The dam is a large box-like structure of reinforced concrete. Inside is a cost reduction space: a series of large cavities that could have been filled with concrete but the cheaper option was to leave them empty. The mood inside the cavities is like in a long-abandoned brutalist church. The ceiling is high, in the dim light almost out of sight. Somewhere in the distance a small stream is trickling. It is a small part of the great river Oulujoki. The stream has found its own route through the dam and meanders towards the deepest point of the dam basin on the rocks that form the steeply sloping floor of the storage space. The drops of the stream against the rocks chime in the majestic acoustics of the storage space.
The water of Oulujoki is squeezed through the turbines of eight power plants on its way from lake Oulujärvi to the Bay of Bothnia. When I think about the effects of damming the river the cathedralesque storage space begins to feel like a mausoleum. In my mind’s eye I can see a small memorial plaque on the concrete wall commemorating the river ecosystem that was sacrificed for electricity production.
A veteran power plant worker tells a story of a Russian prisoner of war who was labouring on the Pyhäkoski dam construction site during the wars. According to the story, there was an accident — or “accident” — on the construction site and the prisoner of war fell into the concrete mix when it was being poured. The power plant worker shows a pillar where he says the remains of the Russian man are trapped inside the concrete. If the story is true the dam structure is an actual burial chamber. I would prefer to believe that the story is just a product of wild imagination but I am troubled by the fact that it could very well be true. Other accidents did occur on the huge dam construction sites. Many workers gave their lives or their health to electrify Finland.
Occupational safety is on a different level now compared to the time of the construction of hydroelectric power plants but we still live in a world shaped by organized irresponsibility. Maximizing investors’ profits in the short term is seen as more important than the negative externalities affecting nature and people. The profit motive determines what and how our society produces and consumes. For this reason, it is difficult to imagine relief from the climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss we are witnessing. For the same reason there are still no nature-like fishways around the dams of Oulujoki for the migrating fish.
One of the externalities of hydroelectric power is the environmental trauma it has caused to the people of the river valley due to the total transformation and disfiguration of their living environment. When the river was dammed, their safe and familiar homeland suddenly became foreign. Their knowledge and skills related to fishing and other river use became irrelevant. Many farms and pastures were left under water. For those who used to live close to the roaring rapids their sudden silence caused insomnia. The trauma has been deepened by society’s unwillingness to acknowledge it. Public discourse touted hydroelectric power as progressive and necessary. Untreated trauma haunts people permanently and can be passed on to the next generation.
I try to see the river and its damming from the perspective of beings other than humans. I don’t know if fish possess knowledge inherited from previous generations so that they would be able to mourn the loss of their old spawning grounds. But salmon are still trying to migrate up the Oulujoki river without getting past the Montta power plant. They don’t want to swim to the capture facility where they could be captured to be transported upstream in a tanker truck. Salmon spawning activity has been observed downstream from Montta even though it is not a suitable environment for spawning.
A freshwater pearl mussel can live to be over 200 years old. The remaining populations of the freshwater pearl mussels in Finland consist of mostly elders. These elderly mussels might be able to remember a time when salmon ascended the river in great numbers and entered the streams where the mussels live. The larvae of the freshwater pearl mussels used to swim into the gills of the salmon and set off on a journey that lasted over the winter. In the following spring the migrating salmon returned to the river and the larva that had developed into a small mussel as a parasite of the salmon detached from its host and continued its life on the river bottom.
Oulujoki was born when post-glacial rebound separated Oulujärvi from Lake Ancylus about 9,000 years ago. I’m imagining the river as a thinking creature that remembers its own history. It would remember when people slowly settled on its banks for the first time. It would remember when salmon, mussels, and many others first started finding places to live and spawn in its rapids and tributaries. The shape and occupants of the river have probably changed in many ways during its lifetime. From the river’s perspective the damming is a recent event. On the river timescale it is easy to foresee a time after the dams. When people cease to clean the dam of moss it will slowly eat away the concrete and water carries away the crumbles.
In the Pyhäkoski opera, the river takes the form of a saxophone quartet. It has swum into the cost reduction space along the small stream and sings the song of the silenced rapids with the sound of saxophones. Is it trying to tell us something with its song? The power plant is another character of the Pyhäkoski opera. It hums its own hydro-electronic music. What are these characters talking about? Can they understand each other? What other sounds and stories can we distinguish arising from amid the rumble of the power plant generators? Moss enjoying a tasty feast of concrete? An elderly mussel waiting patiently for the migrating salmon? A traumatized river valley resident silently weeping in secret, trying to dam up feelings no one wants to hear? A rock from a dam basin blasting site hurled through the air and cracking the skull of a calf grazing on a river bank?
The many stories of Pyhäkoski and river Oulujoki have given rise to feelings that the composers and performers of the Pyhäkoski opera have channeled into the music. The audience brings with them their own experiences, stories and feelings relating to the river and its surroundings. These elements are likely to create a unique polyphony in each listener’s ears.
Text: Tuukka Tervo
Photo: Teija Soini
———
[1] Sociologist Outi Autti has written about the environmental trauma caused by river damming for the residents of river valleys, drawing on interview material she collected along the Kemijoki and Iijoki rivers.
[2] According to a report by the Finnish Environment Institute, 86 Atlantic salmon and 41 trout were captured at the Montta fish transfer facility in 2022.
[3] In 2024, an estimated 3,283 freshwater pearl mussels died in the Hukkajoki River in Suomussalmi after forestry machinery crossed the river during logging operations. The prosecutor is seeking 1,933,687€ in damages from those charged. If the partial destruction of a single freshwater pearl mussel population is considered an environmental crime worth nearly two million euros, it is worth asking what compensation should be sought for damming an entire river system for decades, preventing the freshwater pearl mussel—whose reproduction depends on migratory fish—from reproducing throughout the watershed.
4] In an interview conducted for the Hydropower Cultural Heritage project, Ilpo Aksila recounts how a calf was killed by a rock hurled into the air by a blast because, due to haymaking, it had not been moved to safety before the blasting began.
