Soon after I moved to Finland to study in Jyväskylä I’ve heard about the Koli national park. And just how couldn’t have I. Not only is it regarded as a natural treasure rich in flora and fauna, but it has also earned a status of a national landscape. There aren’t many places in Finland which could claim the same.

Since the rise of national romanticism at the turn of 20th century every important or even aspiring Finnish artist visited Koli area for inspiration. As writers, painters, composers, poets and other artists came here to seek roots for their own work, they pulled along the whole nation and Koli soon became a tourist attraction. However, the national park itself, covering mere 30 square kilometers and including the famous Koli hill, has been established only in 1991 (although it has been a nature reserve since 1906). Since Koli is today as popular as ever and on top of that easily reachable from anywhere in Finland, there probably aren’t many Finns who have not visited it at least once.

Both Koli hill and the national park run along the western shore of lake Pielinen, which has throughout history of human population in area occupied an important role. The area around the lake has been populated by hunter-gatherer and slash-and-burn cultivating communities. Lake Pielinen was also en route between the Gulf of Bothnia and lake Ladoga (in what is today Russia), a frequently traveled route. The lake had a very important connecting role until the 1930s when easier accesses were established on land.

Such historical and cultural details accumulating in my mind over the last two years resulted in my growing interest in Koli and its surroundings. It became a must-visit destination and I was sure that seeing it would importantly contribute to my knowledge and understanding of my Finnish culture and history. Visiting the area thus just became a matter of time and, as it turned out, style.

It might be a bit difficult to imagine, but 72% of Finland is covered in forest. Let’s put it this way, it is world’s 11th most forested country. For comparison, 32% of Germany is covered with forest and 28% of France is. Both Germany and France are considerably larger than Finland, but it is only when their total areas of forested land are combined that the total barely amounts to more forest than there is in Finland alone. Numbers aside, I thought that visiting an area like Koli by means of motorized transportation would be, to say the least, inappropriate.

That said, I went to a nearby bookstore, picked up a map for cyclists for the area, went home, studied it a bit and drafted a rough plan for the trip. As it turned out Koli was not as far from Kuopio where I currently live as I had first imagined. However, I definitely wanted to avoid traffic as much as possible and thus opted to follow the national cycle touring route of Finland as much as possible on my way journey. As it was probably conceived with leisure in mind instead of efficiency it is a winding road and is far from being the shortest and easiest way to get there. Since there are hundreds, if not even thousands of lakes between lakes of Kallavesi and Pielinen, road was as twisty as it gets. But I knew immediately that it was definitely what I was looking for as it turned out it offered as much nature and silence as one could get from traveling on the road.

Before taking off I’ve only had a pretty solid idea of my route for my first day including a place I’d want to reach by the evening of that day. The rest, I’d decide on the fly. Each evening of the trip I’d sit down holding a well deserved meal in my hand and facing a map spread out on the ground, deciding where I wanted to go the next day. Even though the whole journey lasted only four days, it was fantastic.

So this is the first and introductory of four parts about my cycling journey to Koli. The remaining three parts will be published each a few days following the previous one. Enjoy the ride.

Mladen

This is the first part of the Koli cycling trip series. Here you can find the second, third and fourth parts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 9:52 pm and is filed under Cycling, Environment, Finland, Leisure, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.