Mission
The environment, culture, and atmosphere of Oulu may feel ordinary, boring, and uninspiring to locals. This mindset is perhaps best captured by one of our city's most famous landmarks, Shitty town graffiti. Can a place like this really be marketed to tourists or attract new residents from elsewhere in Finland – not to mention inspiring the ”natives”?
What is everyday and self-evident to us is probably new and worth exploring to an outsider. It is all about perspective: as locals, we easily become blind to things that are exciting, exotic, inspiring, and even unique to people coming from elsewhere. Nowadays, it is easy to forget our roots, traditions, language, and culture – our local identity. But if everything here becomes the same as everywhere else, how much will anyone care to come and live or visit here? In that case, the factors that determine our pull and retention will hardly be on our side.
Oulu Union is a registered association that envisions and develops ideas for the benefit of the city of Oulu and the entire region. Our role is to be curators, advocates, and inspirers who connect local actors to achieve even world-class implementations. Our angle is in communication, marketing, and brand building, drawing ideas especially from the region's history, tradition, and culture. In our view, these have not been utilized sufficiently in the technology city of Oulu. Elsewhere in the world, our tar story would have already been made into a major attraction. Here we have the famous golden opportunity – served to us on a silver platter!
Our mission is to highlight significant themes, particularly from the past but also from present-day phenomena, and to make bold new initiatives while exploring the future.
Oulu Union does not step on other associations' toes, but rather we want to unite regional actors who agree with our mission. By inspiring and supporting each other, we can achieve greater and more impactful things. So let's make the unique and exotic story of the Oulu region one to be remembered and experienced – together!
Vision for Tar City 2031
There are certainly hundreds of places around the world that identify as maritime cities, but how many carry the title Tar City ?
In its day, Oulu was one of the world’s busiest ports thanks to the tar trade. It was significant both for the farmers of Kainuu and the surrounding areas, who were responsible for producing this “black gold,” and for the Oulu tar merchants who acted as middlemen, but tar was undoubtedly most important to its largest end users: the great powers of the era. Wooden warships and merchant vessels were not seaworthy without the protective tar that coated them, and enormous quantities of it were consumed. Thus, Oulu’s role in the script of world history is by no means insignificant. In addition to tar—and many ships, for example—being exported from Oulu, interesting goods, customs, and stories were brought here from abroad.
From the late 18th century until the early 20th century, Oulu apparently had the world's largest tar storage facility, Tervahovi (18th-century tar inspection and taxation house in Oulu). The warehouse and porton the northern shore of Toppilansalmi—which began operations unofficially in 1781 and officially a couple of years later—was the focal point of the entire tar-making industry, which effectively came to an end in its second fire on June 10, 1901.
Very little that can be touched remains from those days, but the international business and culture that grew around tar left an indelible mark on our city. We believe that all of this should now be seized upon and Oulu taken forward with these excellent foundations! We want this unique cultural heritage to support tourism, local identity, and the brand in the title Tar City. In addition, the region’s tar-making heritage must be inscribed on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The year 2031 will mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of Tervahovi. What kind of activities will we have organized by then? See what journalist, nonfiction writer, and columnist Helena Petäistö has to say on the subject!
News
Wanted!
We are currently looking for a modern, hands-on executive director who can effectively communicate our mission, and whose first task would be to secure funding to boost our association's operations.
Once we’ve got the teams and organizers for this phase of the game in order, we’ll be asking all Oulu and Terva fans for their help on a broader scale. In the future, we also want to play a role in shaping the region’s cultural heritage strategy. Sign up now—or get a friend to sign up—if this really resonates with you!
For more information, contact Kalle Hautamäki (040 7044 563) / info@ouluunion.com.
Oulu Days 2025
We participated in the Oulu Days with our tar hut as part of the Tervatöpinät event on the shore of Toppilansalmi on September 6, 2025. Essentially, our booth was a small, two-person, tar-scented movie theater where visitors could immerse themselves in the atmospheric world of the animated film *Tarina tervasta* (*A Story of Tar*).
Illustrated and animated by Antti Palosaari, the three-minute short story tells the tale of tar production, transport, and sale from the perspective of Juho, a peasant from Kainuu, and places the entire tar industry into a larger picture where the tar taken from Oulu to Stockholm, England, and the rest of Europe enabled the great fleets of the time to sail the world's seas.
