Where to Stay in Kuusamo, Pohjois-Pohjanmaa

Kuusamo is known as the outdoor capital of Koillismaa, the north-eastern corner of Pohjois-Pohjanmaa, drawing winter crowds to the Ruka ski resort and summer walkers to the gorges of Oulanka National Park. The wilderness is the draw. In the town itself the Pyhän Ristin kirkko stands as the parish church, while the Kuusamon kotiseutumuseo gathers the local past and the Evakkomuistomerkki recalls the evacuation that emptied this far stretch of northern Finland in wartime.

The Pyhän Ristin kirkko is the chief built landmark of Kuusamo, the parish church standing at the heart of this Koillismaa town. Much of what draws people is wild. North of the centre the Ruka fell rises with its winter slopes, while east of town the canyon walls and rapids of Oulanka National Park run through the forests of northern Finland.

In town the Kuusamon kotiseutumuseo keeps the local heritage, the Evakkomuistomerkki and the memorial to the writer Marina Takalo recalling the hard wartime years of this far corner of Pohjois-Pohjanmaa.

Kuusamo's history is one of a remote wilderness parish in Koillismaa, the north-eastern reach of Pohjois-Pohjanmaa, settled slowly by farmers, fishers and reindeer herders along its lakes and rivers. The community was chartered in the 19th century, its life gathered around the parish church and the long-worked clearings of this far stretch of northern Finland. Forest and water shaped everything.

For generations the people lived by the land, their faith and memory carried by the church and later kept in the Kuusamon kotiseutumuseo, the homestead museum that holds the old tools and rooms of the district. War tore deeply at the parish in the twentieth century. The whole population was evacuated and the town was burned in the retreat, a wound recalled by the Evakkomuistomerkki and by the memorial to the writer Marina Takalo, who carried the oral tradition of this Koillismaa country into exile and back.

Rebuilding came after, and with it a new chapter. The Ruka fell was developed for skiing and the gorges of Oulanka National Park were protected for walkers, turning the old wilderness parish into the outdoor centre of Pohjois-Pohjanmaa while the Pyhän Ristin kirkko still marked the older heart of Kuusamo.

Kuusamo spreads across a vast tract of lake, fell and forest in Koillismaa, the north-eastern corner of Pohjois-Pohjanmaa. Pine woods, bogs and hundreds of lakes fill the broad municipality, broken by the rounded fell of Ruka in the north and the deep river canyons of Oulanka National Park toward the east. The land is wild and watered.

The town centre, gathered near the Pyhän Ristin kirkko, sits among this expanse of northern Finland, a single built point in a great sweep of wilderness that runs to the eastern border country.

Kuusamo carries one of the harsher climates in Pohjois-Pohjanmaa, set by its place in the far north-east of Finland. Winters are long, dark and deeply cold, the snow lying for months over the fell at Ruka and the forests of Koillismaa and feeding the long ski season. The cold dominates the year.

Brief, bright summers bring the near-endless northern daylight to the lakes and the gorges of Oulanka National Park, the short window when walkers and paddlers fill the wilderness around Kuusamo before the snow returns.

Kuusamo lies far up in Koillismaa, and most distant visitors fly. The town has its own airport, the quickest link across the long distances of northern Finland for skiers heading to Ruka and walkers bound for Oulanka National Park. The air route saves a long drive.

Roads also climb north and east through Pohjois-Pohjanmaa to reach the town near the Pyhän Ristin kirkko, with bus services running the same long routes, while the nearest railheads lie well to the south and west of Kuusamo.