The gathering of information and memories from forest professionals began by selecting the areas where the interviews would be carried out. The distribution of areas was defined as information gathering proceeded. One starting point for selecting the interview areas was the situation in the 1950’s. In the 1950’s, the significance of forestry as a means of employment was particularly great in the East and North of Finland. In these areas approximately half of the landless population and two-thirds of small farmers earned their living from floating and forest work. The interview project wanted to emphasise these areas. (Map 1) However, the research did target the whole of Finland. In addition to its geographical scope, the project also covered cultural areas. One can find industrial localities, countryside areas, provincial centres and remote districts within the research area. The majority of the interviews were carried out as week-long field tours, 20 of which were organised in total. (Map 2) During the preliminary study, a suitable interview framework was compiled and tested for each professional group. The common themes to be dealt with were childhood, choice of profession, education, working life experiences, changes at work and relationships with the forest. The interview frameworks were developed further as the project proceeded and interesting special themes were discovered. The interview frameworks worked as a memory support for the interviewer and as a tool for getting into the subject. Co-operation was carried out with Lusto’s mechanical forestry data recording project, since the projects had mutual targets of interest. The interviews concentrated on the experiences of degree foresters, foresters (forest supervisors, forest technicians and forest engineers), forest machine contractors and operators, lumberjacks and the woman cooks in the forest camps. Diagrams 1-4 show the distribution of interviewees according to profession and age group, and also by employer. The group of “other interviewees” in diagram 1 is more accurately analysed in diagram 2. Kuva:Pauliina Susi The interviews were carried out using an autobiographical interview method. The project did not aim to collect detailed information on work and tools, methods and technology or changes to them, but to collect the forest professionals’ experiences of these changes. Autobiographical interviews are always personal in their character. When the interviewee is asked about the best and worst moments of his working career, or the choices and evaluations made along the way, he has to stop think about the different stages of his life in a new way. The interviewees may also have refused to answer the questions they found awkward, and some indeed did so. However, most of those interviewed talked quite openly, even about the more painful aspects of their lives. In this situation, the interviewer was required to have the skill of being a good listener, and the full trust of the interviewee. However, the trust required for open conversation did not always transpire and there are some short worded interviews found amongst the material from when it was difficult to encourage the forest professionals talk more extensively about the issues concerned. The interviews were also problematic when the interviewee talked about forestry at more of a general level than from personal experience. Reasons for this could for example be related to the interviewee’s job as a forestry expert and the custom of presenting only general information instead of personal opinions. The interviewee has also perhaps consciously wanted to avoid personal matters. However, from an ethnology point of view, it was only personal experiences that were important in this project. The aim was that in addition to their own work, the forest professionals would tell about their own family, living environment, values and attitudes. When questions about their childhood home and family life were raised in the interview, few interviewees found them strange. They did not always see that their working career affected family life. The interviews also show how changes in place of work have moved families to different localities, how work time and spare time have overlapped and how forest professionals have taken work home (a few of the forest professionals partners were also interviewed in order to supplement the families’ point of view). One can find different research subjects from the interview material collected. The interviews opened up a view to the human side of forestry. The material makes it possible to complement the picture from past lesser known decades. The material collected will convey information from the past, but especially also from this time; not only from the lives of forest professionals, but also the society around them. The material is currently being utilised in the following ongoing research: Hanna Snellman, Ph.D., docent, “Gothenburg – the biggest village of Salla” (monography); Katri Kaunisto MA, “Forest Professionals in Changing Forestry” (doctoral thesis of ethnology, Helsinki University), Tiina Suopajärvi MA, “A foresters’ relationship with nature” (doctoral thesis of cultural anthropology, Oulu University), and Leena Paaskoski MA, “In the Degree Forester’s Profession, Ethnology research into changes in the degree foresters’ professional culture (doctoral thesis of ethnology, Helsinki University).