Lusto
The Finnish Forest Museum
Lustontie 1
58450 PUNKAHARJU
Finland
Phone +358 15 345 100
Telefax +358 15 345 1050
lusto@lusto.fi
The old logging site exhibition gives new insights to the old time logging sites and timber floating routes. It brings alive the golden age of buck saws, lumberjacks and Finnhorses.
The exhibition shows many articles, photographs and films related to logging sites and timber floating operations that all portray the long history of Finnish forest work and timber floating in a fine and vivid way. The life style, work and people working in this field are not forgotten in this exhibition.
As the wood supply volumes to the forest industry started to grow in the end of the 19thcentury, the forests gave work to more and more people. During wintertime there were an untold number of forest workers and horses slaving away in the forests. The workforce was at its biggest in the end of the 1940s – 300 000 men and 100 000 horses. On the timber floating routes there were working as many as 100 000 men during the 1920s and 1930s. The work was hard manual labour with tools like two man saw and buck saw. During the dark time of the day the men serviced their tools, played cards and told stories.
As forestry work was made more efficient by mechanization during the 1960s and 1970s, the number of forest workers started to diminish and horses, for example, were not needed as much anymore. The golden age of timber floating lasted till the 1950s. At first came to end the labour demanding timber floating in the streams, and gradually ceased all floating in small watercourses. Timber transport moved on roads; it was operated by trucks.
The old logging site exhibition perfectly completes the Time of the Machines exhibition, which portrays the mechanization of timber harvesting, forestry and forest industry and was opened in Lusto two years ago. Lusto is now proud to present the whole history of Finnish forest work, starting from the horse powered logging sites and timber floating operations to the era of modern machines.
Besides the work done at logging sites and timber rafts, the exhibition introduces Finnish tar industry and other non-industrial forms of utilizing forests, and gives a look at the change that has happened in the utilization of forests between the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. A brief glimpse is also taken at the state’s forest economy, the beginning of forestry education and the development of private forest economy.
