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Etelä-Suomen Sanomat Article - English translation by Pertti Harju

The hunt for the free confluence

A Confluence spotter is a modern explorer

A busy townie needs a good reason in order to wade in the middle of nowhere. More often the reason is degree confluence: hunting of the map coordinate line intersections. This activity is made possible by the internet and GSP-devices that are available to every man. On Earth’s land and off shore areas the number of this kind of latitude and longitude intersections is 12582, and only a small number of them are conquered. The number of these confluences in Finland is quite limited. We have only 39 primary confluences here and only four of them are unvisited at the moment. They are situated in the wilderness of Lapland or at off shore areas of Åland islands.

Interesting Scandinavian Shield

Norwegians are eager confluence spotters. They have rapidly spotted also the difficult mountain areas. Free confluences at the Scandinavian Shield are near the Finnish border. Another tempting area for Finnish confluence hunters lies behind the Eastern border. In Russia there is the largest number of unvisited confluences in the world. Only five of the total of 1724 confluences there are recorded, mostly by the western tourists near St. Petersburg. After easy targets the difficult ones are left at mountain areas. There are plenty of them among other in Nepal where only one of fourteen confluences has been visited. This visiting is not ending when the confluence has been conquered. One idea of the hobby is to hike to same points at different seasons and make a kind of a diary of the changes of the views and the nature. This is done by other visitors than the first ones.

Diaries

The personal visit diaries are the most interesting part of this site. You can have a very detailed pictures how people in different cultures look at the hiking, the nature and the landscape. At first sight Saudi Arabia seems to be only a boundless sand desert, but local hikers can also in these conditions make an expedition and document the little wonders of nature. There is plenty of beautiful views in densely populated Japan, but sometimes the confluence hunter has to content himself with the view of backyard. One of the confluences is located next to a coke machine. It is surprising that in USA none of the confluences is situated in big cities even in the crowded areas of New York, Washington D.C, California and Florida. Most areas even there are of mountain, desert, forests or marshland. Maybe one of the easiest confluence visits was made by a tourist to the pool of one hotel in Lombardia.

More further

When the easiest places are visited you have to go deeper to the forests, further off to deserts and higher to the mountains. The confluence visits are concentrated to USA, Canada and Northern Europe, which indicates that the participants of this project are wealthy, well educated white people. It is not a surprise that the first confluence visits in less-developed countries are situated near tourist centres and are made by white tourists. Eastern Europe, Africa, Central Asia and Far East are the areas not yet conquered.