What is a World Heritage Site

The High Coast was selected as a World Heritage site in 2000 because it features the world’s largest post-glacial rebound (land uplift) after the last Ice Age. In 2006, the heritage site was expanded to include the Kvarken Archipelago in Finland. On the High Coast, you can see very clear evidence of the ice’s advance and the dramatic effects of the land uplift on the landscape in the form of “calot hills”, shingle fields and isolated basins. The Kvarken Archipelago is a much smoother landscape, where the deglaciation created different moraine formations that aren’t present in the High Coast. Visit our joint World Heritage Site portal.

A World Heritage site is a place, object or area that in a unique way testifies to the earth’s history or the history of humankind. The organisation that designates World Heritage sites is UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The countries that have ratified the World Heritage Convention have promised to protect and preserve the cultural and natural heritage that exists within their borders. There are three different types of world heritage: cultural heritage, natural heritage and mixed heritage.

The countries themselves highlight the objects that they wish to have inscribed in the World Heritage List, after which a World Heritage Committee, in consultation with experts, decides whether the object meets the requirements and criteria contained in the World Heritage Convention.

In summary, a World Heritage site must meet one of the following criteria:

• Serve as an outstanding representative of one or more important steps in human development

• Include amazing natural phenomena in incomparably beautiful natural areas and aesthetic value

• Represent an outstanding example of important steps in the earth’s history

There are currently over 1,000 registered World Heritage sites in more than 150 countries.

In Sweden we have 15 of them. The High Coast/Kvarken Archipelago is the only exclusively natural heritage site in Sweden.

The High Coast/Kvarken Archipelago, which is shared between Sweden and Finland, is also one of the few cross-border world heritage sites.

Sadly, about 50 World Heritage Sites are in danger for reasons such as war and conflict, natural disasters, unsustainable tourism or environmental degradation.