River · Finland
Kemijoki
Kemijoki is the longest river in Finland. It gathers water from the bogs and low fells of eastern Lapland and flows south-west to the Gulf of Bothnia at the town of Kemi.
Picture credit: Fanny Schertzer (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Kemijoki?
The river starts here: fells and bogs of eastern Lapland in Finland.
It ends in the the Gulf of Bothnia at Kemi.
Countries on the river: Finland.
The story behind it
The Kemijoki runs through a land of forests, reindeer and very long winters. From November the surface freezes so hard that people can walk and even drive on the ice, while under the cover the water keeps flowing quietly. In spring the ice breaks with loud cracks and piles up into white walls at the bends. Rovaniemi, the largest town of Lapland, stands where the Ounasjoki joins from the north. For hundreds of years, logs were floated down the river to the sawmills near the coast; today a chain of dams uses the same water to make electricity for the whole country. The dams also blocked the old salmon runs, so fishers, scientists and towns argue about fish ladders and about how to bring salmon back to Lapland.
Questions children ask
How long is the Kemijoki?
The Kemijoki is about 550 km long. No other river in Finland is longer, and its branches drain a very large part of Lapland.
Which country does the Kemijoki flow through?
The Kemijoki lies completely in Finland and crosses the region of Lapland from north-east to south-west. Its source area reaches almost to the Russian border.
Where does the Kemijoki flow into?
It flows into the Gulf of Bothnia, the northern arm of the Baltic Sea, at the harbour town of Kemi. In cold winters the sea there freezes over for months.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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