Saimaa ( , ; sv, Saimen) is a lake located in the
Finnish Lakeland
Finnish Lakeland or Finnish lake district ( fi, Järvi-Suomi, "Lake Finland", sv, Insjöfinland) is the largest of the four landscape regions into which the geography of Finland is divided.
The hilly, forest-covered landscape of the lake pl ...
area in southeastern
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...
. At approximately , it is the largest
lake
A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...
in Finland, and the
fourth largest natural freshwater lake in Europe.
The name Saimaa likely comes from a
non-Uralic, non-Indo European substrate language.
History
It was formed by
glacial melting at the end of the
Ice Age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...
. Major
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an o ...
s on the lakeshore include
Lappeenranta,
Imatra,
Savonlinna
Savonlinna (, , ; sv, Nyslott, lit=New Castle) is a town and a municipality of inhabitants in the southeast of Finland, in the heart of the Saimaa lake region, which is why the city is also nicknamed the "Capital of Saimaa". Together with Mi ...
,
Mikkeli
Mikkeli (; sv, S:t Michel; la, Michaelia) is a town and municipality in Finland. It is located in what used to be the province of Eastern Finland and is part of the Etelä-Savo region. The municipality has a population of () (around 34, ...
,
Varkaus
Varkaus (before year 1929 ''Warkaus'') is a Middle- Savonian industrial town and municipality of Finland. It is located in the province of Eastern Finland and is part of the Northern Savonia region, between city of Kuopio and town of Savonlin ...
, and
Joensuu
Joensuu (; krl, Jovensuu; ) is a city and municipality in North Karelia, Finland, located on the northern shore of Lake Pyhäselkä (northern part of Lake Saimaa) at the mouth of the Pielinen River (''Pielisjoki''). It was founded in 1848. The ...
. About 6000 years ago, ancient Lake Saimaa, estimated to cover nearly at the time, was abruptly discharged through a new outlet. The event created thousands of square kilometres of new residual wetlands. Following this event, the region saw a population maximum in the decades following only to later return to an ecological development towards old boreal conifer forests which saw a decline in population.
Topography
The
Vuoksi River
The Vuoksi (russian: Вуокса, historically: "Uzerva"; fi, Vuoksi; sv, Vuoksen) is a river running through the northernmost part of the Karelian Isthmus from Lake Saimaa in southeastern Finland to Lake Ladoga in northwestern Russia. Th ...
flows from Saimaa to
Lake Ladoga. Most of the lake is spotted with islands, and narrow canals divide the lake in many parts, each having their own names (major basins include
Suur-Saimaa,
Orivesi,
Puruvesi,
Haukivesi,
Yövesi,
Pihlajavesi, and
Pyhäselkä). Thus, Saimaa exhibits all major types of lake in Finland at different levels of
eutrophication
Eutrophication is the process by which an entire body of water, or parts of it, becomes progressively enriched with minerals and nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. It has also been defined as "nutrient-induced increase in phyt ...
.
In places in the Saimaa basin (an area larger than the lake), "there is more shoreline here per unit of area than anywhere else in the world, the total length being nearly . The number of islands in the region, 14,000, also shows what a maze of detail the system has."
Natural resources
An endangered
freshwater seal
The freshwater seals are seals which live in freshwater bodies.
The only exclusively freshwater seal species is the Baikal seal, locally named ().
The others are the subspecies or colonies of regular saltwater seals. These include two subspecies ...
, the
Saimaa ringed seal
The Saimaa ringed seal (''Pusa hispida saimensis'', Finnish: ''Saimaannorppa'') is a subspecies of ringed seal (''Pusa hispida''). They are among the most endangered seals in the world, having a total population of only about 400 individuals. ...
, lives only at Saimaa. Another of the lake's endangered species is the Saimaa
salmon
Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus '' Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Onco ...
.
Due to its rich, easily accessible asbestos deposits, the shores of the lake are the most probable origin of
asbestos-ceramic, a type of pottery made between c. 1900 BC – 200 AD.
The areas around Saimaa lake are a very popular location for summer cabins as well as lake cruises.
Saimaa canal
The
Saimaa Canal
The Saimaa Canal ( fi, Saimaan kanava; sv, Saima kanal; russian: Сайменский канал) is a transportation canal that connects lake Saimaa with the Gulf of Finland near Vyborg, Russia. The canal was built from 1845 to 1856 and open ...
from
Lauritsala,
Lappeenranta to
Vyborg
Vyborg (; rus, Вы́борг, links=1, r=Výborg, p=ˈvɨbərk; fi, Viipuri ; sv, Viborg ; german: Wiborg ) is a town in, and the administrative center of, Vyborgsky District in Leningrad Oblast, Russia. It lies on the Karelian Isthmus ...
connects Saimaa to the
Gulf of Finland. Other
canal
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface f ...
s connect Saimaa to smaller lakes in Eastern Finland and form a network of
waterway
A waterway is any navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other languages. A first distinction is necessary ...
s. These waterways are mainly used to transport
wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...
,
mineral
In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2 ...
s,
metal
A metal (from ancient Greek, Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, e ...
s,
pulp and other
cargo
Cargo consists of bulk goods conveyed by water, air, or land. In economics, freight is cargo that is transported at a freight rate for commercial gain. ''Cargo'' was originally a shipload but now covers all types of freight, including tra ...
, though
tourist
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism ...
s also use the waterways.
Notable people
* The Russian writer
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
went into exile near the shores of Lake Saimaa for a period of time after his apartment was raided by the
Black Hundreds
The Black Hundred (russian: Чёрная сотня, translit=Chornaya sotnya), also known as the black-hundredists (russian: черносотенцы; chernosotentsy), was a reactionary, monarchist and ultra-nationalist movement in Russia in t ...
in the aftermath of the
Moscow Uprising of 1905. He wrote to his divorced wife Ekaterina, writing "it's beautiful here, like a fairy tale".
[Figes, Orlando: ''A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924''. The Bodley Head, London (2014). p. 202]
See also
*
Lakes of Finland
*
Soisalo
References
External links
www.ymparisto.fi – Saimaa, nimet ja rajauksetVisit Saimaa official website Mikkeli, Savonlinna and Varkaus regions
Saimaa – the heart of Finnish lakeland fro
thisisFinlandwebsite
Awarded "EDEN – European Destinations of Excellence" non traditional tourist destination 2010
{{Authority control
Landforms of North Karelia
Landforms of South Karelia
Landforms of South Savo
Landforms of North Savo