Farmer Juha Karimo
Ylöstalo’s cottages have been rented out for five decades. Farmer Juha Karimo needs a wide range of practical skills in his daily work. Buildings need regular maintenance, motorboats require servicing, and all firewood for the saunas is sourced from the family’s own forest during winter. Almost every autumn, storms damage some of the piers, and heavy rains leave the roads in need of repair. You might meet Juha down at the harbor if you rent a motorboat, or spot him hurrying along the our small roads on his “cabin moped”, towing a trailer full of laundry bags — or digging a ditch somewhere on the property.
Juha’s motto: “Anyone who rents out cottages should own a digging machine”.
Hilkka Karimo is responsible for marketing
Hilkka Karimo is Juha’s sister. She handles bookings and invoicing, manages social media, and has created Ylöstalo’s website. After returning from northern Espoo, Hilkka appreciates the good internet connections and the nearby everyday services.
“Lunch restaurant Tiiranta, the library, the gym, and other services near my Särkisalo home are all close by. VisitSalo offers useful tourism training for entrepreneurs. I am very happy with my decision to move away from Espoo.”
Partners
There are several entrepreneurs in Särkisalo whose help is invaluable to Ylöstalo, even though we do as much as we can ourselves. Cottage cleaning, engine repairs for the boats, replacing sauna benches and stove glass doors, installing the cottages’ landscape windows, maintaining the roads… Everything runs smoothly when support is close at hand.
The Karimo family
Ylöstalo has been in the same family since 1711. Earlier records have not been researched, but mentions of the village go back to the 1500s, and ancestors can be traced to the 1600s. In the 1700s, Finland had about 400,000 inhabitants.
In the early 1900s, author Ernst Lampen (later known as Iso-Keisari) spent his summers in Norrby. He recorded parts of our family history, often by listening to the stories of Gammelfar, Gustaf Wilhelm Bjur, who was almost 90 years old. Lampen enjoyed his time in Finby, partly thanks to the jovial sea captains who lived in the area. These captains had seen the world; they had often started at sea at the age of fourteen, working on ships built by the local villages and farms. The most talented of them became captains of ocean-going vessels, and Finby had several of these as well.
peasant sailors
Gammelfar, born in the 1820s, was a hard-working and sharp businessman. He owned shares in several ships. At that time, peasant seafaring was still living its golden age, and thanks to good marriages and successful property deals, he eventually owned all three farms in Norrby. Gustaf Wilhelm also had his own vessel, which he used for trips to Stockholm, Reval (Tallinn), and Helsinki.
It was common to bring home new ideas and small gifts from these overseas journeys. Gammelfar was among the first to have his house painted, inspired by the houses along Lake Mälaren in Sweden. The captains’ homes were furnished with stylishly furnished, and their wives received beautiful fabrics and scarves as presents. Even the ladies of Perniö manors kept a close eye on how the folks from Finby dressed.
The deaf cuckoo
Gammelfar bought a house for his third son, Elis, and named it Strängnäs after a Swedish town Elis was fond of (now known as Vahervaara). By then, steamships had made sailing ships less profitable, but Elis still owned a couple of vessels.
As a young man, Elis once quietly stood under a tree where a cuckoo was calling. He made a wish: to marry Matilda Bastman, and have one child. But the cuckoo must have misheard him – he married Matilda and had ten children.
Usually, it’s hard to trace maternal lines in church records, but Matilda’s ancestry can be followed all the way back to 13th-century German nobles who were sent to Sweden and later to Finland.