In front of you is a copy of the gas station bar, which was located until the 1990s in Savukoski, on the eastern border of Finland, about 170 kilometers from Rovaniemi. The bar and the personal photos and stories collected around it describe the great social changes that took place in Lapland, at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 20th century, Northern Finland population growth was relatively stable. In the countryside, families were big, there were many children, and people moved steadily to urban areas. When agriculture and forestry began to be mechanized from the 1960s, and the structure of society changed, livelihood opportunities in the countryside decreased. The general expectations of the standard of living also rose and people began to move away from their home regions in search of more money.

The result was a large wave of migration from the country and remote areas to the cities of Southern Finland and especially to Sweden. The social environment and landscapes of northern villages were revolutionized as a result of emigration, and several front-line farms, built after the Second World War were left in the cold. The peak period of the migration wave, when people moved from remote villages to larger population centers, dates back to the turn of the 1970s.

Those who remained in their home regions gathered to spend their increased free time due to mechanization and unemployment, in places like Savukoski's Teboil bar. Due to the long distances, there are many service stations in Finland at regular intervals. In small towns, they have been important gathering places, where friends have met and talked, drank beer, played the lottery and hit pajatso; a slot machine. In the bar, they also heard tales about who had moved to Sweden for work, agreed on the gathering of deer groups, and talked about the politicians operating in southern Finland and the capital region of Helsinki.

You can get to know life in Savukoski and Eastern Lapland through the photos and interviews with the young Lapland man next to the bar. This young man from a family of reindeer herders moved to Helsinki, but later returned to his home regions in Eastern Lapland and continued his life as a reindeer herder in Salla, a neighboring municipality of Savukoski. This young man's story tells us vividly what life in Finland is like when viewed from different parts of our country and at different ages.