- Erratic boulders The ice age carried boulders weighing hundreds of tonnes for hundreds of kilometres and left them in the middle of the forest – some still balance on a single point of contact.
- Giant's kettles Meltwater spun a stone in the same hollow for thousands of years and ground a perfect cylinder into the bedrock – the deepest are more than ten metres.
- Rock paintings Stone Age people painted elk, boats and their own hands in red ochre on lakeside cliffs – and the paintings are still there, 5,000 years later.
- Hill forts and ancient monuments Iron Age refuge forts, Bronze Age burial cairns and stone labyrinths whose purpose nobody knows – Finland's oldest structures stand in the forest without a sign.
- Caves Finland's bedrock is too hard for great stalactite caverns, but under boulders, in limestone and in cracks carved by the ice sheet there are caves where ice lasts all summer.
- War history The 1,200 km of Salpa Line bunkers, the Raate road, the battlefields of the Great Wrath and dugouts you can still sleep in – the traces of war are in the terrain, not only in museums.
- Ruins and abandoned places Medieval churches of which only the walls remain, a fell hotel burned in the war, a mine's concentrator in the middle of the forest – and one ruin that was built as a ruin.
- Mines and quarries A mine where you dig your own amethyst on a fell top, the quarry that supplied St Petersburg's Alexander Column, and a diving cave system in an old limestone mine.
- Canals and locks Vääksy locks hundreds of boats through on a summer day, the Höytiäinen canal dropped a lake by nine metres in one night – and at the museum canals the lock gates are still opened by hand.
- Historic bridges Stone bridges along an 18th-century post road, some of Finland's oldest cast-in-place concrete arches, and suspension bridges swaying above fell rivers.
- Windmills and watermills Smock mills, post mills and watermills grinding in the rapids, some still turning – and a shingle mill where logs become roof shingles.
- Cup-marked and sacrificial stones Iron Age people ground cup-shaped hollows into stones and left their offerings in them – the meaning of the cups is still a mystery, and the largest stone has more than a hundred.
- Observatories and planetariums The dark nights from September to March open a path to the stars: Finland's amateur observatories and research observatories welcome visitors to their telescopes.
- Burial grounds and ancient burial sites Layers of burial history lie embedded in Finnish soil, from Bronze Age stone cairns to Orthodox burial grounds, with many ancient burials still resting protected in the forest.
- Duckboards and Bog Trails Duckboards across bogs lead to aapa mires, raised bogs and bird towers – from spring migratory birds through summer cloudberry meadows to autumn colours.
- Railways, locomotives and heritage trains Steam locomotives, heritage railways and old stations tell how the railway transformed Finland from 1862 onwards, and they can still be viewed on the map.
- Traces of the Ice Age A glacier kilometres thick melted from Finland only about 10,000 years ago, leaving behind eskers, giant's kettles, and erratic boulders that land uplift continues to reveal.
- Unusual statues and ITE art Finland has both serious statues of heroes and wild ITE art parks, where self-taught artists have built their own worlds in their own gardens.
- Finnish records Finnish records maps locations that hold their own "Finland's largest" or "Finland's oldest" titles in sources: the highest waterfall, the longest river, the biggest tree.
Lists
Editor's numbered picks: the places with a story. Every list links to the place pages and to the whole theme.
- 11 erratic boulders in Finland worth the detour Every one of these stones travelled tens or hundreds of kilometres inside the ice sheet and stayed where the ice dropped it. Since then people have given each a name, a story and sometimes legal protection.
- 7 giant's kettles in Finland worth standing at the edge of Meltwater spun a stone in the same hollow for thousands of years. The result is a cylinder with walls that look machine-drilled – and standing at its edge tells you how much water once ran beneath the ice.
- 11 rock paintings in Finland you can see with the naked eye A hunter painted an elk and his own hand on the rock in red ochre from a boat 5,000 years ago. Land uplift has raised the images metres above the water, and a silica film has kept the colour – these eleven can be seen without binoculars.
- 9 caves in Finland you can actually enter Finland's granite does not make dripstone caverns, but ice, frost and weathering have made hollows under boulders and in rock fissures that you can stand in – and where ice lasts through the summer.
- 11 war history sites in Finland, from the 1700s to the Winter War Finland's wars do not have to be read in a museum. They stand as concrete bunkers at field edges, stone tank barriers in the forest and memorial stones on fields where thousands fell – and in one place 105 bells still ring.