See the remarkable richness of life in Europe’s old-growth forests

In a snowy forest within Sweden’s Muddus National Park, sunlight casts the tops of spruces in a red glow, while the shadows become a frigid blue.

October snow covers the ground beneath a mixed boreal forest amid the intricate patterns of string bogs in Sweden’s Muddus National Park.

One of Europe’s first national parks, the Swedish Stora Sjöfallet was established in 1909. It gives refuge to ancient Scots pine forests that have been the homelands of Indigenous Sami people for thousands of years.

At the beginning of November in Italy’s Abruzzo region, naked beeches emerge like grey skeletons against the yellow maples and rusty-red forest floor.

In Rondane, Norway, mountain birch and Scots pine forests are distinctly separated along a sudden change in the gradient of the slope.

Near Haarberg’s home in Vågå, Norway, the autumn colours of the tree line, formed by the mountain birch forest, are already at their peak by the middle of September.