Ukko-Koli
Interesting facts
- Ukko-Koli is the highest point in the whole of southern Finland, and its steep drop to the lake is rare in the country's gentle terrain.
- The summit names come from Finnish mythology: Ukko is the sky god, Akka a female spirit, and Paha-Koli means the evil Koli.
- The Karelian mountains of which Koli is a remnant are thought to have once rivalled the Himalayas in size before being worn almost flat.
- The glassy white quartzite is sprinkled with tiny needles of kyanite, a metamorphic mineral formed when the old beach sand was buried about ten kilometres deep.
- The ridge marks the boundary between two worlds of rock: to the east lies some of Finland's oldest bedrock, more than 2.6 billion years old.
- Koli is still rising by around five millimetres a year as the land rebounds from the weight of the vanished ice sheet.
- Old maps called the hills Mustarinta, perhaps a euphemism for the bear, and a natural boulder on the summit is said to resemble a bear's head.
- Eero Järnefelt's Autumn Landscape of Lake Pielisjärvi, painted from Koli in 1899, became a symbol of Finnish identity and the push for independence.
- In 1893 Järnefelt and his wife Fanny painted a short poem in red on the wall of Pirunkirkko, the Devil's Church cave on the Koli hills.
- A 1923 study ranked Koli as Finland's most popular tourist destination, and the country's first proper ski lift was built here at the end of the 1930s.
Why it is worth it
Ukko-Koli is the summit that gave Finland one of its defining national images: a bare crown of white rock high above Lake Pielinen, with forested islands scattered across the water below and the woods of North Karelia rolling away to the horizon. At 347 metres above sea level it is the highest point of the Koli hills and stands about 253 metres above the lake, an unusual drop in a country of gentle relief.
The whiteness of the rock is the key to the place. Ukko-Koli is built of quartzite, 85 to 95 per cent quartz, which began as ancient beach sand and was compacted and transformed deep underground. The hills are remnants of the Karelides, a mountain range raised roughly 1.8 billion years ago and worn down over immense spans of time; ice-age glaciers then smoothed and rounded the cliffs into their present shape. Ukko-Koli is the highest of a cluster of summits that includes Akka-Koli and Paha-Koli, all within Koli National Park, established in 1991 on about 30 square kilometres of hills along the western shore of the lake. The park also preserves traces of traditional farming, from slash-and-burn clearings to meadows still grazed by native breeds of cattle and sheep.
Koli entered Finnish culture in the late nineteenth century, when painters, writers and composers came looking for a landscape that expressed national identity. Eero Järnefelt painted Koli views at least fifty times, the writer Juhani Aho was among the visitors, and Jean Sibelius is said to have drawn on the scenery for his Fourth Symphony. Folklore also attaches older meanings to the hills: tradition speaks of ancient sacrificial and gathering places, and coins have been found in a cleft on the northern slope known as a sacrifice crevice. Today the summit area holds Hotel Koli and the Ukko nature centre.
Getting there
Ukko-Koli lies within Koli National Park in North Karelia, about 38 km in a straight line from Kontiolahti, the nearest town listed for the area; the regional capital, Joensuu, is to the south. The nearest airport is Joensuu Airport (JOE), about 50 km away.
On these lists
63.09877, 29.81977per Wikidata