Seitseminen

Seitseminen National Park was established in 1982 in the Pirkanmaa region, in south-western Finland, and covers some 45 km². Roughly half its area is peatland, crossed by wooden boardwalks, and the other half conifer forest.

Its heart is the Multiharju forest, a stand of old pinewood protected since 1910, that is, seventy-two years before the park existed. Its centuries-old trees, the abundance of standing and fallen deadwood and the continuity of the canopy make it a reference for boreal forest in a natural state, a habitat type practically vanished in the south of the country after centuries of forestry.

Much of the rest of the park is land under restoration: peatlands that were drained for forestry planting and whose ditches have been progressively blocked to return their natural water regime, a work of decades whose results can be observed on the ground. Seitseminen also preserves the traditional Kovero farm, kept working as a living museum of Finnish subsistence agriculture, with its fields, hay meadows and wooden buildings. The path network totals some sixty kilometres and connects with that of neighbouring Helvetinjärvi.