Today in Kitee: sunrise at 8:27am – sunset at 16:15. Cloudy. -6C.
Less than 8 hours of day light. Better to put some warm clothes on go for the 7km walk around the village and hamlets of Niinikumppu, in the countryside not far from Kitee.
The temperature has lowered since yesterday and you can hear the sound of the dry snow crunching under the sole of the boots. The countryside road is fully covered by snow with signs of the tiers of the cars that passed during the day. On the side of the road, where the snow is more soft, there are footprints of a couple walking their dog. We pass few empty homes. No lights inside. Cars or vans parked in the yard covered by snow. One house has a flag pole with the thin and long flag of this region, Karelia, hanging on the top and moving in slow waves. These are countryside house. All in wood. Mostly painted in dark red. The frames of the doors and windows in painted in white.
These houses seem hibernating and I ask myself where the owners are. Have they left just for the holidays? Have they moved elsewhere duchin the winter? Have they moved for good?
This is not my first walk around here. I have passed by these houses during the spring, the summer, the winter. These houses are well kept but they seem often empty. I try to imagine how it is to live here, in the countryside of Eastern Finland. 8 km form the main road. 15 km from Kitee, which is a small town. What do people do? How do they earn their living? Some may own fields and plant barley and other crops in the spring and summer. But the winter is quite long and farms tend to be pretty small. Some may own forest and would sell timber. But it takes years for seeding to become trees that are worth selling. What do they do in the meantime.
As I am writing this, I opened the AdminStat site and looked at the demographic data of the Municipality of Kitee. On 1. January 2017, the population was 10.719. The net birthrate for that year was -95. The net migration rate was -138. The population on 31. December of 2017 has decreased by 233 down to 10.486. That was in line with previous years when the population of Kitee on average decreased by 1,4%.
The largest age group in the municipality is the 55-64 which accounted in 2017 for 19,865 of the population. The people in the age groups from 55 and above account for 52,46% of the population. This means that the young people leave the municipality and the population here is getting older.
What will be the future of municipalities like Kitee in the 21st century, I wondered during my walk today. i have been coming here regularly for the past 20 years. How will the houses I saw today look like 20 -40 years from now. Will they still be inhabited? Will they still be there? Will they be look run down and abandoned? Will there be young families living here?
