Not many borders in the world have etched such a clear frontier to the physical landscape as that between Finland and Russia. The border exclusion zone used to be quite broad in the time when the Soviet Union still was present. There were restricted zones on both sides of the border. Today the restrictions are not so strict. Within three kilometers of the border you need a permit, You can live there, have agriculture and so on.
Where the 65th parallel crosses the border, the native landscape has been wet, swampy forest. In the Russian side the forest has largely remained in that state.
The screenshot above shows the existing borderline from the space. The added pink line shows the position of the Parallel 65 North. The light green young forest on the western side is also streaked with draining ditches. The eastern side is more or less intact. You can also easily see the actual border line cut in the forest to make an elbow turn towards north by north-east.
When we advance eastwards, the forests give way to another lake district. There are also more and more villages, small and larger. First we see the Lake Sudnozero and a small village which even has an old russian orthodox church built of round logs. Image below by Aleksey Protasov.
Not far from this place open the wide stretches of the three Kuito lakes. The significance of the lakes has been great for the salesmen in the middle ages who used to travel by boat in the roadless frontier. Their trips reached up to the Finnish coastal towns. The villages and settlements around the lakes were originally populated by Karelian people whose language is closely related to Finnish. Actually most parts of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala has been transcribed from the local folklore. Even the largest city in the area bears the name Kalevala. It sits on the northern shore of the Middle Kuito lake.
The waters of the Kuito lakes drain through the river Kem which meanders in the boggy landscape first to south-east and then back to north. The route starting from the Kuito lakes seems to be very nice for boating and canoeing. There are some rapids in the river but due to the high water flow it most probably gives one a comfortable ride. The river slows down from time to time to form sizable lakes. The first one is lake Panozero where Kari T-S, a Finnish tourist has captured this scene of cattle gathered around a new farm house of traditional construction.
Next we come to an even larger lake, which we later recognize as being a man-made reservoir for a hydroelectric power plant. The Krivoporozhsky reservoir has been there for thirty years. Thanks to the virtual nature of our travel we need not to worry about the dam in the river. A few clicks and downstream we go past the village of Avnyeporog. With about 150 inhabitants a local pub may not be so profitable but the Audi in the front tells a different story (Image by maklai).
Even if it would make it more interesting to follow the river, I follow my guideline, the 65th parallel and in less than 50 kilometers find myself over seashore at the town of Rabocheostrovsk. The huge expanse of sea is a surprising sight. But that is mostly due to my own ignorance. I really had no idea that the White Sea which is in fact a giant bay inlet of the Arctic Ocean, reaches this far south. So here finally is the end of the river Kem.
I really had to double check the map of the White Sea to see how wrong I had been. The southern reach of the White Sea is actually another 135 kilometers south from my latitude (shown with a red line in the image below).
A view from the harbour of Rabocheostrovsk by picabiette. That is where I need to go next.
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