Hamra

Hamra began in 1909 as one of the smallest of Sweden's founding parks — 28 hectares of virgin forest, a single stand spared because a state forester recognised what he was looking at. For a century it stayed a postage stamp of old taiga in a sea of managed woodland; in 2011 it was expanded fifty-fold, to around 1,400 hectares, and became a park with three registers: the original old-growth core, the great open mire of Svartåmyran, and a stretch of running water on the Voxnan river.

The core is the treasure. This is genuine northern urskog — pines and spruces that have never been cut, some approaching five hundred years, standing among the fallen generations before them. The fire scars, tinder fungus and beard lichens are all the signatures of continuity, and the birds follow: capercaillie, Siberian jay and three-toed woodpecker, the specialist trio of old Norrland forest. Bears pass through, as they do everywhere in this corner of Orsa finnmark — the old Finnish-settled forest country on the Dalarna border.

Svartåmyran gives the park its horizontal counterpart: a wide, silent mire crossed by boardwalk, gold with cloudberry in July, loud with cranes and waders in May. Between the two, the park packs a remarkable amount of the old Norrland into a morning's walking.

What's worth knowing before you go

Hamra is signposted from road 296 in the empty middle of the country — Ljusdal, Sveg and Orsa are all about an hour away, and the nearby village of Fågelsjö (whose old farm is part of the region's Unesco-listed Hälsingland heritage) makes a natural pairing. The entrance has shelters and a small trail system; the boardwalk mire loop and the old-forest loop are both short and easy, which makes this one of the most accessible true old-growth forests in Sweden.

The connoisseur's detail is in the core stand: stop walking. The century-scale slowness of an uncut forest is something you hear rather than see, and it takes about five quiet minutes to arrive.