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Rokua health&spa Booking Service

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The Rokua Geopark's geosites outline the gradual development of the terrain from below a kilometres thick ice mass to the deep bottom of the ancient Baltic Sea and further via an island and shore stage to become the present inland area.

 

The RGP area includes a number of impressive bedrock sites, which can be used as examples of the main development stages of the Fennoscandian bedrock area. The geosites are complemented by the Utajärvi Rock Park, constructed for educational use, which is unique in Finland in terms of its realisation. In addition, the RGP area has in Finnish conditions an exceptionally diverse and high quality range of landscape forms that arose during the time of the ancient continental ice sheet and its melting stage as well as during the uplift process that followed it. The landscape consists of a changing, varied mosaic of thousands of geological formations, including drumlins, hummocky moraines, terminal moraines, esker ridges, kettle holes, ancient shorelines, dunes, ravines and bogs. The course of time is a connecting thread that transforms the geological jigsaw puzzle, which initially seems chaotic, into a logical whole.

 

The geology has also affected the development of the area’s living nature in many ways. Moreover, geological processes have shaped Lake Oulu with its esker islands and the River Oulu with its stepped rapids. Lake Oulu and the River Oulu together form a waterway route that has directed human movement for nearly 9,000 years. It has served as the main path for the early waves of settlement and trade since the Stone Age. Even today the route is broadly as it was. Movement, of course, has shifted from water to asphalt, and an increasing number of travellers are tourists interested in nature and culture. For such visitors, the Rokua Geopark presents the geology on which the landscape is based.