Mythic Karelia, a treasure of poetry, the heart of the Finnish language, an idyllic museum of an ancient past: so it was described at the end of the nineteenth century, in the time of romantic Karelianism. Today it is a border district, one nature but, by order of the European Union, a politically and socially divided region. A Russian photographer and a Finnish photographer worked separately and put together their view of the place as it is now.