Endemic time-spaces of Finland: Aquatic regimes

Abstract

This article explores the endemic time-spaces of Finnish aquatic regimes. More precisely, it examines the socio-ecological relationships between Finns and lakes, rivers, and marshes-mires. First, the 'engine' of endemic time-space research, land use, and occupancy documentation, is explored in the Finnish context. Then two catchment areas, Kokemäenjoki in Western Finland and Vuoksi in Eastern Finland, provide cases which illustrate both past endemic time-spaces and surviving aspects of cultural readings of lakes and rivers. The ongoing winter seining in Lake Puruvesi in North Karelia emerges as an unbroken practice, with deep roots, that maintains the endemic time-spaces of a traditional Finnish relationship with a lake. As industrial uses of catchment areas, zoning, and environmental permitting exclude endemic readings inherent on the land and waterscapes, solutions are explored through mapping, along with its limitations, as a form bridging the gap between local realities and resource extraction.