Inari (municipality)
| coat of arms | map |
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| Basic data | |
| State : |
 Finland
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| Landscape : | Lapland |
| Administrative community : | Northern Lapland |
| Geographical location | 68 ° 54 ' N , 27 ° 2' E |
| Surface: | 17,333.89 km² |
| of which land area: | 15,052.38 km² |
| of which inland waterways: | 2,281.51 km² |
| Residents : | 6,930 (Dec. 31, 2018) |
| Population density : | 0.5 inhabitants / km² |
| Municipality number : | 148 |
| Language (s) : |
Finnish 92% Swedish 0.3% Sami 6.1%
another 1.6% |
| Website : | www.inari.fi |
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Inari [ inɑri ] ( North Sami Anar , Inari Sami Aanaar , skoltsamisch Aanar , Swedish Enare ) is a municipality in the Finnish part of Lapland . It is located on Lake Inarijärvi and has 6930 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2018) on an area of over 17,000 square kilometers. A large part of the municipal area consists of deserted wilderness. Ivalo is the administrative seat of the municipality of Inari . The Sami culture is strongly present in Inari, whose population consists of 30 percent of this indigenous people. In addition to traditional reindeer herding and forestry, tourism has now become the main livelihood of the municipality, thanks in particular to the Saariselkä winter sports resort .
geography
Position and extent
Inari is located in the north of the Finnish landscape of Lapland about 250 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle and about 250 kilometers south of the North Cape . Inari has an extremely extensive district: With 17,334 km², the largest municipality in Finland in terms of area comprises five percent of the total land area and is thus somewhat larger than the German state of Thuringia . A large part of the municipal area consists of uninhabited wilderness. With fewer than 7,000 inhabitants, this results in a population density of 0.46 inhabitants per square kilometer.
Inari's neighboring communities are Utsjoki in the north, Sodankylä in the south, Kittilä in the southwest and Enontekiö in the west. Inari borders on Norway in the northwest and northeast (municipalities Karasjok and Kautokeino in the northwest and Sør-Varanger in the northeast) and in the east on Russia ( Rajon Petschenga ).
Localities
The administrative seat of the municipality of Inari is Ivalo . About half of the community's population lives in the town on the Ivalojoki River south of Inarijärvi. The eponymous church village Inari , on the other hand, only has about 450 inhabitants. It is located at the west end of Inarijärvi. The rest of the population is spread across a number of small and sometimes very remote villages in the municipality.
The villages of Inari (population as of December 31, 2005 in brackets):
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Landscape and nature
Inari is part of the greater Lapland area . Most of the municipality belongs to forest Lapland, in which pine and spruce can still be found. Higher altitudes are tree-free and only covered by lichen . Pine and spruce reach the limit of their distribution area in Inari, north of this the Fjell-Lapland type of landscape begins, where tundra- like vegetation predominates and only squat birch trees grow in low altitudes . For the most part rather flat environment, few raise fells (tunturi) , the highest of Viipustunturi with 599 m. 72.2% of the area of Inari are under nature protection of various degrees. Most of the Lemmenjoki National Park is located in the municipality , with 2850 km² the largest in Finland, a small part of the Urho-Kekkonen National Park and the wilderness areas of Hammastunturi , Kaldoaivi , Muotkatunturi , Paistunturi , Tsarmitunturi and Vätsäri . Various wild animals live in the Inari wilderness, including elk , bears , wolverines , wolves, and golden eagles . The reindeer found everywhere are semi-domesticated livestock.
2129 km², that is twelve percent of the municipal area, is covered by water. Around half of this is on the Inarijärvi . With an area of 1041 km² (almost double that of Lake Constance ) it is the third largest lake in Finland. It lies in a depression and is up to 92 meters deep. The coastline of the lake with its more than 3000 islands is very fragmented. Other notable lakes are Mutusjärvi , Paatari and Patujärvi . The other lakes are often very small. In the north of Inari, with an average of ten lakes or ponds per square kilometer, Finland has the highest lake density. A number of major rivers flow through the municipality of Inari. The rivers Ivalojoki , Lemmenjoki , Vaskojoki and Juutuanjoki flow into the Inarijärvi, which in turn is drained into the Arctic Ocean by the Norwegian-Russian border river Paatsjoki . The Finnish-Norwegian border river Inarijoki, on the other hand, flows into the Tenojoki (Tanaelva).
climate
The climate in Inari is cold-temperate and, as generally in Finnish Lapland, quite continental . The annual precipitation in Inaris is one of the lowest in Finland at 405 mm, but this is compensated for by the low evaporation due to the cool temperatures. The annual average temperature is −1.3 ° C (for comparison: Helsinki approx. +5 ° C, Berlin approx. +9 ° C). The warmest month is July with a mean average temperature of 13.2 ° C, the coldest is January with −13.5 ° C. The thermal summer lasts from mid-June to the end of August. In the short summer, however, temperatures can rise quite high. The maximum annual temperatures in Finland were last measured in 2000, 2004 and 2005, each around 30 ° C in the village of Sevettijärvi in Inari. Winters are long and cold - temperatures below −40 ° C are not uncommon. A permanent snow cover usually prevails between late October and mid-late May. The banks of the Inarijärvi usually freeze at the end of October, the open areas a month later. The ice usually does not melt until the beginning of June.
Due to its location about 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, Inari has extreme seasonal differences in the duration of the sunshine: In Ivalo, the midnight sun shines between May 24th and July 21st . Accordingly, the polar night (kaamos) prevails between December 4th and January 8th .
history
prehistory
After the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age , the first human settlement spread to the Inari area. The oldest traces of settlement date from the time between 8000 and 7000 BC. The first settlers were members of the Komsa culture who came from the Arctic Coast. Later during the Stone Age , people from northern Sweden and the White Sea coast also immigrated . Due to the mixing of this Stone Age indigenous population and the from the 3rd millennium BC The Sami population of Lapland emerged from the immigrant Finno-Ugrians in the 3rd century BC and remained predominant in Inari until the 20th century.
The culture of the Inari seeds, indigenous to Inari , differed from that of the Sami of Northern Lapland, as they did not live from reindeer herding but from hunting and fishing. Their way of life was semi-nomadic: they spent the cold season in a winter village and hunted the wild forest reindeer , in summer they went fishing and picked berries. The inhabitants of a winter village formed a community that had the right to use a specified area. In the case of Inari, the area of the village roughly corresponded to today's municipality area. In the winter village, the Sami also settled their judicial affairs. This Sami jurisdiction remained in Inari until 1823. The seeds of Inari possessed in the Middle Ages trading contacts to the Pomor on the White Sea coast, Birkarls on the Baltic Sea and the ports of the North Sea, the Hanse were driven.
Swedish and Russian time
With the development of Lapland in the late Middle Ages, Inari also moved into the focus of Sweden , Norway and Russia . The first written mention of Inari comes from a document of the Moscow Grand Duke Vasily III. on the taxation of Lapland from the year 1517. In 1595 the Swedish-Russian border was established in the Peace of Teusina and confirmed again in 1617 in the Peace of Stolbowo . It ran east of Inarijärvi, not far from today's border. In practice, however, the area remained more or less ownerless, and the state's influence was essentially limited to collecting taxes. Inari was taxed by Sweden and Norway as well as by Russia until 1751. In the 16th century the first inhabitants of Inari adopted the Christian faith. In a Swedish tax list from 1570, six out of 17 taxpayers already have a Christian name. Inari's Christianization finally began in the 17th century. From 1630 the pastor Johan Pictorius from Kemi converted the inhabitants of Inari to Christianity, in 1646 the first church was built in Pielpajärvi.
From the 18th century, sedentary agriculture began to take the place of the semi-nomadic way of life. Inari's first farm was founded by Inari's name Johan Nilsson Aikio around 1740. From the middle of the 18th century, Finnish new settlers settled in the village of Kyrö, today's Ivalo . When the forest reindeer population began to decline in the 19th century due to intensive hunting, the importance of livestock as a branch of business increased. At the same time, the state tried to induce the Sami to settle down through tax breaks. From 1830 on, new farms were built all over Inari. A total of 121 farms were founded, almost three quarters of them by Sami and over a quarter by Finns.
When Sweden ceded what is now Finland to Russia in the Treaty of Fredrikshamn in 1809 , Inari also became part of the newly founded Grand Duchy of Finland . When the Russian-Norwegian border was closed in 1852 and the Russian-Swedish border in 1889, the reindeer nomads of northern Lapland were no longer able to move their herds to the Arctic coast as before and had to move their pastures south to the interior. This resulted in a North Sami- speaking population in Inari who ranched reindeer. As a result, Inari seeds, who had previously kept only a few reindeer as draft animals, and Finns took over reindeer herding as a branch of business.
Since independence
With the Finnish declaration of independence in 1917, Inari became part of the independent Republic of Finland. At that time the Sami still made up the majority of the population in Inari. But when around 200 seeds fell victim to the Spanish flu in 1920 , the majority ratio was reversed. In the Peace of Dorpat in 1920, Finland received the Petsamo (Petschenga) area northeast of Inari from Soviet Russia and thus access to the Arctic Ocean. In 1931 a continuous road connection to Petsamo was created with the Ice Sea Road from Rovaniemi via Ivalo to the port of Liinahamari . The village of Ivalo benefited from its location on the Eismeerstraße and soon overtook the old church village of Inari .
During the Continuation War from 1941 to 1944, in which Finland fought in a so-called brotherhood in arms with Germany against the Soviet Union , Enontekiö, like all of Northern Finland, belonged to the area of operations of the Wehrmacht . The Germans began to build the Ivalo protective position in the south of Inari , which, together with the ram position in north-west Lapland, was supposed to protect the Arctic ports in occupied Norway and in Petsamo. When Finland signed the Moscow armistice with the Soviet Union on September 4, 1944 , in which it undertook to drive the German troops out of the country, the Finnish-German Lapland War broke out. The civilian population of Lapland had to be brought to safety within a short period of time. The population of Inari was evacuated to Ylivieska in northern Ostrobothnia . The Wehrmacht troops had to leave the not yet completed protective position and withdrew after a short battle. They used the scorched earth tactics and wreaked havoc in Inari as well.
In the Moscow armistice, Finland had to cede Petsamo to the Soviet Union. The local Skolt seeds were evacuated and settled in Inari after the war. In the Paris Peace of 1947, Finland also sold the Jäniskoski-Niskakoski area to the Soviet Union in order to be able to settle Soviet reparation claims . This 176 km² area in the east of Inari was almost uninhabited, but was of interest to the Soviet Union because of the hydroelectric power station located there on the Paatsjoki River.
population
Population development and structure
Inari currently has almost 7,000 inhabitants. At the beginning of the 1990s the population was still over 7,800. But because the structurally weak Lapland was hit harder by the Finnish economic crisis than the south of the country, a wave of emigration to the growth centers of the south began in the middle of the decade. In Inari, too, the population of the municipality decreased by ten percent between 1996 and 2006. 15.5% of the residents of Inari are younger than 15 years, 69.1% between 15 and 64 years old and 15.4% older than 64 years.
| year | 1980 | 1985 | 1990 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residents | 6900 | 7219 | 7559 | 7851 | 7783 | 7719 | 7555 | 7452 | 7360 | 7268 | 7217 | 7153 | 7084 | 7043 | 6986 |
Languages and ethnicities
Inari belongs to the settlement area of the indigenous people of the Sami . As a result of immigration and assimilation, the majority of the community population today consists of ethnic Finns , but 30 percent of Inari's inhabitants, around 2,200 people, are ethnic Sami. However, only about 400 of them, or almost 6 percent of the community population, speak Sami as their mother tongue. The Inaris Sami are divided into three groups, which differ linguistically and culturally not only from the Finnish majority population, but also from each other. North Sami, the largest Sami language, is spoken in Inari as well as in the rest of the Sami areas of Finland and parts of Norway and Sweden. The Inari seeds, however, only settle in the Inari area. Their language, Inari Sami , has only a few hundred speakers left. The numerically small group of Skolt seeds was evacuated from the Petsamo (Petschenga) area after the Second World War and settled in the municipality of Inari in the villages of Sevettijärvi and Nellim . Except in Inari, Scolt Sami is still spoken by a few people in Russia.
Inari belongs to the legally defined "homeland" (kotiseutualue) of the Sami in Finland. All three Sami languages have an official status in the community and can be used in dealings with the authorities. This makes Inari the only quadrilingual municipality in Finland. The Sajos Cultural Center is the seat of the Finnish Samething , the parliamentary representation of the Sami of Finland.
Religions
The majority of the inhabitants of Inari belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church . The Inari parish was founded in 1881 and has 5500 members. It has four places of worship in the municipality: the main church in Ivalo, built in 1966, the Sami church in Inari (1951), the old solitary church of Pielpajärvi (1760) and a chapel in the winter sports resort of Saariselkä (1996). Laestadianism has been present in Inari as in all of Lapland since the 1870s . This awakening movement works within the Evangelical Lutheran Church and thus also under the umbrella of the Evangelical Church Community Inari, but it also organizes its own devotions, Bible study groups and youth groups. The Laestadian Inaris are organized in two “peace associations” (rauhanyhdistys) , the peace association of Ivalo and the old Laestadian peace association of Ivalonlaakso.
The Skolt seeds are of the Orthodox faith. There are three Orthodox churches in Inari: one in Ivalo, one in Nellim and one in Sevettijärvi. All three are subordinate to the Orthodox parish of Lapland, based in Rovaniemi .
politics
administration
As in general in rural Finland, the Center Party is the strongest political force in Inari . In the local elections in 2008 she received almost a third, in the parliamentary elections in 2007 even more than half of the votes. In the municipal council, the highest decision-making body in local affairs, it has eight out of 27 members. The second largest parliamentary group is the joint list of Inari Independents (Inarin sitoutumattomien yhteislista) with seven MPs. As usual in Lapland, the left-wing alliance is quite well represented with five seats on the local council. The National Gathering Party and the Social Democrats , which are among the three major parties nationwide, play a rather subordinate role in Inari with four and two seats respectively on the municipal council. The Green Bund is also represented in the municipal council with one member.
| Political party | 2008 election results | Seats |
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| Center Party | 28.7% | 8th |
| List of Inari Independents | 22.6% | 7th |
| Left alliance | 16.0% | 5 |
| National rally party | 15.7% | 4th |
| Social democrats | 8.8% | 2 |
| Green covenant | 5.3% | 1 |
coat of arms
Inari's coat of arms was designed by Ahti Hammar in 1955. In the black field it shows a silver vendace with golden reindeer antlers.
Town twinning
Inari has twinned cities with the neighboring Norwegian municipality of Sør-Varanger and the city of Kola in Russia.
Economy and Infrastructure
economy
The economic structure of Inaris shows a strong share of the service sector: 79% of the working population are employed in the tertiary sector, 40% of them in the public service. 10% of the population work in agriculture and forestry. The industrial sector plays a completely subordinate role with three percent of employees. Inari's largest individual employers are the municipality, the Finnish Border Guard and the State Forest Service. As is generally the case in Lapland, the unemployment rate is high at 17.8% (2005).
The most important industry in Inaris is tourism . There are around 13,500 beds in the municipality, of which around 10,600 are in the Saariselkä holiday center . Around 375,000 overnight stays are registered every year. The income from tourism amounts to 70.1 million euros. The Saariselkä winter sports resort is located in the south of the municipality at the foot of the Kaunispää and Iisakkipää fells. With over 240,000 overnight stays per year, Saariselkä is the largest holiday center in Finnish Lapland. Over 40% of the visitors come from abroad. By far the largest group are the Germans, followed by the British, Norwegians, Japanese and French.
Since Saariselkä not only attracts skiers in winter thanks to the nearby Urho-Kekkonen National Park but also many nature tourists in summer and autumn, the seasonality is less pronounced than in many other tourist centers in Lapland: the main season is the ski season in March and April with almost 34,000 each Overnight stays, as well as around 25,000 overnight stays are registered in July and September. Many Lapland tourists also arrive at Ivalo Airport or stop over in Inari on their way to the North Cape .
Traditionally, the most important industries in Inari are reindeer herding and forestry. 600 of the approximately 7000 inhabitants of Inari own reindeer. A total of 38,000 semi-domesticated reindeer live in the community. Lately there have been major disputes between the reindeer owners and the forestry corporations, as logs are also being felled in the pristine forests that reindeer use as winter pasture. In spring 2005, the environmental protection organization Greenpeace intervened in the conflict and set up a camp in Inari.
traffic
Because of the low population density, large areas in Inari have no roads, but all settlements are connected to the road network. The most important traffic artery is State Road 4 , which , coming from southern Finland via Sodankylä , leads in a north-south direction via Saariselkä, Ivalo, Inari and Kaamanen to Utsjoki and on to the Norwegian border. Furthermore, two main roads cross the municipality: the main road 91 leads from Ivalo to the Russian border. Main road 92 starts at Kaamanen and leads to the village of Karigasniemi in the municipality of Utsjoki, where there is a border crossing to Norway. There are two border crossing points in Inari: At Raja-Jooseppi you can cross the border to Russia and at Näätämö to Norway.
With Ivalo airport , the municipality of Inari has the northernmost airport in Finland. It is located 11 km southwest of Ivalo and 25 km north of Saariselkä. The airport was built by the German Wehrmacht in 1943, but destroyed again in 1945 when they withdrew during the Lapland War. It was repaired after the war and opened in 1955. Today the Finnish airline Finnair offers direct flights between Helsinki-Vantaa and Ivalo twice a day . In addition, numerous charter flights go to the airport during the tourist season in winter. In 2007 Ivalo recorded 145,870 passengers.
Inari is not connected to the railway network. The nearest train stations are in Kemijärvi around 270 kilometers south and in Kolari 258 kilometers southwest. Motorail service runs to the railway station in Rovaniemi about 290 km south.
Inari is connected to Europe's longest official long-distance cycle route, the Iron Curtain Trail , which, with EU funding, runs along the former Iron Curtain to the Black Sea.
Education and Social
The low population density of the municipality poses problems for the education system, as well as the rest of the public infrastructure. Inari's students have to take very long journeys to school. There are four primary schools in the municipality: one in Ivalo, one in Inari, one in Sevettijärvi and one in Törmänen. There is only a high school in Ivalo. The Sami students are offered lessons in Northern, Inari and Skolt Sami. The municipality of Inari also has an adult education center. In addition to its main presence in Ivalo, the municipality's library also has a branch in Inari. The remote areas are supplied with a mobile library.
There are four state health centers in Inari, one in Ivalo, one in Inari, one in Nellim and one in Sevettijärvi.
Culture and sights
The main attraction of Inari is likely to be the nature of the municipality. The Lemmenjoki and Urho Kekkonen National Parks in particular attract numerous nature tourists with their hiking trails. The solitary church of Pielpajärvi is one of the few buildings of cultural and historical interest . It is located near the town of Inari and can only be reached via a 4.5 km long hiking trail. The wooden cruciform church was built from 1754 to 1760 under the direction of the builder Anders Abrahamsson Hellander on the site of a dilapidated previous building from 1646 as the church of the chapel parish Inari. The free-standing church tower followed five years later. In addition to the solitary church of Pielpajärvi, a gold digger camp from the times of the Lappish gold rush in the 19th century on the Ivalojoki River, the ensembles of the Sami villages Angeli, Lisma and Nellim, two historic reindeer divisions in Petsikkotunturi and Sallivaara, the house that the als Raja-Jooseppi known hermit Josef Salli built in 1914 in the border area with Russia, as well as the island of Ukonsaari . The rocky island on Inarijärvi was sacred to the Sami in pre-Christian times because of its distinctive shape and was used as a place of sacrifice.
Inari is a center of the Sami culture in Finland. The village of Inari is home to the Finnish Samething and the Sami Museum Siida , founded in 1962 , which presents the culture and history of the Sami as well as the nature of Northern Lapland. The complex includes a permanent exhibition and changing exhibitions of the Sami Museum, the nature center of Northern Lapland and an open-air museum with various historical Sami residential buildings ( Koten ) and farmhouses. The Sami-language broadcaster YLE Radio Sámi of the Finnish public broadcaster Yleisradio broadcasts from Inari. The internationally successful Sami folk duo Angelit comes from the village of Angeli . Another Sami musician from Inari is the rap artist Amoc , who produces hip hop in Inari Sami .
Sources and further information
literature
- Teuvo Lehtola: Kolmen kuninkaan maa. Inarin historia 1500-luvulta jälleenrakennusaikaan. Jyväskylä: Kustannus Puntsi, 1998, ISBN 951-97541-5-6 .
- Veli-Pekka Lehtola: Inari - Aanaar. Inarin historia jääkaudesta nykypäivään. Oulu: Suomenmaa, 2003, ISBN 952-91-5767-3 .
Web links
- Inari Municipality website (Finnish)
- inarilapland.org (Inari-Lapland tourism portal, English)
- saariselka.fi (Saariselkä Holiday Center website, German)
- Topographic map - with zoom function
Individual evidence
- ↑ Maanmittauslaitos (Finnish land surveying office): Suomen pinta-alat kunnittain January 1, 2010 . (PDF; 199 kB)
- ↑ Statistical Office Finland: Table 11ra - Key figures on population by region, 1990-2018
- ↑ a b c d e f Website of the municipality: Tilastotietoja Inarin kunnasta ( Memento of March 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (Finnish)
- ↑ ymparisto.fi (website of the Finnish Ministry of the Environment): Suomen järvet ( memento of the original from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Finnish)
- ↑ Ilmatieteen laitos: Vuoden lämpimin ja kylmin paikka Suomessa (Finnish)
- ↑ ymparisto.fi (website of the Finnish Ministry of the Environment): Inarijärven luonto ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Finnish)
- ↑ Eija Onanlatva: History . In the information project Anarâš of the Siida Museum (Eng.)
- ↑ Teuvo Lehtola: Kolmen Kuninkaan maa. Inarin historia 1500-luvulta jälleenrakennusaikaan , Jyväskylä 1998, p. 22.
- ^ Ilmari Mattus: Kristinusko . In: Anarâš (website of the Siida Museum), 2006 (Finnish)
- ↑ Tarja Nahkiaisoja: Uudistilat . In: Anarâš (website of the Siida Museum), 2006 (Finnish)
- ↑ Marko Jouste: Lappi maailmansodan vuosina (Finnish)
- ↑ Tilastokeskus (Finnish Statistics Office) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Tilastokeskus (Finnish Statistical Office) ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , As of December 31, 2006
- ↑ Website of the parish Inari ( Memento of the original of July 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Finnish)
- ↑ Finnish Ministry of Justice: Result of the 2007 general election
- ↑ Finnish Ministry of Justice: Result of the 2008 local elections
- ↑ As of 2003, Lapin liitto: Tourism in Finland and Lapland (Engl.), P. 77.
- ↑ As of 2003, Lapin liitto: Tourism in Finland and Lapland (Engl.), P. 82.
- ↑ As of 2003, Lapin liitto: Tourism in Finland and Lapland (Engl.), P. 87.
- ↑ Website of the reindeer owners' cooperative (paliskunta) of Inari ( Memento of the original of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (engl.)
- ↑ Finavia (Finnish Aviation Authority) ( Memento of the original from June 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (engl.)
- ↑ Iron Curtain Trail - The northern part. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 6, 2017 ; Retrieved April 17, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
