Rytilehtola

Fisherman’s village

Lehtola is the perfect setting for fishing in a beautiful lake landscape. The village has a fishing harbour built by the Maritime Administration to serve fishermen. The village beach is also located next to the harbour.

Ottavaara Cave

Ottavaara Cave was long considered to be the longest cave in Finland, but the 31-metre-long cave is no longer even the longest in Lapland, as the 35-metre-long Karhunpesel Cave is located in Korouoma, Rovaniemi. Ottavaara Cave is still a great place to visit!

Crevasses are formed either by earthquakes or by continental ice, usually in the late stages of the last ice age, when the pressure of the continental ice crushed and blocked rocks, creating crevasses. Earthquakes that occurred when the pressure after the ice melted eased may also have created cave deposits.

The last ice age covered the landscape around the edges of Lapland some 8 000-12 000 years ago, so the Ottavaara cave is ancient, but the bedrock of the dike dates back billions of years and may have experienced several ice ages and other natural cataclysms.

The mouth of the cave is under a high and steep rocky cove on the south-facing slope of the dike. In recent years, debris has broken up the rock and shortened the cave. Below the mouth of the cave is a rocky outcrop. The cave has a spacious chamber, where you can find a chrysalis shaped like a bed.

The cave has been known for a long time. Journalist Eero Leskelä guided Jumisko power plant builders and tourists from Jumisko Holiday Village to the cave in the 1950s and 60s.

The cave has also been an animal hideout and Vaales Haste caught a lynx in the cave sometime in the 1960s.

Ottavaara is located on the shores of Lake Ailanka. It rises from the shore of the lake to a height of 370 metres above sea level. There are no signposts to the area.