Think of summer in Australia. Sun, sweat and more than likely, cyclones. Then think of the polar opposite, literally, mid-winter in the frozen forests of Sweden’s Arctic Circle. Cold that snaps breath and bone, the slightest breeze slinging icy pinpricks into any sliver of exposed skin. Welcome to a world of white, where Arctic loggers live, work and play
Like, seriously, one skinny frozen track spearing into the forest through towering snowbanks looks just like any other skinny frozen track slinking through the snow. They’re all the same. White, crystal white, where even the tyre tracks of a heavy truck are soon secreted under soft snow.
And it’s not as if you can stop and ask a local for directions. There simply aren’t any locals about when the temperature’s lower than a frog’s freckle and there’s a breeze that turns snow specks into ice picks stinging every pore on exposed skin. True, you can cover up most things with layer upon layer of thermals and wool, but not everything. It’s a cold that bites, deep and hard.
Besides, speaking Swedish beyond the word ‘skol’ (as in, cheers!) is not my strong point. ‘Hey mate, you wouldn’t know where Johannes Korkeaniemi is working today, would ya?’ probably wouldn’t translate too well anyway.
Cold that snaps breath and bone, the slightest breeze slinging icy pinpricks into any sliver of exposed skin.
Then there’s the fact that only a small percentage of Sweden’s 10 million people live up here around 66.6 degrees latitude where the Arctic Circle treks around Earth’s polar north. Official numbers say 15 per cent of Sweden’s land mass sits above the circle yet barely half a million people call the country’s Arctic territories ‘home’.
No mistake, winter in this world of frozen lakes and snow-soaked boreal forests is fierce and forbidding, and unless they’re involved in the mining or forestry industries, the great majority of Sweden’s Svens and Helgas prefer to live down south where winter isn’t quite so … frozen!
And from all reports, the winter of early 2024 has been particularly harsh with temperatures of minus 40-something Celsius regularly registered around this neck of the woods, which happens to be not far west of Sweden’s border with Finland.
It’s all part of a vast northern interior which receives heavy snowfall for up to eight months of the year, yet on the other side of the celestial sphere from late May until around mid-July, sunlight lasts all day and all night. Land of the midnight sun.
A small percentage of Sweden’s population live where the Arctic Circle treks around the polar north
Apparently, we’re lucky though. It’s February, historically the coldest month of the year, yet the forecast is that minus 20 degrees Celsius might be the worst we get over the next few days, perhaps even a balmy minus 15. Lucky or not, there’s no desire for pluggers or boardies as the temperature hovers somewhere between frigid and ‘Mate, how much do you want for your fur-lined long johns?’
Still, driving through one small, isolated village to the next, each seemingly hibernating under a deep blanket of ice and snow, there appear few signs of life other than an occasional light in a window. Very occasionally, a log truck rumbles past in a billowing cloud of white, but always going the other way.
Road signs, too, seem rare as residents and for the bloke from Down Under, the signs that do exist warn of unfamiliar things like snowmobiles and reindeer. (We’re definitely not in Kansas, Dorothy.)
But then, eventually, almost mercifully after a couple of wrong turns and more than a few slips and slides despite studded tyres on the car, there’s finally a sure sign that we’ve actually found the right track and better still, we’re heading in the right direction.
It’s all part of a vast northern interior which receives heavy snowfall for up to eight months of the year.
There, one on each side of a narrow curling trail atop a small rise just off the main road, lay truck mudguards in the snow, removed on the way in to the log dump to make it easier for snow chains to be fitted to tyres on the lead drive axle.
Obviously designed to be quickly detached and reattached, the guards will go back on again after the chains have come off and the loaded truck idles down to the main road of hard packed ice and snow for the run to either a sawmill or paper plant.
Trees, trees and more trees
Obviously enough, forestry is big business in Sweden, with forest products reportedly accounting for between nine and 12 per cent of Swedish industry’s total employment, exports and sales figures. Indeed, the forest industry is said to directly employ around 70,000 Swedes and upwards of 120,000 people if sub-contractors are included.
So, given forestry’s formidable presence in business and no doubt, political quarters, the industry has plenty of lobbying muscle and isn’t shy about stating a few factors in support of its own sustainability. Like, forest covers around 70 per cent of Sweden’s land mass and with an estimated 87 billion trees, give or take a few for Christmas, it’s said there’s now twice as much wood growing in the country than there was 90 years ago. It’s worth noting, too, that almost half of all forest land is owned by family enterprises.
Forestry is big business in Sweden, accounting for between nine and 12 per cent of employment
Furthermore, just one per cent of the forest is felled annually yet at least 380 million trees are said to be planted in Sweden every year. Or, for every tree felled, two are planted and yet, demand continues to outstrip supply.
When it’s all boiled down, Sweden is the world’s fourth largest exporter of pulp, paper and sawn timber, with a stated export value in 2022 of 186 billion Swedish krona, or 27.3 billion Aussie dollars on recent conversion rates.
From any angle, it’s an industry of vast proportions, yet for one small family operation, it’s much more than a business. Like so many others, it’s a life.
Right now, though, we still have a few kilometres to travel into the forest on slippery tracks where two 750hp Volvo FH16s are said to be loading from stockpiles of cut pine and spruce plantations. It’s a slow run in and across a broad expanse of open country, a blustery breeze is whipping sheets of fallen snow into blasts of bone-cracking cold.
Road signs seem rare … and for the bloke from Down Under, the signs that do exist warn of unfamiliar things like snowmobiles and reindeer.
Suddenly, there’s a genuine sense of icy isolation and the thought of being lost or alone out here conjures all sorts of frozen fate for a stranger from the other side of Earth.
Then, at last, there’s a truck, sporting all the kit that goes with a big banger hauling logs in these parts, not least a respectable bar up front for close encounters with Rudolph and his moose mates, and banks of driving lights guaranteed to dazzle dark into daylight. And up here at this time of year, dark comes early in the afternoon and stays late into the morning.
Still, there’s no question we’ve found the truck and driver we’re looking for, with the Korkeaniemi family name stark across the lower edge of the windscreen and on the roof fairing the name ‘Stenvalls’, a long-established and family-owned timber processing company.
Meantime, a few hundred metres further back on another log stack, the driver of a second Korkeaniemi truck and trailer outfit is loading his own load of logs from the cab of a truck-mounted crane.
At last, there’s a truck, sporting all the kit that goes with a big banger hauling logs in these parts
However, it’s the man in the white truck we’re keen to meet, Johannes Korkeaniemi. All we know is that he’s something of a ‘young gun’, born and raised in the family log harvesting and haulage business, and right now with the wind flinging frozen flakes every which way, he sits perched in the open at least three metres above ground, snatching bundles of sawn logs from snow-laden stacks beside the truck and trailer.
His entire focus is on the work at hand, seeming to barely acknowledge the sudden presence of others as he swings the long jib and grab claw like a mechanical extension of himself, arranging each bundle of timber with what can only be seen as absolute precision.
To coin a phrase, he’s done this before and the following night at a marketplace in another Swedish town in the far north, proud father Mika will show a photo of a six year-old Johannes atop a truck-mounted crane obviously practicing for later life. (We’ll get back to the family patriarch shortly, for this is a story where diversity truly comes in a most remarkable form.)
Soon enough, Johannes has the combination – a four-axle Volvo with hub-reduction diffs and single rear steering axle coupled to a five-axle trailer – loaded near enough to legal gross of 74 tonnes over the combination’s 24-metre length.
For one small family operation, it’s much more than a business. Like so many others, it’s a life.
He climbs down with the agility of a possum, nods ‘hello’ in broken English which far exceeds my non-existent Swedish and gets back to work using the crane to haul chains over the load. Unquestionably, the job comes first, always.
And from the first it’s apparent this is a seriously skilled young man but if the expectation was for a burly Nordic lumberjack type, well, think again.
Johannes Korkeaniemi is, in fact, a slightly built, fresh-faced, even boyish 23 year-old who could easily give the impression of still being in high school. But no, inside the truck and out, at every moment and in every movement, his affinity and aptitude with machinery is not just evident, it’s exemplary.
Born to it, you might say, and that’s how he puts it as well, but only after the load’s chained down and he’s ready to roll. Likewise, if the biting wind is troubling him while we talk briefly beside the truck, it doesn’t show in the slightest. On the other hand, the relief of his visitor when we climb into the Volvo for the run back to the main road was, to put it simply, warmly received.
Johannes Korkeaniemi was born and raised in the family log harvesting and haulage business
Language barriers initially made the conversation a tad tough, maybe even tedious for the younger man but again, his English smashed my Swedish and as Johannes urged the Volvo ahead, the finesse and mastery as he selectively engaged gears and diff locks to suit the immediate conditions was something special to watch.
In a 750 hp FH16, power and torque are definitely not in short supply but channelling that grunt in a controlled and concise manner which avoids ploughing off what can be best described as a tenuous track, is not for the novice, the foolhardy or the frivolous.
No question, over many decades I have been extremely fortunate to drive lots of trucks in lots of places and equally, had the good fortune to mix with some exceptional drivers of big gear, but rarely have I seen such skill in a man so young.
Nonetheless, a broad grin emerges when he’s asked if unintended trips off-track are inevitable in such a slippery, unforgiving environment. “It happens sometimes,” he says casually, quickly adding, “but it can be fun getting out.”
In a 750 hp FH16, power and torque are not in short supply but channelling that grunt in a controlled and concise manner … is not for the novice, the foolhardy or the frivolous.
Fun? “Ja. Yeah. Fun.” Such are the ways, I guess, of young men uncompromisingly confident in their own skin and their own ability.
Time was tight and it was apparent that once the snow chains were off and the mudguards back on, Johannes would be keen to make a mile and unload at the mill before dark which, at two o’clock in the afternoon, was just an hour or so away.
Enough time, however, to explain that he was indeed born to the logging life and there’s next to nothing he’d change, especially the early years going to work with his father Mika at any opportunity and coming to grips with big machinery. It was, obviously enough, a natural fit.
As Johannes continues though, it emerges that trucks are a relatively recent addition to a family business based on log harvesting rather than log haulage. Mika Korkeaniemi, his son tells, is about 50 years of age and started in trucks as a young man but moved into contract harvesting for various mills – Stenvalls, for instance – and today operates four timber harvesting machines.
Johannes barely acknowledges the presence of others as he swings the long jib and grab claw
Around four years ago, the family business which includes Johannes’s older brother Christoffer decided that hauling timber was something of a natural extension to harvesting timber, with Volvo’s flagship FH16 750 becoming the truck of choice. Nowadays, there are five trucks in the Korkeaniemi clan and as Johannes adds with some enthusiasm, there’s a new 750 on the way.
By now, it was easy to sense the young man’s eagerness to hit the icy road but when casually asked if his father still drives, it was a smiling Johannes who said simply, “Ja, sometimes. Not too much. He makes things.”
What things? And out of a bag he presented a a small, finely crafted wooden cup as a parting gift. “These things. Maybe you will see.”
Journey to Jokkmokk
Above the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland sits the small town of Jokkmokk, a few hours’ drive north-west of the forest from the day before. Once a year the town holds a fair where local artisans and crafts people set up stalls and sell their wares to residents and visitors alike. It’s an event where community spirit and courtesy are warm, welcoming and honest.
Everything from skinning knives to reindeer goods and of course, neatly honed wooden cups are on the table, all overseen by a man with a personality every bit as big as his frame.
Snow starts to fall in the early evening and there, impossible to miss among the stallholders, stands a bear of a man, his paws buried in a pair of red fox gauntlets. This, folks, is Johannes’s father Mika Korkeaniemi alongside his wife Carola.
In what is possibly one of the most intriguing examples of diversification in a family enterprise based entirely on Sweden’s timber industry, the couple produce and sell typically Nordic artefacts and wares in a business they call ‘Forest Jewel’.
Everything from skinning knives to reindeer goods and of course, neatly honed wooden cups are on the table, all overseen by a man with a personality every bit as big as his frame.
As Mika puts it, the timber industry has been a lifelong passion and this handcrafts pursuit is simply an extension tailored to tourism.
Mika’s handcrafts pursuit is simply an extension of his lifelong passion for the timber industry
Nor is it a flash in the pan or the manifestation of some mid-life crisis. Now in its 11th year, Forest Jewel is what husband and wife simply declare as something they share and enjoy.
Meantime, the kids are keeping the wheels turning but as Carola is quick to point out, it’s not just Johannes and his older brother. In her early 20s, daughter Paulina drives a log truck and there’s a younger son waiting to make his mark. A family affair, all the way.
After Carola burns my name into the wooden cup from Johannes the day before, Mika produces a bottle containing the Nordic equivalent of liquid lightning, allegedly to treat the timber and warm the blood. I fear a second shot would boil it.
Skol!
