What is now forest and farmland was once the seabed, and there was a time when the only way to reach the site of today's Närpes Church was by boat. In the Närpes region, the land rises by over 8 cm per year, significantly shaping the landscape as shorelines and the natural environment shift with the ongoing land uplift.
For coastal inhabitants, land uplift was long a mystery – why was the shoreline moving? People believed that the water was disappearing as harbors became shallower and fields were forming where previous generations had once fished. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists observed differences in water levels along the Baltic Sea coast and realized that it was not the water receding, but the land rising.
This discovery raised new questions. What was causing the land to rise? Could it be that the Earth was cooling and contracting? In the 19th century, a theory emerged suggesting that the Northern Hemisphere had once been covered by a massive ice sheet that compressed the Earth's crust. Over time, it was understood that the cause was the last Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago. As the ice melted, the depressed crust slowly began to rise again, creating vast new land areas – about 1 km² or 100 hectares each year. The land uplift is especially pronounced in the Kvarken region, where the ice was at its thickest, up to 3,000 meters, pressing the land down significantly. This means that in approximately 2,000 years, a land connection to Sweden could emerge here.
In recent years, scientists have started to explore how rising sea levels caused by climate change might affect land uplift. Perhaps the two processes will balance each other to some extent, influencing the future of the Baltic Sea coastline.