Log house making its way to Finland

Immigrants from Finland arrived in Saskatchewan in a time before the area was officially a province.

They built a home out of logs, and raised a family.

The house, in New Finland, would see a family grow, the parents passing, the children growing and moving on.

The farm was actually initially home to Finnish immigrant Herman Huhtala, but he could not adapt to life as a Saskatchewan pioneer.

“He went back to Finland. It was just too tough here,” said Valerie Knuuttila.

That move back was in 1913.

“That was the year my grandparents moved in,” said Knuutilla.

“They lived in that house until 1977.”

In time the home would be left empty.

But it would endure through the decades of hot Saskatchewan summers and cold winters.

And as it aged it became one of the few Finnish homestead homes still in good repair. That fact interested the World of Trails in Peräseinäjoki, Finland.

The World of Trails has a mandate to bring buildings to Finland as a centre piece to show what life was like where Finnish immigrants went. Already Finnish homes from Australia, Siberia and the United States are on-site.

It was Alice Knuuttila, daughter-in-law of Gus and Liisa who contacted the museum to suggest the log home might be of interest, after learning the museum might be interested from a family friend. She made the offer to donate the home.

Alice made contact with the museum in Finland in 2010, and they were indeed interested.

“Four people from the museum came out to see the house,” explained Valerie Knuuttila.

The house was in great shape given it was a 100-years old, but Alice had maintained the house almost as a family museum complete with many period pieces of furniture.

The museum said yes after checking out the home, wanting to have it disassembled and shipped to Finland for reconstruction.

At the museum the home will become the main installation describing life for Finnish immigrants to Canada.

For those unfamiliar with New Finland, SK., it is not actually a town dot on a map.

“New Finland is not on any modern map, and there are no signs announcing its boundaries; in fact, there are no exact boundaries. But the people who were born there, whether or not they still live there, need no directions, New Finland is part of their consciousness; it is in their bones,” wrote Nancy Mattson Schelstraete, in the 1988 history book Life In the New Finland Woods.

“The boundaries of New Finland are invisible but none the less real. New Finlanders know where Uusi Suomi ends and the rest of the world begins; some who are reading this book, however, will need something more precise to locate it. New Finland measures about 12 miles north and south and 14 miles east and west within the municipalities of Willowdale and Rocanville. It is circled by five towns. To the south are Whitewood and Wapella on the Number 1 Highway; to the northeast is Tantallon on the Qu’Appelle River; to the east and northwest respectively are the potash towns of Rocanville and Esterhazy.

After the initial interest the project stalled due to funding at the museum end of things.

“A few times it looked like it was going to happen, but something intervened,” said Knuuttila, adding she would have volunteers ready to help take the house apart, and it would be again postponed.

But this year the land was sold and the new owner wanted the log house removed. With the added urgency, the project finally moved forward, but again with some delay. A hope for a July start evaporated into August.

“It left very little time to actually arrange everything,” said Knuuttila, who added to finally get the go ahead left her feeling elated.

“It was almost a shock,” she said, adding after nearly seven years there was a feeling the project might never get done.

Knuuttila said Alice was more than pleased.

“She was just like a little kid. Her blue eyes were sparkling,” she said.

While moving forward the August timeline was not ideal.

“This is a bad time,” said Knuuttila in the midst of the deconstruction. “We’re at the end of baling and the start of harvest, and everyone is a volunteer … So I didn’t know how it was going to happen.”

However, when asked family, friends, neighbours and even strangers showed up to help undertake the work.

The community came on-board too with Esterhazy businesses coming forward to feed to work crews; Bigway Foods, Subway, TJ’s Pizza, and others supplying other services, North American Lumber, Barry the Builder, and the Elks Club.

The volunteers had a big job ahead of them, but they did have a sage leader, log construction expert Stephen Dalley from Vancouver who acted as an on-site, hands-on foreman, in the employ of the Finnish museum.

Knuutilla said even once the work started new challenges popped up. For example the Canadian Food Inspection Agency arrived having to inspect the logs for export. They had to be certified safe to export to the European Union which meant “taking a wire brush to every piece of wood to make sure there was no dirt on it. We didn’t anticipate having to wire brush every log.”

The deconstruction was like taking apart history in layers. In some respects that was literal.

“There were 17, or 18 layers of wallpaper,” said Knuutilla.

Dalley said the house had some interesting features.

Typically early homestead homes utilized a saddle notch design in log construction.

“It was a quick and easy way of building it,” he said, adding logs remained in a natural round state.

The Finnish home had the logs cut to have flat planes, and a joint notch typical in furniture was used, making the home very strong.

Built out of poplar, the house was “no more than an inch out of square in any one dimension. It was very accurately done.”

While no exact documentation exists it appears construction began around 1900, on the 14 X 41 foot home.

Dalley said the home was clearly made with thought and skill, noting the exact dimensions of the windows that were symmetrical along the front.

The actual work entailed taking the roof off, then the ceiling, and then the walls log-by-log. Dalley numbered each piece to ensure those rebuilding the home at the museum could out it back together like a puzzle with marked pieces. He added, if asked he would love to go to help that side of the project when it is ready.

The logs were connected with wooden dowels. Dalley said usually they have to cut the dowels, so that in reconstruction would mean redrilling the holes and making new dowels.

In the case of the Knuuttila home the years had dried the logs, so thanks to a solid roof, and protected area, the logs came apart, dowels intact.

The work was completed in time for the container units to pull out of the farmyard Aug. 26, heading to port, where they will make a trans-Atlantic trip, scheduled to arrive in Finland Sept. 27.

Knuutilla said there is no announced timeline for the house to be rebuilt at the museum, although a new foundation will need to be fashioned as the logs closest to the ground were too rotted to send over.

Knuutilla said once the home is rebuilt she will be making the trip to Finland to see it.