The city known for its high technology also has an impressive past. In principle, there is nothing new under the sun - internationalism and expertise in technological economics have existed in Oulu before.

The city of Oulu turned a full 400 years in April 2005. When Charles IX founded Oulu at the mouth of a rapidly flowing river - adjacent to a fortress which had been started earlier - military strategy was at issue, and the project was linked with the superpower politics of that time. The forests and people of the north had already been subject to Stockholm’s sphere of influence and the national entities of Russia. Naturally, furs and rivers rich in salmon were economically attractive. They were likewise interested in the inhabitants, the taxation of whom enticed both western and eastern rulers. In fact, the fortress and the town were intended to be the bridgehead of the Swedish Empire.

Finland’s centuries-long fateful position between two worlds - east and west - has at times been a source of great benefit as well as great sorrow for the Finnish people. Nobody knows exactly when Finland, or the region that was considered to be Finland, drifted into administrative contact with Sweden’s medieval kingdom. In fact, it is generally safe to say that around the 1100s and thereafter the Finnish people gradually became model subjects of the ”Kingdom of Three Crowns”. They happened to speak Finnish, but in their own minds they were good Swedes. This is no longer seen in the present mentality based on the nation-state tradition. In the 1600s the Swedish kingdom was an awe-inspiring and, unfortunately, very war-like superpower whose terrifying mounted troops, called ”hakkapeliitta”, were mainly composed of Finnish soldiers.

The paths of Sweden and Finland diverged during the unrest at the time of the Napoleonic wars, and this separation was linked to new superpower issues.  As a result of the war Finland was incorporated into Russia in 1809.  In the world of that time, which was based on autocracy, Finland had exceptionally good luck. Finland became the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. It preserved the enlightened Western administrative and justice system of the period of Swedish rule. The czars granted Finland several privileges that other ”Russian” peoples did not have.  The period of Russian rule went well up to the year 1899, when pan-Slavic feelings of nationalism in Russia reared its head. The exemptions of the Grand Duchy were irritating, and the weak-willed Nicholas II ate his word and the ruler’s assurance, which his predecessors had confirmed to Finland without exception. Finland proclaimed her independence in 1917, although during the following spring she had to fight a bitter war of independence, which immediately turned into a civil war. As the country became independent, Oulu had already become somewhat provincial, as the exceptional prosperity and strong internationalism of the 1800s had waned.

But let us look a little further back in time: The town of Oulu, then, has lived half of its life in ”Swedish Finland”. In its first century the town was small when viewed from today’s perspective, although, of course, it was not at all insignificant by the standards of the 1600s. As early as in the latter half of the century, Oulu’s school was a high-level institution which graduated students directly to a university. The language of instruction was Latin, and the town was commendably international in other ways, as well. Old ledgers reveal that wine from the Rhine and beer from Wismar were also consumed here, where the ethnic backgrounds of the inhabitants also varied. The town’s trade relations mostly passed through Stockholm, the capital town (of Sweden).

The population of Oulu at the time it was established had been about 400.  At the end of the century it approached 1000, but the famine of the 1690s heavily taxed the population throughout Finland. During the 1600s the salmon became established as the symbol of Oulu and soon received a more ceremonious and heraldic form on a real coat of arms. On it the king of fish from the Oulujoki River, the ancient main artery which has since been fettered by power plants, swam under a fortress with four towers. The salmon, fur and butter trades continued persistently while wars tore at the kingdom from time to time. The hardships of the 1710s, known as the Great Wrath, brought the bloodthirsty troops of Czar Peter I (so-called ”The Great” by his admirers) into the town. Oulu’s fortress was burned and approximately 60 residents of the town were dragged to Russia into slavery. Countless lives were lost all over Finland and dozens of thousands of Finns were butchered in the systematic massacres carried out by Russians invaders.  Other trials experienced by the town included large fires that periodically destroyed the entire wooden town, as happened in 1822.

The next century - the 1700s - brought with it small sawmills at the mouth of the river and a continually growing interest in the vegetal tar trade. One factor was that in the early decades of the 1700s the Russian Empire had taken possession of Karelia, which had been the central tar production region of Sweden (i.e. Swedish Finland). Tar can be considered the ”high-tech” product of its time. The world’s superpowers, investing in their seafaring and fleets, were always in need of tar. In 1765 Oulu obtained its own international trade rights during the Diet of 1765 in Stockholm. In truth, bribes were needed for this, but the politics of that time called for resourcefulness...

At the beginning of the 1800s Oulu was already convincingly distinguished in the maritime industry. When the sympathetic Czar of Russia, Alexander I, visited Finland - and Oulu -  in 1819, the town already had 4000 inhabitants and for a long time  was the second largest town in Finland. Tar was no longer produced in the coastal areas, from where pine forests had already diminished; instead it was produced on the banks of the Oulujoki River - further and further away.  Eventually tar-kilns produced ”black gold” in the eastern regions of the province, in the Kainuu region. The Oulujoki River offered an excellent and functional ”logistic channel”.  Tar burning and river transport, which had become the key home industry of the Kainuu peasantry, created an interesting antity all the way up to the 1900s. As early as the 1780s the well-to-do merchants and Trade Society of Oulu had concentrated the tar trade into their own terminal, the Tar Wharf on the north shore of Toppilansalmi-passage, which served as a deep-water port. Oulu’s ships got larger and journeys became longer. In 1860s the merchant fleet registered in Oulu was the largest in the country and five years later the amount of tar exported from the town rose to record levels: more than 83 500 barrels were exported.  The largest buyers included England; its empire’s oak ships were able to float without rotting even in distant waters due to this sticky liquid. Then, unfortunately, came metal ships and cheaper chemical methods along with many other innovations.

The first steam-powered sawmills began operating in the Oulu region as early as the 1850s, and the sale of ships abroad, too, was very profitable. Foreign products were imported before the ice froze for the winter enjoyment of Oulu residents. The wealthiest people were accustomed to eating foie de gras made by the masters of Strasbourg, and Spanish olives were also known. Businesses in Oulu supplied their customers with the fashions of Paris with a delay of a few months, Sailors spoke English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and even Portuguese, as needed.