Salmon Fishing in Oulu, Finland, 1896
A look at the past of salmon fishing along one of Finland's most prolific rivers at Oula, once known as Uleaborg.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Through Finland in Carts by Ethel Bielliana Tweedie, 1897.
The Uleaborg salmon is among the most famous in the world. Seeing the fish caught is very interesting, especially when the take happens to be about 200! The Ulea river is very wide, and for a hundred or more miles up its course are the famous rapids, which we had been fortunate enough to descend alive, as described in the last chapter. How the salmon manage to swim against such a force of water must ever remain a marvel; but they do, and the fishing near Waala and various other stretches is excellent. In the winter months all but the waterfalls — and even some of them — are frozen solid; it is during these spells of cold that trees are thrown on to the ice to be conveyed, free of charge, to Uleaborg on the rushing waters of spring. Not dozens, but thousands and thousands of trees are carried by such means down to the coast.
This goes on until the 10th of June, and, therefore, it is not until then that the salmon piers, with their nets, can be put up. Accordingly, on the 10th of each June sixty men start work at Uleaborg, and in eight days erect two barriers, about three hundred yards apart, each crossing the entire stream, except for one spot left clear for the boats to pass through. These piers are very simple, and one wonders that such fragile erections can withstand the immense rush. Wooden staves are driven into the ground with great difficulty, planks are laid upon them, and then large stones are piled up which keep all steady, the whole thing being bound together by rope made of birch-tree branches.
On either side of the barrier are the nets, perhaps a hundred altogether, or twenty-five a side on each of the pier erections. They resemble nets on the Thames or anywhere else, except that they are much larger, being intended to catch big fish.
We were so fascinated the first time we went to see the salmon caught, that we returned the second day to watch the performance again. We little dreamed that our curiosity in their fishing was exciting equal interest in the Uleaborg folk. Such, however, was the case, as a notice afterwards appeared in the paper to say that the English ladies had been twice to look at the salmon-catching, had appeared much interested in what they saw, had asked many questions, etc. It was a good thing we were not up to any mischief, as the Finnish press was so fond of chronicling all our doings.
At five o'clock every morning, and at five o'clock every evening the nets are lifted, and, as a rule, one might say about a hundred fish are taken each time, although we were fortunate enough to see a catch of nearly twice that number. Some of them were little — weighing only two or three pounds — but the average appeared to be about twenty pounds, while one or two turned the scale at forty.
About a dozen men assembled on the bank, all smoking their everlasting pipes, some who had been lying asleep on the grass being roused from their slumbers, for it was five in the afternoon and time for them to start on their "catch." Each wooden pier was to be tackled by half a dozen men in a tar-boat, and, as we were particularly anxious to see this done, I persuaded one of the men to let me join his party, which he only allowed me to do after I had faithfully promised to sit perfectly still. I have described what cockly things these tar-boats are, even filled with their barrels or luggage for ballast, but when perfectly empty, as they always are, except for the weight of half a dozen men, when they go to fetch the salmon, it is a perfect marvel they do not upset. They are not so long, however, as those used for the rapids, although they are pointed the same at both ends, and the planks are equally wide and as quaintly tied together.
Off I went to the farthest end of one of these long wooden vessels; the boat was punted to the desired spot, the water apparently not being very deep at that point, and, having brought their craft up sideways against the wooden erection with its nets, the men who had run along the top of the pier — a somewhat dangerous proceeding — drew the net sluices up one by one so that the men in our boat might get at the salmon, while one of her crew, with a long stick and a hook at the end, pulled the net from the bed of the river.
It was most awfully exciting; sometimes the meshes would come up with half a dozen fish in them, sometimes disappointment awaited the fishermen, for they got nothing. But what struck me as particularly strange was the fact that half the salmon were dead and half were alive; apparently the dead ones had been in the net some hours (more than twelve was impossible as they had been taken up at 5 a.m.) Two or three hours captivity, however, with such a tremendous weight of water passing over them was enough to knock the life out of any fish.
It was a trying moment when a monster salmon, struggling frantically, was pulled half into our boat; but the men very cleverly speared them or knocked them on the head with a large mallet, which killed them instantly. Ere half an hour elapsed we had emptied all the nets along our pier, and with the boat well filled with beautiful shining fish, we returned to the little landing-stage from which we originally started.
As those fish — nearly two hundred in number — lay on that small wooden pier they made a mighty show, and it seemed wonderful to consider that seventy or eighty salmon had been taken at the same spot only a few hours previously, while one hundred and twenty-five miles farther up the river something between fifty and a hundred are netted daily.
Everything was managed in the most business-like fashion, and with great cleanliness. Two men, one on either side of the pier, sat on tubs turned upside down and, each with a knife in his hand, proceeded to clean the fish. They cut its throat, and, with the most marvellous rapidity, cleansed it, the mysteries from the interior being put aside for sale to the poor; then another man came forward and, picking up the fish thus prepared, washed it most carefully in the stream. In a very short space of time the whole catch of salmon were lying cleaned and washed upon the dripping pier. They were then put on trucks or wheel-barrows and rolled up to the ice-house. Here all the fish were accurately weighed, the number of kilos, being entered in a ledger, and, after sorting out the large from the small, they were packed into ice in enormous wooden tubs, and within a couple of hours most of them were on their way to St. Petersburg.
The river does not belong to the State, but the people in the neighbourhood; some three hundred, including many peasants, have an interest in it, and have formed themselves into a company. There is a manager who arranges all the fishing, engages ten or twelve men to make the nets, keep them in order, take them up for the salmon, and pack the fish when ready for export.
In 1895 Russia had undertaken to buy every kilo of fish caught at a fixed price, therefore it was impossible for private individuals to procure even a pound of the famous Uleaborg salmon in Uleaborg itself!
Last summer nearly seventy thousand marks worth of fish were taken during the short season; that is to say, the net fishing begins on the 10th of June and ends during the last days of August, when the nets and the piers have to be taken away and packed up carefully for the following summer's use.
It was at this salmon ground that my sister and I were much amused at two little incidents.
We were sitting on a wooden bench, waiting till all should be ready, when one of the fishermen came and stood before us. He was smoking and his hands were in his pockets as he paused within a few feet of us in a most leisurely manner. He did not do so rudely, although perhaps somewhat awkwardly. As he was evidently a Finlander we felt unable to converse with the gentleman, and therefore merely smiled.
"You speak English?" he said in that language.
"Certainly," we replied, somewhat taken aback.
"So do I," he rejoined.
As he was a very poor-looking person, with tattered clothing and a very Finnish countenance, we were somewhat amazed, and we asked if he were a Scotchman, that type more closely resembling the Finn than the Saxon race.
"No," he replied, " I am a Finn, but was a sailor for years, and I have been over to America as an emigrant."
"You speak English wonderfully well," we answered, really surprised at the purity of the man's accent.
"Yes," he said, "I was several years in America, where I lost all the money I had made at sea. It took me a long time to collect enough to come home again, but I have just come back, and if not richer, anyway I hope I'm wiser." And he thereupon began to explain the disadvantages of emigration.
Imagine in the far North, almost on the borders of Lapland, being addressed in our own tongue by a man in rags! We were astonished; yet all over Finland one meets with sailors who speak the Queen's English, and in Uleaborg we were struck with the fact on two other occasions — the first being when the man at the helm of a small penny steamer addressed us, and the second when a blue-coated policeman entered into conversation!
This shows how universal our language is becoming. But still, although English is the language of commerce, and with English one can travel all over the world, better than with any other tongue, the only way really to enjoy and appreciate voyaging in foreign lands is either to speak the language of the people, or, if that cannot be managed, to have some one always at hand capable and willing to translate.
As we left the salmon ground a lady, who had apparently been watching the proceedings from afar, desiring to know more of such strange beings as the "two English ladies," advanced, and, on the trifling pretext of asking if we had lost our way, addressed us in excellent French.
We thanked her, and replied we had been for several days in Uleaborg and knew our way quite well; but she was not to be baffled — she came to have a talk and she meant to have it — therefore she walked beside us the whole way back to the hotel, giving us little bits of information, though much more inclined to ask us questions than to answer those to which we were really in need of replies.
Will any one deny that the Finlander is inquisitive? Perhaps the reader will be inquisitive too when he learns that unintentionally we made a match! Nevertheless, the statement is quite true. We, most innocent and unoffending. We who abhor interference in all matrimonial affairs. We, without design or intent, made a match.
It came about in this way.
By mere chance we chaperoned a charming and delightful girl down the Gulf of Bothnia. Her coming with us was only decided upon during the last five minutes of our stay, and her clothes were positively repacked on the platform of the station to enable her to do so at all.
We had been given introductions to a delightful Baron at one of the towns en route to Hango, and having arrived at our destination, and not being masters of the language, we asked our maiden fair to kindly telephone in her own language and acquaint the Baron with the fact of our arrival. She did so; they were strangers, and heard each the other's dulcet tones for the first time through the mechanical mysteries of the telephone. The Baron joined us an hour later, he invited us to dinner, he escorted us about, he drove us to a park, he sat beside us in the evening while we drank coffee and admired the view. He came to see us off the following day, he gave us books and flowers as a parting gift, and we left.
Pangs of remorse fill my soul as I write these lines. For the twenty-four hours we remained in that town I monopolised this delightful Baron. I plied him with questions, I insisted on his showing me everything there was to be seen of interest, and telling me many things I wished to know about his country, and, with regret, truth compels me to repeat that, so dense were my powers of perception, I monopolised him almost entirely.
We left Finland shortly after this, but we had hardly reached our native shore before a letter from the charming girl arrived, in which she said, "Fancy, the Baron turned up here the other day, and the day after his arrival he proposed, I accepted him, and we shall be married by the end of the month."
Comment is needless. Romance will have its sway in spite of dense Englishwomen and stupid writers, who do not see what is going on under their noses, in their search for less interesting information elsewhere!
Ethel Bielliana Tweedie. Through Finland in Carts. Adam and Charles Black, 1897.
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