SW DN-286 The Kvarken Archipelago

Kvarken (Swedish: Kvarken, Finnish: Merenkurkku) is the narrow region in the Gulf of Bothnia separating the Bothnian Bay (the inner part of the gulf) 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 1 cm a year.

On the Finnish side of Kvarken, there is a large archipelago, the Kvarken Archipelago, which includes the large islands Replot, Björkö and a large number of smaller islands. There are 5,600 islands in this Archipelago. Most of the islands are inhabited. The archipelago is smaller on the Swedish side of the region, and the islands have much steeper shores.

The Archipelago 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 islands appear and unite, peninsulas expand and lakes evolve from bays and develop into marshes and peat fens.

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.

This postcard came from mmiatsu (8 September 2014) Swap-bot.