Øvre Pasvik

Øvre Pasvik National Park was established in 1970 in the municipality of Sør-Varanger, at the south-eastern tip of Finnmark, in the narrow corridor of Norwegian territory that reaches in between Russia and Finland. It covers some 119 km².

Its value is biogeographical: here ends, at its western extreme, the great taiga that extends without interruption across Russia and Siberia. The forest is very slow-growing Scots pine on poor soils, with twisted trees several centuries old, interspersed with extensive peat bogs, shallow lakes and rock outcrops. That appearance is completely unlike that of the rest of Norway and relates the landscape to that of Karelia and western Siberia.

The wildlife reflects that eastern character: the park is one of the few places in Norway with a regular brown bear presence, favoured by the continuity of the forest to the east, and it holds taiga species such as the Siberian jay, uncommon in the country. Together with the adjoining protected areas in Russia and Finland it forms the trilateral Pasvik-Inari area, managed through cooperation between the three countries, one of the few cross-border conservation initiatives on this frontier.