Exam Notes Generation - History of Finland

History of Finland - Bedrock and Early Resources

The bedrock of Finland is part of the Fenno-Scandian shield, containing some of Europe's oldest and most stable rock formations like granites, quartzite schists, and gneisses, formed in pre-Cambrian times.

Geological History and Resource Implications

  • Virtually no deposition occurred during periods when sedimentary rocks formed in Britain and western Europe.
  • Most Finnish rocks predate organic life, lacking coal deposits of the Carboniferous period, unlike Britain, Germany, France, and Belgium, which fueled the industrial revolution.
  • Finland also lacks oil-bearing strata found under the North Sea.

Early Industrialization and Energy Sources

  • Finland initially relied on wood from its forests for furnaces and railway engines, but wood has a lower calorific value than coal or oil.
  • Later, hydro-electric power and peat processing were developed, but domestic sources supply only a small proportion of the country's needs, necessitating imported fuels.
  • Coal is imported from Britain and Poland, while oil and gas come from Russia since World War II.

Mineral Wealth

  • Finland's ancient rocks are rich in mineral ores.
  • The Kalevala mentions bog iron and copper use in the first millennium AD, with rock iron ore mined in Uusimaa in the 16th century.
  • Large-scale exploitation began after independence.

Outokumpu Copper Mine

  • The most important metal ore source is at Outokumpu, Kuopio province, where copper was discovered in 1912.
  • Development started in the 1920s, with the Finnish government taking ownership.
  • Outokumpu deposits yield copper, iron, zinc, cobalt, nickel, tin, gold, silver, and sulphur.

Petsamo Nickel Deposits

  • The largest nickel deposit was in the Petsamo region on the Arctic coast.
  • Petsamo was ceded to Finland by the Soviet Union in 1920 under the Treaty of Dorpat (Tartu), fulfilling an 1864 promise by the Tsarist government.
  • During World War II, German forces controlled these deposits, which were lost to Finland when the Soviet Union retook the area in 1944.

Post-War Mineral Resources

  • Other nickel deposits were developed to replace those lost in Petsamo.
  • Finland's ancient rocks contain non-ferrous metals like copper, lead, zinc, and tin, along with titanium and vanadium, used in high-grade steel production.

Non-Metallic Minerals

  • Non-metallic minerals include graphite from metamorphic schists in Pori and Kuopio, exported to Russia in the 19th century.
  • Abundant feldspar, quartz, and clay are used in pottery and glass-making.
  • Finland has an export surplus of granite for building stone and meets domestic limestone needs for iron, steel, and building industries.

Isostatic Recovery

  • The melting of the ice-cap around 8,000 BC caused isostatic recovery of the earth's crust, still ongoing.
  • The land surface rises at rates varying from 100 cm per century at the Gulf of Finland's head to 40 cm in the Helsinki region.

Land Area Growth

  • Finland's area has grown as the sea receded, with some medieval ports now miles inland.
  • New outports like Mantyluoto serve former ports like Pori(now 20 km inland).
  • The land area increases by 1,000 square kilometers a century, attributed to sediment deposition and isostatic recovery.

Tilting and Lakes

  • Differential land uplift causes tilting, occasionally draining lake basins, though Finland has about 55,000 lakes (defined as bodies of water over 200 meters in surface dimension).

Lake Systems and Waterways

  • The largest lake system, centered on Lake Saimaa, spans 4,400 square kilometers, providing an inland waterway from Lappeenranta to Kuopio (300 km north) and beyond.
  • The Paijanne system west of Saimaa links Lahti to Jyvaskyla (over 170 km).

Rivers and Canals

  • Rivers draining the lakes are short; the Vuoksi flows from Lake Saimaa to Lake Ladoga (now in Russia), benefiting the Russian economy.
  • State-owned power station at Imatra remains in Finnish hands.
  • The Kymi and Kokemaki rivers have power stations in their upper reaches.

The Kemi River

*The longest river in Finland is the Kemi River, flowing 552 kilometers through southern Lapland to the Gulf of Bothnia.
*Its hydro-electric potential is fully utilized.
*The rivers are used for navigation and log floating with canals supplementing them such as the Murole canal opened in 1854.

Saimaa Canal

  • The Saimaa Canal links the Saimaa system to Viipuri port, now in Russia.
  • An agreement in 1962 granted Finland the right to use the canal after territory transfer gave Viipuri to the Soviet Union.

Climate

  • The North Atlantic Drift influences Finland's climate, making it milder than other countries at similar latitudes.
  • The Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland also moderate the climate. Precipitation is not high, ranging from 500 mm in the north to 620 mm in the south, with only the southwest tip and Aland Islands exceeding 880 mm.

Snow and Frost

  • Snow depth and frost incidence are greatest along the Russian border in Kainuu and southeastern Lapland.
  • Southwestern coasts and islands have milder climates, with snow confined to January-March and frosts occurring in early December.

Ports and Ice

  • Ports are hampered by ice in an average winter but kept open with ice breakers.
  • Exceptionally severe winters block the Gulf of Bothnia, freeze the Aland Islands, and allow cars to cross the ice between Sweden and Finland.

Summers

  • Summers are warm with long days; Helsinki has nine hours of sunshine between May and August; Sodankyla in Lapland has eight hours.
  • Long days compensate for the low sun angle, enabling dense vegetation cover to grow despite a short growing season.

Vegetation

  • Unlike the treeless tundras of northern Canada and Siberia, Lapland has dwarf birch, willow, mountain heath, and shrubs.

Agriculture

  • The growing season is adequate for temperate cereals; spring wheat grows south of Lapland, while rye, barley, and oats grow even in central Lapland.
  • Fodder crops like timothy grass survive in all but the northernmost fells, and potatoes grow throughout the country.

Farming and Peat Bogs

  • Cattle are grazed on forest clearings and southern/western meadows, with dairy farming as a major rural occupation.
  • Farming is impossible in areas with extensive peat bogs, especially in Oulu province.
  • Finnish agriculture faces overproduction, and subsidies once used to increase output are now used to encourage farmers to leave the land or grow trees instead of crops.

Adaptation to Winter

  • The Finn's adapt to the long, cold, dark winters, there's costs associated with protection against winter (heating, food, clothing, medicines) to the costs of the assault on winter (breaking the ice at sea, clearing the snow on land, lighting the darkness) and the costs of damage by winter.
  • One attempt to compute the cost of the 1962-3 winter suggested a figure of approximately 4 per cent of GDP, or £17 per capita for each inhabitant

Forest Resources

  • More than two thirds of Finland is covered with forest and over one half of the forests consists of good quality timber.
  • The main species of trees are pine, spruce, birch, alder and aspen.
  • In the 19th century Burn-beating was being carried out to clear forest land for agriculture.
  • Today the forest industry is conducted on scientific lines, with due attention being paid to conservation.
  • The ownership of the forests is widely distributed, with more than half the forest area belonging to individual farmers.

Wood-Based Industries

  • Wood-based industries range from the sale of sawn timber to the manufacture of paper, prefabricated houses and even to the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
  • In 1985 over one third of the value of Finnish exports was produced by the sale of the products of the wood and paper industries.
  • The forest reserve is continually renewed by nature, and as long as felling does not exceed the rate of growth, it is an inexhaustible resource.

The First Settlers

  • The first settles to Finland came about 7,000 BC.
    *The present Baltic Sea was occupied by the fresh-water Ancylus Lake.
  • These early inhabitants occupied a bleak, tundra-like terrain, and the scant archaeological evidence available suggests that their culture was similar to that of the Maglemosian period in Denmark.
  • They lived by hunting elk and by fishing in the coastal lowlands in Southern Finland.
    *

Boat Using People

*The discovery of an elk head carved in pine appears to be the prow of a boat used by the mesolithic people.
*It was found at Lehtojarvi and dated by radiocarbon techniques to be from about 5,800 BC.
*Other traces of boat-using people from around 3,000 BC have also been found, notably at Lankaa, where a rock painting depicts an elk head boat that apparently carried a crew of four.
*Elk head carvings in soapstone are also known from south-west and eastern Finland.
*The carving of an elk head on a huntsman's club found at Huittinen may be evidence of a belief in the magical power of an effigy of the hunter's prey.

The Ancylus Lake

  • About 5,000 BC the Ancyclus Lake was transformed into the Litorina Sea, which was the forerunner of the present-day Baltic.
  • About 3,000 BC, a neolithic type of culture flourished in Karelia, it's characterized by ceramics decorated with a comb pattern.
  • The peoples of western Europe did not practice agriculture but lived by hunting and fishing and the collection of berries, nuts and fungi.
  • Various types of seal replaced the elk as a major element in their diet.

Boat Axe

  • The culture that made its appearance in Finland around 2,000 BC was probably from a maritime people who settled along the southern and south-western shores of the mainland and on the Aland Islands.
  • The characteristic relic of these people is a polished stone axe shaped like a boat, which is found on many coastal sites, but seldom far inland.
  • It seems that Finland was experiencing cultural influences from both east and west.

Bronze Age

  • Bronze Age artifacts began to appear in coastal locations near to, but separate from, the Boat Axe remains, dating from about 1,200 BC.
    *The Bronze Age settlers appear to have come from the south of the Gulf of Finland and possibly also from Scandinavia and to have arrived by sea.
    *Pottery from a Bronze Age settlement has been found on one of the Aland Islands, and there are hundreds of Bronze Age sites scattered around the coasts of Finland, which date from about 1,500 to 500 BC.
    *