About Rovaniemi
The city of Rovaniemi and Ranua commune together form the Rovaniemi area. Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, is an international city at the point where the rivers Kemijoki and Ounasjoki meet. It is a university city, the commercial centre for the area and a city of sport and culture. Rovaniemi consists also of dozens of village centres that are spread out along both sides of the Arctic Circle along the banks of two of the largest rivers in Finland - the Rivers Kemijoki and Ounasjoki. Ranua is the most southern municipality in Lapland. It is famous for its zoo and cloudberry marshes.
Location
Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, is located on the Arctic Circle, approximately 800 kilometers north of Helsinki with excellent connections.
Population Rovaniemi: appr. 57.000
Ranua Commune: appr. 5.000 Total: appr. 62.000 | Land Rovaniemi: 8014 km2
Ranua Commune: 3 694 km2
Total: 11 708 km
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History
Located at the confluence of two large rivers, the most important transport routes at the time, Rovaniemi began to adopt the role of the "gateway to Lapland".
There has probably been continuous settlement in the Rovaniemi area since the Stone Age. Periodic cleareance of new land for agriculture and the practice of shlash-and-burn cultivation began around 750-530 B.C. Meanwhile, artefacts found in the area suggest that an increasing number of travellers from Karelia in the east, Häme in the south and the Arctic Ocean coast in the north must have come there 500 A.D. onwards.
One cannot talk about the people of Rovaniemi until the time when the area was first given its name. The oldest surviving instance of the name in writing dates from 7 th September 1453 when the bailiff of Ostrobothnia confirmed a transfer of land between the farms of Korkalo and Rovaniemi, although the name must have been in exictens much earlier, of course.
The word Rovaniemi has often been considered to be of Lappish origin, as "roavve" in Saami denotes a forested ridge or hill or the site of an old forest fire. In the dialects of southern Lapland, however, "rova" means a heap of stones, a rock or group of rocks in a stretch of rapids, or even a sauna stove.
Source: Rovaniemi, 8000 years of international history by Heikki Annanpalo. For more information, visit http://www.rovaniemi.fi.
