Finland has an established tradition of protests at harvest sites by organizations like Greenpeace and Luontoliitto, which have affected the national-level and local policymaking. However, long-term daily Finnish forest activism has focused on observing public announcements or public permit applications for large, scenery-changing loggings and then activist experts have tried to convince the loggers not to log. A strategy here is to discuss the logging in question with local branches of the SLL. Activist Minka Virtanen (interview May 12, 2024) told me that because these permits are public and can be followed by forestry activists on a national level, they are one key knowledge source about where logging is planned in the natural or old-growth forests managed by Metsähallitus.
Seasoned activists and experts in the Finnish forest context, for example in the SLL, have also focused on building the knowledge base on the impacts of clearcutting. In Yrjö Haverinen’s view, when “so much factual information is known it cannot be denied or sidelined.” In an interview with the author on April 24, 2024, he continued that, in his estimation, in the face of these truths even the forest industry “needs to think” how forests are handled in the long term. The NGOs have shed light on the aspects of forestry that are not brought up by industry or the state. This approach to activism is more akin to the older Finnish way of relying on expert knowledge, the power of information and facts, and soft negotiations behind the scenes directly with decision-makers. Jyri Mikkola from SLL saw that the rise of the new generation forest movement reflected “how far Finland’s forest situation still is from where it should be.” He added that “also the younger generation representatives have the will to act to remedy this.” In this chapter, I will discuss this new resistance and the ways resisters have approached forestry activism in Finland.
Metsäliike, which is linked to XR and distinct from the wider forest movement, has organized many protests to demand that the devastation of forests be stopped, especially on state lands. As part of the broader forest movement, the 2018-founded Meidän Metsämme (Our Forests) social movement has focused on organizing forest dialogues with all stakeholders to affect experts, researchers, and locals (Meidän Metsämme, n.d.). In contrast, Metsäliike has been more radical and focused on civil disobedience. For example, on February 9, 2023, I observed a protest in the streets in front of the MMM, which is in the heart of downtown Helsinki and near the University of Helsinki (see Figure 10.1).
Figure 10.1 A march for nature that happened in the center of Helsinki.
The protestors demanded that the state stop logging in the Aalistunturi area in western Lapland. Ida Korhonen, an activist in the movement and one of the key characters in the prize-winning Havumetsän lapset (Once Upon a Time in a Forest) documentary film by Virpi Suutari (Reference Suutari2024), spoke at the event. She had recently arrived from Aalistunturi, which at the time was covered in thick snow, and where trees were being harvested by machines. They had also been protesting at the logging site when the multiple police had come to forcefully remove the protestors. Ida shared her thoughts in the rally about why she participates in the movement (translated from Finnish):
I do not want nature to disappear … [there should be] no factories, no log piles, and no heating plants, but the peace of a fell top … and I no longer want to just watch as nature disappears around me. I do not want to remain sleeping, I go wading in unbroken snow. To create a new history. Hello trees. Either we stay standing or we fall.
Korhonen spoke in the rally about how Finland has had a long history of forest activism, where people have risen against the destruction of nature, and that it felt great to be part of this history. She continued:
But at the same time this is really awful, since as we have a history of forest activism, we also have a history of destroying the nature. We have a state that systematically ravages, exploits our nature … we are in a situation, where we need people to go camping in the middle of a logging road in the middle of the winter. It makes me really sad. Since I think Aalistunturi is a pretty perfect example for what is happening in Finland. That we have locals who make a proposal for a national park for a certain area and in a couple months, look, there are hundreds of hectares of logging plans for that place.Footnote 1
By this, Korhonen was referring to the area being suggested for the creation of a national park, as there are very few old-growth forests, nature areas, or national parks in that part of western Lapland. This is a telling example of how pro-forestry Finnish powerholders, such as the current Orpo government and its Minister of Forestry and Agriculture Sari Essayah, seem to systematically try to ensure that conservation is kept limited, which in turn dooms many of the remaining forests. The threshold criteria for forest protection in this concept is too high now, argued Jyri Mikkola, although some state lands are also moved away from economic use. The focus of the Metsäliike has been on state forests, as it would be problematic to target the hundreds of thousands of private forest owners, many of whom gain an important part of their income from forestry. However, the logging carried out by Metsähallitus represents only 8 percent of all logging in Finland and the bulk of wood availability is decided by private forest sales (Frilander & Eskonen, Reference Frilander and Eskonen2020). Furthermore, there are about 50–80,000 hectares of state forests whose conservation value would be as high or higher than the Metso private forest conservation areas, making the protection of state forests more efficient (and less costly) than buying private areas for conversation (Frilander & Eskonen, Reference Frilander and Eskonen2020). The problem is that the state is letting forests be logged that would have at least the same value if protected as what they are spending to buy forest from private owners elsewhere to protect, Jyri Mikkola argued during our interview. Along these lines, Korhonen asked the protesters during the demonstration:
In the end this is about people going to defend something that is dear and important to them, which the state is trying to destroy. State forests are not of the Metsähallitus or of those people who made the national park proposition or us protesters, who camped there. State forests are common forests of us all and Metsähallitus should care for those forests according to the wishes of the forest owners. Or what do you think? Is Metsähallitus caring for our forests as well as we would like it to?
To this, the crowd replied by shouting: “No!!!,” after which Korhonen exclaimed how Metsähallitus “logs natural forests, conceals information, lies … fearing that researchers may find and protect natural forests. And at the same time Metsähallitus claims that we do not log any natural forests anywhere … we all know that they are being logged all the time.” Korhonen reminded the crowd that according to many surveys most Finns want more nature conservation and that it is high time to compensate for the logging that was done to create the welfare state. People can best pay nature back by protection and restoration.
There is also an important nonanthropocentric view of community present here that includes humans and forests being discursively reflected and built in the mobilization, which is a big difference in comparison to the materialist, economistic, rational, and human utilitarian view to forests by the industry proponents. Korhonen was able to articulate this:
When I speak of our forests, I do not mean that they are something we own, to what we can do whatever we want. I mean that in the same way as when I am speaking for example of our family or my friends. I do not own them. But we share some important connection and companionship. It is our nature, nature to which we belong. Nature, to whom we belong. Our forests. Our forest economy, our responsibility.
Korhonen emphasized that what happens to nature and forests is the responsibility of everyone, but especially the people elected to parliament and those working at the Ministry. However, each blames the other for ordering or retaining clearcutting, for example in Aalistunturi. Metsähallitus asserts that they are ordered to act by the politicians, while the politicians insist that Metsähallitus has the autonomy and liberty to do what it wants. This maintains an image that no one is ultimately responsible, which is a common feature in RDPE settings where blame, responsibility, and agency are rarely assigned to the powerholders, as they often refer to these processes as running by themselves. Korhonen called for accountability:
Let’s ensure that these entities, Metsähallitus and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry take responsibility for biodiversity loss. Start to do real deeds to stop nature loss or at least stop the systematic advancement of nature loss … since I do not want any more a continuum of forest activism in Finland. I want a continuum of decaying wood. I want biodiverse forests … and until we get them, we will protest … if needed every day for the next seven years, so that we can ensure that biodiversity loss is really discontinued by year 2030 … before it, let’s see [each other] at streets and squares and logging roads and sites and pulp mill gates … [and] forests.
In this setting, with growing pressure toward a shift in business as usual, some corporations have taken reformative measures in their harvesting policies. For example, according to Jyri Mikkola, UPM has followed the FSC certificate demands and placed at least 5 percent of its productive forest land permanently outside of loggings. The company has also said it would not completely clearcut about 6–7 percent of its forest areas (some of these are drained spruce bogs). The Tornator and Metsä Group have similar initiatives, which seem like cosmetic changes in the overall picture, but which Lassila (Reference Lassila2021) argues should be understood in the historical context where any idea of nonclearcutting harvesting was unheard of for decades and CCF was almost a “swear word to many forest directors.” Clearcutting in bogs is particularly harmful for the climate and water and companies fear this may be prohibited soon, which is a reason they might be trying to change some practices preemptively (Lassila, Reference Lassila2021).
New Media Activism
In March 2024, the Finnish government indicated that it would oppose the EU’s Restoration Act, which is a move made in collaboration with the Orbán government in Hungary. Critiques on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) were shocked by this alignment with Orbán’s far-right regime, which is openly hostile to nature. In a discussion of the EU Restoration Act on X on March 21, 2024, commentators referred to how the pulp industry has captured and dominated the Finnish government and several political parties’ key agendas. @NiklasKaskeala (Kaskeala, Reference Kaskeala2024) argued that the Finnish and Swedish forest industry, through their lobbying, managed to overturn the Restoration Act, “One sector firmly stuck on the wrong side of history manages to keep as a hostage the actions of the whole Union to stop nature loss.” To this, @TarmoKetola (Ketola, Reference Ketola2024b) added, “This is starting to get absurd when an industry that is becoming all the time less and less productive and employing is holding the rest of society hostage in its arsing around.” In another posting on the Restoration Act, @MariPantsar (Pantsar, Reference Pantsar2024), the director of the Kone Foundation “Metsän puolella” (“On the Side of the Forest”) initiative, argued: “I thought the government would no longer be able to surprise with its anti-nature and anti-climate nature. I guess I was wrong again. #restoresetting [ennallistamisasetus].” Another commentator, @MaiKivela (Kivelä, Reference Kivelä2024), a Left Alliance MP, tried to explain how it is not beneficial to Finns and forest owners to go against the Restoration Act, “The restoration regulation is about the possibility of using money to improve the state of Finnish nature, while at the same time employing Finnish people, above all those living in rural areas. In other words, the restoration money is directed to Finnish landowners, machine operators and contractors.” In the end, on June 17, 2024, Finland, along with five other EU states, voted against the Restoration Act (all of these, excepting Poland, have a right-wing government with a strong populist party), which was however passed, as, surprisingly, the majority of countries supported the Act.
These remarks are telling of the contemporary debates around clearcutting in Finland. In the past few years, many good new books critical of clearcutting in different ways have been published in Finnish. Huuto kaupunkiluonnon puolesta (A Yell for City Nature) (2022) explores how forest loss extends even to the cores of city forests across Finland, as city planners are ravaging forests for intensifying urban building. In the book, one of its writers, Sanni Seppo (Kanninen & Seppo, Reference Kanninen and Seppo2022: 255–256), asks while walking in a beloved forest under threat of being cut:
Would it be better for me not to wander anymore in forests, not to enjoy and become attached, as this is always followed by anxiety for the loss?… Should I say farewell to the forest now or start to fight for it?… Shall I struggle, although knowing that any obstacle [to logging] I find can be overturned, and they can always make an exception.
Similar tension between worry and action is reflected in Puut puhuvat (Trees Talk) (Forsberg & Jussila, Reference Forsberg and Jussila2023), inspired by Simard’s (Reference Simard2021) Finding the Mother Tree and based on in-depth experiences of the Finnish Natural Heritage Foundation members, as the foundation buying natural forests for permanent protection (Finnish Natural Heritage Foundation, 2023). The book includes a long history of maternal forest relations in Finland, broken by the arrival of agriculture, Christianity, and paternalism. Suomalainen metsäkylpy (A Finnish Forest Bath) (Leppänen & Pajunen, Reference Leppänen and Pajunen2019) explores the health and other myriad benefits of natural forest exposure and forest walks. The book also has an extensive discussion on the long-term history of forest relations in Finland before the modern forest industry, where forests and trees were central for culture, religion, and livelihoods. Juha Kauppinen (Reference Kauppinen2021), a long-term nature activist and journalist, records the past decades of history of environmental activism in Finland, including those movements against clearcuts in the 1970s–1990s. In his book, Heräämisiä (Awakenings) (2021), he also details how one can become an activist in practice. These are just some examples – besides the other recent references in this chapter – on how scholars and activists are now becoming ever more active in voicing dissent and dissatisfaction over the continuation of clearcutting. This forest activism has spread in concert with a general resistance to rampant mining expansion and demands for climate action.
The Kone Foundation (2023) has started a new major funding scheme called “Metsän puolella” to support research and action around natural forests in Finland and internationally. The Foundation has given grants to many key activists, for example XR, and to a broad group of nature surveyors who worked across Finland mapping valuable old forests that should be conserved. After this enormous work, this survey yielded a detailed and updated map on where to conserve first, considering biodiversity and importance. However, the government disregarded this mapping project and instead initiated its own mapping project, which experts have called a notorious debacle of continuing to sideline expertise and creating window-dressing to push down the bar of what can be clearcut, thereby decreasing conserved forest land size. Haverinen from SLL argued that the criteria that these Kone Foundation-funded mappers have used when evaluating forests “should be accepted by the government and politicians.” The mappers identified 201 public forests (totaling about 60,000 hectares) between 2020 and 2023 around Finland that should not be logged (Greenpeace Suomi, n.d.a).
The government announced in early June 2024 that it will water down the criteria for defining old-growth forests in Finland, making the criteria so strict that according to researchers and environmentalists, such as Panu Halme, there will be practically no old-growth forests left in Southern Finland because everything will be allowed to be cut (Hallikainen, Reference Hallikainen2024). Green Party and other politicians criticized this as a scandalous rigging of ecological criteria, demanded as part of the EU biodiversity strategy to end nature loss. For example, Ville Niinistö, a Member of European Parliament (Greens), tweeted on June 5, 2024, “The impudent attempt to falsify the criteria for the old forest, so that the forests would not need to be protected, is completely exceptional in Finland. The EU Commission has the authority to intervene in an unscientific definition” (@VilleNiinisto; Niinisto, Reference Niinisto2024). The decision was made on June 3, but still on June 4 Orpo met with the Finnish Nature Panel (an independent panel of scientific experts, consisting of leading researchers gathering research data for decision-makers) to pretend his government would discuss the issue with researchers (as he had previously promised that old forests would be protected), which Kaisa Kosonen from Greenpeace saw as a sign of the current state of “science-based decision making” (Kosonen, Reference Kosonen2024).
Latest Conflicts and Trends
There is currently an unprecedented urgency in Finland to retain and protect conservation areas, as the status of Natura 2000 and all conservation areas is put into question by Anglo American, which has carried out – with state and police backing – mining prospecting on top of the Viiankiaapa Natura area in Sodankylä, Northern Finland. This prospecting was resisted by the Metsäliike and XR activists in the spring of 2024, by actively blocking the machinery at the entrance (see Figure 10.2).
Figure 10.2 Protesters from XR block the entrance to the Metsä Group Kemi pulp mill complex. Kemi, Finland, September 2023.
Figure 10.2Long description
Protesters from XR block the entrance to the Metsä Group Kemi pulp mill complex. Five individuals, dressed in winter clothing, hold a banner reading "TULE MUUKAAN SEARVVA KAPINAAN! STUIBMÄI! JOIN THE REBELLION!" One protester sits atop a tripod structure, while others stand beside the banner. The scene is set in Kemi, Finland, with a sign for the Metsä Group visible in the background.
The activists fear that if this activity is allowed, all companies, including pulp companies, can start logging inside conservation areas, making them de facto unprotected. If these activities move forward, the so-called green transition can be considered more important than previous nature conservation legislation. The fear is that then companies would be allowed to enter protected areas, claiming they are doing this for the “bioeconomy” or “green transition,” Ida Korhonen told me in May 2024.
Meanwhile, the state has not been willing to grant self-governance rights to the Sámi, in fear of them attaining too much power to make decisions related to land use in Sápmi and thus, be able to ban all logging, mining, and wind farming. Therefore, the increasingly vocal movement of Sámi activists, and especially young Sámi activists, for their rights can be considered as an important part of the overall resistance to clearcutting in Finland, as most of the remaining old forests are in Northern Finland. The delimiting of Sámi rights as an action is aligned in this sense with retaining extractivisms rather than protecting nature.
However, slowly more and more people have started to defend forests, questioning the story from the forest industry that clearcutting would be sustainable way to interact with the forest. This growing expression of grievances also brings into question the framing that only those who own forests have the right to decide what happens to them (meaning in practice they have the right to remove them). Typically, this forest activism starts with nearby forests. For example, on February 16, 2023, in Isnäs, a village in Loviisa, a local millionaire forest owner decided to clearcut and sell his forests to UPM. These forests were next to a school in the middle of town and were widely loved by the children. The locals resisted this and the parents of the children tried to block the clearcutting – although eventually most of the forest was destroyed, which shows the power of the RDPE. This example shows how people have started to defend loved places and dare to question the legitimacy of the current forestry system to act as it wishes. In the end, 16 hectares were logged, while about 5 hectares next to the school were retained, in a solution UPM called a “compromise,” due to the local resistance (Joukanen, Reference Joukanen2023). Greenpeace noted how UPM company representative gave untruthful answers to questions from the children before the logging. When the children asked what would happen to the animals in the forest, the UPM employee responded that “nothing would happen to the animals” and that the animals “would continue to live here as before,” and that a “new home would be found for them” (Joukanen, Reference Joukanen2023). In fact, such claims are representative of the underlying extractivist mindsets and myopia that are required to carry out the foundational violence that is required by those in this line of work. Existences must be denied and hidden in the process of destroying entire habitats. For those that operate inside the extractivist and deforesting RDPEs, the range of existences actively registered and realized in their minds is very limited. This allows them to perpetuate the falsehoods that dominate the thinking about what happens to other living beings and their homes with clearcutting. Children have not yet succumbed to the trap of nontruths about existences that is omnipresent in modern consumer societies.
I tried to ask several activists and experts for some current examples of successful resistance against clearcutting, but, for example in South Karelia, the answers from the SLL regional environmentalists were bleak – with none really during the past 20 years. A Lappeenranta-based activist told me that, “I do not see any [successes] here, no victories. Or then they are really marginal,” such as possibly allowing CCF in some municipalities in theory, or agreeing on some spoken level that CCF should be favored on peat lands. Other locals also answered that there are no successes, as the clearcutting has expanded so much since 2014. However, Jyri Mikkola thought that there were some successes, “but not many,” including the forest-preserving alternations to the forest plan in the city of Imatra (which also has a major pulp and paper mill, owned by Stora Enso). However, in the bigger picture the situation remains bleak. This dire situation is the current reality; therefore, this book has focused far less on resistance and their successful strategies than my other books. This reflects the reality of the deforesting RDPEs that are currently in power. This means that first the root causes of the RDPE need to be identified, to be able to even understand the situation. Once the situation is understood, then it is easier to start to affect and improve the situation. Even to talk about these things in Finland felt “therapeutic” for many informants, as many told me at the end of their interviews they have felt so alone under the crush of the pro-clearcutting and pulping hegemony.
In the past few years many former forestry professionals have turned to forest activism, trying to conserve forests by voluntary mapping and being active in conservation NGOs and movements. For example, Yrjö Haverinen (interview April 24, 2024), trained as forest products engineer at the Helsinki University of Technology in 1971, has been active since around 2010 in the forest conservation efforts in South Karelia. Previously, he worked for years for the Kemijärvi and Kuusankoski pulp mills and was a trainer for new paper engineers. As time passed, “the more worried I have become of the background history of Finnish forest industry. That greedy wood use, forgetting other things except mere wood growth, that forest is also so much more.” He thinks the root cause of the current clearcutting is the 1948 continuance of the practical ban on forestry methods other than clearcutting. In addition, he sees the pulp mills themselves as a huge part of the problem. He shared some thoughts about the state of affairs:
But now we have come so far in this usage of trees that our forests tolerance starts to be tested, and this has resulted in the forest scenery that, when you travel Finland east to west, or west to east, or south to north, or down, so, there is quite a bit of patchwork quilt, consisting of those clearcut, young forests.
This has negatively affected many aspects of the forest ecosystem, including “biodiversity, climate change, water pollution, human health, and recreation.” Haverinen felt that the real question is “what price and importance” should be given to these different aspects of the forest and the surrounding nature. When I asked Haverinen about what the role of civil society has been in affecting this state of affairs in South Karelia, he referred to the still important yet decreasing role of forest industry in offering jobs, tax income, and export yields. However, he indicated that as this role gets weaker “people start to value the local environment near forests as helping in recreation and health. They like to go mushroom picking, collecting berries, enjoying the nature on their free time.” When I asked if logging in important places has been stopped, the answer was negative. He said that “there have not been any larger confrontations here.” He referred to “dismal-looking” clearcuts on the shores of the Saimaa lakes that stand in stark contradiction to the promotion of tourism industry and job creation in the area. He said that when “the scenery turns baldhead does that please those coming from the south or elsewhere, as it does not even please the locals.” It was interesting to hear that very little contentious agency was actively and openly present, which again demonstrates the dominance and hegemony of the pulping RDPE in South Karelia.
Metsäliike Protests at Aalistunturi and Karttimonjoki
Meanwhile, the new Metsäliike, which, according to one member, has about 250 people in its communication list of insider activists, “with a few dozen really active coordinators,” has acted notably. This group has especially protested in Northern Finland in some very visible campaigns, such as Aalistunturi (see Figure 10.3). An activist of the movement, who wanted to remain anonymous, gave me some insight into the current setting of forest activism in Finland. Metsäliike “focuses especially on these old natural forests and particularly in state lands, and the means cavalcade includes direct action,” unlike most other forest activist groups that are more established in Finland. Metsäliike is a “quite horizontal grassroots level organization and [carries out] for example forest guard action, where some people have kind of recruited to watch over weekly some valuable state natural forests under a logging notice.”
Figure 10.3 Metsäliike members as forest guards in Aalistunturi, Finland, January 2023.
I asked what their key strategies had been, he answered that the strategies
most central for creating identity and recognition have been the logging stopping, nonviolent civil disobedience using and direct-action utilizing forest campaigns. Aalistunturi was perhaps the most visible, where we blocked by bodies or structures or tents the roads that harvesters would have used to go to log, and did use [later], but could not temporarily because of the protest go logging this kind of state-owned valuable forest area, which had had a local environmentalists’ protection proposition, and a national park proposition.
The Metsäliike member relayed the story about how they went to Aalistunturi from Helsinki with others, after hearing about the action:
We drove there in the middle of the night, and it was snowing quite a bit, it was like fearing that the car would be stuck soon on the roadside, driving in fresh snow. We arrived and went in the middle of the night precisely as the aim was to set up a tent in the middle of the road, so that in the morning these forestry workers cannot pass to their harvesters. So, the harvesters were there, logging had started, but these workers left each night with their own cars, and as the distances were so long, we managed to block a fork in the road so far from the logging site that it would not have made sense for them to leave the car there and trudge in the snow to their harvesters.… We spent the night in the tent … in the middle of the night, or maybe at five AM, a harvester driver came there … and a friend went to say that there is a demonstration here and you do not need to go to work today, and then he was just that “this is clear and I will call the management.”
The next day “there arrived an erätarkastaja [warden] of Metsähallitus, which is a kind of official who can give expulsion orders, that has some police like powers.” He told them to leave even before the police arrived. The activist I was speaking to had to leave earlier than the others for other reasons and saw many more police driving to the spot (see Figure 10.4):
A pointless column of police cars to dismantle the demonstration … that was completely unimaginable, the scale of the police operation, fully inconceivable, there came all the way from Oulu some like snow sledges, dogs, and rubber bullet weapons, goddammit.… So, I do not know for what they were then prepared, as there was such a cavalcade of that bunch. People stayed in the area for several weeks and made similar roadblocks or just walked to a 60–90-meter distance from harvesters, when they are not allowed to work, if people are inside the perimeter. Quite often the drivers respect this, but not always in Helsinki.
Figure 10.4 The police patrolling at Aalistunturi, Finland, January 2023.
If a person managed to ski close to the machine and signal the driver, they stopped the logging. “We understood that Metsähallitus paid a compensation to them for the stalled time.”
I asked how it felt to set up the camp: “Quite varied, if I remember, always before something like this happens there is a kind of nervous and tense feeling, but then when the tent was up there in the middle of the night, then you maybe relax, that the objective has been kind of fulfilled.” He said it also felt like that way they
managed to at least for a very small part to help the local nature defense struggle, firstly, and secondly talk to people nationally about the problems of contemporary forest industry in Finland, and problematic policies of Metsähallitus. It felt that way useful, but then one does on the other hand think always that where are the concrete impacts … as police continually with its mighty force removes activists from there and the loggings continue.
This activist, like others, emphasized that Metsäliike goes to ongoing struggles to help when asked: “These struggles do not come from nowhere, and they are not invited by some national movement, but collaborations with local environmentalists. But this is often left invisible in the official campaigns, as these local actors do not necessarily want to be in the most heated direct-action phase so actively with their own face and name in publicity.”
He saw that in the state cases where they had campaigned they had “hardly attained conservation victories,” “as this protection is so difficult as we have this pulp industry that has left from a mitten [lähteä lapasesta, a common idiomatic expression in Finnish meaning that a situation has gone out of control] during the past 15 years.” However, there were some places, like Karttimonjoki, where “a logging notice issued had not been executed, or had been postponed, due to campaigning.”
I talked to another activist, Minka, who has participated as a forest activist in many events, for example camping for two weeks at Karttimonjoki in Kainuu to serve as a “forest guard,” in case Metsähallitus wanted to restart logging there. This case had multiple meanings and was essential in forging the new Metsäliike. According to Jyri Mikkola, the environmentalists first heard about these logging plans in the dialogue process between Metsähallitus, SLL, SLL Kainuu, and Greenpeace. Later, he checked the place and did a species survey as a member of the Luonnonmetsätyöryhmä. As Metsähallitus did not completely withdraw from the logging, Greenpeace took over the retainment of the forests, after which Metsäliike and XR entered the picture. Minka was with them and, during our interview, she told me about the episode and the feelings she experienced in these forests:
So, we went off, we thought that it would be wonderful to get to do something like this to stop loggings. That it could feel like not being so frustrated and fearful of everything [referring to the unfolding climate catastrophe], to get to do something concrete. Then this case spread in social media, and we thought that if they need people, we will go there to help. Three people inexperienced in forest activism left there … we had turns for mornings, days and afternoons … to check that no harvesters were there … and besides that we were learning all these things [of forest activism], doing social media and so on.
Then Greenpeace shifted the coordination to XR, and having stayed in the area for two to three weeks, Minka stayed to introduce newcomers to the forest area:
to spread the information, coordinating it.… I walked the new activists in the area, explained what the case was, and how it is connected to Metsähallitus practices .… The area is interesting, as on the way there are really dramatic clearcuts, and then different age planted areas or tree plantations. So, then you learn fast the difference between natural forests and others.
This happened in late autumn and winter of 2021. Minka said she was surprised to learn that in practice the activism was not so rough as is often thought and the general conditions were better. She was not expected to chain herself to a tree; instead the key tactics were making social media posts and walking close to the harvester. During this stay she learned how bad the situation of forests in Finland was and she said she “felt like I had been scammed. I was angry, why has no one told me, a silly feeling, that I had thought all is so nicely, and so possibly all others think … while many things are going to hell.”
This is a sign of the doxa turning to heterodoxy, when the assumed state of affairs is shown to be something else, Minka expressing feeling that
the fronts [props] are tearing and creaking.… A shocked and angry feeling, and at the same time it is so unbelievably beautiful, that old, natural forest also there in Karttimonjoki, it was also so amazing. There was a beaver nest, and wolverine food deposits, and all kinds of beings, and a huge alder. In the end I remembered single trees and places, and that was really beautiful and incredible, the terrain in that kind of old areas, so I wrote there this …
At this point she looked at her notebook and then proceeded to share what she had written, “I feel a bit like when being really enamored … maybe I am then enamored with those forests that carry the world … I couldn’t possibly be away from there!” She continued, “well, the whole place has become important to me, it has been somehow miraculous. I have been to natural and old forests also before,” but in that region the drastic difference to clearcuts around “highlighted the gorgeousness of natural state,” “when there was time to be” in that forest for weeks.
They had thought before arriving that the locals would be hostile to activists coming from Helsinki but found this was not the case. She shares that “there were locals we met, who said that also others share the opinion that enough has been logged here, but no one dares to say this aloud. We received this kind of half-furtive comments.” They also made local friends and allies. She told me of one such interaction:
There was a reindeer herder who passed the area often. And when he saw us, he followed us, saying that finally I managed to catch you, I have been trying to find you here. Somehow, he was really pro-conservation, well he had his own motivations, hunting capercaillie [a bird in the grouse family], there was a lek [another type of grouse], so he did not want it to be logged. He was a guy who helped us a lot, and in the end started to watch the area … promising to tell us if logging was starting.
The hunters in general, although not approving of XR or Greenpeace in many senses, were supportive of the logging protests, saying that it was “good that you are here.” A young local politician also expressed support for them, but being from the Centre Party, quickly received reprimands from her “Centre party colleagues, especially older ones”; therefore, she had to backpedal, saying that she had only said her personal opinions. Yet, even despite the fallout she was “still visiting us and wanting to help us.” There were also local tourism entrepreneurs who helped in the effort and were happy for them to be there, according to Minka.
I asked what the outcome was; she said simply, “Well, the forest is still standing.” She continued to elaborate, “It is in a passive state, the logging announcement is still active.” Yet, when they had actively watched over the area for two months and got good local and national publicity, “the logging thing was frozen” and continues to be as of February 2025. The activists also signaled they are ready to pursue more radical means if needed, which potentially makes the area more of a no-go for Metsähallitus. Greenpeace was there after the 2021 camp to put a lot of ropes between treetops (Greenpeace Suomi, 2023). Minka indicated that it did this “as this might slow down somehow the loggings, as it makes using harvesters hazardous, and also result in plastic powder” from the ropes possibly ending up in pulp digesters, there being also metal parts used to attach the ropes that make logging hazardous. She continued, “and then someone [from the company] went and saw this roping, and nothing has happened after that.” This ended up saving the nest of a protected species of large bird, which if the presence of the nest was verified would “protect a substantial area.” Minka shared that, “The area is being still watched over by us.”
The Karttimonjoki episode was important to forge the Metsäliike, as “it was realized that yes we do have all these different strengths, and that this thing is working well, this created connection between the forest sections.” The connections created most strongly were between XR and Greenpeace, and others, such as Luontoliitto. This action also allowed “Metsäliike to become independent as a kind of own social movement.” This was also an important battle “symbolically”:
[A]nd somehow also it became a loved place, and one remembers all single burls and some particular tussocks, or somehow remembers those areas and recognizes … sometimes it comes to my dreams, that place so that I fear somehow that now [it has been logged]. Now that I say that the last checking I have done was two months ago, I get a kind of panic that what if it has been logged down in this time, some kind of sadness and fear is connected to it already beforehand, that what happens to that area, as one has become attached to it. A while ago I saw a nightmare that the reindeer-man called me that we have the case on in here, shutting off the call, and I did not know if that was real? And then I was calling to whom to call? What should I start to do?… I have seen nightmares that the loggings start, and it is something there deep in the mind, while I am not actively working on this case now … there is some multi-meaning purpose to this case, a feeling of principles, that at least this will not be laid down on my time.
I asked if she felt a feeling of succeeding after the episode, she said, “Definitely yes, I feel that after activism I have had” a feeling that one can affect things:
Nothing could have made me feel more as part of this society than doing this activism, somehow one notices that we can tie together by a semi-small group these kind of nice ideas, and then execute them with different degrees of success, typically quite well. And then this suddenly shows in the public discussion, or affects something, or that forest is concretely there standing. That you kind of participate actively as a citizen to the discussions of this society or wake up those discussions, have a feeling of agency in oneself and in one’s life, but also in relation to the society.
And although there have been also many places of sadness, that some areas have been logged, then at least we have prolonged a case, or at least something has been left, one hectare out of six standing. Not all has gone according to Metsähallitus or some company plans, something has been saved or at least some kind of own sense here in the middle of modern world’s absurdity and oppression, that one remains somehow operational when acting. That leads to a kind of successful feeling, or hopeful feeling.
I asked what the current state of forest activism in Finland is, to which Minka replied: “I have heard from people having done this longer that in the past two years many new things have happened, with new interest, new things starting differently. Not a huge landslide [of activism] but a constant” interest by people to educate themselves and hear more. She has now talked to large masses, audiences of hundreds of people, and is known as one of the key characters in the Havumetsän lapset (literally meaning Children of the Coniferous Forest) film. She felt that there was “a kind of hard consensus” reigning:
[T]he common feeling is that people are in the end quite busted [broken up] about what is happening here. Or then if they have not known, they are quite shocked, but somehow, they want that nature would be more protected and feel distressed of the current situation and the order of the modern society. This love and worry for nature have been a cross-cutting theme.… Some kind of a silent rupture is taking place, I feel.
This last sentence refers to more positive times in society in relation to forest conservation. Besides Minka, other activists also indicated that they felt the same, as another Metsäliike member said to me in May 2024:
[A] general critical attitude towards Finland’s forest industry has risen, but it is maybe delimited to such circles where it has not however managed to affect much what companies materially do, and what happens within the most important decisions. Or at what level Finland’s harvests are. How much money is put into forest programs. The current government program is a huge setback.
Thus, there is a kind of deepening rupture between what most people want and what the ruling elites and the RDPE do. This is a possible explanation of why Finland (and Sweden, where similar dynamics are taking place) is experiencing more hostile police responses to the new clearcutting and pulp company blockades put up by forest activists.
I asked Minka what a person could do upon seeing the destruction of their nearby forest. If they were feeling sadness and anger, how could they react? She said, “It is worth it to mourn those sorrows, it is worthwhile to feel those feelings, since they are really valid. If sorrow comes, agony.” During the press tour she had heard a lot of these stories:
Someone comes to tell that we had this and then it was logged, and I am so sad. We had a neighbor and then he went and cut that wonderful childhood forest right next to our house so that my father could not even talk for a week. Or that I have not been able to return to the area, or I have somehow a bad feeling or somehow feel pain otherwise.
There has been a surge of new literature on experiencing and feeling the painful emotions and distress caused by the ecological and climate crises, the traumas. Writing from an ecopsychology perspective, therapist Harri Virtanen (Reference Virtanen2022) argues in his book on surviving eco-anxiety, Trauma ja Luonto (Trauma and Nature), that these emotions are not individual per se, but they flow from the worsening quality of the environment, of which we are a part. It is a misunderstanding borne by the individualization of all issues and problems in modern society that one mischaracterizes the feelings as one’s own fault, while they should be seen as natural consequences of the cause of ecological degradation taking place and being witnessed. This eco-anxiety is becoming increasingly common and is a source of serious mental distress, especially among the youth. However, activism could be considered a cure for these helpful feelings, which are themselves helpful signals to act. However, one needs to start by recognizing and not sidelining the emotions. Minka told me about encountering these feelings en masse due to Finnish clearcutting, “People have huge experiences of losses, sorrow and anxiety for losing their nearby areas and even single trees.” This statement refers to the practice that many Finns still have of having important or sacred family trees (see Tree People by Kovalainen and Seppo [Reference Kovalainen and Seppo2014]). These feelings can have “gnawed the person for years or decades.”
Minka continued, it is “no small thing that a huge ecosystem is lost, so it is worth it to feel the sorrow. That is a huge thing, that it is somehow lost, that one should be near to the feelings, but not attach” oneself to them. “If one notices that there is something wrong, and feels bad, then one can try to stop it, that it would not happen again somewhere else. Or spread information about it.” She recommended that it is important to be active locally in different ways.
However, this is easier said than done, especially if one lives on the deforesting frontier in the rural areas of Finland, with a strong pulping hegemony present. Minka said that it helps her to put these actions into the perspective of where the planet is going, the predicted huge problems due to the climatic-ecological catastrophes, climatic collapse. She closed with the thought: “Relating one’s own personal fears to the enormous, bigger also personal fears can be what helps. At least it helps me at times if I am afraid in some protest or somewhere. So, then I think of those things, that really make me afraid, really really, and suddenly it feels a bit easier to be there.”
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