EXPERIENC | Lapin Metsämuseo - Forestry Museum of Lapland

Experience History

With industrialization in the 19th century, the demand for wood increased throughout Europe, and Lapland's untouched forests garnered attention. This began Lapland's most remarkable era, as the lumberjack culture emerged and tens of thousands of people went to work in the forests, felling and transporting wood to the south. Lapland's prosperity and population grew, especially in Rovaniemi and other population centers.

The Forestry Museum of Lapland offers a comprehensive overview of this significant era and its impacts, presenting the development of the forestry industry and lumberjack culture in Lapland up to the 1960s.

Lumberjacks

At the time, forestry workers were called "jätkät," and many had nicknames; in the logging camps, there were Nätti-Jussi (Pretty-Jussi), Hankala-Väisänen (Difficult-Väisänen), Tiiraaja-Mäkinen (Peeper-Mäkinen), Hullu-Hytönen (Crazy-Hytönen), Niiskuttaja (The Sniffer), and many others. The "flying" jacks from the south would often stay in the camps most of the year, while the local jacks would go home whenever they could. Money was needed, especially since there was no agricultural work available in the winter. At the Forestry Museum, you can find out what kind of work these semi-mythical figures did, from felling to hauling and floating.

Cabins and the Hostesses

Nurmes Museum.

1925-29. Raimo Oinonen photograph collection. Pielinen Museum.

Mannelin, 1956. Metsätehon kokoelma. Lusto - Suomen Metsämuseo.

"In the morning, the smell in the cabin was usually quite something, as there were initially no separate harness or drying rooms, so horse tack and wet clothes added their own touch to the unique odor. It was said that camaraderie thrived.

The first lumberjacks slept outdoors, in lean-tos or dug-out saunas. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first cabins came about, and a few decades later, a cabin law required forestry companies to provide accommodation for the lumberjacks. This started a development that peaked in the 1960s, when every lumberjack had their own bed and locker. The development of the cabins is also directly related to the role of women in the logging camps, as cabin laws eventually required a camp cook to handle food production and cleanliness while the jacks were at work. At the Forestry Museum, you can see the development of the cabins and get acquainted with the conditions in which the hostesses lived in the golden age of the logging camps."

Industrialization

"The locomotives did not travel at a particularly high speed. They moved like a limping horse, and the speed was the same empty or loaded. The engine was steered with a wheel, which was tilted in the opposite direction compared to a car's steering wheel. The driver had to perform their duties in the open at the front of the locomotive."

Hugo Richard Sandberg. K. E. Ståhlberg, 1893. Lusto - Finnish Forest Museum.

This is how the Sandberg locomotive, brought to Finland in the early 1900s, was described. It is perhaps the clearest indication of how strongly the logging camps were a part of the industrialization of both Finland and the whole of Europe. During the logging era, pioneers like Hugo Richard Sandberg, the Chief of Forest of the Kemi Company, invested in the import and use of industrial machinery in the logging camps. A great deal of know-how also came to Finland, as various forestry professionals were trained both in institutions and on the job.

Both the changing conditions for workers and the development of the camps, as well as the forestry and log-driving machinery, were part of this progress. As Finland industrialized, its first sign might have been a group of men in the forests of Lapland felling trees. At the Forestry Museum, you can see the role of the forestry industry in Finland's industrialization through exhibits like the Sandberg locomotive, the Uitto 6 steam winching boat, and the evolution of the chainsaw.