Understand
A succession of ice ages and their glaciers scraping back and forth has reduced what were once mountains into gentle rounded fells Finnish tunturi, barely reaching 500m. The valleys between them are sparsely forested, but the exposed summits are treeless.
Aside from the occasional Sámi reindeer herder, there wasn't much human activity in these parts until Konrad Planting struck gold at the nearby Lutto River in 1865. The Finnish gold rush started soon thereafter and the first claim in Saariselkä was staked in 1871. Enough gold was found that by 1902 the mining company Prospektor set up its headquarters here and hacked a cart trail down to Sodankylä, some 100 kilometers away.
The gold rush slowly faded away, but in the 1960s the area started to gradually develop into a tourist attraction. Hotels and restaurants were built, skiing lifts were put up, and in 1983 the region stretching from Saariselkä to the Russian border -- favorite hunting grounds of former president Urho Kaleva Kekkonen -- were turned into the UKK National Park.
These days Saariselkä is a part of the municipality of Inari, which has some 7,700 inhabitants including some 2,200 Sámi on 17,321 square kilometers of land.
