Arctic Ivalo

Ivalo (pohjoissaameksi Avvil, koltansaameksi Âˊvvel ja inarinsaameksi Avveel) on Inarin kunnan suurin taajama ja hallinnollinen keskus Inarijärven eteläpuolella. Taajaman väkiluku oli vuoden 2016 lopulla 3 036. Ivalon maapinta-ala on 7,40 neliökilometriä.

Ivalo sijaitsee seudun tärkeimmän tieyhteyden nelostien varrella. Ivalon kuntakeskuksesta Inarin kirkonkylään on matkaa 39 km. Rovaniemelle kertyy etäisyyttä 288 km ja Utsjoelle 164 km. Saariselän matkailukeskus sijaitsee 30 km Ivalosta etelään.

Ivalo tunnettiin aiemmin Kyrön kylänä. Kyrön kylän perusti 1750-luvulla Ivalojoen alajuoksulle Tornionlaaksosta muuttanut Henrik Kyrö. Ruotsalaisen sukututkijan Erik Kuoksun mukaan Kyrö kuului laajaan pirkkamiessukuun, jotka kuninkaan valtuuttamina kävivät kauppaa lapinkylien kanssa ja kantoivat niistä verot. Kyrö merkittiin lappalaiseksi, koska hän ei perustanut taloa vaan elinkeinoina olivat kalastus ja metsästys. Kyrön tytär nai saamelaisen miehen ja kyläläiset alkoivat 1700-luvun lopulla kehittää poronhoidosta sivuelinkeinoa.[2]

 

Arctic Ivalo

Ivalo (Northern Sami Avvil, Skolt Sámi Âˊvvel, and Inari Sámi Avveel) is the largest urban and administrative center of Inari municipality south of Lake Inari. The population of the agglomeration was 3,036 at the end of 2016. Ivalo’s land area is 7.40 square kilometers.

The Ivalo is located on the four-track roadside main road. Ivalo Municipality Center is 39 km from Inari Church Village. The distance to Rovaniemi is 288 km and to Utsjoki 164 km. Saariselkä Tourist Center is located 30 km south of Ivalo.

Ivalo was formerly known as Kyrö village. The Kyrö village was founded in the 1750s by Henrik Kyrö, who moved to the lower reaches of Ivalojoki from the Tornio Valley. According to the Swedish genealogy researcher Erik Kuoksu, Kyrö belonged to a large group of merchants who, under the authority of the king, were trading with taxi villages and carrying taxes on them. Kyrö was marked as a patron because he did not set up a house, but fishing and hunting were the livelihoods. At the end of the 18th century, Kyrö’s daughter, a Sami man, and villagers began to develop a reindeer husbandry industry.

After the continuation war, 1941-1944 the Soviet and the Allied forces pressured Finland to turn on their brothers in arms, as their common enemy was Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union State Atheism.

Finland was forced to ask German troops to leave Lapland and return to Germany. It was insulting request demanded by the Allied forces. Finland obeyed and asked the German troop’s nicely to go away from Finland. They were reluctant to leave, knowing full well what was waiting for them in Germany in 1944. After some time the Soviets pressured increased to drive the German troops out of Finland.

The German troops did start moving North to Norway where they were going to board German ships. As the Germans retreated they did what they were trained to do in a war as the German troops withdrew, they applied the scorched earth policy, similar to that the Finnish troops did when they retreated from Karelian Isthmus during the Winter war 1939-40.

Germans troops withdraw

In the war in Lapland, the retreating German troops burned down the houses at Ivalo, like most of the other settlements in Lapland. The Finnish troops behind retreating forces in Germany reached Ivalo on November 5, 1944.

Finland to Ivalo, 99800 Inari, Finland

Travel by car / bus.

3 h 22 min (287.1 km) via E75

German troops in Lapland during 1941 – 1944.

In northern Finland, there were about 213,000 men in the German 20th Army.  Their area of ​​responsibility was a 700-kilometer front line from the height of the Oulujoki River to the Arctic Ocean. A significant part of the soldiers belonged to various SS formations. The Commander of the Force, after Eduard Dietl, who died in June 1944, was General Lothar Renduli

XIX Mountain Army was responsible for the northernmost Front of Petsamo. In the south of the Sallan-Alakurt region, the XXXVI army fought. The southernmost XVIII Mountain Army was responsible for the Kiesting-Uhtua front line.

In addition to the crew, there were, for example, 32,000 horses or mules and 17,500–26,000 motor vehicles. Forces had stored the need for half a year of ammunition, food, fuel and other supplies, for a total of about 180 000 tonnes, mainly in Oulu and Rovaniemi. However, there were also warehouses, for example, in Uhtua one thousand kilometers from the Norwegian border.

In August 1944 the Intelligence Department of the Finnish Army headquarters prepared a report evaluating the possibilities of withdrawal of the German troops. According to the report, the evacuation of troops by sea would take two months, and the shipping of the material is still half a year longer. The schedule was estimated as summer time – much more time in winter.

War losses

In the war in Lapland, Finland lost 774 men, and 262 lost (of which 164 prisoners), and 2 904 were injured . One third of Finns killed in anti-personnel mines.

The losses of the Germans were nearly 1,000, over 2,000 wounded and 1,300 prisoners . The prisoners received by the Finns were surrendered to the Soviet Union, where the survivors were returned to their home country in the 1950s. The Finnish prisoners taken by the Germans were transported to Norway, most of which were released in the spring of 1945.

Chapel of the German Military Cemetery at Norvajärvi.

The losses did not end when the war ended. The Germans put a considerable amount of explosives on the terrain while securing their withdrawal from the mine fields. The mines caused serious civilian casualties many years after the war, the last in the 1970s. By 1973, a total of 1,142,000 explosives had been cleared, and individual explosives still exist for over 70 years after the end of the war.

In 1963, the graveyard of German soldiers, who were killed in the war in Lapland, has been put into operation at Norvajärvi in ​​Rovaniemi.

President of Finland Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim,

“After the devastating Soviet strategic Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive in southern Finland from June to July and a change in Finnish leadership in August 1944, Finland negotiated a separate peace agreement with the USSR.[14] The ceasefire agreement required the Finns to break diplomatic ties with Germany and publicly demand the withdrawal of all German troops from Finland by 15 September 1944.

Any troops remaining after the deadline were to be expelled or disarmed and handed over to the USSR. Even with the German withdrawal operation, the Finns estimated it would take three months for the Wehrmacht to fully evacuate. The task was further complicated by the Soviet demand that the majority of the Finnish Defence Forces be demobilised while conducting a military campaign against the Germans.

Before deciding to accept the Soviet demands, President Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, former Finnish commander-in-chief, wrote a letter directly to Adolf Hitler”:

Our German brothers-in-arms will forever remain in our hearts. The Germans in Finland were certainly not the representatives of foreign despotism but helpers and brothers-in-arms.

But even in such cases foreigners are in difficult positions requiring such tact. I can assure you that during the past years nothing whatsoever happened that could have induced us to consider the German troops intruders or oppressors.

I believe that the attitude of the German Army in northern Finland towards the local population and authorities will enter our history as a unique example of a correct and cordial relationship […]

I deem it my duty to lead my people out of the war. I cannot and I will not turn the arms which you have so liberally supplied us against Germans.

I harbour the hope that you, even if you disapprove of my attitude, will wish and endeavour like myself and all other Finns to terminate our former relations without increasing the gravity of the situation.