Sari Alatossava has lived the idea of the European Green Belt intensively for ten years. She has been active in many cross-border projects in the two national parks Oulanka in Finland and Paanajärvi in Russia. Both national parks border on the border between Finland and Russia. ‘The Russian Paanajärvi National Park is four times the size of our Oulanka National Park,’ explains Sari. At the centre of the Russian national park is the 20-kilometre-long Lake Paanajärvi with its many fjord-like outcrops. There were small settlements around the lake. The area belonged to Finland before the Second World War. During the Winter War of 1939/1940, people were forced to leave their homes for the first time. Finnish soldiers burnt them down so that they could not serve as shelter for Soviet soldiers. The inhabitants returned in 1941, began to rebuild their homes and had to leave again in the summer of 1944. This time for good, as the area became part of the Soviet Union.
‘We travelled to their old homes with older people who lived on Lake Paanajärvi before the war,’ says Sari. "Together with our Russian colleagues from the National Park, we travelled along the shore by boat to see where their villages were. We still recognised the places because the vegetation was not yet so dense." No new settlements were built so close to the border after the war. Apart from employees of the Russian border troops, hardly anyone set foot in this area for decades.
Sari shows photos from her exploratory tours through the region with the former inhabitants. In some places, they still found the old stone fireplaces that had survived the fire. ‘We have documented many of these eyewitness conversations that tell of life at Lake Paanajärvi before the war,’ says Sari happily. It is a treasure, as these people are no longer alive. "We were able to reconstruct where which house stood. Together with our Russian national park colleagues and architects, we developed plans to partially rebuild a village as an open-air museum." Sari shows site and building plans of the planned museum village.
The sauna was built in 2005. ‘We are Finns,’ she comments on this approach. In 2007, a former storagehouse was rebuilt. ‘And in 2016, the Russians built the main building.’ She shows pictures of the big inauguration ceremony in the growing museum village. Official speeches were held and information boards were set up.
"None of us have been in the national park or on the site since coronavirus. With the start of the war in 2022, all contact broke off." Silence. ‘We don't know what the site looks like.’
‘For our team at the national park office in Kussomo, working with our Russian colleagues on cross-border projects was an important part of our work,’ summarises Sari. "We met several times a year. Every year in August, we travelled to the lake for a few days to maintain the property. For us, it was also a kind of team-building exercise with lots of adventure. Even today, we still talk about our trips to Russia as a team." This also includes the story of transporting the sauna heater to the new sauna. ‘The Russian border officials were probably a bit surprised.’
‘We have worked with Russian partners on so many EU projects over the years.’ Publications and documentation about both parks have been produced, paths have been marked and information boards erected. "But the cooperation went far beyond our two national parks. We networked with other national parks in Russia. We had international guests. There were meetings on the topic of cross-border nature conservation." And it all came to an end from one day to the next.
I always had the dream that I could hike across the border through the two national parks. And then Sari raves about Paanajärvi National Park in Russia. It really is wilderness and very different to our small Finnish national park." She is a little optimistic, however, because even during the Cold War there was cooperation with the Soviet Union in the field of nature conservation. ‘We'll see if this cooperation can be continued again at some point.’ It would be a good sign for the Fennoscandia Green Belt, the northernmost section of the European Green Belt.
