That variety, together with the particular conditions of the Baltic, makes the area one of the richest in species in Finland.

It is a deeply humanised landscape: close to a hundred islands are inhabited, and the island communities, on a very small scale, have kept a close relationship with the sea for generations. Traditional fishing and farming have steadily lost their profitability and the population has fallen sharply since the early twentieth century, which has made conserving the cultural landscape as important an objective as protecting nature. Since 1994 much of the archipelago has formed the Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve, one of Finland's two, and the national park is its core. In 2007 it also received PAN Parks certification.