Nazi revenge in the war in Lapland: Finland’s biggest jumping hill was destroyed

The scenery is breathtaking. When you use the Lapland supplement appropriately, you can see the whole of Rovaniemi from here.

In 1937, Finland’s largest, most talked about and even scariest jumping hill was completed in Pöyliövaara, on the edge of Kemijoki, on the southern edge of Rovaniemi. The length of the hill was 90 and the total length was 236 meters.

“The starting platform of Jättiläisuksimäki will be a hundred meters higher than the plateau. The hill is seven times steeper than Rinteenmäki on the Petsamo road, from which many cars have also slid backwards,” was written in the Rovaniemi newspaper.

Construction materials were sunk into the mammoth of its time: 10 kilometers of round wood, 25 kilometers of boards, 5,610 bolts and 280 kilograms of nails.

– A high hill with a moderately steep downhill slope. It must have been a place exposed to the wind, as there were not many trees around, says a writer who has studied the history of Rovaniemi Kalevi Mikkonen.

In one competition, the conditions were so fierce that more than half of the jumpers fell. Five men were taken to the hospital, among them was the future world champion who broke his collarbone SpongeBob SquarePants.

The first legends

In the 1930s, hill jumping experienced a strong boom in Finland. According to the Ski Association, a total of 119 hills were built in Finland between 1930 and 1936.

– Building a jumping hill was one Tahko Pihkala favorite children. He especially emphasized the combined one, because it taught future soldiers courage, says the skiing historian Pentti Jussila.

In the opening competition of Pöyliövaara in 1937, Rovaniemi’s own son Timo Murama won in front of 8,000 spectators. He bounced 71 meters. A higher jump had never been made in Finland before.

– I am extremely annoyed by the use of the word legend in sports, but I have to use it myself: the first Finnish hill legends were born at the Pöyliövaara Games, Jussila smiles.

“Big hill”

Iltalehti went through the results lists of the competitions held in Pöyliövaara, in case someone from the same age could find a memory for this story.

Those who have succeeded on the mountain have already passed from time to eternity, but would Finland’s oldest living Olympic champion, the great man of the combined Heikki Hasucompeted in Pöyliövaara?

Hasu answers his landline in Kymenlaakso. He complains that it is difficult to talk on the phone due to hearing loss.

The 1948 St. Moritz Olympic winner states that he has competed at Pöyliövaara.

– It was a big hill. I don’t remember anything else, he announces.

What will the 97-year-old’s everyday life include in the early winter of 2023?

– What an almost 100-year-old should hear: after the morning comes the evening, Hasu answers.

Air surveillance

In the Continuation War between 1941 and 1944, the ski jumping site became a military target, when the tower of the ski jumping hill housed a control point for Finnish air surveillance pilots. At the bottom of the hill was a small cabin equipped with a stove and a field telephone as a resting place.

In the area of ​​Pöyliövaara, there was a maintenance and residential barracks area for the Germans. There were a total of eight barracks.

In March 1944, the brothers-in-arms staged the Ounasvaara winter ski jump at Pöyliövaara.

– No matter how many soldiers participated in the competitions. In 1943, there were also Swedes involved, says Mikkonen.

The races were broadcast and there were thousands of people in Mäkimonto. There were 25 participants in the 1944 hill race and they got on the podium Lasse Johansson (72.8 points), Leo Laakso (71.0) as well as Kalervo Kaplas (70.9).

The awards ceremony and the closing ceremony of the games were held in the Haus der Kameradschaft, a party space built by the Germans in Rovaniemi.

– As long as there are Finns and Germans in Lapland, there will be no rut here, declared the German general who was the patron of the Games Eduard Dietl.

Nazi detonation

The armistice terms of the continuation war included that the Finns evict the Germans from Lapland.

Hostilities between Finland and Nazi Germany began at the turn of October 1944.

It is possible that on October 8, 1944, a German who competed at Pöyliövaara was about to blow up Finland’s largest jumping hill, which cost half a million marks.

– The wooden hill was completely destroyed. It was one of the first destruction works carried out in Rovaniemi, Mikkonen states.

The Rovaniemi newspaper wrote sarcastically that the Germans destroyed the jumping hill as the first “military device”.

– The reason for blowing up the hill was obvious, Mikkonen states.

– Finnish troops were coming to Rovaniemi from Ranua. Finnish spies would have had the opportunity to see the entire area of ​​the town and the movements of the Germans from the jumping hill, the author clarifies.

An eternal record

The old location coordinates can be found on the destroyed hill. The map application shows that the path starting from the east side of Kemijoki possibly leads to the destination.

The steep slope is not very easy to walk on, but after about five minutes of hiking you will see: the northernmost reinforced concrete element of the jumping hill. Half a dozen elements can be found on the tabletop until a commemorative plaque is encountered. It has 13 lines of text and the first sentence reads: “From 1937 to 1944, Pöyliövaara’s ski jump, which was the largest in Finland, was located at this location.”

The eternal record of a performance venue that has only been standing for seven years is Lauri Pietikäinen jumped 74 meters in 1941.

Sources: Barracks and barbed wire work, Kalevi Mikkonen’s blog, Lapland’s People and the history of Finnish ski jumping.