Finland's National Parks in the Order They Were Founded, From Pallas in 1938 to Hossa in 2017

Begin in Lapland, where national park protection in Finland first took hold in 1938. Today the park spans four municipalities and covers 1,020 square kilometers, making it the third largest in the country. Its roughly 100 kilometer chain of fells rises out of boreal taiga, and it is the most visited national park in Finland.

Move south to the Saimaa lake system, where this park was set up in 1956 on islands in Lake Haukivesi. It protects the critically endangered Saimaa ringed seal, and an old croft on the main island still uses slash-and-burn farming to keep its cultural landscape open.

Four parks share 1982 as their founding year, and this is the first. Its Finnish name means roughly Hell Lake, and it represents the wild forests of the Tavastia region. Faults in the bedrock cut deep gorges, and the best known is the Helvetinkolu gorge at the lake end.

Founded the same year in Kainuu to preserve wilderness, this park covers about 45 square kilometers of mires and dry forest. Two thirds is near-natural coniferous forest averaging 100 to 150 years old, and the Hiidenportti gorge has vertical cliffs about a kilometer long and up to 20 meters high.

The third 1982 park is small, about 19 square kilometers in Central Finland. Pine and spruce forest alternate with bogland around Lake Isojarvi, and the park holds evidence of early human settlement. More than 30 kilometers of marked and ring trails cross it.

The last of the 1982 group is mostly swamp, 57 square kilometers across Kauhajoki and Karvia, including the 16.3 square kilometer Kauhaneva bog. It was added to the Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance in 2004 and is part of the Natura 2000 network.

Turn to the southwest coast, where the park was established in the early 1980s over about 500 square kilometers of small islands and skerries. Only around 2,000 of the 8,400 islets in the region fall in its cooperative area, and the larger islands stay mostly in private hands. It is a UNESCO biosphere reserve.

Founded in 1989 on the Uusimaa coast, this park is mostly rock islets and open sea, reached only by boat. From April 1 to July 17 each year landing on the important bird islands and motorboat use are prohibited to protect nesting, and the park received a European Diploma for protected areas in 1996.

Back inland, this 1990 park in Etelä-Savo protects habitat for the Saimaa ringed seal among ice age carved cliffs that rise straight from the water. Motorboats are banned, so visitors paddle or row, and cave paintings have been found within its boundaries.

Created in 1991, this park protects about 30 square kilometers of forested hills above Lake Pielinen in North Karelia. It is kept partly as a working cultural landscape: hay is still cut yearly and traditional Finnish cattle and sheep breeds graze the meadows.

Also founded in 1991, this park lies in the far north on the Gulf of Bothnia and covers 157 square kilometers, of which only about 2.5 square kilometers is land. Post-glacial rebound is still reshaping its islands, and it can be reached only by boat.

Founded in 1998 in Southwest Finland, this park is mostly bog, with primeval forest left unmanaged for more than 150 years in places. Eurasian lynx live there permanently, brown bears and wolves have been recorded, and more than 300 kilometers of marked trails cross its lakes and mires.

End with the newest stop, established on June 17, 2017, as Finland's 40th national park to coincide with the centenary of independence. It grew from the Hossa Hiking Area of 1979, the oldest official hiking area in Finland, and protects the Värikallio rock paintings dated to roughly 1500 to 2500 BC.