It was one o’clock in the morning but the sun still hung above the horizon. After a long day of pulling nets that had been cast into the North Sea, preservation of the catch would take place well into the wee hours. Depending on what type of fish the day’s haul would be, this might mean hanging cleaned fish to air dry or chunks of the flesh being placed into a temporary “smoker” to force the moisture out after having sat in a brine for several hours. Small fish - like smelt - would be preserved differently.
Placed in wooden kegs, they would be layered raw between an inch or so of salt. A layer of fish, a layer of salt and so on until the barrel was full and capped.
This “suolakala” had a strong unique flavor that could only be enjoyed as an “acquired taste”.
If it were a different time of the year, the sun may rise for a few minutes a day. The Sami had moved to wintering grounds with their herds of reindeer. Near the Arctic Circle, there would be a zone at the bottom of the tundra and into the northernmost forested regions of Finland where snow depth allowed for the reindeer to paw through the cover to lichen below that was their diet. The herd was their life. It provided food, milk, hides for their shelters and clothing, transportation when matched with a sled and even a basis for their religious beliefs. Life was harsh.
There was no agriculture and aside from the herded reindeer, a subsistence-based lifestyle meant that variety came from the preserved fish they harvested in the summer along with moose, bear and upland game birds such as capercaillie, willow grouse and ptarmigan. Fruits were limited to the berries they could find – cloudberry, mustikka (similar to a blueberry), lingonberry, crowberry, bilberry, raspberry, strawberry and cranberry.
Their traditional domicile was tent-like. Made from reindeer hides and long poles, they were easily moved from one area to another when the lichen had been eaten down earth. Sometimes double-walled, if positioned properly to the prevailing winds, small fires could be burned inside. To keep warm, a large skin bag would allow all members of a family to sleep within it to have composite body heat keep everyone warm throughout the night. My dad always referred to this as a “fart bag.”
Family groups stayed together. Daughters would marry the sons of other groups and would move away, but several generations of sons would maintain a loose association with his family.
Because of this, many family surnames stayed through time and could establish lineage easier to follow. It was thus for thousands of years.
As Scandinavians gradually moved north, the Sami lifestyle was negatively affected. The “Lapps,” as they were called by many, were considered a primitive culture and easily exploited. Migration patterns were disrupted.
Access to certain fishing grounds and herding territories were being denied to them. Cultural mainstays for millennia were persecuted.
Religion, family organization and other traditions were not only frowned upon but were made illegal and destroyed.
When important metals were discovered and mined, the Sami were used as cheap and sometimes slave labor to enter the underground shafts and extricate the ore. As time progressed from the middle 1600s, some of the Sami population stubbornly held onto any cultural identity and lifestyle choices that tradition had taught them. There are still some today that embody some of that ancient way of life. Many, however, succumbed in part or totally into the encroaching Swedish, Russian and Finnish society.
Even as they became less nomadic and assimilated into a new culture, ancestral biases still followed them.
Ida Närhi was born in central Finland in 1872. Though her birthplace was in the Church Records as being in Vesanto, Finland, they were nomadic Sami and moved from place to place as each year progressed. They would spend transition time between summer and winter around Kemijärvi and she always considered this her favorite area. When looking at genealogical records, her village of residence in early life included at least five towns and villages where the family might stay for part of the year. Ida was my great-grandmother.
She stayed single until relatively late in life. She was 25 when she married Otto Johan Kinnunen in 1896. He was from a neighboring family group who had wintered for generations near Viitasaari.
As time marched on in the late 1800s, they gradually left the nomadic life and spent more of the year in central Finland – especially as their family grew. In 1897 my grandmother Helmi was born. In 1899, Otto John came along. Another daughter, Nellie was born in 1903. And finally, Wilho brought up the end of the family in 1910.
As a family, they were caught in a difficult position.
They had no land; no farm and Otto worked as a laborer for several neighbors. As the family grew his income could not easily support them. As Sami’s, they were discriminated against and had fewer rights than the rest of the Finnish population.
After Wilho was born, life was unsustainable and so the decision was made to emigrate to America. They came a different route than many other Finnish immigrants.
They sailed from Kemi, Finland to England and left Bristol on the ship Royal George on Feb. 25, 1914.
They arrived in St. John, New Brunswick and traveled by rail to the U.S., crossing the border on March 5. The manifest lists his occupation as “laborer” and their previous residence as Kemi with a destination of Hibbing, Minnesota. They stayed with a Finnish family for a time, whose name I have not been able to find, but the address was given as Stuntz Location, Hibbing. After a brief time with Otto working in the mines and Ida working as a domestic in neighboring households, they began a search for property they could call their own.
Next time: Trains, Motorcycles, Property and Matrimony
