A military camp in the middle of nowhere: mobilities, dislocation and the archaeology of a Second World War German military base in Finnish Lapland

Abstract

This article discusses military mobilities and encampment, and associated themes such as dislocation and displacement of people, through the case of a Second World War German military camp in Finnish Lapland. The article describes the camp and its archaeological research and discusses various aspects of the camp and camp life in its particular subarctic ‘wilderness’ setting, framing the discussion within the themes of mobilities and dislocations, and especially their multiple impacts on the German troops and their multinational prisoners-of-war based in the camp. A particular emphasis is put on how mobilities and dislocation – in effect ‘being stuck’ in a northern wilderness – were intertwined and how the inhabitants of the camp coped with the situation, as well as how this is reflected in the different features of the camp itself and the archaeological material that the fieldwork produced.

Keywords:

• Conflict archaeology
• Second World War
• mobility
• German
• Prisoner of War
• Lapland
• Finland

Introduction

Mobility has emerged as an important research topic across the social sciences in the 2000s and been addressed from myriad perspectives, ranging from the more abstract notions that life is movement and the world a continuous generative process of ‘coming into being’ to more concrete questions about the significance and implications of the movement of people, things and ideas (e.g. Urry 2007; Ingold 2011; Beaudry and Parno 2013). Mobilities come in diverse forms, many of which are centrally important in the context of the modern world, where Urry (2007, 10–11) has identified twelve main types of mobility, including military mobility. Military mobilities are often also associated, directly and indirectly, with encampment – camps for soldiers, prisoners and refugees, for example – and the twentieth century has indeed been dubbed as ‘the era of camps’ (Löfgren 2003, 245; quoted in Minca 2015, 75).

This article will look into military mobilities and encampment, and associated themes such as dislocation or displacement of people, through the case of a Second World War (WWII) German military camp in Finnish Lapland. The article describes the camp and its archaeological research and discusses various aspects of the camp and camp life in its particular subarctic ‘wilderness’ setting, framing the discussion within the themes of mobilities and dislocations, and especially their multiple impacts on the German troops and their multinational prisoners of war based in the camp. A particular emphasis is put on how mobilities and dislocation – in effect ‘being stuck’ in a northern wilderness – were intertwined and how the inhabitants of the camp coped with the situation, as well as how this is reflected in the different features of the camp itself and the archaeological material that the fieldwork produced.

The military base under study is located by River Peltojoki in northern Inari, Finnish Lapland, and is one of the thousands of sites that German troops built in northern Finland in 1941–1944, when Finland and Germany cooperated in the war against the Soviet Union (Figure 1). The Peltojoki base is readily associated with issues of mobility in the sense that it was originally built to serve German road construction through the Lapland wilderness, to provide a connection from northernmost Finland to the German-occupied Norway. At the time, the road network and other infrastructure in Lapland was very rudimentary and unsuitable for the purposes of over 200,000 German troops based in Finland, and consequently the Germans engaged in various major construction projects in northern Finland (e.g. Korpi 2010; and below). Indeed, the northern front of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union was fairly stagnant due to the difficult environmental conditions of Lapland, and the German troops based in Finland were largely entangled in other activities than active warfare. Towards the end of the war, the unofficial alliance between Finland and Germany broke apart and resulted in the so-called ‘Lapland War’ between the former brothers-in-arms. While retreating to Norway, the German troops destroyed not only their own military sites, but also inflicted large-scale destruction of northern Finnish landscapes and property.

Figure 1. Top: Location of the studied Peltojoki Military base in Lapland, and the frontlines in 1941–1944; Bottom: Present-day view over the Peltojoki base situated on the right bank of the River Peltojoki (Illustration: Oula Seitsonen).

The tangible and intangible heritage of the German military presence is rich in Finnish Lapland, but it has attracted little scholarly or other interest until very recently; it is becoming increasingly clear, however, that this material has a substantial potential for addressing a range of topics about the recent past and its significance in the present (e.g. Seitsonen and Herva 2011; Herva 2014; Herva et al. 2016; and below). The complicated Finnish–German relations during the war – first as much needed, albeit somewhat awkward, friends and then as enemies who ended up causing large-scale destruction in Lapland – has been, and to a degree still is, a sensitive topic which has only recently begun to be reconsidered from fresh perspectives (e.g. Kivimäki 2012). At the same time, the material remains of the German troops in Finland, including the potential of former German sites for archaeological research, has been brought to scholarly and public discussion. Our fieldwork conducted in 2006–2007 and 2009, and discussed in here, was an early attempt to map and consider the usefulness of archaeological approaches for meaningful problem-oriented studies of WWII German military sites in Finland. This paper presents and analyses the material derived from that fieldwork and puts it in a broader context.

Historical background and the German military base at Peltojoki

Finland was drawn into the WWII in November 1939 when the Soviet Union attacked the country. The resulting ‘Winter War’ lasted only three months but resulted in heavy losses for Finland, and since a new war against the Soviet Union was expected, Finland turned to Germany for help. Although not formally allies, in practice Finland became a co-belligerent in Germany’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union. Over 200,000 German military personnel came to be stationed primarily in northern Finland where they took the responsibility of the Arctic front (Jokisipilä 2005). This northern terrain, however, was exceedingly unfamiliar to the Germans and unsuitable for their war efforts (Figure 2), and the front became essentially stationary soon after Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union commenced.

Figure 2. Left: Original caption: ‘Maintenance road on the west bank of the Kotikoski. Wagons part of a German supply train. / Traffic on the Alakurtti road’ (Photograph: Heikki Roivainen/SA-Kuva JSdia006/Alakurtti (Salla) 26.09.1941); Right: Original caption: ‘German “panzer lieutenant” as a fjell climber’ (Photograph: Heikki Roivainen/SA-Kuva 67457/Voittotunturi 15.12.1941).

The Germans established large military bases near northern Finnish towns and villages where they interacted with local civilians and were generally in amicable terms with them (Junila 2000; Seitsonen and Koskinen-Koivisto 2017; Ylimaunu et al. 2013). Majority of the German bases were located behind the frontlines and served diverse logistical, administrative and other supporting functions. Large numbers of the German troops based in Finland were engaged in other activities than direct warfare, including constructing and improving the inadequate infrastructure (Korpi 2010). Nearly 30,000 multinational prisoners of war were used as forced labour in these projects which sometimes unfolded fairly deep in the Lapland’s taiga and tundra wilderness (Otto 2008; Westerlund 2008a, 2008b). The Peltojoki base is an example of these more remote sites, established late in 1941 or early 1942 to house the construction workers of Kaamanen-Karigasniemi road and Peltojoki bridge. Oral histories, and some archaeological finds, indicate at least an occasional presence of PoWs in the camp; they were engaged at least in road building and maintenance, such as snowploughing. After the road was finished in 1943, the Peltojoki base served as a bridge guard, supply depot, and stopover along the Karigasniemi road until it was destroyed and abandoned around mid-November in 1944 (Huttunen 1990).

The initial mapping of the base, located on the northern side of River Peltojoki which meanders down from the treeless fjells, was conducted during archaeological surveys in the adjoining Muotkatunturit wilderness area in 2006–2007 (Seitsonen and Nordqvist 2009) and followed by a more thorough study of the site in 2009. A total of 45 wartime structures were identified within an area covering c. 250 × 150 m², for instance a large dugout, kitchen building, and barrack foundations (Figure 3). Ten structures/features were test excavated, with the trenches varying from 0.5 to 4 m² in area (Figure 4).

Figure 3. General map of the Peltojoki base (Map: Oula Seitsonen & Kerkko Nordqvist).

Figure 4. Some of the excavated structures: (a) Rubbish pit S1/trench 1; (b) Animal shelter S3/trench 3; (c) Kitchen-mess hall S2/trench 2a (Photographs: Oula Seitsonen); (d) Rubbish pit S27/trench 6, Oula Seitsonen digging (Photograph: Kerkko Nordqvist).

Trench 1 targeted a quadrangular, about 60 cm deep rubbish pit (S1) close to the kitchen, and produced household waste. Trenches 2a–b were dug at the kitchen remains (S2) on the riverbank and revealed a burned wooden and concrete floor, and produced various household items, whereas 2c denotes porcelain finds collected from the river next to the kitchen. Trench 3 was dug within a turf foundation (S3) that proved out to be an animal shelter and revealed the manure drain in the middle of the floor. Trench 4 covered one corner of a pit toilet (S14) which appeared to have two phases of use: the few finds from the lower layer suggested an association with the German presence and the upper with post-war use, and decaying parts of the post-war superstructure were also documented in the vicinity. Trench 5 was dug in the foundations of one (S5) of the two identified barracks at the site. The foundation bank consisted of fine sand brought from somewhere else, possibly a sandpit north of the base: a prefabricated barrack with a wooden floor and a door and window(s) at the end of the barrack appears to have been erected on it.

Trenches 6–8 were cuts opened into backfilled pits (S27, S4, S17) which had been used to destroy military material before the German retreat in November 1944. The pits contained large quantities of burned artefacts: S27 (Trench 6) produced mainly military items, S4 (Trench 7) contained both military material and building materials, whereas parts of unidentified machinery dominated the finds from S17 (Trench 8). Trench 9 was a sondage in the middle of a small barrack foundation (S28) and produced only two flattened tins. Trench 10 was dug in a concentration of broken glass (S31), which was invisible to the surface but could be felt through the turf. This seems to have been a level-ground dump specifically for glassware, consisting mostly of sherds from alcohol bottles, but also broken drinking glasses and pints, and one glass ashtray.

Over 1700 wartime and post-war finds were catalogued from the excavations and some 200 more finds mapped on the surface (Table 1), in addition to which Stone Age lithic material was encountered at the site. As examples of the finds, sherds of mirror glass, burned shoe polish containers and a razor blade hint at the homely routines of the soldiers stationed at the base, whereas other finds, such as Pelikan ink bottle fragments and remains of burned binders, are related to the administrative duties conducted there. Personal military items – such as buckles, fasteners and exploded bullet shells – together with household items were found around the kitchen and barrack foundations.

Table 1. Finds catalogued at the test excavations (x = present; Misc. category includes bits and pieces of e.g. charred leather, cloth and paper, metal, wire, and so on).

Trench	Str.	Military	Economic	Building	Machinery	Vehicle	Misc.	Total
1	1		239	x			x	239
2a–b	2	6	201	97			x	304
2c	river		298					298
3	3			x				0
4	14	1	3					4
5	5	1	7	7				15
6	27	95	177	18	45	5	x	340
7	4	35	27	52			x	114
8	17	18	27	39	127		x	211
9	28		2					2
10	31		196					196
Total		156	1177	213	172	5	x	1723

Building a road through the wilderness

The surroundings of the Peltojoki base, and indeed much of northern Finland, must have looked virtually like an uninhabited tundra and taiga environment for the Germans although it was, actually, an ancient cultural landscape of the indigenous Sámi and had also been inhabited by Finnish settlers for a long time. Indeed, northern Fennoscandia had been an arena for cultural encounters and interaction – effectively a meeting zone between North, South, East and West – for centuries before the WWII, but the arrival of the German troops and their multinational PoWs marked an unpreceded scale of internationalization in this northern periphery. Moreover, human mobilities in this northern terrain had traditionally not been along constructed roads, central to the functioning of the German war machinery, but instead along traditional river routes and pathways.

The poor tracks and constricted road network in Lapland was a source of constant concern to the German troops. It is illustrative that the important 530-km ‘Arctic Ocean Road’ (Eismeerstraße) that connected Rovaniemi – the ‘capital’ of Finnish Lapland and headquarters of German troops – to the then Finnish harbour of Liinahamari by the Arctic Ocean had been finished only about a decade before the war, and had a very limited capacity often compromised by difficult weather conditions (Figure 5). The notoriously poor condition of Lapland’s roads and its effect on the German vehicles is featured in, for instance, the Finnish liaison officers memorandums (Alftan 2005) and in a book compiled by the German Mountain Jaegers (Gebirgsjäger, many of an Austrian origin) serving in Lapland for their home front (Mabre 1944). Likewise, the memoirs of the German officer responsible for the transportation operations by the Eismeerstraße expounds the hardships caused by the road (von Hessen 1986).

Figure 5. Top: Original caption: ‘Germans repair a maintenance road’ (Photograph: Heikki Roivainen/SA-Kuva 82313/Petsamo, Litsavuono 17.4.1942); Bottom: Mercedes-Benz 320 of the Second Gebirgsjäger Division (division insignia painted on the door) somewhere in the Lapland wilderness; Note the skis and ski poles attached to the bonnet and snow chains on the rear wheels, and the sticks set up along the roadsides as markers in the snow (Photograph: Max Peronius 1940–1944).

The insufficient infrastructure effectively compromised German military action in northern Finland (Mann and Jörgensen 2002, 70): consequently, the Germans supervised the building of some 500 km of new roads, nearly 200 km of railway, and hundreds of bridges, as well as the improvement of over 1000 km of old roads (Westerlund 2008a, 100; Korpi 2010). The Karigasniemi road, by which the Peltojoki base is located, was one of these German projects. The construction of the road through the sparsely populated municipalities of Inari and Utsjoki, with its vast stretches of uninhabited taiga and tundra, had been started by Finns in the 1930s, but the works were stalled by the Winter War and recommenced by the Germans. The eastern end of the dirt road was in Kaamanen, where a military airport was built using forced labour, while the western end reached Karigasniemi and ran on the Norwegian side to Karasjok and onwards to Lakselv by the Arctic Ocean. Ultimately, the road was to improve the communication and transportation to and from the Nazi-occupied Norway; the Germans treated the Arctic front as a single theatre of operations and largely ignored the national borders between Finland, Norway and Russia (Westerlund 2008a, 2008b). The new dirt road connected the wilderness area, previously traversed by footpaths, to an outside world in a new, concrete way. In a local view, this new kind of connectedness was further amplified by the fact that the builders were exotic Germans and their multinational PoWs.

The Peltojoki base was one of the many German military camps by the Karigasniemi road. Given that the Germans destroyed their military bases and most of their archives during the retreat in 1944 (Silvennoinen 2008, 358–359), very little to no documentary evidence survives of these camps, and of many other sites and activities in the wilderness. The scanty archival material and collected oral histories (Westerlund 2008b; Arvelin 2009), as well as our informal talks with the locals, suggest that the road builders comprised of PoWs working under poor conditions. Shootings and hangings of prisoners happened at least occasionally and bodies were allegedly buried into the road foundations (Kallatsa 2009, 20); indeed, the locals describe the Karigasniemi road as ‘being founded on bodies’. According to the local police, unmarked burials are still encountered intermittently on the roadside and reinterred in proper graveyards in, for instance, the village of Ivalo.

The Karigasniemi road and its construction are about mobility in a very concrete and straightforward sense, but mobilities in many other forms also shaped the life in the Peltojoki base. The road and the military sites associated with it, as well as German mobilities more generally, had impacts on both local people and the German troops and their PoWs. In what follows, we will look into various aspects of the Peltojoki camp and how mobilities were entangled with and affected the relationships between people, materialities and the environment on this northern fringe of the European world.

Peltojoki base and its materialities

Spatiality and the built environment

In spatial terms, the Peltojoki base appears rather loosely organized: the identifiable traces of buildings and other constructions are spread out and organically adapted to the surrounding landscape. Peltojoki is by no means exceptional in this respect among the German sites in Lapland: while some camps that we have documented were organized on a more or less regular geometric plan, numerous others compare to the seemingly non-formal layout of the Peltojoki base (see Mikkonen 2016; Seitsonen and Herva 2017). Indeed, a characteristic feature of the camps, judging from our documentation and wartime photographs, is a great variability in the layout, suggesting that commanding officers improvised the spatial organization of their camps as they saw fit.

The Peltojoki base looks to the south, to the bridge over the river and the direction of a prospective attack along the road. The bridge was guarded by a dugout (S13), presumably a machine gun position (based on ammo belt fragments documented in 2006), and several other shooting positions. Crossing the bridge onto the northern side, one encounters on the eastern side of the road remains of what appears to be a car repair shop (S32) and associated lightweight building (S36). The camp proper, in turn, was located on the opposite side of the road, and accessed on what is now a narrow track and the starting point of a hiking route (Figure 6). This spot is marked by a single standing fence post, however, accompanied by a row of cut-down posts on the roadside (S15).

Figure 6. Top: Entrance road to the Peltojoki base as seen today: barrack foundations (S5) in the bush to the left and the single standing fencepost on the right (red and blue paint on the fence marks the start of a modern-day hiking trail); Bottom: Barrack foundations (S12) on the upper-terrace (Photographs: Oula Seitsonen).

Whether the post(s) were originally associated with the camp is unclear, but this seems likely – it is hard to imagine any post-war use for them in this location – in which case they can be regarded as the remains of a fence. Yet this interpretation raises other questions, as any signs of fencing, or traces of using living trees to support barbed wire (a practice observed in many Lapland camps), could not be identified on any other side of the camp. The fencing systems at German camps varied considerably and prisoners were not always kept behind barbed wire: at many places there was essentially nowhere to run but the wilderness. It is perhaps not impossible that the Peltojoki base was ‘symbolically’ fenced only on the roadside – as something of an appropriate ‘façade’, rather than to serve a practical function. While this may seem like a strange idea, it is in harmony with a number of similar or related features observed at other sites, such as building disproportionately massive stone foundations for barracks (as at Lautavaara near Rovaniemi) or lining up footpaths with cobblestones in camps in the wilderness (as at Kankiniemi in Inari); such practices can be seen to make sense, for example, in terms of dislocation and its impacts (see below).

Within the camp, first barrack foundation is located next to the entrance. The foundation consists of c. 20 cm high and 1 meter wide bank of fine sand (Figure 6) and is the size of prefabricated barracks that the Finnish woodcraft enterprises sold the German troops in great quantities during the war (Figure 7) (Westerlund 2008b, 133; Kallatsa 2009, 21). A concrete slab that served as a base for a stove is identifiable within this foundation. Remains of some more lightweight structure were documented opposite to the barrack. Deeper into the camp, a kitchen and mess hall (with cooking area reinforced with concrete), and an animal shelter with a turf foundation (and a manure pile behind it) stood on the riverside terrace. A rubbish pit filled with German tins was documented between the barrack foundation and the kitchen (S1; see Seitsonen and Herva 2011, Figure 10.7) in 2006 and excavated in 2009.

Figure 7. Top: Prefabricated barracks in a German camp somewhere in the Finnish Lapland (Photograph: Max Peronius 1940–1944); and sales brochure blueprints of the “yurt”-like plywood tents; Middle: ‘Tenda di legno compensato’ (Plywood tent; drawn by O. Seitsonen after Joh. Parviaisen tehtaat O.y., 1942); Bottom: ‘Kleinjurte’ (Small yurt; drawn by Oula Seitsonen after Puutalo Oy., 1943), targeted by the Finnish woodcraft industry especially to the German and Italian markets.

One of our informants had visited the mess hall as a young boy on a cloudberry-picking trip, possibly in 1943, and his recollections indicated that there had been structures in the camp that have not left any visible traces on the ground. He reminisced, for instance, that near the kitchen and the animal shelter had stood lightly built tent-like structures, some of which had been covered with turf for insulation, including a sauna for delousing the soldiers. These lightweight structures were probably ‘yurt’-shaped cardboard and plywood tents, an important wartime product of the Finnish woodcraft industry (Figure 7). There are several vague stone and concrete features that may derive from the foundations of stoves used in lightweight tents.

Our initial surveys of other German camps and wartime photographs propose that the yurt-like tents were commonly used for housing PoWs on the one hand and as storage space on the other, and only temporarily for accommodating soldiers – but again, there was variation in the housing arrangements of both the troops and PoWs depending on situation. At Peltojoki, some indications of PoW presence were found (see below), but any specific area where prisoners would have been accommodated could not be identified, though a PoW housing area could plausibly have been west of the barrack foundation S12 where remains of stove foundations and lightweight structures were documented. It is also worth noticing that there is no evidence at Peltojoki of any ‘iconic’ prisoner-camp structures, such as proper barbed wire fencing: perhaps the Germans saw the surrounding wilderness as sufficient for discouraging escape attempts.

There are numerous shooting positions on the upper-terrace part of the camp, and the collapsed dugout which has still some intact wooden structures. However, since mines have reportedly been surfacing there, we left that structure untouched. Next to the dugout, there is another barrack foundation similar to the other one by the entrance of the camp, except for an added porch (S12; Figure 6). Four lightweight barrack and/or tent placements (S28–S30), partly surrounded by shallow ditches, were identified on the northern edge of the camp. Adjacent to one of these, we located a pit (S17) used for burning material during the retreat: unidentified machine parts and tins found inside one of the foundations may indicate this area served for general storage of the camp. Nearby, we excavated partly the dump for glass, consisting mostly of sherds from cognac and wine bottles. This ‘specialized’ rubbish pit, along with the household waste dump by the kitchen, is hinting curiously well-structured waste disposal practices at the faraway and otherwise makeshift-looking camp. This may give some clues about the broader implications of the ‘dislocated life’ in the camp, discussed below.

The destruction and afterlife of the Peltojoki base

Some features documented at Peltojoki were associated with the destruction and afterlife of the site. For instance, the backfilled pits on the upper terrace, evidently dating from the destruction and abandonment phase, clearly speak of a systematic demolition of the base during the retreat, and may provide further clues about the internal spatial divisions within the site. One pit (S4) had been used to destroy skis (or at least ski bindings), carbide lamps, and building materials, such as full boxes of nails (Figure 8), another (S17) pieces of machinery, tools and clothing (or at least buttons, buckles and related items), while yet another pit (S27) contained a wide range of equipment, including cable reels (Figure 4), Jerry cans (Wehrmacht-Einheitskanister), barrel tops (one of these stamped ‘Chlorure de calcium, Solvay, Importe de Belgique’), some vehicle parts, gas masks, mess kits, shoes (or at least their parts as evidenced by the heel irons), fasteners, clips and buckles, and so on (Figure 9(c)–(g)). Explosives were used to ignite the material piled in the pits: base caps of Model 24 Stielhandgranate were recovered from all these pits and a tail of a German 1 kg incendiary bomb in S27 (Figure 9(i)). The Germans were careful in trying to render useless everything they left behind, to slow down the pursuing Finnish forces: all the burned but still potentially reusable material, such as Jerry cans, stove pipes, and oil drums, were perforated with axe blows.

Figure 8. Household finds from the excavations: (a) refitted German cup, (b) refitted Arabia Pääsky jug, (c) German soup bowl fragment, (d)–(g) ceramic stamps, (h)–(l) cutlery, (m)–(q) tins, (r) fragment of a stoneware bottle, (s)–(t) cutlery stamps, (u) ‘RK’ scratched on a fork, (v) Delbeck bottle top, (w) Aktiebolaget Vin & Spritcentralen bottle top (10 cm scale: b–c; 5 cm scale: a, h–r; 2 cm scale: d–g, s–w) (Illustration: O. Seitsonen).

Figure 9. Building materials from the excavations: (a) melted box of nails (b) melted explosive rivets, (c–d) melted light bulbs, (e) coat hooks, (f) cupboard hinge, (g) makeshift oven door, made from a fuel drum lid (30 cm scale: g; 5 cm scale: all others) (Illustration: O. Seitsonen).

After the war, the returning evacuee families scavenged the destroyed military sites for any reusable material, as reflected by several informants we have talked to. For instance, reindeer herders collected wire, posts and other material for reindeer fences. As the returning evacuees found their homes in ashes, sometimes ruins of German camps had to suffice for a shelter or other use (Arvelin 2009). At Peltojoki, there are two ground cellar-like pits (another still preserving some of its wooden superstructure, S9) west of the animal shelter, and at least one of these served, according to our informant, as a temporary shelter for the evacuees. The remains of an outside toilet (S14) documented on the westernmost edge of the Peltojoki camp also produced signs of reuse. A test pit dug in the toilet pit indicated that the toilet was most likely left open by the retreating Germans and reused by the returning evacuees occupying the ground cellar.

More substantial military material was cleared up immediately after the war, but enormous quantities were also left in northern landscapes, and have been subject to various uses and manipulations after the war (see Herva et al. 2016). It is widely known, for instance, that children and juveniles engaged in the hazardous practice of playing with German explosives for decades after the war, and one informant reminisced having exploded hand grenades and mines at Peltojoki. Intriguingly, the owner of the camping ground next to the site has used military items, such as bomb tails and shrapnel taken from the former German airfield in Kaamanen, to ‘decorate’ his cabins and cafe. Curious as such engagements with the remains of a difficult past may appear, it is an illustrative example of the outwardly nonchalant northern attitude towards the wartime heritage in the ancestral landscape. This appears to be typical especially to the indigenous Sámi reindeer herders: rather than regarding Lapland’s landscapes as an untouched wilderness, as it is typically presented to the tourists, they recognize it as a cultural landscape which has multiple temporal layers and with which they are intimately familiar.

The latest major intervention at the Peltojoki site took place a year before the 2009 excavations. During the initial mapping in 2006–2007, the site was still littered with rusted military finds, including broken oil drums, bullet perforated metal plates, ammo boxes, stove parts, and so on. For instance, on the northern edge of the camp, there was a dump of broken Volkswagen-manufactured stoves and stove pipes of the type used to heat the barracks and plywood tents. In 2008, however, a Rovaniemi-based environmental organization cleared a majority of surface finds from the site: between 2005 and 2010, this organization cleared up military material from several sites. This launched an animated local debate about the status and value of WWII sites and materialities in Lapland (see Heinäaho and Rautiainen 2011; Herva 2014; Seitsonen and Herva 2017). Indirectly, this also stimulated us to explore the Peltojoki site, which then led to a much wider research project about the material heritage of the German military presence in Lapland.

The finds

The artefacts from Peltojoki fall in various categories from military items and building materials to household waste and personal items. The bulk of the military material, as described above, was found mainly in the pits associated with the destruction of the camp (Figure 9). Building materials were encountered both in the pits related to the destruction of the camp and in the studied building foundations (due to their abundance, these were recorded only by trenches and not individually counted), and consisted of items such as nails, bolts, screws, iron wire, wind-protective cardboard, melted glass, bits of metal, and undefinable charred substances.

The finds from the kitchen area show that it was burned down with the furniture and kitchen utensils still inside, as illustrated by the recovered porcelain sherds, hinges, L-brackets and coat hooks (Figure 8(c)–(e)). A makeshift oven door, manufactured from a fuel drum lid (Figure 8(f)), was also found, as well as asbestos plates used for thermal insulation. Numerous broken and melted light bulbs and electric wire (Figure 8(b)) show that the camp was electrified; this must have been done with a generator, maybe placed in the assumed storage area, given that majority of the machinery parts were found there.

Artefacts related to everyday economic and household activities form over two-thirds of the catalogued finds, as might be expected in a base inhabited for nearly four years (Table 1). Sherds of porcelain and glass, cutlery and empty ration tins were most common in this category. The food economy seems to have relied largely on German military-issued canned meat and fish, some produced in the occupied Denmark and Norway (Figure 10(i)–(j)). Many of the tins and tin tops have indented manufacturer stamps on them, but as far as we know, there are no guides at the moment for decoding the canning plant identities; descriptions of the tins’ contents were marked on the storing cardboard boxes or crates (Nash n.d.).

Figure 10. Military finds from the excavations: (a) pickaxe, (b) pile of melted mess tins, (c)–(d) shoe sole irons, (e)–(f) ski bindings, (g) gas mask filter, (h) burned binder, (i) tail of a 1 kg incendiary bomb, (j)–(n) shells, (o)–(u) German buttons, (v)–(x) buckles, (y) unidentified button, (z) ‘Oт Якoвa’, an engraved piece of aluminium, (å) self-made shoe sole with a wooden heel (10 cm scale: a–i; 5 cm scale j–å) (Illustration: O. Seitsonen).

Nearly 500 sherds of porcelain were catalogued and show an interesting variety: at least one-third are of a Finnish origin, mostly products of the Arabia factories with various flowery and gilded designs, whereas the rest comprise German military-issued ware. Two sherds of the latter are products of Johann Haviland, Bavaria and one sherd has the stamp ‘Fl.U.V., 1942, Bohemia’ (Flieger Unterkunft Verwaltung, Flight Barracks Administration; Figure 10(d)–(g)). Some of the Arabia sherds have manufacturing dates on them which show that they were made in the late 1920s and the 1930s. Some could also be refitted and turned out to be from an Arabia Pääsky jug (Figure 10(b)). The presence of Finnish wares is interesting in the view that there was a large German supply depot in Kaamanen, some 20 km away from Peltojoki, where large quantities of military-issued porcelain was stored: when it was exploded in 1944, the surroundings were sprinkled with porcelain sherds. Why, then, such a prominent presence of Finnish civilian wares in a German military camp?

Also one piece of cutlery found at Peltojoki, a small spoon with flower ornamentation, is a civilian item, whereas another spoon is a Finnish military issue, with the stamps Puolustuslaitos, Sorsakoski (Finnish Defence Forces, Finnish manufacturer), and the Finnish swastika emblem (the symbol of the Finnish Defence Forces since 1918, and unrelated to the Nazi swastika). The rest of the cutlery finds are standard German military issue, all stamped Fl.U.V. (Figure 10(j), (s)–(t)). Pieces of bottle glass were found primarily in the glass dump on the upper terrace (S31) and indicate that alcohol was abundantly available. A couple of bottle tops shows that at least French Delbeck wine or cognac and products of Swedish state-owned Aktiebolaget Vin & Spritcentralen were consumed at Peltojoki (Figure 10(v)–(w)). Also an almost complete, fractured glass jug was recovered from the rubbish pit S1, and sherds of beer and schnapps glasses found in the kitchen. It is known from the Finnish liaison officers’ reports (Alftan 2005) that the Germans had a good supply of alcohol. During the retreat in 1944, for instance, some 200,000 bottles of alcohol were reportedly left on the roadside in Petsamo to slow down the Russian advance (Westerlund 2008b, 292).

Making a home in an Alien Northern World

Lost in Lapland

Both the Germans and their PoWs found themselves in a strange and exotic land in Lapland. This northern edge of Europe had indeed been seen as an enchanted land of natural and supernatural wonders, and the home of the indigenous Sámi people, across the continent since early modern times (Herva 2014). The exoticism of the North was keenly tapped in the German wartime propaganda (e.g. Wehrmacht [1943] 2006), which in turn mediated German soldiers’ perceptions of Lapland (e.g. Mabre 1944; Knabe 1983, 20). The German soldiers residing in places like Peltojoki came to have a first-hand experience of the wonders and nightmares of northern lands – such as the inescapable silence of the wilderness, months-long midnight sun, gloomy polar night, Aurora Borealis, reindeer and mosquitos – even more acutely than their compatriots based in the northern towns.

The German troops were in many ways lost and incapacitated in the Lapland wilderness, which promoted a sense of alienation and dislocation. Major Hessen (1986; incidentally, his father was elected as the king of newly-independent Finland in 1918, which plan fell down with the defeat of Germany in the First World War) describes in his memoirs various aspects of this uncomfortable situation and the physical and mental hardships arising from the northern conditions. He talks about the rough and bare terrains in woodless tundra of Petsamo, the freezing temperatures and constant darkness in the winter, the blight of mosquitoes and constant sunlight in the summer, the damage of frost heave to roads in the spring and autumn, as well as the sheer dullness of life for the troops stuck far from everything. The monotony of being, he thought, was the worst of all the maladies in the North, and surmised that one could not possibly understand how hard it all was unless one had experienced it personally. In the light of these hardships, von Hessen was not surprised about suicides among the troops.

This isolation and the ‘phenomenological’ characteristics of the northern world – Lapland’s ‘genius loci’ (Norberg-Schultz 1980) from a German point of view – affected the behaviour and thought of the German troops, and how they saw themselves in relation with the surrounding world in faraway places like the Peltojoki base. This is an important frame of reference for interpreting the material record of the site. Documentary sources and memoirs show that the German troops, including the battle-hardened elite Gebirgsjäger, were poorly prepared to, and overwhelmed by the unfamiliar Arctic environment, which effectively stalled their advance so quickly in 1941 (Pipping [1947] 2008, 10; Jokisipilä 2005). Indeed, the German high command had serious doubts about the region’s suitability for military action to begin with (Mann and Jörgensen 2002, 70, 72), and the conditions in Arctic Lapland were way beyond the familiar ‘lifeworlds’ of the ordinary German troopers and their unconscious, common sense and routine context of everyday actions (see Schütz and Luckmann 1973, 3; Seamon 1979, 2007).

While the Germans saw the northern tundra and taiga as a frightening, aversive and unnavigable environment, it was deeply familiar to the Finnish soldiers who had since their childhood engaged in hunting, fishing and reindeer herding in these very landscapes, or landscapes similar to them (Alftan 2005, 174, 192–194). The Germans were clearly impressed by the Finnish performance, for instance, by their ‘supernatural’ orienteering skills, despite the poor and impromptu equipment, whereas the Finns soon became disillusioned with and contemptuous of the German inability to fight in Lapland (Pipping [1947] 2008, 10; Junila 2000:104–105; Alftan 2005, 174, 192–194). The German performance improved over time, however, as manuals were prepared (e.g. Halter 1942; Wehrmacht [1943] 2006; Merkblatt 18a, 17 1943; Merkblatt 18a, 26 1944) and active training programs assisted by Finnish specialists implemented (Alftan 2005, 189; Airio 2014, 238–240).

Cultural encounters and internationalism

Although Lapland had been an arena of cultural encounters for centuries, the arrival of the German troops and their multinational PoWs marked an unpreceded degree of internationalism, particularly in towns like Rovaniemi where the German presence was very prominent. The Germans were not present merely as a uniformed mass of army troops: instead, close and personal relationships were frequently developed between the locals and individual German soldiers, and also some PoWs. Germans also contributed indispensably to the evacuation of Finnish civilians in the fall 1944 before the Lapland War broke out (Lehtola 2003; Uola 2012, 526–527). Encounters with the Germans were evidently memorable in remote regions of Lapland, echoed in the memoirs of our informants who were children and teenagers at the time and excited to meet people from outside their everyday lifeworld. A visit to a German military base offered them a chance to see things never seen before, such as electricity or a movie, as one informant recalled. German soldiers typically treated children with delicacies, missing their own relatives and family life in Lapland, and also practised forms of charity towards the locals, for instance, by arranging food aid and Christmas parties for poor families (Alftan 2005, 139; Jokisipilä 2005; Airio 2014, 252).

It is difficult to tell how common visits of the locals to Peltojoki or other camps in the wilderness were, and the excavations did not shed much light on this matter either. However, reindeer bones found in the kitchen waste pit are potentially interesting in this respect. The Germans sometimes shot free-ranging, but Sámi-owned reindeer, which was a matter of occasional dispute (Alftan 2005, 144), but also bought extra food supplies from the herders. One reindeer bone found at Peltojoki is split in a particular manner to extract marrow, a delicacy among the Sámi. This might be an indication of social interaction with the locals or familiarity with their ways of reindeer treatment and consumption. Oral histories also suggest occasional contact between the locals, Germans, and their PoWs; for instance, at Peltojoki the local Sámi always brought food supplies for PoWs on their berry-picking trips. German soldiers allowed children to take these to the PoWs, and in return they got little handmade gifts, such as small wood-carved birds, from the prisoners; at least in Peltojoki and nearby wilderness camps prisoners were allowed to possess knives, as remembered by our informants.

Although northern Finns and Sámi were certainly not isolated from the world before the 1940s, the Germans nonetheless brought with them a completely new dimension of outside world both literally and figuratively. A tabulation of the recovered finds by the origin illustrates the place of Peltojoki in a wider network of German military logistics and movements of things (Table 2, Figure 11). For instance, canned food was imported from Denmark and Norway, and alcohol from Sweden and Central Europe, whereas porcelain finds included Central European as well as Finnish products; as an extreme example, at a nearby WWII site fish tins originating from Brazil were uncovered in a German dump. The presence of products from numerous countries and factories echoes also the commercial importance of war efforts for diverse entrepreneurs in the occupied countries, as well as in Germany, Finland and even the ostensibly neutral Sweden. The German presence instigated a major economic boost in Lapland (e.g. Björklund 1981; Westerlund 2008a), which was not without ethical implications, given that PoWs were quite liberally used as a cheap workforce by various companies in different countries (e.g. Westerlund 2008a, 2008b; Suhonen 2011).

Table 2. Recovered finds by the origin and the manufacturers’ approximate Euclidean distance from the Peltojoki base.

Provenience (manufacturer, country)	Euclidean distance (~km)	Type of artefacts and stamps on them
1. Sorsakoski, Finland	800	Spoons, Sorsakoski
2. Arabia, Finland	1000	Porcelain, Arabia, Suomi Finlandia, 19, etc.
3. Aktiebolaget Vin & Spritcentralen, Sweden	1200	Alcohol bottle top, Aktiebolaget Vin & Spritcentralen
4. ?, (western?) Norway	~1300	Fish tin, Norvegia, Norway
5. Kolding, Denmark	1800	Fish tin, Danmark, 50, Kolding
6. Pelikan, Germany	2100	Ink bottle sherds
6. Teuto Metallwerke G.m.b.H., Osnabrück, Germany	2100	Cartridges, P369 S* 7 39
7. Bohemia, Czech Republic	2300	Porcelain, Fl.U.V., 1942, Bohemia
8. Johann Haviland, Germany	2400	Porcelain, Johann Haviland, Bavaria
9. Solvay, Belgium	2400	Barrel lid, Chlorure de calcium, Solvay, Importe de Belgique
10. Delbeck, France	2600	Alcohol bottle top, Delbeck ***

Figure 11. Provenances of artefacts encountered at Peltojoki base (numbering refers to the Table 2), and the maximum extent of Axis-related territories in 1942 (Note: modern borders) (illustration: Oula Seitsonen).

Coping with the effects of mobility and dislocation

Despite this internationalism on one level, day-to-day life at sites like Peltojoki was distinctively characterized by isolation and dislocation. Both the German troops and their PoWs were subject to, and on the mercy of, the diverse effects of long-range mobilities. They were cast on and confined in a harsh, unfamiliar environment in a situation over which they had very little control. Various finds from Peltojoki speak of alienation, but also of attempts to cope with the effects of dislocation. Paradoxically, material culture and material practices can be seen to have worked simultaneously for and against adjusting to the conditions of the camp life in a northern wilderness: much of German material culture was at odds with northern realities, and even conspired against the objectives of the German army. The reliance on motorized transport and vehicles, and also on mules as draught animals (Westerlund 2008b, 49–50, 55), unsuitable to Lapland conditions, is but one obvious example.

The adjusting to northern realities, or a failure to do so, was not merely a matter of a straightforward practical (dys)functionality of particular material things and practices, but there were also important mental and symbolic aspects to it. The Peltojoki porcelain assemblage is an illustrative example of this, and of the potential twofold impacts of material culture on the inhabitants of the camp. As noted earlier, a substantial share of the identified porcelain finds represent Finnish civilian products with nice floral decorative patterns. The German troops were apparently well-supplied with military-issue tableware even in remote places like Peltojoki so there was probably some particular meaning for civilian ware. Although we do not know how they ended up in the camp, civilian tableware would have provided the troops a touch of the familial world, similarly as, for instance, engaging with Finnish children acted as something of a substitute for the family life that the soldiers were missing.

However, there was also a darker side to these objects and practices that generated a sense of comfort and homeliness, and afforded a temporary escape from the soldiers’ and prisoners’ actual life situation. The things that served to carry people to other places and times, countering to the effects of displacement, could simultaneously evoke or accentuate the sense of isolation and being lost (see Naum 2013, 171–172). In the context of Peltojoki, the use of electricity would have had a similar twofold effect as civilian porcelain and other civilian items, feeding familiarity and alienation at the same time. The ability to produce electricity with a generator may also be seen as a means of creating some sense of (symbolic) control over the northern wilderness conditions. This sense or illusion of control over the difficult situation and conditions is another important theme related to the effects of dislocation. Indeed, several finds, and practices associated with them, can be interpreted in terms of oscillation between control and escapism: attempts to master at least some aspects of the situation where both the soldiers and PoW found themselves on one hand, and attempts to escape from the realities of that situation on the other.

As an example, the toiletry finds suggest that grooming, for instance, was part of the taskscapes in Peltojoki: sticking to such practices in a remote camp would indeed have fostered a sense of orderliness and control over one’s life on a small scale. Minding one’s appearance in the wilderness conditions can perhaps be understood as secular, and military, rituals which, on a deep level, compared to the ‘superstitious’ use of charms that helped soldiers to maintain the feeling they had some control over their destinies (see MacKenzie 2015). In addition to personal everyday routines, various features documented at Peltojoki and/or other wilderness sites can be interpreted as ‘psychological weapons’ against the uncertainty and powerlessness generated by the inhospitable northern world. For instance, whatever practical function the fencing of German military sites may have served, they symbolically defined the boundaries of military camps and separated the ‘domesticated’ insides from the ‘wild’ outsides. If, indeed, the Peltojoki base was only partially fenced off, as our mapping suggests, it certainly highlights the symbolic dimension of controlling the environment, just like the lining of paths with pebbles, as evidenced at some sites, can be associated with similar concerns of symbolic orderliness. Likewise, although there does not seem to have been a standard manner of accommodating either the troops or PoWs, our documentation of several camps shows a tendency to accommodate one group differently from the other, which can also be read as an expression of symbolic order within military camps even faraway in the wilderness.

The evidence of abundant alcohol consumption at Peltojoki appears to bring control and escapism together in an intriguing manner. The German troops were well supplied with alcohol, and drinking can readily be understood as a means of escaping from the wretched life in an isolated camp. On the other hand, however, the glass dump excavated at Peltojoki points to a control-based mode of dealing with the effects of dislocation. That is, while the Peltojoki base was spatially loosely organized, this dump and several other features hint at organized and orderly waste management practices. In addition, the general distribution of different types of finds, as recovered from different parts of the camp, indicates clear spatial divisions within the camp. Such everyday practices as waste management helped to engender and maintain a sense of control and provided an antidote to the insecurity that characterized the life in the middle of nowhere.

Certain objects and their manipulations likewise enabled countering powerlessness by affording a means for countering anchoring on the world on one hand and escaping from it on the other, as exemplified by a few modified and self-made artefacts from Peltojoki. One fork found in the camp has the roughly engraved letters ‘R K’ on it (Figure 10(u)): these may be someone’s initials, and are a rare example of the ‘individualization’ of a standard military item. This object might be seen as a token of one’s agency and the ability to ‘make a difference’, or leave a mark in the world, on however small and symbolic manner. However, RK also stood for the Reich Chancellery (Reichskanzlerei) and the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes): thus the engraving could be, additionally, an inside joke with connotations to the Reich Chancellery or the Knight’s Cross on a basic kitchen item in a remote military outpost.

Some modified and self-made finds can be directly linked to Russian PoWs. A particularly interesting find in this context is a burned and twisted piece of aluminium with a Russian language engraving and crude decoration on it (Figure 9(z)). The text Oт Якoвa (From Jakov) probably refers to the maker of this piece of ‘trench art’, apparently a lid for something. Prisoners and forced labourers, of course, would have experienced the effects of dislocation, sense of powerlessness and the fragility of life even more prominently and acutely than the German soldiers. This would conceivably have accentuated the need to exercise one’s agency and to do anything that created a feeling of being able to make a difference, to have a control of at least something, even if only a piece of aluminium to be manipulated, and perhaps also a need to leave behind something personal and identifying.

Based on the inscription the decorated lid was evidently intended as a gift from Jakov to somebody, although it is impossible to tell whom. In the context of a similar isolated and distant German PoW camp by the Arctic Ocean in Norway, Grabowski et al. (2014) have proposed that the soldiers and prisoners had a sense of a shared destiny, both groups being confined or cast away on the edge of the world, which could have promoted mutual sympathy under difficult conditions and eroded stereotypical relationships between the guards and prisoners. A similar sense of camaraderie could plausibly have developed at sites like Peltojoki as well, creating a setting where the relationships between the Germans and their prisoners were, at least sometimes (for instance, some times of a year when camp was more isolated, or in some phase of its use life), more relaxed and closer than in some other circumstances. If this was the case, Jakov’s gift could have been made for some German, but then again, it might also have been manufactured for another inmate or some civilian regularly visiting the site.

Only two other finds can be associated with PoWs and were, like the Jakov piece, found in the rubbish pit S27. One is a battered button which is typologically unrelated to Finnish and German military designs and might derive from Soviet equipment, though the poor preservation makes it difficult to affirm this (Figure 9(y)). The other, and in this context more interesting, find is a self-made rubber shoe sole with a wooden heel reinforcement (Figure 9(å)), crudely carved to shape from what looks like a left-over piece of rubber, and most likely workmanship of a prisoner. Analogous self-made items and their manufacturing waste have proven to be the best single indicator of PoW presence in many camps we have mapped. Finnish liaison officers also described the talents of many PoWs for manufacturing various essentials at camps (Alftan 2005, 121–123). Making shoe soles and other useful artefacts from improvised materials was something of a survival skill for prisoners, but making artefacts can also be seen as mentally or psychologically important, as it, like all handicrafts, allowed shutting off the external world to some degree and an escape from the distressing life in a camp.

Conclusions

The material heritage and archaeology of the German military presence in the Finnish Lapland during WWII has attracted little interest until very recently. Our research at the site of Peltojoki in 2006–2009 was the first problem-oriented attempt to engage with the topic archaeologically and to map the potential of studying former German military bases in Arctic Lapland. The results of our fieldwork offer insights into the daily life in an isolated wilderness military outpost, as well as raise various broader themes for consideration, some of which were tentatively discussed in this paper and are further pursued in our ongoing studies (see Herva et al. 2016; Thomas, Seitsonen, and Herva 2016). Our studies unveiled several aberrations from the expected – or rather commonly assumed – military standards related to the built environment of a camp or the uses of material culture. It is suggested that many of the unexpected finds and observations about life in the Peltojoki camp can be understood as material and mental responses to the alien environment and, more generally, dislocation associated with military mobilities, which affected both the German troops and their PoWs confined in an exotic and alien northern world.

Although the excavations at the Peltojoki military base were small in scale and, initially, modest in aims, the mapping and excavations, as well as the finds analyses, brought forward a diversity of issues related to the potential archaeological and heritage value of the site – and hundreds of other military sites established by the German troops in Finnish Lapland between 1941 and 1944. The sites in the wilderness are especially poorly known from any documentary sources, which underline the value of archaeological and ethnographical research which, however, should seek to say something meaningful about ‘big issues’, rather than merely recover small details to ‘decorate’ established historical narratives about the WWII. While WWII sites and remains are not regarded as protected heritage in Finland, the memories of the German military presence and its material traces are subject to diverse interests among the Finnish and Sámi communities in Lapland, and relevant (though of varying importance) to local people as part of their lived lifeworld. Hence, we have come to recognize that the contemporary and post-war perceptions, uses, and engagements with German sites and materialities are at least as relevant matters as the wartime uses of the sites, and this is the direction in which our research has been developing after the initial excavations at Peltojoki.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest is reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [grant number 275497].

Geolocation information

Peltojoki, Inari, Lapland, Finland, N69.254607/E26.818014

Notes on contributors

Oula Seitsonen is an archaeologist and geographer working in the project Lapland’s Dark Heritage at the University of Helsinki.

Vesa-Pekka Herva is a professor of archaeology at the University of Oulu and the PI of the project Lapland’s Dark Heritage.

Kerkko Nordqvist is an archaeologist at the University of Oulu and has worked for the project Landscapes of Finnish Conflicts.

Anu Herva is an archaeologist and has worked for the project Landscapes of Finnish Conflicts.

Sanna Seitsonen is an archaeologist at Arkteekki Ltd. and has worked for the project Landscapes of Finnish Conflicts.

Acknowledgements

We express our gratitude to all the people who have contributed to the studies: especially to local informants for their time and efforts. Thanks to Hans Niittyvuopio, who provided also excellent accommodation at Muotkan Ruoktu, and to the members of the Lapland Society for Military History, especially Jari Leskinen and Aki Romakkaniemi. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Research is part of the projects ‘Landscapes of Finnish Conflicts’ and ‘Lapland’s Dark Heritage: Understanding the Cultural Legacy of Northern Finland’s WWII German Materialities within Interdisciplinary Perspective’ (funded by the Academy of Finland, decision No. 275497).