Kalliosaari-Katiskajärvi
63.7806N 24.5123E Sievi
There were two workers’ cabins in Kalliosaari, one of which was built from round timber in the early 1920s and the second in the mid-1940s. The older cabin housed 20 men, who slept in two-storey bunks. There was also a kitchen and a bedroom for the foreman. In the newer cabin, there was room for 20 men. The stable, with stalls on both sides of a corridor, was large enough for 30 horses. Near this workers’ cabin, behind Lake Katiskajärvi, there was also a cabin for lumberjacks and railway builders to stay overnight.
Stories
“In the spring I met a nice girl from Sievi at the Kalliosaari cabin. My company suited her fine. One warm evening, we were sitting at the doorstep of the cabin. Lumberjacks were walking back and forth through the cabin door. The girl was annoyed because so many boots touched her bottom on the stairs. (…)I proposed that we should move to the well lid. She agreed, and we talked there for a long time. Both of us described our rather identical poor childhoods. And both of us were living an adolescence full of work, at full speed. We went to Lake Katiskajärvi, and I’d have liked to kiss the girl. I did not dare.” (Ojakangas: Aurinkomutka 2012)
“The forest cabins were not used only for accommodation. Martta Myllylä remembers a wedding organised in Kalliosaari, where people travelled from Eskola by an express train.” (Interview with Martta Myllylä 18 December 2015, Eskolan Metsärata)
“There in the Katiska house we children grew up in nature and often visited Kalliosaari as well. There was that forest cabin and the men. And that’s not all: often we drove on a pump trolley and platform truck to Itäoja cabin, and we were not old, just about three to four years. Sometimes the train also came, and it was a wonder that we made it.” (Anna Mertanen’s email on 30 December 2012, Eskolan Metsärata)
Photos
Kalliosaari-Katiskajärvi
Kalliosaari workers´cabin
On Lake Katiskajärvi
Katiska house
