Every design for Kuusamo

Beside the memorial Tuhotun Kuusamon jälleenrakentajille, dedicated to the people who rebuilt Kuusamo after its destruction, you sense how often this corner of Koillismaa has had to start again. Until the seventeenth century the land belonged to the semi-nomadic Sami of the Maanselkä and Kitka villages, who fished the lakes in summer and hunted wild reindeer, bears and beavers in autumn. Then settlers from Savo and Kainuu arrived with a tax exemption and slash-and-burn farming, and within a few decades the Sami way of life here was gone. The name came later, taken from Lake Kuusamojärvi.

Kuusamon kotiseutumuseo gathers that long story together. Today the town on the Russian border is one of Finland's great winter sports centres, with Ruka hosting international ski jumping, cross-country and Nordic combined events.

And then there is Hannu Hautala luontokuvakeskus, the nature photography centre, which shows the forests, lakes and birds that make people want to carry Kuusamo's outline wherever they go.