I saw a dream about a running reindeer. It was running fast, without stopping. Heavily breathing, panting as it ran over every obstacle. It didn’t care what it was stepping on, it just kept on running. Keep going. Every single step can be a trap or a loose stone but you just need to keep on running. Even if you stumble and fall. Run.
I felt the moisture of its breath on my face. I looked into its eyes: calm panic - alertness. The sound of air passing through its nostrils. The fur over its chest as its lungs pumped air in and out while it was running. The oval gaze of its eyes - observing large areas at once - not the typical fearful piercing gaze of an alarmed animal.
It was the time during winter when the sun is setting and everything is soaking in blue light for hours and eventually turning into the deep darkness of the freezing clear skyed night. Sharp crisp stars in the sky.
It’s so cold that the breathing of the reindeer turns into visible fog as it runs over a cliff. Its hoofs are slipping and stumbling on the snow covered rocks. At times the reindeer looked like a monkey or a human climbing up the rock wall. Its limbs twisting and bending in human-ape-like ways. The forward falling motion never ending. No doubt of its survival, no fear of death. And yet again it is all done in order to keep death away. Running until its running days are over. Surviving and thriving. Until it’s time to die and become food for others.
A beast’s face covered in warm blood.
Another warm breath fogging the cold night.
The running reindeer dream.
Kitka
The people of Kitka Siida used to live around the lake Kitkajärvi in Kuusamo and its neigboring Posio. The lake is said to be the biggest natural spring in Finland. Its clear waters drain to the River Kitkajoki. Close to the Russian border the River Kitkajoki joins the slightly muddier River Oulankajoki. The waters of Oulankajoki then run to the lake Paanajärvi on the Russian side of the border. The rivers and the lakes are part of a greater Kovda river system (Koutajoki in Finnish) which drains its waters to the White Sea. Last part of the Kitkajoki and most of the Oulankajoki run inside the Oulanka National Park, after the border the waters run in the vast Paanajärvi National Park. There are several other National Parks (e.g. Hossa) and several Nature Reserves in and around Kuusamo.
Kuusamo is on highlands and it is constantly 200-300 meters above sea level. The area is the remains of ancient mountains. The granite-gneiss bedrock is one of the oldest in the world. The area has also a lot of calcareous carbonate rocks which is not that typical to Finland. The calcerous carbonate rocks cause high levels of lime in the soil. The lime mixed with other minerals gives the area a very distinct type of vegetation. Adding to the minerals, the many canyons around the river system in the area creates microclimates that complicate even further the vegetation.
The waters from Kuusamo flow in two main directions. To the east through the Oulankajoki and to the west through River Iijoki that runs from lake IIjärvi in Kuusamo to west to the town of Ii by the Bay of Bothnia (part of the Baltic Sea).
The area from modern day Kuusamo up north to Inari was called Kemi Lappmark and the Kemi Sámi used to live there. They spoke Kemi Sámi language and its dialects and lived off the land hunting, fishing and gathering. They had not many domesticated reindeer but only a few to pull the sledge and to milk the female reindeer. The tamed reindeer – called poro in finnish – were also used as bait when hunting for wild reindeer. They were nomadic and they changed their place according to season. They had separate winter and summer camps. The last known location of Kitka Siida winter camp was at the west side of the Lake Kitkajärvi at Talliskotalampi. All the members of the Siida would gather at the winter camp for winter. During summer each family would live on their own part of the Siida.
The Finnish Invasion
1673 marked the beginning of a downfall for Kemi Sámi. From that year on, King Charles XI of Sweden allowed Finnish settlers to settle the lands of the Sámi in Kemi Lappmark. The Swedish kingdom wanted to expand its lands towards the north. Before the new ruling by the king Sámi had been living under the protection of the Swedish King paying tax to both Sweden and Russia. To invite settlers to Lappmark the king gave a 15 year tax exemption to people settling the area. And at the same time in Kainuu the king ruled that only a few working age men could live in one house. This meant a lot of homeless (usually young) men seeking a new place to establish a household.
Lapponia byJohannes Schefferus is published also in 1673. The book describes the Sámi, their habits, language and their lands. It also describes what kind of money could be made in Lapland: the precious metals and stones, pearls, furs and others. The book also contains two yoik poems in (most likely Kemi) Sámi language by the Olaus Sirma, "Guldnasas" and "Moarsi favrrot". Olaus Sirma is said to be the first Sámi to study at university. The book was translated to many European languages and it became quite popular as it portrayed the exotic indigenous peoples of the Northern Europe. The yoiks were especially appreciated and many were astonished by them. It is said that yoiks had a special impact on Goethe’s work.
Olaus Sirma worked as a chaplain in Enontekiö and was interested to further the use of Sámi language and even translated catechism to Sámi, unfortunately he couldn’t find funding to print the book and the book was published long after his death in 1913. Olaus had a daughter called Brita, his only child. Brita was married to the vicar of Alatornio Henrik Johansson Tornberg,who was my forefather.
Another forefather of mine, Henrik Mattson Tawast took care of Count Jacob De La Gardie’s estate in Finland. Jacob’s son Magnus De La Gardie commissioned the Lapponia. Very likely my ancestral dad Henrik knew Magnus. It is interesting (at least for me) that through my Kuusamo ancestry there are these human connections to this book from the time the downfall of the Sámi begun that depicts the life of my Sámi ancestry.
In 1674 The first Finns settled in Lapland. Kuusamo became a sort of a capital of the newly invaded Kémi Lappmark and a church was built in 1686. King Charles XI donated an extravagant 500 kg silver-bronze bell for the church. There is a legend that the king donated the bell as thanks to the healers from Kuusamo who went to Stockholm and healed the king. The sound of this large bell can be heard over 10 km away from the church. The bell changed the soundscape of the area for good and its ringing declared now the omnipotent all seeing god and the might of the King and the Kingdom over the unruly pagan lands. The gift from the King wasn’t only a nice gift but also a tool for propaganda - similar to the radios in North Korean homes. As the bell rang daily, people would receive a message from the church and the king: we are still here and we rule over this land. The bell’s ringing is still heard today as it is located at the bell tower of the current church of Kuusamo be. The ringing is an auditory relic of the time when Swedish kingdom invaded the lands of the Sámi.
The church had very hostile attitudes towards the Sámi, their language, religion and culture. The language is of the Devil, the food is unnatural and they worship satan et cetera et cetera. Glory to God in Heaven! The Lord bless thee, and keep thee... The usual story when missionaries arrive to teach the pagans about the grace of god.
The first vicar of Kuusamo was a violent person called Johannes Tuderus. He whipped the devils' language out of the Sámi and burned the shamanic ceremonial drums of the Sámi. He nailed shut the mystical backdoors of the kota huts - the posio. He had a vicious character and was told to be an alcoholic. Both the Finns that were called lanta and the Sámi were afraid of him.
The Sámi soon learned to hide everything “bad” from the outsiders. But traditions could survive in the remote villages as the priest could only visit these places a few times in a year. Many pagan traditions seem to survive in Kuusamo until the mid 20th century, as can be seen from some of the objects at the Kuusamo Outdoor Museum that contain pagan symbols and from the stories from the 20th century depicting pagan traditions from the book series about Kuusamo History.
The first Finns to settle in Kuusamo are from Kainuu (Kainuulaiset) that is located south of Kuusamo and the Iiläiset which means the people who live along the River Iijoki in the west of Kuusamo. The people from Kainuu were known for their slash and burn agriculture. The people from Iijoki were more interested in fishing. From the time before the king's ruling the people from Iijoki had agreements with the Sámi to fish on their waters. But now all these people would start settling on the Sámi people’s lands. The Finns have advanced fishing methods and soon are overfishing the fish populations of the lakes and rivers of the area. The slash and burn farming destroys many of the grazing lands of the wild reindeer. The population of wild reindeer that the Sámi are dependent on shrinks dramatically. Burning down forests and turning them into fields for crops destroys the hunting grounds of other animals such as foxes, martens, beavers and wild geese. For Sámi these were important sources of food, furs, skins, veins for thread, feathers and so on. Every part of the animal had its use. They also paid their taxes in furs and fish and as the hunting suffered so the tax payments got more difficult.
Apparently pearls were hunted from the freshwater pearl mussels (Margaritifera margaritifera) living in the rivers. In 1691 the crown took privilege over pearl hunting which meant that people could still hunt for pearls but they could only sell them to the king. In 1695 a man from Rovaniemi sold 14 pearls at the price of 142 copper riksdaler. For comparison: around the same time the crown was selling grain barrels at the price of 11 copper riksdaler.
Today the beavers, wild geese and freshwater pearl mussels are all endangered in Finland. Last summer was the first time in over 30 years that I saw remains of wood eaten by a beaver at the lake where our family cottage is in Kuusamo.
In the records of Sompio district court from 1687: the “desperate” Sámi from both Kitka and Maanselkä complain “with tears in their eyes” – as the record states – that group of Finns have settled by violence and without permit at their immemorial lands and forests. The Sámi had a protection letter from the previous king and in a way the Finns were “squatting” the lands without permission. Similar events happened in many courts in the area during the time and the court would always rule that the Finns should leave or at least pay a fine, but there was nobody to enforce the judgement, so the Finns would stay in their new farms.
In the many of the court records a Sámi elder (lappalaislautamies) called Marttinin Antti appears to represent the Kitka Siida. Antti is my forefather. He might have been one of the weeping Sámi at the 1687 Sompio court. The name of him is interesting. It is evidently recorded in tax, church and court records in Swedish as Anders Mårthensson, which means Anders the son of Mårthen. The Finnish genealogists refer to him as Marttinin Antti. But the truth is that nobody really knows his real name. He must have had a Sámi name, and had a Finnish version of it and then Swedish version.
I have been playing with an idea that the name Marttinin, which could be translated as “Marttin’s” doesn’t necessarily mean that his father was Marttin or Mårthen, as the Swedish records state. In Swedish and Finnish å is basically the same as o. But it could also be a wrongly pronounced version of Swedish word mård meaning a marten, one of the common fur animals the Sámi hunted, traded and used to pay their taxes with. The older people of Kuusamo still have difficulties pronouncing the letter d, it always sounds like a t, so they would say mårt instead of mård. (Similarity with the swedish land becoming lanta, see footnote above.)He must have been dealing with the Swedes before, selling them furs or paying taxes so he knew that the Swedish were interested in the martens or as they are sometimes in Swedish called mården. So he could say “Hi I have martens and my name is (something that sounds like) Antti” and the Swedish could hear “Hi… Mårten... Antti” and the Swedish who might not know Finnish let alone Sámi, had learned to translate Antti into Anders and everybody was the son of somebody so they would just call him Anders Mårthensson. So maybe his name was originally something that sounded like Antti who was good at hunting martens. Or maybe his father was really good at hunting martens and he inherited the name from him, who knows. Similarly his offspring uses the last name Pitkä which wasn’t originally a last name but quite possibly an attribute of one of his sons “the tall one” that was later adopted as the family name. The church forced the Sámi to take christian Finnish names and baptized children by force. Often the Sámi would wash away the church given “shit name” in their own ritual and give real names to the children, but these names are lost from historical documents.
In 1690 court records show the Sámi complaining that all the animals they have hunted have run away from their lands because of the slash and burn farming of the Finnish settlers. The traditional livelihoods of the Sámi suffer. The Finns have reasonable crops and fish catches, they are doing fine.
