Forest industry on the map of Finland

Abstract

The map of Finland would look quite different if the forest industry had not had such an important role in the Finnish national economy and society. The production of pulp, paper, sawn timber, plywood and furniture concentrated people in dozens of mill towns and industrial centres. The harvesting and transportation of roundwood, in turn, dispersed people in hundreds of rural villages in different parts of the country. Together these localities formed the settlement systems of the forest sector, in which each of the localities had a certain economic and productive role. During the first half of twentieth century this settlement system expanded with increasing production, but during the second half of the century both lumberman–smallholder villages and mill communities faced serious difficulties. The restructuring processes within the forest
sector decreased jobs in forestry and industrial production, although the production volumes continued to increase. Both the growth periods and restructuring periods have created spatial inequalities between localities and regions within the settlement system of the forest sector.