Mires and Man – in General and Locally

Mires and man – in general and locally

Summary

Vaalan lukio Jouni Kauhanen 11.1.2017

As a country, Finland is covered by more mires per surface area than a majority of the other countries of the world. Geologically speaking, a mire constitutes a layer of peat that has been formed from decomposing mire plants. The thickness of the layer must exceed 30 centimetres and the surface area of a mire must be at least 20 ha.

The three largest regions of mires in Finland are Sodankylä, Kittilä and Pudasjärvi, the surface area of which comprises 220 000 ha of mires. Teuravuoma in Kolari is Finland's largest mire. There are also a large number of such areas in our region surrounding Oulujärvi. According to forest inventories, the surface area of mires in Vaala totals 66 440 ha (58% of the surface area of the municipality). Of this, the geological surface area of mires (over 20 ha + peat layer) is a total of 35 745 ha. Over the decades, the Geological Survey of Finland has studied around 40 000 ha of, or 218, mires in Vaala.

Of the areas involved in the Natura 2000 project, Olvassuo in the regions of Pudasjärvi, Utajärvi and Puolakka comprises about 27 000 ha, Litokaira in the regions of Pudasjärvi, Kuivaniemi and

Ranua comprises, all in all, approximately 30 300 ha and Veneneva-Pelso, from Lumijoki to Siikalatva, including Pelso National Park, comprises about 12 000 ha.

The essence of mires in tradition In Finnish folklore, a diverse range of material has been associated with mires. In folk religion, dark-watered mires have often been associated with death and disease, where they have represented the indefinable "half world in-between". In folktales, the creators of mires were often female giants, who carried bare earth and moss into lakes, thus resulting in the mires.

The difficulty in moving through mires has also played its part in shaping the images of such areas. These difficulties have been reflected in the Finnish proverbs. "Suo siellä, vetelä täällä,” which can very loosely be translated as- “between the devil and the deep blue sea”- referring to the negative options and disappointments that a traveller has ahead of them. ”Suksi suolle”- skis into the mire- creates an impression of an unsympathetic and distant place, whilst ”Surma tulee suota myöten”- death comes along with the mire-refers to night frosts that destroy harvests.

From Kalevala traditions, mires have been connected to the "stamp of the enemy". Frost has played a key role in creating the negative cultural image of mires, as frost has resulted in a decrease in the amount of bread.

In the hereafter, mires have also been regarded as a location for agony and punishment, where purgatory cleansed souls are led and sunk down to their neck or waist, according to the weight of their sins. Väinämöinen, a central character in Finnish folklore, is also known to sing arrogantly of Joukahainen mire.

Mires have also been linked with the beliefs of treasures, whilst, at times, methane bursts may take place, resulting from the degradation of organic compounds, creating light effects that have, in folklore, been called will-of-the-wisps, among other names.

Furthermore, mires have also been sites for iron making, as well as the origins to such traditions. Already during prehistoric times, Finns were able to take advantage of mires in order to make iron.

Mires have, however, also been connected to and associated with other positive features. The oldest economic activities practiced in Finnish mires were hunting and fishing. Ancient hunters were drawn to mires in the easy pursuit of moulting geese. Berries- cloudberries and cranberries- have both been collected and are still presently being collected in mires.

A mire as an archive of the past Mires can be compared to archives in which traces of the past are preserved. Mires reveal to us historical information on the development of the surrounding nature, as well as the past of humans.

Mires as agricultural land

The actual cultivation of mires began during the Middle Ages (in the 1300s), but it didn’t reach significant proportions until the 1800s. The cultivation of mires in the past involved the burning of the peat layers before the actual farming took place. Thin turf layers of mires were often burned to the roots. In Ostrobothnia, bogs were burned, in Eastern and Central Finland, fire-fallow farming was carried out in swamp marshes. The idea of the draining of mires to create farmland arose in the 1600s in South Ostrobothnia, from where it spread throughout our country. The most famous of the early draining of mires took place in Lattomeri in Ulvila during the late 1700s and Pelso’s mires in the 1800s.

The conquest of the large mire in Pelso in Säräisniemi (nowadays Vaala) to create agricultural land and forestry land took place in the 1800s with the assistance of relief efforts and their associated supplementary means of drainage. The work was finished off by Pelso prison (subsidiary prison), which was established as part of a boom in Finnish prisons located on mires in 1935. During the first ten years, 840 ha of arable land was hoed from mires at Pelso, in addition to the digging of 91 000 running meters of drainage, the digging of 410 000 meters of ditches and other dikes and the construction of 212 different buildings. The average hoeing work of mireland per day comprised 225 square meters and the digging of drainage, depending on the amount of water, was 5-10 cubic meters. On land that was both wet and windy, the drainage work was not only strenuous, but also hazardous to one’s health, as the workers and their clothing were constantly wet.

After World War II, in accordance with the land acquisition act, almost 50 farms were set up in Pelso. The populated area of Pelso is also the largest continuous urban area in the current Vaala.

Crazy years of forest drainage

Forest drainage operations began in Finland in 1908. At that time, the State Forest Enterprise hired the two first mire drainage foresters. The Finnish mire landscape changed dramatically, especially in the 1960s, whereupon, of the mires measuring a little over ten million ha, about 60 percent was converted into a landscape of straight line drainages.

Of the measured drainages, 10-20 percent is estimated to be comprised of drainage for waste. Public discussion on the great change in mires in the Finnish landscape was instigated by Professor Valter Keltikangas in 1955. Through editorials in the Finnish Nature magazine, Keltikangas proposed the preservation of the most relevant aspects of mires as sample areas or as more extensive protected mirelands.

In 1965, the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation and the Peat Society appointed a committee to prepare a mire protection programme. In 1976, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry appointed a working group to examine the protection of the mires, leading to the Mire Conservation Programme I (v. 1979) and II (v. 1981).

Energy from peat

Finland’s mire resources have been calculated to be at least about 70 billion cubic meters. The peat reserves studied at Pelso mire were, at the beginning of the 1950s, 145 million cubic meters. On the basis of geological studies, the central board of the peat industry provided a proposal on 30.11.1943 to the then Ministry of Trade and Industry in support of the industrial exploitation of Pelso’s peat resources. Under exceptional war circumstances, a Fischer-Tropsch factory was planned for the shore of Rokuanjärvi lake in order to manufacture synthetic lubricating oil from peat.

The prison extracted peat during the 1940s and 1950s, but since then, the process has lapsed. Once again, the peat resources of Pelso began to be utilised during the oil crisis in the 1970s. Vapo Oy’s peat production in Pelso activated the entire charting activities concerning peatland. A peat briquette factory was also planned for Vaala, but the project did not receive sufficient support.

The most significant company to be involved in peat production in Northern Ostrobothnia has been Turveruukki, founded in 1975.

Environmental issues concerning peat production were raised in the 1980s and environmental conditions concerning production were tightened towards the end of the decade, along with a revised Water Act.

The changing valuation of mirelands Mires have held a natural strong resistance against Finns, the battle of which has allowed Finns to measure and value themselves. Mires are, therefore, also linked to grit and courage, i.e., the famous Finnish Sisu. On the other hand, mires are a valuable element of nature to the people.

The national identities of Finnishness have been constructed through images of different landscapes. These have been dominated by forest and lake views, cultivated landscapes, rapids and urban silhouettes. It has been difficult to connect positive metaphors to mires.

During the mid-1990s, interest towards mires increased in Finland, to some degree. This primarily concerned some level of mire nostalgia, but it also stemmed from ecological factors, the basic roots of Finnish identity and new significances of mires to human activities.

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