Kemi Workers' Museum

The museum is in a workers’ settlement in the Marttala district of the city of Kemi in Lapland. It is open on request and visited especially by educational groups to learn how people lived in the early 20^th century. The two houses were built in 1929 by the company Ab Kemi, which developed sawmills and cellulose pulp mills in several parts of Finland. They are the last houses of about 40. The timber buildings are painted in traditional colours and contained apartments of a high standard for the time. One building has an exhibition of the history of the area and the other displays the apartments of sawmill workers, factory workers and skilled workers furnished with everyday objects in scenarios from the 1910s to the 1930s. Next to the museum is the Suomen Kähertäjämuseo, the Finnish barbers’ museum, with some 5,000 objects and a reconstructed barber’s shop. Barbers often carried out tooth extractions and small medical procedures for the workers. Both museums are run by the historical museum of Kemi.