Koli

Koli National Park was established in 1991 in the municipalities of Joensuu, Lieksa and Kontiolahti, in the region of North Karelia. At only 30 km² it is one of the smallest parks in Finland and yet one of the most visited, with close to 250,000 visitors a year.

Its value is above all scenic. The white quartzite summits of Koli, with Ukko-Koli as the highest point, rise above Lake Pielinen, Finland's fourth largest, and offer a panorama of water, islands and forest that is regarded as the Finnish national landscape par excellence. That view inspired, from the late nineteenth century, the artists of Karelianism, the movement that sought in Karelia the roots of Finnish identity: painters such as Eero Järnefelt and Akseli Gallen-Kallela put it on canvas, and Jean Sibelius came up here in 1909 at a decisive moment in his work.

The park preserves spruce and pine forest, traditional hay meadows kept up by active management, and a hillside flora that benefits from the somewhat richer soils of the weathered quartzite. There are more than fifty kilometres of ski trails and a network of paths linking the summits. Koli is included in the North Karelia Biosphere Reserve, which covers some 4,400 km² and where forest covers 70% of the territory over some of the oldest rocks on the planet.