Linnansaari National Park

A national park in the middle of Haukivesi, part of the greater Saimaa, established to conserve what is most characteristic of the Finnish lakeland: island, water and old forest together. Much of the main island is coniferous forest in a natural state, with herb-rich patches, and there is an old croft on it whose fields are still worked by slash-and-burn, kept up deliberately, because the cultural landscape and the plants and animals that depend on it would otherwise go. The critically endangered Saimaa ringed seal lives in the park.