page_title: Skuleskogen National Park
section_title: Exploitation of the park
hierarchical_section_title: Skuleskogen National Park / History / Exploitation of the park
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Näskebodarna, dans le parc national de Skuleskogen. English: Näskebodarna, in Skuleskogen national park.
context_page_description: Skuleskogen National Park is a Swedish national park in Västernorrland County, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, in northern Sweden. It covers 30.62 km², constituting the eastern part of the Forest of Skule.
  The park is characterized by a very rough topology with many rocky peaks, of which the highest is Slåttdalsberget, 280 m in altitude, rising directly from the sea. The topography is also marked by the presence of deep crevasses and caves. This particular topology can be found throughout the entire High Coast, a region of Sweden so named because it constitutes the highest section of the coast of the Baltic Sea. This region is in our day principally known as a favoured site for the observation of the phenomenon of post-glacial rebound. Most of the region was under the sea less than 10,000 years ago, after the ice sheet that blanketed it melted. But thanks to the melting of this mass of ice that had been pressing down upon it, the ground is rising year by year, at a current speed of 8 mm per year.
  Humans have left their mark upon the park, although they probably never established themselves there in great numbers.
context_section_description: The forest of Skule has always been a topographic barrier. For example, it would have perhaps have been the northern frontier of the kingdom of Svealand before the year 1000, and thus the border between adjacent municipalities and parishes. The villages it separated had very limited contact with each other and, because of the poor agricultural potential of the forest, there was never a permanent settlement in the forest. The forest was, however, traversed by a trail, which later took the name of Kustlandsvägen and which corresponded roughly to the path of today's European route E4. For a long time, this path constituted the only road to the north of the country. The zone was thus the property of the Swedish crown, which could decide who could use the forest as pasture or engage in logging there. In the 17th century, unlike many of the northern Swedish forests belonging to the crown, Skuleskogen did not see any colonization by the Forest Finns (Skogsfinnar), and thus did not undergo slash-and-burn cultivation techniques. The forest was instead used as a summer pasture (transhumance), and the hay of the marshes was used as well, although in a very localized fashion. As a result, in today's national park there were four summer pasture cottages, three having existed up until the turn of the 20th century, while the last (Näskebodarna) remained active up until the end of World War II. This last is now used, maintained in its old state, for tourism. The forest would seem to be more open in those days than now.
  At the same time, it would seem that the Sami were using the mountains as a winter pasture for their reindeer until 1919. They would pass the summer in the mountains of Jämtland, and would travel to the coast between November and April.
  After the Great Northern War at the beginning of the 18th century, Sweden encouraged the foundation of villages on its territories by tax exemptions. As a result, a few isolated villages were established in the forest of Skuleskogen, but none in today's park. Until the middle of the 18th century, logging was limited to the area directly around the villages and thus only minimally affected the forest of the park. But that soon changed, the state taking an active part in the exploitation of the forest. Logging became the principal activity in the area of the park. In a few years, a dozen mills, including a steam mill, were constructed in immediate proximity to today's park. The sawmills driven by water wheels only had weak capacities in general and only functioned during certain periods of the year. The number of steam mills grew thereafter. At first, only the trees with trunks over a fixed length in diameter were able to be cut, but bit by bit, these rules changed, and in the end all the trees were able to be felled. Logging slowed down markedly at the turn of the century, allowing the forest to regenerate. About 15% of the forest was affected by a new period of exploitation before the protection of the area. The forest's oldest trees therefore date from the start of the 20th century.
caption: The old summer pastures of Näskebodarna
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