Inari (community) – Wikipedia

Inari [ Invention ] (North Samic Anar , Inarisamisch Aanaar , scolisian Aanar , Swedish Enare ) is a municipality in the Finnish part of Lapland. It is located on the lake Inarijärvi and has 6862 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2020) on an area of ​​around 17,300 square kilometers. A large part of the municipal area consists of deserted wilderness. The administrative seat of the municipality of Inari is the place Ivalo. Samische culture is very present in Inari, whose population consists of 30 percent of this indigenous people. In addition to traditional reindeer breeding and forestry, tourism, especially thanks to Saariselkä’s winter sports resorts, has become the main business branch of the community.

Location and expansion [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Inari is around 250 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in the north of the Finnish landscape of Lapland and approx. 250 kilometers south of the North Cape. Inari has an extremely extensive district: With 17,334 km², the largest municipality of Finland comprises five percent of the total country area and is therefore slightly larger than the German state of Thuringia. Much of the municipal area consists of uninhabited wilderness. With less than 7,000 inhabitants, this results in a population density of 0.46 inhabitants per square kilometer.

Neighboring communities of Inari are Utsjoki in the north, Sobankylä in the south, Kittilä in the southwest and enontekiö in the west. Inari is bordered on Norway in the northwest and northeast (Karasjok and Kautokeino municipalities in the northwest as well as Sør-Varanger in the northeast) and in the east to Russia (Rajon Petschenga).

Localities [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The administrative seat of the municipality of Inari is Ivalo. About half of the community population lives in the place located on the Ivalojoki river south of the Inarijärvi. The eponymous Kirchdorf Inari, on the other hand, only has about 450 inhabitants. It is located at the west end of the Inarijärvi. The rest of the population is spread over a number of small and sometimes very remote villages in the municipal area.

The villages of Inari (population of December 31, 2005 in brackets) ^[3] :

Battery lake (157) Akujärvi, rest (26) Angeli-Pyhäjärvi-Dog (86) Inari (459) Inari, surroundings (310) Ivalo (3.379) Ivalo, surroundings (157) Kaamanen (192) Lake Spring (185) Clutch (217) Dandage (21)

Lisma (15) Lakenjärvi-Lemmenjoki (138) Nellim (194) Beard (75) Riutula-Kettukoski-Tirro (82) Saariselkä (311) Sevettijärvi-Näästämö (238) Törmänen (351) Törmänen, rest (274) Ukonjärvi (21) Veskoniemi (71)

Landscape and nature [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Inari belongs to the Lapland area. For the most part, the municipal area belongs to Wald-Lapland, in which pine and spruce still occur. Higher layers are tree -free and are only covered by lichen. Kiefer and Fichte reach the border of its distribution area in Inari, north of it begins the Fjell-Lapland landscape, where tundra-like vegetation prevails and only growing birch trees in low locations. Occasionally fjells rise from the largely flat surroundings (mountain in Lapland) whose highest of the Viipustunturi is 599 m. 72.2% of the Inaris area are under nature conservation of different degrees. ^[3] In the area of ​​the municipality is the majority of the Lemmenjoki national park, with 2850 km² of the largest Finland, a small part of the Urho-Kekkonen national park as well as the wilderness areas of Hammastunturi, Kaldoaivi, Muotkatunturi, Paistunturi and Vässäri. Various wild animals, including moose, bears, diverse, wolves and stone eagles, live in the wilderness of Inari. The reindeer to be found everywhere are half -domesticated farm animals.

2129 km², that is twelve percent of the municipal area, are covered by water. Around half of this will be paid to the Inarijärvi. With an area of ​​1041 km² (almost twice the Lake Constance), it is the third largest lake in Finland. It is located in a depression and is up to 92 meters deep. The coastline of the lake with its over 3000 islands is very divided. Other noteworthy lakes are the Mutusjärvi, Paatari and Patujärvi. The other lakes are often very small. In the north of Inari, an average of ten lakes or ponds per square kilometer is reached by the highest native density of Finland. ^[4] A number of larger rivers flow through the municipal area of ​​Inari. The rivers Ivalojoki, Lemmenjoki, Vaskojoki and Juutuanjoki open 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 [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The climate in Inari is cold and, as is generally shaped in Finnish-Lapland. Inaris’s annual precipitation, at 405 mm, is one of the least Finland, but this is compensated for by the low evaporation due to the cool temperatures. The average annual temperature is −1.3 ° C (for comparison: Helsinki approx. +5 ° C, Berlin approx. +9 ° C). The warmest month is July with an average average temperature of 13.2 ° C, the coldest in January at −13.5 ° C. The thermal summer lasts from mid -June to the end of August. In the short summer, however, the temperatures can rise high. Finland’s maximum temperatures were last measured in 2000, 2004 and 2005 with around 30 ° C in the village of Sevettijärvi in ​​Inari. ^[5] The winter are long and cold – deepest temperatures of below −40 ° C are not uncommon. There is usually a permanent blanket between the end of October and the middle of May. The bank areas of the Inarijärvi mostly icon at the end of October, the open areas a month later. The ice usually melts only in early June. ^[6]

Due to its location about 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, there are extreme seasonal differences in the sunshine duration in Inari: Between May 24 and July 21, the midnight sun seems to be between May 24 and July 21. Accordingly, the polar night is between December 4 and January 8 (Kaamos) .

prehistory [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

After the withdrawal of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age, the first human settlement in the Inari area spread. The oldest traces of settlement date 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, the population from northern Sweden and the white sea coast also immigrated. ^[7] By mixing this Stone Age original population and the 3rd millennium BC. The immigrant Finno-Ugrier was created by the Samic population of Lapland, which remained predominant in Inari until the 20th century.

The culture of the indigenous inari names in Inari differed from that of the seeds of northern Lapland, since they did not live from reindeer breeding, but from hunting and fishing. Her way of life was semi -nomadic: the cold season spent her in a winter village and hunted the wild forest animals, in summer they operated fishing and collected berries. The residents of a winter village formed a community that had the right to use in a defined area. In the case of Inari, the area of ​​the village corresponded to today’s municipal area. In the winter village, the seeds also regulated their judicial matters. In Inari, this Sami jurisdiction remained until 1823. ^[8] The seeds of Inari had lively trade contacts in the Middle Ages to the pomorns on the Russian white sea coast, the Birkarls on the Baltic Sea and the ports on the north sea, which were controlled by the Hanseatic League.

Swedish and Russian time [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

With Lapland’s development in the late Middle Ages, Inari also moved into Sweden, Norway and Russia. The first written mention of Inari comes from a document by the Moscow Grand Prince Wassili III. The Swedish-Russian border in the Peace of Teusina was determined by Lapland’s taxation from 1517. In 1595, and confirmed again in 1617 in the peace of Stolbowo. It ran east of the Inarijärvi near the current border. In practical terms, however, the area remained more or less abandoned, the state influence was essentially limited to collecting taxes. Inari was taxed by both Sweden and Norway and Russia until 1751. In the 16th century, the first inhabitants of Inaris took over the Christian faith. In a Swedish tax list of 1570, six out of 17 taxpayers already have a Christian name. The Christianization of Inaris finally started in the 17th century. From 1630 the pastor Johan Pictorius from Kemi converted the residents of Inaris to Christianity, in 1646 the first church was built in Pielpajärvi. ^[9]

From the 18th century, the sedentary agricultural culture began to take the place of the semi -nomadic lifestyle. Around 1740, the first farm in Inaris was founded by Inarisame Johan Nilsson Aikio. From the middle of the 18th century, Finnish new settlers settled in the village of Kyrö, today’s Ivalo. When the forestry stocks in the 19th century began to go back through the intensive hunting, the importance of cattle branch as a branch of business increased. At the same time, the state tried to arrange the seeds through tax prices to become sedentary. This resulted in new farms, especially from 1830. A total of 121 farms were founded, including almost three quarters by seeds and over a quarter through Finn. ^[ten]

When Sweden in 1809 in the Treaty of Fredrikshamn, the area of ​​today’s Finland left Russia, Inari also became part of the newly founded Grand Principality of Finland. When the Russian-Norwegian and the Russian-Swedish border was closed in 1852, the veneer mate of Northern Lapland could no longer move to the Arctic Coast with their herds and had to move their pasture areas to the inland. As a result, a north -samic -speaking, reindeer breeding, also created in Inari. As a result, inarisame, which had previously only kept a few reindeer as accessible animals, and Finns took over the reindeer breeding as a business branch.

Since independence [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

With the Finnish declaration of independence, Inari also became part of the independent Republic of Finland in 1917. At that time, the seeds were still the majority of the population in Inari. However, when around 200 seeds of the Spanish flu fell victim to in 1920, the majority ratio turned. ^[11] In the peace of Dorpat, Finland received the area of ​​Petamo (Petschenga) northeast of Inari in 1920 from Soviet Russia and thus access to the Arctic Ocean. In 1931, a continuous road connection to Petamo was created with the Rovaniemi at Ivaniemi via Ivalo to Hafen Liinahamari. The village of Ivalo benefited from its location on the Ice Meerstrasse and soon fled the old Kirchdorf Inari.

During the war of continuation from 1941 to 1944, in which Finland fought against the Soviet Union in a so -called arms brotherhood with Germany, Enontekiö, as well as all of Northern Finland, was part of the operating area of ​​the Wehrmacht. The Germans began to build the Ivalo protection position in the south of Inari, which, together with the Sturmbock position in Northwestern Lapland, was to protect the Arctic Ports in the occupied Norway and Petamo. When Finland closed the armistice of Moscow with the Soviet Union on September 4, 1944, in which it was committed to passing 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 time. The population of Inaris was evacuated to Ylivieska in North Eastern Botten. The Wehrmacht troops had to leave the protective position that had not yet been completed and withdrew after a short battle. They applied the tactics of the burned earth and also caused destruction in Inari.

Finland Petamo had had to go to the Soviet Union in the armistice of Moscow. The scolt seeds based there were evacuated and settled in Inari after the war. In the Paris Peace of 1947, Finland sold in order to be able to pay Soviet reparation demands, the area of ​​Jäniskoski-Iiskoski to the Soviet Union. This 176 km² area in the east of Inari was almost uninhabited, but was of interest to the Soviet Union because of the hydropower plant there on the Paatsjoki river.

Population development and structure [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Inari currently has almost 7,000 inhabitants. At the beginning of the 1990s, the population still had over 7800. However, because the structurally weak Lapland was hit by the Finnish economic crisis more heavier than the south of the country, from the middle of the decade, a wave of emigration began to the south growth centers. In Inari, the population of the community in Inari decreased by ten percent between 1996 and 2006. 15.5% of the residents of Inaris are younger than 15 years, 69.1% between 15 and 64 years old and 15.4% older than 64 years. ^[3]

Development of the population ^[twelfth]

Year	1980	1985	1990	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Resident	6900	7219	7559	7851	7783	7719	7555	7452	7360	7268	7217	7153	7084	7043	6986

Languages ​​and ethnic groups [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Inari belongs to the settlement area of ​​the indigenous people of the seeds. As a result of immigration and assimilation, the majority of the municipal population today consists of ethnic Finns, but 30 percent of the residents are still inaris, around 2200 people, ethnic seeds. ^[3] However, only about 400 of them, i.e. almost 6 percent of the population, speak Samisch as a mother tongue. ^[13] The seeds inaris share in three groups, which differ linguistically and culturally not only from the Finnish majority population, but also among themselves. North Samic, the largest Sami language, is widespread in Inari as well as in the other Samic areas of Finland and parts of Norway and Sweden. The inaris seeds, on the other hand, only settle in the Inari area. Her language, the inarisamic, has only a few hundred speakers. The small group of the scolts seeds was also evacuated from the area of ​​Petsamo (Petschenga) after the Second World War and settled in the municipal area of ​​Inari in the villages of Sevettijärvi and Nellim. Except in Inari, the Skolsnische is spoken by a few people in Russia.

Inari is part of the legally defined “home area” (homeland) The seed in Finland. All three Samic languages ​​have an official status in the community and may be used in dealing with the authorities. This makes Inari the only four -language community of Finland. The Sajos Culture Center is the seat of Finnish Samething, the parliamentary representation of the seeds of Finland.

Religions [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The majority of Inaris residents belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The parish of Inari was founded in 1881 and has 5500 members. ^[14] It has four places of worship in the municipal area: the main church in Ivalo, built in 1966, the Samische Church in Inari (1951), the old Einödkirche of Pielpajärvi (1760) and a chapel in the winter sports resort of Saariselkä (1996). Laestadianism has been represented in Inari since the 1870s. This revival movement works within the Evangelical Lutheran Church and thus also under the roof of the Evangelical parish of Inari, but also organizes its own devotions, Bible circles and youth groups. The Laestadians Inaris are in two “peace clubs” (Peace Association) , organized by the Peace Association of Ivalo and the Altlaestadian Peace Association of Ivalonlaakso.

The scolt seeds are 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.

Administration [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

As is generally in the rural areas of Finland, the Center Party is the strongest political force in Inari. In the 2008 local elections, she received almost a third in the 2007 parliamentary election ^[15] even over half of the votes. In the municipal council, the highest decision -making body for local affairs, it provides eight out of 27 MPs. The second strongest faction provides the common list of independent of Inari (Inari’s Common list) With seven MPs. As is usual in Lapland, the left -wing alliance is quite strongly represented in the local council with five seats. The National Collection Party and the Social Democrats, which are among the three major parties nationwide, play a rather subordinate role in Inari with four or two seats. The Green Bund is also represented in the local council with a MP.

coat of arms [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Inari’s coat of arms was designed by Ahti Hammar in 1955. It shows a silver marade with a gold reindeer antlers in the black field.

Town partnerships [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Inari maintains city twinning with the Norwegian neighboring municipality Sør-Varanger and the city of Kola in Russia.

Business [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The Inaris economic structure shows a strong proportion of the service sector: 79% of the employed population are employed in the tertiary sector, 40% of them in the public service. 10% of the residents work in agriculture and forestry. The industrial sector plays a completely subordinate role with three percent of the employees. The largest individual employers of Inari are the municipality, the Finnish border protection and the state forest authority. The unemployment rate is high in Lapland with 17.8% (2005). ^[3]

Tourism is the most important inaris industry. There are around 13,500 bed places in the community, including around 10,600 in the Saariselkä holiday center. Around 375,000 overnight stays are registered annually. The income from tourism amounts to 70.1 million euros. ^[3] The winter sports resort of Saariselkä is located in the south of the municipal area at the foot of the Fjells Kaunispää and Iisakkipää. With over 240,000 overnight stays per year ^[17] Saariselkä is the largest holiday center in Finnish Lapland. Over 40% of visitors come from abroad. By far the largest group are the Germans followed by British, Norwegians, Japanese and French. ^[18]

Since Saariselkä attracts many natural tourists in the summer in winter thanks to the skiers thanks to the nearby Urho-Kekkonen national park, 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, but also in July and September, around 25,000 overnight stays are registered. ^[19] Many Lapland tourists also arrive at Ivalo Airport or have a stopover in Inari on the way to the North Cape.

The most important importance in Inaris are reindeer breeding and forestry. 600 of the approximately 7,000 inhabitants inaris have reindeer. In total, 38,000 half -domesticated reindeer live in the community. ^[20] Lately there have been major disputes between the reindeer owners and the forestry groups, since wood is also beaten in the untouched primeval forests, which are used by the reindeer as a winter pasture. In the spring of 2005, the environmental protection organization Greenpeace intervened and built a camp in Inari.

Traffic [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Due to the low population density, wide areas in Inari are pathless, but all settlements are connected to the road network. The most important traffic artery is state road 4, which leads via Sodankylä from Südfinland in the north-south direction via Saariselkä, Ivalo, Inari and Kaamanen to Utsjoki and further to the Norwegian border. The municipal area also crosses two main roads: Hauptstraße 91 leads from Ivalo to the Russian border. Hauptstraße 92 begins with 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, the border to Russia can be crossed to Norway near Näätämö.

With Ivalo Airport, Inari has Finland’s northernmost airport. 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 was destroyed again in 1945 when it retreated in the Lapland war. After the war it was repaired again and opened in 1955. Today the Finnish airline Finnair offers direct flights between Helsinki-Vanta and Ivalo twice a day. In addition, numerous charter flights head for the airport during the tourist season in winter. In 2007, 145,870 passengers were recorded in Ivalo. ^[21]

Despite the film, the municipality is to the rail network Migratory birds … once to Inari not connected. The next train stations are located in Kemijärvi around 270 kilometers south and 258 kilometers southwest in Kolari. Car trip traffic to the train station in Rovaniemi exists about 290 km south.

Inari is connected to Europe’s longest official long -distance cycle path, the Iron Curtain Trail, which runs out along the former iron curtain to the Black Sea. ^[22]

Education and social issues [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The small population of the municipality poses problems, as well as the rest of the public infrastructure. The students inaris have to accept very long ways of school. There are four primary schools in the community: one in Ivalo, one in Inari, one in Sevettijärvi and one in Törmänen. There is only a high school in Ivalo. Lessons for North, Inari and Skolsamisch are offered to the Samic students. In addition, the municipality of Inari maintains a 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 moving library.

In Inari there are four state health centers, one in Ivalo, one in Inari, one in Nellim and one in Sevettijärvi.

Inaris’s main worthy of the community is likely to be the nature of the community. The Lemmenjoki and Urho-Kekkonen national park in particular attract numerous natural tourists with its hiking paths. One of the few buildings of cultural -historical interest is the Einödkirche of Pielpajärvi. It is located near the town of Inari and can only be reached via an approximately 4.5 km long hiking trail. The wooden Kreuzkirche was built from 1754 to 1760 under the direction of the master builder Anders Abrahamsson Hellander at the site of a dilapidated predecessor building from 1646 as the church of the chapel community Inari. The free -standing church tower followed five years later. In addition to the Einödkirche of Pielpajärvi, a gold digger camp from the time of the Lappish gold rush in the 19th century on the Ivalojoki River, the ensembles of the Sami villages of Angeli, Lisma and Nellim, two historical reindeer slices in Petsikkotunturi and Sallivaara, are the house that Raja-Jooseppi acquired Hermit Josef Salli in 1914 in the border area with Russia, as well as the island of Ukonsaari. The rocky island on the Inarijärvi was sacred in pre -Christian times because of its striking form and was used as a sacrificial place.

Inari is a center of Finland’s Samic culture. The Finnish Samething and the Sami Museum Siida, founded in 1962, are located in the village of Inari, which presents the culture and history of the seeds 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 Samic residential buildings (Koten) and farmhouses. The Sami-speaking broadcaster Yle Radio Sámi of the Yleisradio Broadcasting Broadcasting Center sends from Inari. The internationally successful Sami Folk duo Angelit comes from the village of Angeli. Another Samic musician from Inari is the rap artist Amoc, who produces hip-hop in inarisamic.

• Teuvo Lehtola: The land of three kings. Inari’s history from the 16th century to reconstruction. Jyväskylä: Kustannus Puntsi, 1998, ISBN 951-97541-5-6.
• Veli-Pekka Lehtola: Inari – Aanaar. Inari’s history from the Ice Age to the present. Oulu: Suomenmaa, 2003, ISBN 952-91-5767-3.