Kuhmo (until 1937 Kuhmoniemi) is a Finnish city located in the
southeastern part of Kainuu province. The city has a population of
8,148 and an area of 5,456.84 km2, of which 650.31 km2 is water.
The population density is 1.7 inhabitants / km2.
The parish
of Kuhmo was separated from the parish of Sotkamo in 1854 as
Kuhmoniemi and it became a municipality in 1865. The name was
officially abbreviated to Kuhmo at the beginning of 1937, and Kuhmo
became a town at the beginning of 1986. Kuhmo's anti-Russian border
is the oldest border between Finland and Russia currently in force.
There is the border post of Vartius. Kuhmo is one of the wilderest
cities in Finland. The largest city closest to Kuhmo is Kostomuksha
in Russia, which is also a twin city of Kuhmo, and a little further
away is Kajaani. Kuhmo's neighboring municipalities are Hyrynsalmi,
Lieksa, Nurmes, Ristijärvi, Sotkamo and Suomussalmi.
Ulvinsalo Nature Park, founded in 1956, is located in the
southeastern part of Kuhmo on the national border. The area of the
municipality mainly belongs to the Oulujoki water area, but Lake
Jonkerinjärvi in the southeast corner of the municipality flows
down the Long River into the Vuoksi watershed on the Lieksa side.
At the end of January 2022, Kuhmo was chosen as the 2023
Finnish-Ugric capital of culture. Among Finnish actors, the Friends of
Sukukansoj yyätsat ry participated in the selection.
Chamber
music festivals
Chamber music festivals have been organized in the
city since 1970 at the initiative of cellist Seppo Kimanen, which have
long been Finland's largest chamber music festival. The festival, which
runs until July, lasts for two weeks, and during it about 70 concerts
are organized, in which about 150 top musicians from Finland and around
the world perform. An average of 35,000 concert tickets are sold each
year, and according to ticket sales, Kuhmo's Chamber Music is the fourth
largest event in the Finland Festivals chain. The artistic directors of
Kuhmo Chamber Music are violinists Minna Pensola and Antti Tikkanen.
Congregations
According to the 2018 regional distribution, Kuhmo
has the following parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of
Finland:
Kuhmo parish
At the end of 2010, 89.2 percent of
Kuhmo's residents, or 8,468 people, belonged to the parish. Regarding
revival movements within the church, there are activities by
evangelicals and revivalists in Kuhmo. Other denominations are
represented by the Kuhmo Pentecostal Congregation, which belongs to the
Pentecostal revival, and the Kuhmo Vapaaseurakunta, which belongs to the
Free Church of Finland. In Kuhmo there is also the Church of the Saints
of Karelian Orthodox Church.
Food culture
In the 1980s,
röntöset was named Kuhmo's signature dish.
Humans arrived in the Kuhmo area in the Stone Age. The oldest places
of residence include Katerman Anttila, Paloniemi and Karankaniemi on the
shore of Lake Ontojärvi and Sylväjänniemi in Lammasjärvi. Both place
names and several artefact finds tell about the Sámi who inhabited Kuhmo
for a long time. From the 8th century onwards, the waterways giving off
in every direction brought to the Kuhmo region traders and merchants,
tax collectors and raiders from the west, east and south. The Norwegian
Vikings passed through the Kuhmo area to the Viennese Sea, in the
southeastern corner of which was the fabled Bjarmia. Possibly already
before the Vikings, Kainians arrived in the Kuhmo region and later the
top lakes of the Vuoksi watershed in Kuhmo came under the influence of
the Karelians.
When the Peace of Pähkinäsaari was concluded
between Novgorod and Sweden in 1323, the territories of Kuhmo remained
in the Kingdom of Novgorod. However, the border did not prevent the tax
collectors and wild men from Ostrobothnia from invading the Kuhmo area.
The birth of a permanent settlement in Kuhmo was connected to the
settlement of the wilderness of Oulujärvi, implemented by Kustaa Vaasa.
At the request of the king, the chief of Savonlinna, Kustaa Fincke, sent
1,552 settlers from Savoia to the area. However, the Russians destroyed
almost the entire settlement during the Long Wrath of 1570-1595. In the
Peace of Täyssinä concluded after the war, the regions of Kuhmo were
annexed to Sweden.
In 1599, Oulujärvi keeper was established. The
first tax collection took place in 1605, when there were ten smokes in
the Kuhmo area in the villages of Katerma and Lammasjärvi. The residents
came mainly from Savo. The people of Liminka probably also returned to
their former places of origin. The Sámi gave way to the cask smokers in
the 1620s. The development of Kuhmo's settlement is closely linked to
nature. Hunting and fishing have created the basis for Kuhmo's permanent
settlement. Kaskenpolto was started by the people of Savoia at the end
of the 16th century.
The Kuhmo region was initially part of
Liminga parish, from 1559 to Oulujärvi, from 1599 to Paltamo and from
1647 to Sotkamo parish. In the years 1650–1681, the area belonged to
Pietari Brahe's free lordship of Kajaani. In 1753, Kuhmo became the
chapel congregation of Sotkamo, and at that time the first cross church
was also built (1754), which, however, burned down already in 1804. The
new church was completed on Markkulanmäki in 1816. Next to the church, a
bell tower designed by Engel was completed in 1862.
As a border
guard, Kuhmo has experienced the curses of war. The resettlement
experienced a setback as early as 1611, when Charles IX headed a
military expedition through Kuhmo to the Viennese Sea. In revenge, the
Russians burned the village of Lammasjärvi in the summer of 1611. The
war that started was soon perceived as a war between the great powers,
and so the inhabitants made the first border peace in 1614 without the
consent of their governments. When the war ended with the peace of
Stolbova in 1617, the boundary stone of Kuhmo's Jonkerinjärvi was carved
with a crown on the west side and a cross on the east side. During the
Great Northern War between 1700 and 1721, in addition to hostilities,
the inhabitants were also affected by a plague epidemic. After the peace
of Uusikaupunki, the bandit gangs that gathered on the border kept the
residents in a state of fear and uncertainty. During the Pekkiviha
period in 1742–1743, the Russians conquered the area, and even in 1750
and 1755, people from across the border burned Kuhmo's houses. In the
Finnish war of 1808–1809, Kuhmo was a transit and base location for
Russian and Swedish troops.
After Finland was annexed to Russia
as its Grand Duchy in 1809, Kuhmo became a lively shopping and transit
place for Viennese bag merchants. Elias Lönnrot's poetry collecting
trips to Karelia via Kuhmo in the 1830s and 1840s also fall into this
period. Lönnrot also finished his Kalevala texts in the late autumn of
1834. While living on his district doctor's vaccination trip in Kuhmo in
Högmann's cottage in the church yard. Towards the end of the century,
among others, Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Louis Sparre connected Kuhmo to
Karelianism. Gallen-Kallela went on his honeymoon in the summer of 1890
to Kuhmo, living on a farm in Lapinsalmi, in the scenery of which
Gallen-Kallela also painted several of his paintings. The view from
Lapinsalmi to Lentua was the model for the background landscape of the
middle picture of Gallen-Kallela's Aino-Triptyk. With Louis Sparre, who
joined the party, the young couple made two Kalevala discovery trips to
the Russian side of the border, where Louis Sparre traveled as early as
1892 with Emil Wikström.
Kuhmo's agriculture was still primitive
in the 19th century. Because of this, motion sickness taxed the
population severely. In the great plague years of 1831–1833, one
thousand of Kuhmo's 4,000 inhabitants died of whooping cough, measles,
typhoid and dysentery. A large number of houses were deserted and people
fled to Russia. People also moved to Russia during the famine years of
the 1860s. The current church in Kuhmo was built under the leadership of
Jakob Rijf in 1816, although Kuhmo's parish became independent from
Sotkamo as an independent parish only on October 1, 1856.
Kaskenpoltto was practiced in Kuhmo until the second half of the 19th
century. Commercial burning of tar spread to the western parts of Kuhmo
in the middle of the 18th century, and the tar trade became more active
in the early 19th century, when the waterway's dams and bypass canals
made transportation to Oulu easier. The largest production of tar by the
people of Kuhmo was at the end of the 1890s, when, for example, 15,000
barrels of tar were rowed from Kuhmo to Oulu in 1897. Kuhmo was
Finland's largest tar producer at the time; By 1900, Kuhmo had produced
1/6 of all Finnish tar production. The completion of the railway to
Kajaani in 1904 shortened the tar rowing distance, but the time of tar
burning was already over by then. Arable farming also developed in the
second half of the 19th century. The last boom in agriculture occurred
after World War II. The front men increased the number of farms and the
arable area. In 1969, the largest cultivated field was almost 8,000
hectares. The number of premises was at its highest in 1959: 1,685. In
2000, there were 197 active facilities.
Kuhmo's population grew
rapidly in the first half of the 20th century. In 1920, the population
of Kuhmo was almost 7,500, but in 1960 it was already over 14,400.
However, in the mid-1960s, a period of population loss that lasted more
than 10 years began, which dropped the number of inhabitants to just
over 13,500. In 1985, Kuhmo had 13,658 inhabitants. By 2011, the
municipality's population was down to 9,422. The most significant
feature of the population development was the population moving from
rural villages to the city center. In the 1950s, only 1,600 people lived
in the central area, and in 1970, around 4,500 people lived in the
central area, but in 1983 there were already 7,436 people. Kuhmo became
a city in 1986, and after that it was initially the largest city in
Finland by area. Kuhmo's downtown area is an urban center built
according to the grid pattern drawn up by Professor Otto-Iivari Meurman
between 1938 and 1940. In the 1980s, numerous new buildings were
completed in the agglomeration.
Kuhmo was a significant battle tank during the winter war. In the
Kuhmo region, there are several memorials at the battle sites of the
Winter War.
During the Continuation War, several villages in
Kuhmo were attacked by Soviet partisans.
Kuhmo is located in the highlands of Kainuu. The city's landscapes
are characterized by varying hilly and dangerous terrain. Kuhmo's
bedrock is mainly granite gneiss. From the western part of the city, a
shale belt consisting mainly of amphibolite and metabasalt, about 200
kilometers long and a few kilometers wide, starts from the north-south
direction through Hyrynsalmi to Suomussalmi. The most common type of
soil is moraine. The moraines are crossed by ridge lines running
southeast-northwest, and the associated sand and gravel areas are at
their widest on the northwest side of the central harbor and on the
north side of Lake Ontojärvi. The biggest differences in height in the
city area are almost 100 meters. The highest hill in the city is
Pihlajavaara. Other high hazards include Honkavaara, Hirvivaara and
Hotakka. Kuhmo is for the most part a water-free area, where the waters
of the Baltic Sea basin have not reached. This way, the melting waters
of the ice age have not washed away the nutrients important for
vegetation. On the other hand, there are no ancient beaches or clay
mounds in the area either.
Forest land accounts for more than 80
percent of Kuhmo's land area. The most dominant tree species is pine,
which is more than half of the forest area, the share of spruce varies
between 15 and 33 percent. Deciduous trees account for approximately 10
percent of the forest area. Friendship Park has been established to
protect the wild nature of the border region, the nature reserves of
which are located in Kuhmo, with the exception of the Kostamus nature
park and the Juortanansalon-Lapinsuo marsh conservation area that
extends to the Suomussalmi side. The most well-known nature reserves of
Ystäviň park are Elimyssalo and Ulvinsalo. In addition to the routes in
the nature parks, Metsähallitus maintains numerous other hiking trails,
nature trails and excursion destinations in Kuhmo.
The water
areas of Kuhmo mostly belong to the Sotkamo route, however, the water
bodies of the southern part of the town flow into the Vuoksi water body,
and the small water bodies of the eastern part of Kuhmo flow to the
Russian side. The largest lakes are Ontojärvi, Lentua, which has the
city's largest island Kotasaari, Iivantiira, Lentiira, Änätti,
Lammasjärvi and Kellojärvi. Kuhmo's numerous rivers and rapids flow
freely, except for Ontojärvi's water. Saarikoski on the Kuhmo route and
the water above it belong to the national rapids protection program.
Lentuankoski and Pajakkakoski, which flows through the city center, in
particular, have significant tourism and recreational fishing
significance.
In terms of climate, Kuhmo is the most continental
climate region in the country. The temperature differences between the
coldest and warmest months are large. The thermal growing season with
temperatures above five degrees Celsius lasts an average of 131 days in
Kuhmo. The average annual temperature varies from one to two degrees
Celsius.
For thousands of years, the most important game animal
in Kuhmo has been the forest deer. As permanent settlement progressed,
deer began to decrease in the 17th century. The last forest deer were
probably shot in Kuhmo at the beginning of the 20th century. However,
the population survived in the pastures of Pieningä in Eastern Karelia,
and in the mid-1950s, the forest deer began to return to the wilderness
of Kuhmo. The forest deer population grew stronger until the 2000s,
until it started a sharp decline after the number of large carnivores
increased.
In the management plan for the bear population of the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Kuhmo belongs to the management
area of the established population in eastern Finland, where the bear
population is kept denser than the rest of the country. Along with the
rest of Kainuu and North Karelia, the wolf population has also been the
densest in the country.
According to the bear population
management plan, Kuhmo's bear population does not want to grow any
further, so bear felling permits are issued in relatively large numbers
every year. In addition to bear felling permits, strong forest and tea
populations and the extent of state forests attract hunters to the area.
Thanks to strong populations of large carnivores, wildebeest feeding
and viewing booths built in connection with the wildebeests, a lot of
footage of large animals is filmed in the Kuhmo area. Several
documentaries and award-winning nature photos have been filmed in
Haaska.
Training
In Kuhmo, basic education is given in three elementary
schools and one middle school. The elementary schools are Hietapära
school, Lentua school, Tuupala elementary school and Tuupala middle
school. In 2018, there were a total of 672 students in basic education,
of which 222 were middle school students.
Second-level general
education is offered by Kuhmo joint high school. The Kuhmo Music College
provides basic art education in the Kuhmo and Sotkamo regions.
Vocational studies can be completed at the Kainuu vocational college,
whose joint project TaitoTehdas with the city of Kuhmo enables some
studies in Kuhmo as well.
Social and Health Services
Kuhmo's
public social and health services are produced by the Kainuu social and
healthcare municipal corporation (Kainuun soten), jointly owned by the
municipalities of Kainuu. For example, the services of the Kuhmo health
center belong to these services. In the evenings and at night, emergency
medical care for people from Kuh is available at the joint emergency
room of the Kainuu Central Hospital in Kajaani.
Livelihoods
Kuhmo's traditional livelihoods are agriculture and forestry, and
nowadays also tourism. In the Kantola industrial area in Kuhmo, there is
a wood product industry center owned by the city, Woodpolis, which is a
wood construction development and teaching center owned by the city of
Kuhmo. Business activities in the Kantola area are oriented towards
serving the needs of construction, and it produces, among other things,
sawn and planed materials, CLT boards, wooden elements and log houses.
The companies in the area are also important in energy production, when
by-products are electricity and thermal energy and they process pellets,
briquettes and litter and wood chips.
Transport
Regional road
912 runs from Kuhmo to Suomussalmi. The city's goal is to convert this
regional road into a regular road. Kantatie 89 starts from highway 22 in
Paltamo Mieslahti and runs north of Kontiomäki to the Vartius border
station in Kuhmo, from where it continues to Russia. Kantatie 75 comes
to Kuhmo from Siilinjärvi via Nurme. Kantatie 76 leads from Sotkamo from
highway 6 exit to the center of Kuhmo. Regional road 524 runs from
Lieksa to Kuhmo.
There is a daily bus connection to Kajaani from
Kuhmo, as well as a twice-weekly bus service to Suomussalmi during
school hours.