Urho Kekkonen National Park

Listen for a moment. There is wind moving across open ground, the soft crunch of lichen underfoot, and perhaps the faint click of reindeer hooves somewhere beyond the trees. The air smells of resin and cold water. Around you, low rounded hills roll away toward the horizon, bare at the top and dark with pine and birch below. Welcome to Urho Kekkonen National Park, one of the largest protected wildernesses in Finland. From the Savukoski side, you are standing on its quieter, more remote edge.

The park was established in 1983. It carries the name of Urho Kekkonen, who served as President of Finland for a quarter of a century, from the 1950s into the early 1980s. Kekkonen was a passionate outdoorsman. He skied, fished and hiked in Lapland for much of his life. Naming this wilderness after him felt natural to many Finns. Today the park stretches across three municipalities, Savukoski, Sodankylä and Inari, and covers well over two thousand square kilometres of fell, forest and bog.

That word, fell, matters here. In Finnish the word is tunturi. It describes a hill that rises above the tree line, so its summit is bare. These fells are very old. Ice sheets ground them down over many thousands of years, and the result is smooth, rounded shapes rather than sharp peaks. When you climb one, the trees thin out first. Then dwarf birch and juniper take over. Finally you reach open stone and pale lichen, with a view that can run for dozens of kilometres in every direction.

Here is something many visitors miss. Savukoski is home to Korvatunturi, a fell on the Russian border. In Finnish folklore, this is where Santa Claus lives. The name means Ear Fell, and according to the popular tale, its shape works like a giant ear. Santa listens there to hear which children are good. Korvatunturi lies inside a restricted border zone, so most travellers never stand on it. Yet the legend began here, in this wild corner of the park, long before Santa had a village near Rovaniemi.

The second surprise is about the people. This land is not untouched wilderness in the way a map might suggest. People have lived and worked here for centuries. The Sámi, the Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, have herded reindeer across these fells for generations. Finnish settlers came later. Reindeer herding still continues inside the park today. The reindeer you see are not wild animals. Every one of them has an owner, and each owner marks their animals with a small pattern cut into the ear.

Look at the ground near your feet. You will often see a thick, pale grey-green carpet. This is reindeer lichen, the main winter food of the herds. Reindeer dig through deep snow with their hooves to reach it. Lichen grows extremely slowly, so trampled patches can take many years to recover. Around it you may find bilberry, crowberry and, on wetter ground, cloudberry. In late summer the berries ripen, and the bogs glow orange with cloudberries that local people pick by the bucket.

Water shapes this landscape as much as the fells do. Small streams run clear and cold over brown stones. In the south of the park, around Savukoski, rivers drain toward the great Kemijoki, one of the longest rivers in Finland. Wide bogs, called aapa mires, spread between the hills. In summer they hum with mosquitoes and birdlife. Walk carefully on these areas. The ground can be soft and wet, and the marked paths and duckboards exist to protect both the plants and your boots.

The park also holds a special Finnish tradition, the open wilderness hut. Scattered across the backcountry, these simple log cabins are open to any hiker. Inside there is usually a wood stove, bunks and a guest book. The unwritten rules are old and strict. You leave the hut clean. You leave dry firewood for the next person. You make room, even late at night, for a stranger coming in from the cold. Reading those guest books, full of handwritten notes in many languages, is one of the quiet pleasures here.

The light in this place changes the whole experience through the year. The park lies north of the Arctic Circle. In high summer, the sun does not set for weeks, and the fells glow gold even at midnight. In the depth of winter, the opposite happens. The polar night, called kaamos in Finnish, brings a long blue twilight instead of full daylight. On clear, dark nights from autumn to spring, the northern lights often move across the sky in green ribbons.

Autumn brings its own season, which Finns call ruska. For a few short weeks, usually in early autumn, the dwarf birch turns red and the birch leaves turn yellow. The bilberry bushes become deep crimson. The fells look as if someone painted them overnight. Many Finns plan their whole year around a ruska hike. If you are here at that time, you are seeing the park at the moment many locals love most.

Wildlife here is shy, and the wilderness is large. Reindeer are the animals you will meet most often. You might also see the willow grouse, a plump bird that turns white in winter. Golden eagles hunt over the open fells. Bears, wolverines and lynx live in the wider region too, but sightings are rare. Most of the time, the evidence is small. A track in the mud, feathers on a rock, or droppings beside the trail tell you that you are sharing this ground.

The Savukoski side of the park feels very different from the busier northern trailheads near Saariselkä and Kiilopää. Here, the distances are longer and the paths are fewer. Savukoski is one of the most sparsely populated municipalities in Finland, and that emptiness is part of its character. You may walk for hours and meet no one. For experienced hikers, that solitude is the whole point. For everyone else, it is a reason to plan carefully, carry a map, and tell someone your route before you set off.

Before you move on, pause and look around once more. Notice how quiet it is. Notice how far you can see, and how few human marks there are on the land. A path, perhaps a hut roof, perhaps a line of reindeer fence. The wind is still moving through the birch. When you walk away from here, listen to your own footsteps on the lichen. That soft sound is part of what this park was created to protect.