Torronsuo

Torronsuo National Park was established in 1990 in the municipality of Tammela, in the Kanta-Häme region, some hundred kilometres from Helsinki. The area was already protected before the declaration, because of its near-natural state. It is a small park made up almost entirely of raised bog, one of the best-preserved examples of this kind of wetland in the south of the country.

Its distinctive feature is depth: the peat layers exceed twelve metres in places, the greatest accumulation recorded in Finland. That mass has been forming over millennia through the incomplete decomposition of sphagnum in acid, waterlogged conditions, and it constitutes a palaeoenvironmental archive of enormous value, as well as a considerable carbon sink.

The landscape is open and flat, dotted with dwarf birches and stunted pines, and with the first snowfall it takes on the air of Arctic tundra that contrasts with its southerly latitude. The park's emblematic plant is the bog cranberry. It is crossed by wooden boardwalks, part of them wheelchair-accessible, and from the observation towers, such as the one at Kiljamo, the whole extent of the bog can be seen. In spring and autumn Torronsuo receives migrating cranes and geese on passage, which are its main ornithological attraction, and in winter the frozen bog is travelled on cross-country skis.