Kaarnetsaari island on the Ladoga lake

The small island of Kaarnetsaari is located southwest of the large island of Oriatsaari. Despite its small size, it is one of the most famous islands in the Ladoga Skerries Nature Reserve. 

The main attraction on the island of Kaarnetsaari is the Crow`s Gate Rock. In Finnish, "kaaren" means "raven". It is very convenient to approach it if you are sailing on a motor boat from the southern part of the island of Hankosalo. 

The small island of Kaarnetsaari is a mountain called Aino. The Raven Gate Rock is a fragment that broke off from Mount Aino several thousand years ago during the earthquake. The height of the fragment is about 20 meters. It is the height of a 5-storey building. From the very top to the water level, the Raven Gate rock is split by a crack. Its width reaches about one meter. There is a small cave inside the broken-off Raven Gate Rock. 

Naturally, such a crack in the rock could not fail to attract the attention of the ancient Sami peoples who lived in these places. A whole story in the Karelo-Finnish folk epic "Kalevala" is dedicated to it. It tells about the love of a girl Aino ("The Only One"). Her mother wanted her to marry an old rune-singer, Vainemeinen, from Kalevala. But Aino did not want to marry the old man and ran away "To the sea to hide in a cracked cliff." However, she fell off a cliff into the "sea" and turned into a fish. 

The famous Russian artist Nikolai Roerich at the beginning of his career lived in Sortavala and sailed a lot on the Ladoga skerries. On the island of Kaarnetsaari, he painted his famous painting "The Upcoming (Stylite)" in 1918. It is now held in the Brandeis University Gallery in Massachusetts, USA.