I came here in ninety-nine. At first I lived on a farm, and then in the city. When I arrived here, I thought: here, finally, I’m getting to know the locals.

The first thing we did when we moved into the old Finnish house – after the war, ten families had lived here – was to insulate the hay and open the wall. And I saw traces of the settlers. There, in the wall, for some reason there were these lamps covered with a plank. But that was the first thing I found from the former owners of this house.

My feelings about these items are mixed. I wouldn’t say it has to do with their immediate purpose. Light, fire or warmth… They are, after all, migrants. This feeling is related to the fact that we have just entered this town and realized that there are no locals here. Someone came from Segezha, someone from Medvezhegorsk, from Loukhi… It was like that in my neighborhood, I didn’t meet any locals there. Just all the people who moved there, it felt like the whole of Karelia was moving down to the most southern point. Just the fact that the place is rootless.

Oksana