3 Days Left of My 'Finland' -Contest, and a Promotional Entry: The National View of Finland

We have gotten three entry's so far on my 'Finland' -themed contest which I'm hosting for the celebration of 100 year of Finland and you still have 3 MORE DAYS TO ENTER. The deadline for contest entries is 13th of December at 14:00 PM. UTC. So, please make sure to post your entry into the contest post before that. Resteeming is possible until 12th of December 16:56 PM. UTC until the end of the seven day reward period to get your free share of the SBD I'm giving away for the one's helping to spread the contest!

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Like I've said I accept any kind of original work for the contest as an entry that has a connection with Finland: art, poetry, photography, or maybe you have a special story of a Finn you know. Maybe a combination of them? Share your work and you have chance to have a share of the prizepool that should be at least 15$ worth of STEEM judging by the current payout, divided for the top three entrants (1st 50%, 2nd 30%, 3rd 20).

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And for the last kick of this contest, here is my promotional entry for it:

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The full size panorama picture

It's also the wallpaper of my blog; It looks fantastic in it!

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The view is from the top of the highest fell, Ukkokoli (347 meters above sea level), in Finland's Koli National Park that I hiked in a year ago with a group of my friends. The view is considered to be potentially the most iconic view of Finnish nature; Numerous artists have gotten inspiration from the views, the most notable of them being the painter Eero Järnefelt who visited Koli dozens of times and created multiple paintings inspired by it, and the composer Jean Sibelius. Witnessing the view by my own eyes it truly seemed like a painting in a massive canvas.

During the 19th century there was a awakening movement of karelianism, an interest in the history of karelia and ancient Finnish history. Along with the ideology the view became a symbol for the independent Finland at the time of being under the Duchy of Russia. Eventually Finland declared it's independency in 6th of December, 2017 during the falling and revolution in Duchy of Russia.

From the top of Koli one can see the defining factors of Finnish nature: forrests and lakes. Lake Pielinen in the picture is Finland's 4th biggest lake with a surface area of 894 square kilometers. The 100 kilometer long and, at its best, 30 kilometer wide lake has 1491 islands with a distinctive quality: most of them are very long and narrow, some of them looking like teardrops. This is because during the last ice age, that ended approx. 10 000 years ago, the melting and sliding ice sheet glided from North-East to South-West (from left to right in the picture), scraping and grinding the ancient hundreds of meters higher Mountains of Koli and creating drumlins on the lower ground by the direction of its movement. Melting ice water covered a huge areas creating massive ancient lakes. When the continent pushed down by melted ice sheet began to lift back up, most of the melted ice water poured away and the shores budded into hundreds of thousands of individual lakes in Finland as of today.

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The hike there was an amazing trip but for me it held additional value; I used to live next to the Pielinen in my early childhood in a city of Lieksa where we still try to visit yearly with my dad whose almost all family lives in there. But during that time we never got to visit Koli and finally venturing my childhood's North-Karelia felt like getting back home.