The park is one of Sweden's most recent, inaugurated in September 2002 by King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony attended by a few thousand spectators.

The heaths of brush, grass and lichens are unique in the Scandinavian Mountains, a result of the absence of grazing reindeers.

[S 2] In Ortnamn i Dalarna, Harry Ståhl suggests that this word comes from the Old Swedish fala meaning "pale" or "dim",[S 2] like the names of the city of Falun and of the river Fulan.

[S 2] Fulufjället National Park is in Älvdalen Municipality in Dalarna County, 25 km (16 mi) southwest of Särna.

The plateau is gouged by several valleys, facing west (Bergådalen, Girådalen), south (Tangådalen) and east (Göljådalen).

[F 2] The sandstone was formed 900 million years ago, when this part of the Baltic tectonic plate was located near the equator.

[F 3] However, unlike the southernmost sections of the Scandes, such as those around Sarek National Park, the countryside around Fulufjället is not particularly marked by glacial erosion.

Because of the weather and the poverty of the soil, the plateau is mostly heath and bare dirt with only a few common juniper shrubs and some moor birches.

[S 6] It is also in these inaccessible areas that one finds Old Tjikko, a Norway spruce 9,550 yr (301,000 Ms) old, making it one of the oldest trees in the world.

[9] Few animals live in these areas; birds, mostly, such as the willow warbler, the meadow pipit, the northern wheatear, and these rarer ones: the European golden plover, the Eurasian dotterel, the snow bunting, and the Lapland longspur.

To wit, the south-facing slopes are principally covered in Scots pines and their undergrowth strongly resembles heath, with in particular common heather and crowberry.

[S 15] The rest of the coniferous forests include most often whortleberry, northern oak fern, woundwort, and common cow-wheat.

[S 15] The soil rich in diabase allows the growth of more demanding plants, such as Alpine blue-sow-thistle, wood cranesbill and northern wolfsbane.

[S 16] The park shelters an important population of moose that pass the summer on the mountain, but prefer to spend the winter in areas less snowy.

[F 6] There are no more wild reindeerin the park,[F 6] which is part of those few Swedish mountains not included in the area of pasture of domestic reindeer.

[S 16] Like other Swedish mountains, the Norway lemming is present in Fulufjället, but in a patchy fashion, extremely numerous some years and almost absent others.

[F 9] The wooded slopes are host to their own bird species, in particular the ring ouzel, the common raven, and the golden eagle.

[S 17] Several marsh complexes exist in the park, but they are generally poor in vegetation, except for certain zones that the diabase rends richer in nutrients.

[S 11] However, along the mountainside streams, a rich carpet of vegetation was able to develop, with in particular alternate-leaved golden-saxifrage, chickweed willowherb, wolfsbane and wood stitchwort.

[F 7] These areas of water are inhabited by Eurasian beaver, which had disappeared some years ago due to intensive hunting, but which have now recovered their original population.

[S 21] Virtual villages grew up after the beginning of the 19th century at Gördalen, Storbäcken, Storbron, Hägnåsen, Mörkret, Tjärnvallen and Lillådalen.

[12] Even though the mines at Røros required vast quantities of wood and coal, Fulufjället's transport problems initially spared it from logging.

[F 17] One of the arguments in favor of the creation of the park, beyond the simple protection of nature, was that it would draw more tourists, especially foreigners;[F 18] this was particularly important since while Idre and Sälen had succeeded in developing winter tourism, Särna had not.

[F 18] The project's opponents retorted that there was no reason that European tourists should choose to visit this distant mountain over the Alpes.

[13] The council of administration of Älvdalen Municipality heard the locals' negative opinion, and so opposed itself to the creation of the park.

[S 27] The official motive for the creation of the park was "to preserve an area of the central mountains with a distinctive vegetation and a great natural richness in a relatively intact state".

[S 26] But this creation raised the question of the establishment of a national park on the Norwegian side, in order to have a more coherent protection of the whole massif.

[16] Beyond the coherence of protection, one of the principal reasons for the establishment of that park was the presence of brown bears,[17] a species classified as endangered in the country.

[19] Naturvårdsverket is responsible for proposing new national parks, through consultation with the administrative councils of the counties and municipalities; their creation is approved by the Riksdag (Sweden's parliament).

[S 31] Finally, zone 4 (about 1% of the area of the park) corresponds to a radius of about 200 m (660 ft) around the points of strong concentration of visitors, which is to say the entrances, the waterfall of Njupeskär and the valley of Göljån, where the traces of a great flood are still visible.