The photographs and texts are from the book Linnut lumen valossa (‘Birds in the light of snow’, edited by Arno Rautavaara. Design and layout by Jukka Aalto/Armadillo Graphics. Tammi, 2011)

Snowy owl. Photo: Markus Varesvuo, 2010

Markus Varesvuo

Birds of prey have incredibly sharp eyesight. I have had the opportunity to watch the snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) hunt in both its summer nesting habitats and on wide expanses of snow in the winter. According to my own observations, a snow owl can spot a small rodent at a distance of almost half a kilometre. (Montreal, Canada 2/2010. 800 mm+1.4x teleconverter, F11. 1/200 s, ISO 800)

Siberian jay. Photo: Markus Varesvuo, 2010

The Siberian jay (Perisoreus infaustus) is a sympathetic, curious and fearless bird.

Using a remote shutter release and a wide-angle lens, I managed to take a close-up photo of a Siberian Jay that gives its winter habitat a strong presence.

(Kuusamo region, Finland, 2/2010. 24 mm, F11. 1/250 s, ISO 800)

Goldeneyes. Photo: Markus Varesvuo, 2011

The sun shining in the blue sky, ice and glimmering crusted snow provide the best light possible for photographing birds in flight.

In this picture, the details of the lower body of male goldeneyes (Bucephala clangula) are shown in a fine manner and the blue of the background can be exposed to the correct dark shade.

(West Turunmaa region, Finland 3/2011. 800 mm + 1.4x teleconverter, F8, 1/1000 s, ISO 400)

Jari Peltomäki

Common redpoll. Photo: Jari Peltomäki, 2011

The common redpoll (Carduelis flammea) is an active visitor at winter feeding stands for birds. This male descended on a branch in picturesque snowfall, seen as long streaks in the photographs, because of the long exposure.

(Inari, Finnish Lapland 3/2008. F11, 1/60 s, ISO 400)

Tomi Muukkonen

Brambling, greenfinch, bullfinch, great tit. Photo: Tomi Muukkonen, 2011

The brambling (Fringilla montifringilla), the greenfinch (Carduelis chloris) the bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) and the great tit (Parus major). After buying his first camera, a friend of mine took impressive photos of small birds taking flight from a feeding stand. His pictures of hawfinches and other passeriformes were on my mind for years, until I was finally able to interpret this theme in my own way.

(Saarenmaa, Estonia, 2/2010. 95 mm, F8, 1/4000s, ISO 1600)

Arto Juvonen

Blue tit. Photo: Arto Juvonen, 2011

Winter will soon be over; the catkins tell of late winter days that are rapidly becoming longer. In late March, however, winter still extends its grasp, but the blue tits (Parus caeruleus) are in spring mode, singing and showing interest in nesting boxes, and with guests at the feeder starting to disperse themselves through the woods. The strong and lucky individuals have managed to survive a hard winter.

(Loviisa, Finland 3/2011. 500 mm, F4, 1/3200 s, ISO 1600)

Translated by Jüri Kokkonen

Arto Juvonen (born 1957), Tomi Muukkonen (born 1958), Jari Peltomäki (born 1965) and Markus Varesvuo (born 1960) maintain  webpages (also in English) and have won many prizes in both Finnish and foreign competitions in nature photography.

Seal signed: Saimaa ringed seal by Erik Bruun

The graphic artist Professor Erik Bruun has been awarded the Luonnotar / National Spirit of Nature Award for 2011.

The prize, established by the Puu kulttuurissa / Wood in Culture Association in 2001 and now worth € 12,000, is awarded bi-annually to Finnish professionals of any field of culture whose work has helped to make the public in Finland and abroad more aware of Finnish culture, heritage and environment.

Erik Bruun (born 1926) – who was the Art Editor of  Books from Finland from 1976 to 1989 – is perhaps best known to the public for his numerous posters and advertisements, in particular his nature posters for the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation: the Saimaa ringed seal, the bear, eagles, owls, seagulls and other birds.

Bruun’s interest in nature photography, drawing, etching and lithography have long combined in his work for the Finnish wood processing industry as well as in his illustrative work for magazines and books and in designing postage stamps and banknotes.

A book on his life’s work, Sulka ja kynä. Erik Bruunin julisteita ja käyttögrafiikkaa (‘The quill and the pen. Posters and graphics by Erik Bruun’) by Ulla Aartomaa was published in 2007 (and reviewed in Books from Finland 3/2007). Take a look at his work on his home page.

Itämeren tulevaisuus

This publication covers the key environmental issues affecting the Baltic Sea and provides new perspectives on those issues. The Baltic, with its relatively small, shallow dimensions and low salinity, is one of only a few seas in the world that is home to both freshwater and saltwater fish species and inland and marine birds. The Kvarken Archipelago in the Gulf of Bothnia was granted UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 2006. There are some 85 million people living within range of the environmentally sensitive, heavily trafficked Baltic Sea in nine countries around its coastline and its drainage basin. Serious environmental alarm bells began to ring in the 1960s with the realisation that the white-tailed eagle was on the brink of extinction. The socio-political history of the Baltic has had an effect on its protection, since the border between two competing economic systems – communism and capitalism – ran right through it. The articles in this book make it clear that science has identified ways to protect the Baltic Sea, but these research findings are not being put into practice in official decision-making.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Suomalainen aarniometsä

This book explains the cultural significance of forests – particularly virgin forests – to Finns. That term is used to refer to old-growth forests in their natural state, characterised by trees of different ages, an abundance of decaying tree remains, and continuous incremental changes. Nowadays around four per cent of Finnish forests are in a natural or near-natural state, and light is being shed on their ecosystems and the history of the slowly vanishing virgin forests. They are associated with deep-seated values and a multiplicity of roles throughout history. To many artists forests have been a significant elemental force, worthy even of worship; peasants and the timber industry have exploited the virgin forests. The authors also consider whether answers to key environmental issues will be found in old-growth forests: safeguarding natural diversity and slowing climate change. In addition to illustrative material from the authors, the book contains photographs by award-winning photographers Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo.

The wolf's hour? An abandoned house is alive...

Extracts from Viimeiset vieraat. Elämää autiotaloissa [The last visitors. Life in abandoned houses, Maahenki, 2010] by Kai Fagerström, Risto Rasa & Heikki Willamo. Text by Willamo, poems by Rasa, photographs by Fagerström and Willamo

Some thirty years later I found the badgers’ cottage again – it wasn’t the same one, but the mood of my childhood still floated there. Grey walls and a shingle roof, bare gaping windows, the door creaking on its single hinge. Oak tree in the yard, lilacs flourishing wild. The forest was rapidly reclaiming its own behind the cottage. The mounds of sand beside the wall bases showed prints of strong-clawed paws and a number of paths, hardened from use, led into the woods.

I wandered about the yard, looked at the cottage and peeked in the windows. The grey panelling was pretty and at the same time free of unnecessary ornamentation. In the front hall were shoes now decades out of style, in the main room a partially collapsed fireplace, a rusty stove and a stool missing a leg. Between the forest and the house were berry bushes and a few apple trees just barely clinging to life. In front, a hillside field facing south.

I sat in the yard under the great birch tree to await evening. I felt again the tingle of excitement of my childhood evenings in the cottage’s enchanted garden, but now the feeling was seasoned with nostalgia. It was a longing for that innocent time and at the same time for a world that was gone. The foundation stones of our lives are set at an early age and we carry those foundations through the years. Home leaves tracks within us just as do things and events experienced strongly. As adults we see the world through tinted glasses and somewhere deep within we long for the world of our childhood.

Photo: Fagerström & Willamo

At least in that early evening moment I longed for the warm summers, butterfly-filled meadows, cows in the pasture and sand beneath my bare feet. I longed for that total immersion in the world of adventures, which only a child knows how to achieve. Here and now, and let the rest of the world disappear.

I waited. The sun set and twilight deepened. A blackbird sang. At last the pale figure of a badger appeared on the mound under the window. It perched there for a moment, then reversed back under the house. Soon it emerged onto the mound again and shuffled along the path into the woods. Nothing else happened. A lone badger was living in the cottage. Thirty years earlier I would have imagined it the surly master of the house; now it was a badger. I felt wistful. I felt I had lost something irreplaceable.

I went to the cottage on several evenings and the pattern repeated. The badger sniffed the wind and withdrew into its den, to reappear shortly. Then it disappeared on its night expeditions. The only variation was which of the two paths it chose.

During those evenings, something new began to form in the depths of my mind; curiosity replaced nostalgia. Well-built houses remain from one generation to the next. The world changes around them and in the end they are abandoned. They begin to be called abandoned houses, but they are not abandoned. Without upkeep, their fate becomes decay. When the roof finally gives, water does its part and the house collapses.

The old badger did not live to see his cottage collapse. I found him next to the road, killed by a car. He was resting on his side, his paws as if frozen mid-step. I touched one of them. The pads were coarse from walking and digging, the claws, long and sharp, the teeth shone like a string of white pearls. I carried his body into the forest and placed it beneath a small spruce.

The place was briefly without inhabitants, but in the spring a large family could be found within its shelter, a raccoon dog couple and about a dozen pups. The bustle called to mind the time when the cottage was filled with children’s voices, but the new residents were of today. The raccoon dog is an immigrant from far, the east, and it has a bad name in certain circles, as immigrants always have in certain circles. But as so often, this matter didn’t deserve much fuss, either.

Photo: Fagerström & Willamo

In the Finnish countryside the raccoon dog is more of a beggar than a predator. Raccoon dogs busy about at dusk looking for voles, frogs, large insects and larvae. Sometimes they eat the eggs of bird’s nests they happen upon. They like berries and sneak into yards to snitch fallen fruit. They scout the roadsides, risking their lives in hope of road kill, and hang around barn corners. The raccoon dog has all the markings of a versatile bon viveur, but winter is a nearly unsurpassable barrier for it. Only one pup in ten lives to the age of one year, and of this dozen only one or two will see the following spring.

The raccoon dogs brought needed life to the cottage. White clouds of burnet roses bloomed in the doorway and even the tumble-down building seemed to hold itself more erect. It did not take a lot of imagination to see echoes of the cottage’s past in the animals’ bustling – children peeking through the crack of a door, grandma squinting benevolently through the window. The raccoon dog pup sitting in front of the deserted doghouse even recalled the family’s spitz at the start of its life.

Early in July the raccoon dogs moved away. In the autumn another badger appeared, beginning to stock the cottage for its winter quarters. The next spring he sometimes had a friend but there were no baby badgers to be seen. The old geezer continued his solitary life.

The cottage fell into decay. The roof leaked in a number of spots and finally gave. The owners carried away the best logs; the rest sank into a pile overrun with willowherb and raspberry bushes, and fox cubs growing up nearby briefly made the tangle into their fort.

A red cottage stands on a small hill. Seen from afar it appears in good shape there among the bushes, but closer up one sees the boarded windows and rotted steps. The people have gone. Along the walls are mounds of sand with hard-trodden paths leading from them. One runs directly into the apple orchard, another, along the ditch to the lakeside field, but the most well-worn leads under the leafy canopy of the hazelnut grove to a lair dug into the hillside.

Photo: Fagerström & Willamo

I peek in through the window. Inside it looks lived in. People have left their mark: wrinkled rag rugs, things on the table and on the edge of the toppled fireplace. Toys and tops of cooking pots strewn across the floor, a torn bag in the corner. As for the current occupants, sand and dry hay, chewed items and the path under the stove tell of them.

The cottage is being used by badgers. They have another home in the woods beneath the hazel bushes….

The badger clan lives in the red cottage like in the best of fables. They have tables and chairs, rugs on the floors and a rocking chair in the corner. They probably don’t use them, but who’s to say. Anything can happen in the dark. I imagine the clan’s oldest gathering the young about him on a floor cushioned with rugs in a corner of the main room, telling them animal stories and fables. Calmly, without hurry, in badger language. He would use people in his tales – just allegorically, in place of animals.

People and badgers have different requirements for the home. While the badgers live there they redo it; they dig up the foundations and tear open the floors, hastening the building’s decay. Might the failing of this cottage’s bearing wall also be the doing of the badger clan? They have dug up the ground beneath it and caused it to fall sideways and in so doing opened a passage into the main room.

Photo: Fagerström & Willamo

Through the badgers’ activity the house has moved into nature’s realm. After a short vacant period it again holds life, but the direction is inevitable.

The wood rots, the insulation decomposes, even the roofing felt turns brittle and crumbles. The cement cracks, the iron rusts. The glass defies time, but even that gets buried under the forest litter, shatters as frost churns the ground’s surface, and ultimately crumbles into tiny particles, like quartz sand.

Nature is reclaiming her own. After a moment on loan, the place is returning to the great cycle.

Translated by Jill G. Timbers

Hello? A bear cub at the Predator Centre in Kuusamo. Photo: Pasi Jäntti

Spring is here at long last, and the bears have woken up: this frightening beast has got out of the lair in Kuusamo, at the Predator Centre in north-eastern Finland (800 kilometres from Helsinki).

Some of our readers may remember Niisku, the brown bear portrayed in the print version of Books from Finland, issues 4/2006 and 1/2007 – very sleepy, contemplating hibernation.

There are probably about a thousand bears in Finland, and they usually hit the hay (aka the spruce branches in their lair) in November. Tiny bear cubs are born in late January or early February. The family will emerge from the lair when the snow melts. Niisku gave birth to two babies in the spring of 2007.

The Predator Centre in Kuusamo is a private orphanage for wild bears, lynxes and wolverines which have been brought there after being injured and/or orphaned.

Morning, pal. Sulo Karjalainen and Juuso in the Predator Centre, Kuusamo. Photo: Pasi Jäntti

Specimens of Ursus arctos has become a lifelong friends of Sulo Karjalainen (in the photo, right, with Juuso, c. 400 kilos) In summer he may go for forest walks and even fishing with Vyöti, 16, who was brought to the Centre as a small orphan.

The brown bear plays an important role in Finnish mythology, and often features in folk poetry. We are fans! But we never go into the woods alone when mother bear takes her babies out for a walk. Or, if we do, we keep making noises so that the bear family will know to avoid us. After all, if they can choose, they prefer carrots to humans (see the video on the photo page of the Centre video entitled ‘Porkkanat ja karhut’ [‘Carrots and bears’]).

Konstnärsbröderna von Wrights dagböcker 1–7

The three von Wright brothers, who came from a family with nine children in rural north Savo (in eastern Finland), shared a talent for meticulous observation combined with masterful technique and a romantic style. Each of these artists, who were active during the Biedermeier era, was a trailblazer in his own field: Magnus (1805–1868) as a proponent of Finnish national art, Wilhelm (1810–1887) as a wildlife illustrator, and Ferdinand (1822–1906) as a painter of landscapes and birds. Their contribution to Nordic ornithology is considerable. The index volume to the von Wright brothers’ diaries (which were written in Swedish) includes lists of their artworks and details of works held by collections abroad. This series is of significant cultural importance, and it is remarkable for its scientific accuracy. Five volumes consist of Magnus von Wright’s diary entries, which he wrote daily from 1820 up until his death. The sixth volume contains diary entries by the two younger brothers, which provide insights into the everyday life and society of that era, as well as the artists’ working practices and their relationship with nature.

Natural landscapes? According to Metsähallitus, the government body charged with forestry, ‘the regeneration area is defined according to topography, in accordance with the landscape. Retention trees and groups of trees are always left standing in regeneration areas to enhance the landscape and to improve the survival chances of species that require old and decaying trees.’

Ritva Kovalainen & Sanni Seppo
Metsänhoidollisia toimenpiteitä
[Silvicultural operations]
Helsinki: Hiilinielu tuotanto ja Miellotar, 2009. 200 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-99113-4-9
€ 43

Finns have a strong identity as forest people, partly because more than 95 per cent of them still speak an ancient hunter-gatherer language, Finnish, as their mother tongue. In spite of this cultural and historical background, Finland has become the world’s most eager and influential proponent of forestry models based on clear-cutting – felling all the trees in a particular area at one go and planting new trees to replace them.

In most parts of the world traditional forestry, practices have tended to emphasise selective logging, methods in which only some of the trees are removed at the same time. During the past four decades Finnish companies have often led the attack on such traditional forest management. Finland has produced the world’s largest forest consultancy company, Jaakko Pöyry, and some of the major paper and pulp corporations. Finnish companies manufacturing tree harvesters and the machinery for pulp and paper factories have also been world market leaders.

Three times round the globe: he road network built for forest harvesting is the densest in the world

The Finnish model of forestry has been hailed as an economic success story, but it has also caused large-scale devastation of natural forests and huge greenhouse gas emissions from forests, forest soils and peatlands in many different parts of the world, from Finland to Brazil and Indonesia.

Why have Finns, an ancient forest people, been so eager to export clear-cutting to other parts of the world?

The photographers Sanni Seppo and Ritva Kovalainen have produced two remarkable books tracing the roots of this strange paradox.

Puiden kansa (in English, Tree people, 1997; published also in German and Japanese), was an investigation of what we can still find out of the almost totally disappeared, ancient Finno-Ugric cultures, in which sacred trees and sacred forests played a prominent role.

Puiden kansa presented a number of intriguing and forgotten historical anecdotes. A thousand years ago, each Finnish household probably had its own sacrificial tree, and each village had a hiisi, a sacred burial forest. In 1228 the Pope of Rome gave an order to fell the sacred trees and forests of Finland. In spite of widespread resistance, the sacred forests were replaced by Christian churches, except in some parts of East Karelia and Northern Russia. Even in Finland some of the old sacrificial trees of individual households are still standing.

Roads for harvesters: 1200 square kilometres of land is trapped under 125,000 kilometres of road, permanently diminishing the forest area and preventing the forest from functioning as a carbon sink

Metsänhoidollisia toimenpiteitä (‘Silvicultural operations’, 2009), can be seen as a sequel to Puiden kansa. It describes how Finland’s present forestry-industrial complex was created, how the model was forced on the Finnish people, and how it has affected the lives of ordinary Finns at the grass-root level.

Finland was not occupied by the Soviet Union in the Second World War, and during the Cold War it was never a part of the Eastern Block. However, the organisational models that were adopted for the Finnish forestry sector after the Second World War should only have existed on the Soviet side of the border. As Sanni Seppo and Ritva Kovalainen point out, Finland’s forest-owners’ associations were organised by the state, but not to become free actors or genuine citizens’ interest groups. They were integrated into the state administration and controlled by it.

The Finnish state and the pulp and paper industries formed a tight alliance to push through a monolithic model of forestry, which had zero tolerance for dissenting opinion or alternative models. In practice the Finnish forest owners lost almost all control of how their own forests were to be managed. Everybody was forced to adopt the same practices, forest management procedures which were designed to guarantee an adequate supply of wood for the pulp and paper industries. The forest was first thinned to produce pulp wood and then finally clear-cut to produce pulp wood and timber.

Wilderness untouched: forester Jarno Hämäläinen has protected the five hectares of forest he inherited. ‘This is forest growing naturally, untouched by a human hand. This is a place of my own where I return to look for my roots, to listen to the humming of pine trees and the whining of mosquitoes.’

Forest owners who did not agree to clear-cut their forests were harshly punished by the authorities, and accused of ‘destroying their forests’ (!). This was, admittedly, an exceptional procedure in a Western democracy, but it did happen, and the stories included in Seppo and Kovalainen’s book reflect a clear and logical pattern. Seppo and Kovalainen have included an illuminating quote by one of the main architects of Finland’s new forestry policies, according to which ‘we would not have been as successful, if we hadn’t used an almost paramilitary organisation in the forestry sector’.

Puiden kansa was an optimistic book, a book full of hope. It concentrated on the small but wonderful fragments of the ancient world that still remain. This is one of the reasons the book has become so beloved by so many people in Finland. Metsänhoidollisia toimenpiteitä, on the other hand, is mainly about sadness and silent, repressed anger. Each square kilometre of an old forest consists of hundreds of different ‘places’, innumerable small spaces protected by the surrounding trees. When the forest is clear-cut, this rich mosaic of closed spaces disappears from the river of time, never to be regained within a human lifetime. A clear-cut forest becomes only one place, and often not a very attractive one.

Taken away: Irma spent her childhood roaming in forests which are no more

Clear-cutting an old forest always is a small, localised end of the world for the people who live nearby and who used to love the forest as it was.

Through their pictures, Sanni Seppo and Ritva Kovalainen show what once was, and what remained after the logging. They show the people and the bright, hard grief shining on their faces. Moreover, they let the people speak and tell how it made them feel.

All the stories are different, but there are elements which are repeated, over and over again. First the fear that something is going to happen to the forest. A crucifying feeling of helplessness. Impotent anger. Shock, denial, depression, anxiety. Silent questioning of whether all the hatred is justified.

Seppo and Kovalainen’s writing is dense, sharp, deep. The words hit mercilessly, straight at the heart of painful, festering sores and complex dilemmas.

But it is still the photographs that really make the book. Statistics can lie, words can lie, even some photographs can lie, but if you see this collection, you will know in your heart that what you see is the truth about the matter, or at least an important part of the truth.

Neljä retkeä läpi Suomen. Kävellen – pyöräillen – hiihtäen – meloen

In the spring of 2000, a downbeat 40-year-old man sat musing on the meaning of life when an idea suddenly came to him: why not walk from Helsinki to the Arctic Ocean? In his diary of this trek, which covered more than seven weeks and over a thousand kilometres, the journalist and writer Erkki Lampén describes the landscape, people, events and his own thoughts along the journey. Lampén made another three journeys (in 2003, 2004 and 2006) travelling by bicycle, on skis and by kayak, sleeping in a tent, in rustic cabins, in motels and hotels. His circular cycle journey aimed to follow Finland’s national borders as closely as possible; on skis he covered the distance from Porvoo on the south coast to Utsjoki in the far north; he then paddled his kayak from Lapland to the Gulf of Finland (this journey required plenty of wheeling the vessel from one river or lake to another). Lampén’s diary entries convey an entertaining blend of a realistic battle for survival, philosophising, joy, fury and humour.

Linnut vauhdissa features the work of several specialist bird photographers, contains astonishingly sharp photos of birds caught in mid-flight. This book breaks with convention by presenting surprising analogies and juxtapositions of photographs, thereby providing a more in-depth viewing experience than mere biological facts and identification of species. The majority of the photos were shot in Finland, where the Nordic light and winter snow offer unique qualities for nature photography. The preface was written by Hannu Hautala, arguably Finland’s best-known nature photographer. All of the photographers whose work is presented here are experienced birders. They also maintain a website that attracts many visitors, both from Finland and abroad.

Tähtiyöt
[Starry nights]
Helsinki: Maahenki, 2009. 84 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-5652-75-8
€ 41, hardback

Jorma Luhta (born 1951) is an award-winning Finnish nature photographer and author. The subject material of this book is night-time in the forests of northern Finland, illuminated by the stars and the Northern Lights. The problem of light pollution means that even in sparsely populated Lapland the lights from population centres can hamper the view over a radius of two hundred kilometres. Jorma Luhta’s photographs are the result of many years of dogged effort. The most impressive images of all were taken on the coldest night in a century: temperatures fell to around –50 °C. It takes split-second precision to achieve the greatest shots, such as when Luhta’s camera records a sheet of Aurora Borealis resembling Picasso’s white dove of peace (above). In his lyrical text Luhta, a night-time walker in the woods, observes his natural surroundings and contemplates such matters as his fear of the dark and feelings of isolation.

Zzzzzzz! In the grey seal kindergarten babies take a nap after dinner. – Photo: Seppo Keränen

Taskinen, Juha
Paluu Saimaalle
[Return to Lake Saimaa]
Helsinki: WSOY, 2009. 204 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-0-33745-5
€ 38.90, hardback

Keränen, Seppo & Lappalainen, Markku
Hylkeet [The seals]
Helsinki: Maahenki, 2009. 151 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-56-5266-6
€ 45, hardback
Sälar
Helsingfors: Söderströms, 2009.
151 p., ill.
Swedish translation: Annika Luther
ISBN 978-951-52-2603-7
€ 45, hardback

The private life of the species of seal that lives only in Lake Saimaa has been carefully investigated lately. Almost everything about this highly endangered species has been revealed, thanks to technological devices such as transmitters that can be glued to their backs…

STOP! WARNING:  as I realise that not everybody wants to know what pinnipeds do in their spare time, I suggest you quit reading now, if you aren’t interested in the lives and fates of an obscure group of about 260 mammals that live in a lake in the remote west of Finland.

But they are beguiling creatures. An urbanite bitten by the wildlife bug while holidaying on Lake Saimaa, I first succumbed to the charm of the Saimaa ringed seal (Phoca hispida saimensis), and wrote about it for Books from Finland, in 2005.

The landscape of Lake Saimaa: the endangered ringed seal and the osprey live in these waters and on the almost 14,000 islands of Greater Saimaa. – Photos: Juha Taskinen

This spring there has been heated debate in the Finnish media about whether Finland really wants to commit itself to the protection of the Saimaa ringed seal before it disappears from the waters of the Earth.

The ringed seal was trapped in Lake Saimaa, the fourth largest lake in Europe, near the end of the last ice age, some eight or nine millennia ago, as the land began to rise, cutting the lake off from the sea.

Ever since Finns began to inhabit the shores of the Saimaa after the ice age, they have contributed in many ways to the extermination of the ringed seal (in Finnish, norppa, from the Russian nerpa; see here for a four-minute video clip of norppa in its own environment, with a commentary in Finnish). It was hunted to near extinction until it was finally protected by law in the mid 1950s, after which it suffered heavily from environmental pollution – mercury, DDT and PCBs. Inland waters have become cleaner since the 1980s, so the seal has survived; but now, as global warming affects winter temperatures, its procreation is threatened. The mother seal needs to dig a lair in the snow for her pup during its first few weeks. If the pup is born on the ice, it may not survive. When the weaned pup starts exploring its surroundings in April as the ice melts, it will encounter a new, too often fatal danger under the surface: every spring many young seals – an estimated 30 per cent – drown in fishnets.

Born on ice: this seal pup, named Voitto (Victor), was born in a winter with little snow, so his mother couldn’t dig the lair he needed. - Photo: Juha Taskinen

Wildlife experts have repeatedly stressed the need to abstain from fishing with nets between 15 April and 30 June, and free fish traps have been offered to all local fishermen who give up fishing with nets during this short period. However, some of them refuse, claiming it is their ‘ancient right’ to fish how and when they please. The consumption of fish by the small Saimaa seal population does not threaten any kind of fishing: a seal eats a kilo of small fish per day, mostly perch and roach. Nowadays only about 20 people make a living by fishing on Lake Saimaa.

Another premature death: a young seal drowned in a net. – Photo: Juha Taskinen

The Finnish government has expressed its concern – but a law prohibiting net fishing during those crucial weeks has not been passed, indicating that Finland does not have the political will to offer effective protection to a critically endangered indigenous mammal which is rarer than the giant panda.

Juha Taskinen, a nature photographer and guide, has committed himself to the protection of the ringed seal in his native Savo province. In Paluu Saimaalle, a beautiful and touching book, he presents, in words and photos, portraits of the inhabitants of Saimaa in all seasons, telling stories about fishing by humans and pinnipeds, as well as otters and ospreys.

Sealspotting is not easy for the inexperienced: the shy norppa keeps away from humans, and its ringed fur is an excellent camouflage. Thanks to underwater photography and transmitters, the sublacustrine secrets of the seals have been explored.

I’m hungry! Voitto, whose fur is full of frozen lumps of snow, cries for mummy, who emerges from under the ice to feed her pup regularly. This little seal miraculously survived his critical first weeks, but in early spring he was found drowned in a fishnet. - Photos: Juha Taskinen

Taskinen tells how he once caught a seal with his bare hands. He was expecting to be joined by a colleague immediately and got hold of his slippery research subject in the water, but the seal didn’t like the idea of being hugged by a human and decided to leave. Taskinen managed to grab the seal’s back flippers, but as his numb hands were slipping in the cold water, he took one of the flippers between his teeth, just for a second, to get a better grip with his hands – and then accidentally bit the wriggling beast. As Saimaa seals are gentle predators, this one didn’t even try to bite back. Finally the seal was successfully equipped with a transmitter and a flipper tag and released back into his aquatic kingdom, unharmed, save for a minor bite on a flipper and perhaps a firm resolve to never be hugged again.

Later Taskinen thought he should find out whether the seal might have been injured by his bite, so he called a doctor, who rooted around in his medical reference material for a while, concluding that a seal bite isn’t dangerous. There was a long silence on the phone when Taskinen explained again that his was actually a case of man biting dog.

On guard: male grey seals watch over the females feeding their pups on the ice. – Photo: Seppo Keränen

The ancient cousins of the Saimaa seal, the Baltic ringed seal (Phoca hispida botnica) and the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus), live in the Baltic sea, where they too were trapped around 10,000 years ago. The grey seal gives birth on the ice, not requiring a lair in the snow as the ringed seal does.

Hylkeet, Sälar, written by Markku Lappalainen with photogaphs by Seppo Keränen, charts the marine landscape of the Baltic, its people and animals, often in impressive panorama shots. The stony, barren and shallow shoreline, its birds and animals as well as the traditional lifestyles of the people are portrayed with interesting facts and details in the text and in the photographs taken in all seasons.

Group portrait: grey seals of the Baltic live in flocks and are not as shy as their Lake Saimaa cousins. – Photo: Seppo Keränen

Hunting and, increasingly, marine pollution, have critically reduced the Baltic seal population over the past century. In the mid 1980s the World Wildlife Foundation started a protection campaign, which has been successful. The seals eat mostly Baltic herring, but as they consume the same fish as people do, competition on the sea has grown harsher recently. Large, strong and clever, the seals eat fish out of nets, which, unlike the smaller ringed seal, they also destroy. They also consume more salmon now, as their favourite, cod, has almost disappeared from the Baltic.

Sad catch: Heikki Salokangas’s family has fished for 200 years in the Gulf of Bothnia. The grey seal in the Baltic has learned how to plunder nets.. – Photo: Seppo Keränen

In the past the seals have been valuable prey, providing food, train oil, skin and fur. Hunters have also been paid for killing them, to protect human fishing. Now hunting the grey and the ringed seal is allowed during certain periods, but as seals are not easy to catch, only about half of the quota is used up annually. The market for seal products in the European Union isn’t large either. Some of the professional fishermen believe that their trade will soon become extinct as a result of the fast-growing grey seal population. It is estimated that a tenth of all grey seals of the world now live in the small Baltic Sea, which is devoid of polar bears, their only natural enemy (save man).

Both Paluu Saimaalle and Hylkeet richly chronicle the history of the age-old relationship of two mammals, man and seal, both adapted to living in arctic climates. Both eat fish, but the seal survives on fish alone. Only man has a chance of controlling the environment, and the fate of both seals and fish is in his hands – as is his own.

The book presents the history of Finnish nature conservancy and the movement to promote it from the 18th century to the present day in essays by 43 authors. Although a number of prominent figures in Finnish society played an important role in the movement’s development, most of the actual work was done by dedicated nature-lovers. The conservationists of the early days hailed from the world of science, but since the 1970s the most active members of the movement have been environmental activists and government officials. The book discusses the different biotypes – forests, water habitat, swamps, Lapland habitat – and explores the country’s cultural landscapes and the relation of environmental protection to society. Many areas which are now considered important were rescued at the last moment. The book won Finland’s Nature Book of the Year Award for 2008.