Finland is open
Fricamp now covers Finland. 166,209 spots are on the map, from Uusimaa in the south to Utsjoki north of the Arctic Circle. Åland is included.
Finland has been a long time in the making, and the reason it took time is less about finding spots and more about removing those that didn't meet the standard.
Where the spots come from
92,594 of them are road ends — points where a road simply ends. They are sourced from Digiroad, Finland's official national road network, and cross-referenced with the building register from Lantmäteriverket (Maanmittauslaitos). Each spot is at least 150 meters from the nearest residence or holiday home, and at least 75 meters from buildings of unknown use.
The rest come from OpenStreetMap: rest areas, outdoor recreation areas, and parking lots mapped by volunteers.
The most important thing to know before you go
The Finnish right to roam — jokamiehenoikeus — is generous, but it has one limit that is stricter than in Norway and Sweden, and it's worth reading twice:
You are not allowed to drive off-road. The right to roam applies to travel on foot. It does not give you the right to drive a car, motorhome, or caravan into the terrain to stay overnight. Motorized traffic in uncultivated land is regulated by the Off-Road Traffic Act and requires the landowner's permission.
In practice, this means that motorhomes and caravans must be parked on the road, at a rest area, or in a parking lot — not in a field, on the forest floor, or down by the water's edge. This is precisely why our spots in Finland are road ends: you drive where the road goes, and stop where it ends.
The other two main rules:
- Distance. Keep a good distance from houses and cabins. 150 meters is the general recommendation, and it is built into our data.
- Short-term stay. One to two nights in the same spot, then you move on. Without leaving a trace, and without being a nuisance.
If you are in doubt about whether a place is private, ask. Finnish forest roads are often private roads with a boom gate or sign, and the signage must be respected.
About the quality of the spots
We want to be honest about how these spots were created, as it says something about what you can expect.
You don't find a road end by looking for nice places. You find it by asking the computer for every point where the road network ends, and then discarding everything that turns out not to be an end after all. The most difficult error is roads that continue under a different name: to the machine, it looks like a dead end, while in reality, you are in the middle of the roadway.
This was the exact error we spent the most time on. In the final review, we removed 109,779 points that did not pass inspection — over half of the original selection — because they were on through roads, at intersections, or too close to settlements. We also cleared 18,948 points from OpenStreetMap for the same reason.
So what you see now is a leaner Finland than we could have shown you. This is intentional. A spot that turns out to be in the middle of an intersection is worse than no spot at all.
Where Digiroad does not know the road at all, we have let the spot remain. The official road network is not complete for private forest roads, and deleting a spot because the source doesn't know about the road would be deleting based on a lack of knowledge rather than on knowledge.
Did you find something that isn't right?
There are certainly errors remaining. If you see a spot in the middle of a road, on top of a house, or in a place where you are not allowed to park — report it from the map. That is the fastest way to make it disappear for everyone else too.
Have a good trip north.