The suspension bridge
Lapinsalmi, swaying underfoot across the strait.
M. Passinen — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Markus Säynevirta — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Markus Säynevirta — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Markus Säynevirta — CC BY-SA 4.0
A Finnish and Nordic legal principle allowing anyone — resident or visitor — to walk, camp, and pick berries and mushrooms on any natural land **even if it is privately owned**, without permission and without charge. The conditions: stay away from dwellings, damage nothing, light no fire without permission or outside a designated place, and neither hunt nor fell trees. This principle is what makes Finnish nature genuinely rather than theoretically accessible, and it is why the national parks are all free. **Respect it precisely** — mutual trust is what keeps it in place.
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Repovesi National Park lies north-east of Helsinki and is the nearest genuine national park to the capital — the nearest, that is, that gives you Finland as it is imagined: rock, forest and interlocking lakes. The area differs from the rest of flat southern Finland: here **rock cliffs** rise directly out of the lakes, the highest of them Olhavanvuori at about eighty metres above the water, giving the park's best-known view. The **Lapinsalmi suspension bridge** across the strait is the image Finns know: a footbridge hung on cables that sways underfoot. The park has more than sixty kilometres of marked paths, free equipped camping and fire sites, and a hand-pulled ferry raft visitors work themselves to cross to the far bank. **About 155 km from Helsinki, two hours by car** — a long day trip, and most visitors stay overnight. The park is **free**, as all Finnish national parks are.
Lapinsalmi, swaying underfoot across the strait.
Visitors work it themselves across to the far bank.
Repovesi, Kymenlaakso region