The High Coast (Höga Kusten) / Kvarken Archipelago world heritage site

View of the Norrfjärden from the top of Skuleberget

2000: The whole High Coast area was inscribed on the World Heritage List and granted World Heritage status. The area has the largest land uplift of its kind in the world, which was a key reason for the designation of the High Coast as a World Heritage Site.

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The High Coast (Sweden) is located on the west shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, a northern extension of the Baltic Sea.
The area covers 142,500 ha including a marine component of 80,000 ha, which includes a number of offshore islands.
The irregular topography of the region - a series of lakes, inlets and flat hills rising to 350 m - has been largely shaped by the combined processes of glaciation, glacial retreat and the emergence of new land from the sea. Since the last retreat of the ice from the High Coast 9,600 years ago, the uplift has been in the order of 285 m which is the highest known 'rebound'. The High Coast site affords outstanding opportunities for the understanding of the important processes that formed the glaciated and land uplift areas of the Earth's surface. (Font: UNESCO - More info at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/898) 
 

 
In July 2006, the Kvarken Archipelago was inscribed on the World Heritage List, as an extension to the Sweden's High Coast (Höga Kusten). It is the first UNESCO's Natural Heritage Site in Finland. Together, these two areas form a complementary geological complex featuring land uplift unlike anything found elsewhere in the world.

 
 
The Kvarken Archipelago, the finnish side extension of the High Coast World Heritage

The Kvarken Archipelago (Finland) numbers 5,600 islands and islets and covers a total of 194,400 ha (15% land and 85% sea). It features unusual ridged washboard moraines, "De Geer moraines", formed by the melting of the continental ice sheet, 10,000 to 24,000 years ago. 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 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. We congratulate Finland with the inscription of Kvarken on the World Heritage List! (from: Nordic World Heritage Foundation - Newsletter August 2006)
Photo on the left: Tuukka Pahtamaa ©

Land uplift in the Kvarken is very intense and the archipelago is constantly changing shape. New islands emerge from the sea, bays are transformed into lakes and shipping lanes become shallower. Since the land surface increases by a hundred hectares a year, these changes can be noticed during one generation. See more about "The Kvarken Archipelago - a World Heritage" at the Finnish Ministry of the Environment website. And here is the link to The Kvarken region picture gallery. But don't miss to visit The Kvarken Nature Guide!
 
Both High Coast and Kvarken Archipelago are inscribed on the World Heritage List under Natural Criterion viii: "to be outstanding examples representing major stages of earth's history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features".

They are also legally gazetted as "protected landscape/seascape" of IUCN management categories.

The distance between the areas is 150 kilometres.

See also: The Kvarken Archipelago and The High Coast World Heritage Site at www.kvarken.fi.

Explore the High Coast with your boat - link back to the main post

Explore the High Coast on your boat

The Höga Kusten is World Heritage also for sailing

Sailor's fun starts here >
 

2011 winter storm at Docksta Havet

Winter season, albeit pausing of course our activity of hosting boats and sailors, carries sometimes some unwelcomed and unexpected "gifts".

Some years are better than others, but in spring - prior the opening of the season - there is always a lot of mantainance job to recover the buildings and the piers from the damages that occurred in winter. Winter 2011 has being particularly tough for us and we wanted to report it with this publication.

Now, after a few years, that devastation is a far memory. Constant mantainance and the aim to improve every year the area have healed the wounds and returned a marina that is, in better, totally transfigured.

Want to know our story and how we came to this? Read here about us >

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Few words about Nik Ferrando

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Nik Ferrando | profile

Few words about Nik

by Anna Gullì

 

"I have been asked to highlight the main features of Nik Ferrando.
This is a very complex task and frankly I do not know from what begin, as Nik is so……polyhedric!
Many images pass across my mind thinking about him and the capability to elaborate mental contributions is faster than the hand. I do not know will I be able to catch all thoughts. It could be there will be only confused images. Let’s see.
The important is to begin.
I am one of the few people who are pleased to believe to really know him, nevertheless as the time goes on doubts arise and seize me.
I have been associated with him for about 30 years and I have always thought to know everything about him, to know what he wants, his goals, his taste, his desires…..instead it is not like this, he turns out to astonish me; with him you have always to start from the very beginning as his skill to re-create himself is faster than light and it is difficult to stand behind him.
His solemn gait is pressing. It requires a consistent attention and commitment to understand which is “his way”; all ways are “his way” and for this reason it is almost impossible to focus the character. He is “ everybody and nobody”.
His full colour photos would suggest to think about a solar person who moves and feeds with colour, with light, a person who is always in movement, optimistic, strong in will and positive; all this sometimes is true, but it happens to be also exactly the contrary.
Many people would swear he is a gloomy man, often sullen, loath and sometimes reluctant to new things and over all incomprehensive.
I personally believe this is integral part of his glamour.

His places are the port, the centre of the town: Genua, his town, his Genua. His natural environment is that particular nucleus named “carruggi” a pulsing and multi ethnical labyrinth of narrow streets which contour lines are ancient and very high palaces which, if observed from beneath, look as if they would close like a leave, as if they want to protect the same narrow road.
Nevertheless the light passes through from above, often shaded by hanging between palaces clothes, another peculiar feature of the “carruggio”, thus giving light to architecture pearls of a history that seeps from the chinks between stones and bricks.
His world is this, protected, maybe a bit closed, nevertheless bright and tempting, a world with which it is difficult to take contact.
During his working week, Nik lives in one of this renaissance high palaces, in a kind of hermitage, of course at the upper floor.
In 30 years I have been “admitted” inside the walls of his house only few times.
Nobody is allowed to enter the privacy of his life.
His apartment is big, typical of the style of Genua, with enormous double windows which frame invaluable views, an apartment with paintings in unbelievable places such as the bathroom, the storeroom, in one of the bedrooms, but all this is typical of the houses in the narrow streets of Genua.
No curtains on the windows, so the light enters directly; the view is marvellous: the port, one of his big loves!
I have been astonished by his furniture, as everything is in only two colours: yellow and beige.
He has leather sofas everywhere, all, of course, yellow, books and books, piles of books, photos, art, interior decoration photos, also yellow books (thanks to the colour?).
Adventure novels, manuals to built things, gardening books etc. I think that digging you could find everything!
There are also a lot of ancient tables full of colour tests, designs, photos, colour pencils and various things. At the entrance of one room there is a big statue, a Madonna, one of his creations.
On the whole a very pleasant home, very bright and live, where space and light are masters; both abstract, ethereal, but determined, almost definitive.
Nik is very different from how you could imagine looking at his exterior figure you perceive meeting him.
Think that it does not exist any photo of him, no interview, he very seldom speaks with his clients.
I believe his fortune is that his images speak for him and this is the contribution to external communication he desires. It is a pity, I believe.
He would have so much to communicate, also with words!

He has another country house where he lives in weekends. The peculiarity of this house, which, by the way, I never saw, but I know it form his stories, is that in furniture it is exactly the same as the house in Genua. Everything is double: same leather yellow sofas, same kitchen furniture, same working tools, even copies of his favourites books!
A mania, you would say – and I agree – but he has a very deep reason for this: his concept of “home” which he believes should belong to only one house.
A kind of space transposition, which accompanies him.
He says: “ I should always feel at home and for this reason I need my things, it does not matter if these are “other things”, as a matter of fact they are always the same things.
Nik is like this.

Recently he feels attraction to things destined to disappear, beginning from mortal things, as if bringing them to sight he could recognize what has been taken away from them, a kind of ultimate possibility, a kind of immortality.
For example his last photographic courses put their stem towards those areas of Genua port destined to be destroyed.
I do not know how he manages, but he always catches the instant before, the moment after which there is no return; he makes a photo and a moment after the whole district does not exist any longer.
Destroyed, dismantled, disappeared, lifeless.
He has photographed places, which remained within everybody’s reach for years, in which only he has managed to catch that tiny time before destruction, and I believe this can be seen from his photos. Some photos seem to breath, other to smell. It is as if he has a sixth sense, which orients him towards that precise place in that precise moment.
Sometimes I am scared, I must admit, when I discover such things……and upon my questions …..he almost excuses saying “no, this is a chance!”
And yet when we are speaking about him “the chance” is almost a rule!
Nik is like this.
Much more could be said, anecdotes could be told, maybe I will write them with time, I would like not to influence now my readers.
My wish is that everybody could figure out features and traits of this short portrait through his images."

 
 

Setting new secure moorings for sailors in Docksta

Docksta Havet guest harbour

2006/06/07: The moorings at the Y-boom on the floating wharfs are back available and full working for Sailors cruising to Docksta!

Today the extraordinary mantainance jobs on the wharf of the guest harbour are concluded. The floating wharf has been fixed and straightened: the anchoring systems has been checked and fixed and the Y-boom arms are back in function. 

 
 
 

First steps of the restoration of the guest harbour in Docksta prior its relaunch in 2006

The area receives a new grass pad

An overview of the first extraordinary mantainance interventions on the area of the marina in Docksta, before to relaunch it with the Docksta Havet Base Camp project in April 2006.

 
 

Situation of the guest harbour in Docksta prior its relaunch in 2006

Situation of the guest harbour before the restoration on April, 2006

An overview of the area of the marina in Docksta, before to start the restoration of the area and to relaunch it with the Docksta Havet Base Camp project in April 2006.

 
 

HÖGA KUSTEN SOUVENIRS

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HÖGA KUSTEN SOUVENIRS 🧭