Salla (until 1936 Kuolajärvi) is a Finnish municipality located
in the eastern part of Lapland. The municipality is home to 3,403
people and covers an area of 5,872.68 km2, of which 142.76 km2 are
water bodies. The population density is 0.59 inhabitants / km2.
The neighboring municipalities of Salla are Kemijärvi, Kuusamo,
Pelkosenniemi, Posio and Savukoski.
Lake Kuolajärvi was a fur area. There were 19
settlements there in 1555. After the Great Northern War, the new
settlement expanded. Kuolajärvi belonged to Kemijärvi from 1776,
although it had previously belonged to Kuusamo. Due to difficult and
long connections, the people of Kola Lake built their own chapel in
1828 and applied for the right to a chapel congregation under
Kemijärvi in 1824, which was confirmed in 1857. This beginning of
the independent parish is considered to be the year the municipality
was founded.
The forest industry and the support industry
brought the idea of socialism to Lake Kuolajärvi, and there were
1906 log workers' strikes in the locality. The Muurmanni railway
improved Russia's north-south connections, which made Lake
Kuolajärvi a route for transporting munitions to Russia. In 1922, a
so-called fat rebellion organized by the Finnish communists who
moved to the Soviet Union took place in Lake Kuolajärvi.
The
name of the municipality was changed to Salla in 1936. The
population increased so that in 1860 the population of 1,479
increased almost tenfold in a hundred years: in 1964 the population
was 10,389.
During the 1930s, so-called "car smelters" were
made in Salla, because there were large and good quality forests on
the east side of the watershed. From Savoto, logs were driven by
trucks along the streams belonging to the Kemijoki watershed, from
where they were still floated.
In the peace of Moscow that
ended the Winter War in 1940, the majority of the former Salla area
remained in Finland, but the large eastern part (Old Salla) moved to
the areas ceded to the Soviet Union. Some of the people from Salawa
who were left homeless were settled in the area of the
municipality that continued its activities, where the village of
Märkäjärvi became a new municipal center and a church village.
Kursu, which had not been burned by the Germans, but Märkäjärvi is
located in the middle of the municipality, was also considered a
center.
The municipality experienced a strong period of
growth until the end of the 1960s, until which time the population
grew and the birth rate was in a class of its own. After that, a
major migration began, mostly to Sweden. In 1966, more than 11,000
people lived in the municipality. During the years of the most
intense migration, many villages lost up to half of their
inhabitants and the population of the municipality fell sharply,
almost halving within a few years. In many villages, the population
halved in a few years. The population of the municipality has
declined year after year since then. The second wave of great
migration came in the 1990s, when the population also continued its
sharp decline. It is noteworthy that, for example, the population of
Kemijärvi has been on the rise in some years since the time of the
great migration.