The Journey To Kiruna
Gregor Kallina: Where does your family come from and which connection does it have to Kiruna?
Hans-Olof Utsi: I was born in a small village called Mertajärvi, close to the Finnish border. There was still a school and I was one of the last ones to attend it. We we are only six pupils in the end before it was closed. One pupil in the first grade, one in the second grade and four in the third grade. Of course this could not go on like this, so they closed the school. From the fourth to the ninth grade we went to school in Karesuando, where we had moved to. After that, because me and one of my sisters wanted to go to high school, we moved to Kiruna, because it was only available there. Two of my sisters moved south directly after 9th grade, but me I went to Kiruna to go to high school when i was 15, without my parents. They paid for my apartment, but they did not move here. So I was here alone with one of my sisters who also still lives in Kiruna. After high school i received an internship for photography at one of the newspapers here, Norrbottens Kurir in 1987, just before I did my military service. I remember we still transferred the pictures in an analogue way via the telephone line, because the newspaper is based in Luleå. This was the first time when I got in touch with professional photography.
Taking Pictures For A Living
I finished my military service in 1989. After that I volunteered as an UN-soldier in the Lebanon. I also bought a lot of camera equipment there, because it was tax free. Then I went to Alta, in Norway, to have a professional training in photography for a year. After that I decided to go to Canada for six months to visit my relatives. When I came back from Canada I worked one and a half years for the fotolab of the company Satellitbild here in Kiruna and in October 1993 i eventually started my own business as a photographer (www.kirunabilder.se), in the beginning only still photography. Later i worked as an assistant for a documentary film that was shot in the area of Karesuando and so i expanded my portfolio with film activities when the DV format, Digital Video, became available and reduced the costs of filmmaking. Today i am working for a whole bunch of magazines as well as for corporate clients, including LKAB (the local mining company).
Later you decided to differentiate a bit by offering also production and location scouting activities. Was your decision to go into this direction based on the trend that for magazine assignments you get paid less and less these days?
It was not driven by economical need but rather by pure coincidence. There were some small foreign broadcasters coming here in need to find people and locations, so it all started on a small scale in the year around 2000. But it was not until the big commercial of Volvo with Zlatan Ibrahimovic when that business really took off, i did the location scouting for it. In the meantime i teamed up with another guy, Kenny, and we are the ones who are contacted when someone wants to do a commercial or similar up here in the north. So this business gives me some kind of stability, not being forced to hunt for still assignments all the time.
Does the increased interest for Kiruna and the city transformation also affect your business?
Yes, it does, mainly with regard to client magazines, as for example unions. The world is interested in Kiruna.
But not necessarily only on the city transformation but also on nature and tourism topics, boosting your editorial assignments.
Yes, exactly! Part of the commercials, they want to bring stories into the nature. My work is a big time and money saver for companies, as i am familiar with local circumstances and prices. and most big companies are used to work like this, to contact somebody local.
At the moment most of your income comes from commercials?
Yes, I prefer to do commercials, not so much TV series etc., because then I'm occupied for weeks whereas commercials only need two to three days of shooting. I like to keep the diversity in my portfolio.
Apart from the commercial aspect for your business, what do you think personally about the city transformation?
It is really some kind of double feeling. You can understand it from and intellectual point of view, it is logical. But then on the other side, it is just weird and absurd. I feel sadness when i see the places where houses had been not so long time ago. At the same time it is amazing how fast you adapt.
So obviously you are okay with that, at least you can adapt. Do you also think that your fellow citizens can do it?
I think it will be hard for those people who do not own houses or flats, but have to rent them, because they get much less compensation, only a subsidized rent for five years, than those who own real estate. They do not seem to be satisfied.
The Sami Heritage
Is it true that you have Sami ancestors?
That´s true, but we have not been reindeer herders for three generations already. My grandfather's grandfather disappeared in the mountains while herding the reindeer, probably he died somewhere and the herd dissolved into other herds. My grandfather`s grandfather had three daughters but none of them wanted to continue with the reindeer herding. The family was totally smashed by this tragic loss. My grandfather´s mother had to work as a servant for a priest to earn her living. She gave birth to my grandfather while she was not married so the status of my grandfather was "father unknown". My grandmother was not able to take care of my grandfather so she left him at the border river between Finland and Sweden when he was six years old and sent him to a family in Mertajärvi, the place I was born. My grandfather was not considered to be part of this family and he already had to work when he was six years old. He had to learn Swedish on his own quite young. Eventually he married my grandmother, who was also from the village. So my father´s first language was Finnish and then Sami-language, he did not know Swedish before he went to school.
My father became a farmer and entrepreneur already in young years there. He sold a lot of wood to Norway and that is how he met my mother who was born there. They never went back to the herding business, because of economic reasons, but also because being Sami was not a good social status at all. My grandfather was a Sami person, Sami was his first language, but at that time you were officially only a Sami when you did reindeer herding.
This somehow creates a split among Sami people themselves.
Exactly, my grandfather was never accepted either by the swedish society or by the Sami people, he got stuck somewhere in between. My father once went to search my grandfather who left the house without proper clothes and when he eventually had found him on the road to Karesuando, only one sock, no shoes, he asked: "Where are you going"? He just answered "I want to get back to the boat, i want to go back to the boat." So he was on his way back in time, remembering when his mother had left him by the river at the border. He was like a six year old when. When he became old, he also totally lost his Swedish and only spoke Sami and Finnish. This story has affected my family a lot and we have always encouraged our Sami origin.
What do the the Sami people think today with regard to the city transformation or does this not affect them at all?
It does affect them, i have friends who are reindeer herders. The city transformation has been handled more or less, but what worries them is the ongoing exploration of new mines.
Credits:
Gregor Kallina