Pyhä-Häkki National Park, National park in Saarijärvi, Finland.
Pyhä-Häkki is a national park near Saarijärvi in central Finland, protecting one of the last old-growth forest areas in the country, with pine and spruce trees growing alongside open bog areas. A network of marked trails crosses the park, and basic overnight shelters, dry toilets, and a rentable hut are available for visitors who want to stay longer.
Plans to protect this forest were first drawn up in the 1930s, but the disruption of World War II pushed back the process, and the park was officially established in 1956. Before protection, parts of the forest had been used for logging, which makes the surviving old-growth sections all the more notable today.
Finns often refer to this kind of old-growth forest as "erämaa", a word that means wild, uninhabited land far from human settlements. Walking through the park, visitors can see what much of Finland looked like before large-scale logging changed the landscape.
The ground in the park is often wet, so waterproof boots are a good idea even on the marked trails. The best time to visit is from late spring through early autumn, when the paths are accessible and the days are long enough to explore comfortably.
Some of the pine trees here carry dark burn scars on their trunks from forest fires that happened centuries ago, and these marks are still clearly visible today. Fire was actually a natural part of this forest's cycle long before any human management, shaping which trees survived and how the woodland grew.
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