Tales from Salla

In 1960, God in his wisdom deemed it appropriate to burn down part of the forests of Tuntsa. I was asleep, when Fire Chief Yrjö Tervo came to rouse me by knocking on the window. He said that I needed to get up and go to Tuntsa to put out a fire. I had no choice but to go. I drove to Kota-Antti, from where I gathered some men and, together, we marched into the wilderness of Tuntsa. On our way there, we climbed on top of a high hill from where we had a view over a large area. From our vantage point, it seemed that both the northern and north-eastern wilderness were on fire. The blaze of Tuntsa destroyed 10,000 hectares of actual forest area and a total of 20,000 hectares of land. Almost 500 men were engaged in putting out the fire. The blaze of Tuntsa still remains the biggest forest fire in Finland.
Kaarlo Niemelä alias Mettä-Kalle.

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The Winter War had broken out. We numbered about a dozen men tasked with escorting and guiding people and cattle to take the Savukoski road towards the west. In Kotala, we shot the cows in the barn since we could not take them with us. When we left Kotala, the soldiers immediately set the buildings on fire. All buildings had to be burned down; we could not leave anything behind that might have been of benefit to the enemy. Even all chopped firewood was burned. It was a bitter moment for many farm owners and their wives to know that soon their houses and possessions would be burnt to ashes.
Kaarlo Niemelä alias Mettä-Kalle

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A few years ago, a Dutch family was preparing for a reindeer sled ride on the yard of the Salla Reindeer Park. The family included the mother and father as well as their sons and daughters with their spouses. In other words, it was quite a big family.
 
Everything started well enough. The guide gave instructions to the family on how to drive the reindeer sled, and a suitable, domesticated and trained reindeer was selected for each member of the family. At the beginning of the trip, the guide once again repeated the safety instructions about what to do if something unexpected happened during the excursion.
 
The ride started peacefully, the guide leading the way with his own reindeer and the customers following him in single file, each being drawn by his or her own reindeer. Halfway through the route, that ‘something unexpected’ happened… For some reason that remains unknown today, the last reindeer in the line panicked and set off on its own path deep into the forest. The passenger jumped out of the sled, because, apparently, he did not trust the new choice of route his reindeer had made. As is well known, reindeer are herd animals, and thus the panic soon spread to the rest of the reindeer. After a while, the situation looked somewhat comical. The customers were jumping out of their sleds, and the reindeer took advantage of the situation and started running around.
 
After the panic had spread for about a minute, only three reindeer remained under the control of their drivers. Two of those belonged to the tour guide, and the third to a stocky Dutch gentleman, who had participated on a reindeer ride when he had visited Salla two winters earlier. Only one of the panicking reindeer had chosen the right route. This one did not want to stop and wait for the others, but continued to trot along the planned route. The person riding in its sled was the mother of the family.
 
The guides caught the other runaways and steered them back onto the track, but catching the reindeer driven by the mother of the family turned out to be more of a problem. Every time the guide caught up with the reindeer, it galloped off as fast as it could. At this point, the Dutch gentleman who had been able to control his reindeer all along remarked with a twinkle in his eye: “Just let her go. The longer her trip, the better for us. Maybe she’ll come back in a day or two…” The lady in question was the man’s mother-in-law.
 
However, we should warn those of you who are already planning a tour for your mother-in-law on the basis of this tale that such tours cannot be organised on order. Usually, the reindeer walk or gallop throughout the tour peacefully and routinely along the right track. But you can always find out whether this happens to be the occasion when the reindeer themselves decide to change the tour plan without consulting the guides!

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President Urho Kekkonen was a great friend of Lapland and was eager to meet local people when visiting Salla.
During his visit to Salla, he stopped by Vihtori Vuorela’s house for a cup of coffee. His wife had even ironed a white tablecloth for the table. When drinking his coffee, President Kekkonen accidentally spilled some of it onto the white cloth. He apologised to the wife, who naturally answered that there was no need to worry, no harm was done.
After a while, the same accident happened to the host and more coffee stains were spreading on the white cloth. Indignant, the wife scolded her husband: “And there I have another clumsy oaf…”
Still, the visit remained quite pleasant until the end.
It was not long after this that Vuorela’s wife received a package from the capital city and, lo and behold, from the Office of the President of the Republic.
The package contained two white tablecloths, and the note was signed: ”From the first clumsy oaf.” 

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Veikko Hämäläinen, who lived in Sarviselkä of Salla, transported rocks for the defensive line of the village centre with his lorry, from the autumn of 1940 until April the following year. Ten lorries were doing so from the Kaunisharju area – where the Reindeer Park is situated today –, the base of the Sallatunturi fell, and Hatajavaara. Most of the rocks came from the Sallatunturi fell. Each of the rocks was hauled up by hand, and the lorry was then driven under it and the rock lowered onto the platform. Working on a steep slope, you had to be extra careful. On one occasion, in the worst possible place, facing downhill, Veikko noticed that his lorry’s brakes did not work. In order to stop the truck, he would have to turn it sideways. However, when he was turning the truck, it rolled onto its side, and the three-ton rock rolled out.

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We were on a nostalgic trip to Korja, visiting our former home regions now on the Russian side of the border. On our way there, some people had already had a few drinks, and others also started to open their bottles. One of the people taking part on the trip was MP Ulpu Iivari, who assumed the role of the hostess and asked everyone to take out a mug. The hostess made a round, pouring a small serving of Russian cognac for everyone. For those who had lived in Korja before the wars, she poured two servings. “For those who got one serving, this is a welcome toast. And for those who got two servings, this is both a welcome toast and a toast to celebrate their return to these lands of our fathers.”
Kaarlo Niemelä alias Mettä-Kalle 

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In the 1970s, two experienced hunters set out for Tuntsa from the church of Salla to hunt bear during the spring bear hunting season. On the way they held a conversation as follows:

“How do you actually hunt bear,” one of the men asked.

“We find a brook and walk along it, one of us on one side and the other on the other side. After all, all wild creatures gather along brooks in the spring.” And this they decided to do.

Creeping slowly and peacefully ahead, the men followed a river bank. Sometimes one went a little ahead of the other. The hours passed. The brook wound onwards. After a river bend, one of the men came across a bear walking along the river at its leisure, which reared onto its hind legs. Both froze in their footsteps, the bear and the hunter, the latter with plenty of experience of all kinds of situations.

The man took his gun, aimed calmly and, in his mind’s eye, already saw a bullet hit the bear in the chest, and felt the recoil on his shoulder. He drew the bolt and reloaded, again and again, all eight rounds. He turned around to see his friend who had crept up behind him and said:

“Come here quick and bring me some more cartridges,” he said in as small a voice as he could. Having heard his voice, the bear turned around and ran into the spruce forest by the riverside.
 
The man’s friend stepped closer and said:

“But you didn’t fire a single shot.”

“Damn it! I shot all my rounds,” the man retorted.

“Hell no, you haven’t! Not a single shot,” the other man said and kicked an unfired cartridge out of the moss.

The man looked at it in total amazement.

“Everything else went exactly as it was supposed to – I just forgot to pull the trigger,” he thought aloud.

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In the year 1938, when Jaska Repo was digging a ditch, a strange-looking tree stub emerged, attracting his attention. It was approximately 154 cm long and some 15 cm wide, resembling the nose of a ski. It had been cut off by the turning plough wheel, being very rotten and brittle. Most of the ski was left in the ground until later. The National Museum of Finland became very interested in the finding, since it was thought to be the oldest ski in the world. The ski has been dated to 3245 BC by using radiocarbon method. So the ski is over 5000 years old and it is the oldest founded ski in the world!

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