page_title: Kvarken
section_title: World Heritage Site
hierarchical_section_title: Kvarken / World Heritage Site
caption_attribution_description: English: location of the Kvarken Archipelago in Finland, part of the Kvarken marine area between Sweden (left) and Finland (right), marked on a relief map of the Gulf of Bothnia Português: Localização de Arquipélago de Kvarken, Finlândia
context_page_description: Kvarken is the narrow region in the Gulf of Bothnia separating the Bothnian Bay from the Bothnian Sea. The distance from Swedish mainland to Finnish mainland is around 80 km while the distance between the outmost islands is only 25 km. The water depth in the Kvarken region is only around 25 metres. The region also has an unusual rate of land rising at about 10 mm a year.
  On the Finnish side of Kvarken, there is a large archipelago, the Kvarken Archipelago, which includes the large islands Replot, Björkö and many smaller islands. Most of it is belongs to the municipality of Korsholm. Most of the small islands are inhabited. The archipelago is smaller on the Swedish side of the region, and the islands have much steeper shores. The Kvarken region was historically important also, because mail was delivered across Kvarken when the sea was completely frozen from the Swedish to the Finnish coast. This mail route was used frequently during the period of Swedish rule.
  In the group of islands in the “middle” of the Kvarken region, in Swedish called Valsörarna – Finnish Valassaaret, is a 36-metre-high lighthouse designed by Henry Lepaute who worked for Gustave Eiffel's engineering bureau.
context_section_description: In 2006, parts of the Kvarken Archipelago were added as an extension to the World Heritage Site of the High Coast (located on the western shore of the Gulf of Bothnia) in Sweden, because it is “continuously rising from the sea in a process of rapid glacio-isostatic uplift, whereby the land, previously weighed down under the weight of a glacier, lifts at rates that are among the highest in the world. As a consequence of the advancing shoreline, islands appear and unite, peninsulas expand, lakes evolve from bays and develop into marshes and peat fens. This property is essentially a ‘type area’ for research on isostasy; the phenomenon having been first recognized and studied here.” Most Finnish parts of the High Coast/Kvarken Archipelago World Heritage Site are situated in the Korsholm municipality.
caption: Kvarken Archipelago in Finland
exif: {}