Koli National Park, Finland

A drawing of the view from the summit of Koli hill across the national park of the same name. The year of issue "2018" appears at the bottom centre. The country abbreviation "FI" is shown at centre left and the mint mark at centre right.

For Finland, Koli is more than a nature reserve: the hills, rising to 347 metres in North Karelia above Lake Pielinen, are regarded as the embodiment of the Finnish lake landscape and have decisively shaped the country's national self-image. Around 1900, painters of Finnish National Romanticism, such as Eero Järnefelt and Akseli Gallen-Kallela, made pilgrimages to Koli to capture the view over the forested ridges and the wide lake — images that have entered Finland's collective visual language. Jean Sibelius also visited the area and drew inspiration from the landscape. Koli thus became a place of longing for a cultural movement closely tied to the struggle for Finnish identity before independence in 1917.

In 1991, the area was given national park status and is today among Finland's most visited natural destinations. The park protects both the typical Karelian rocky landscape of pines, birches and blueberry slopes, and the historically evolved cultural landscape with old slash-and-burn fields. The view from Ukko-Koli, the area's highest peak, over Lake Pielinen remains a national image of the first rank to this day — found in schoolbooks, tourism advertising and popular culture. Finland honoured this significance in 2018 with a commemorative coin from the series "Finnish National Landscapes".