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What is the punishment for someone who has already lived a hard life?
From the 1920s to the 1980s, workhouses operated in Finland as institutions intended to intervene in crimes before they even happened, or so it was believed. In these little-known yet socially significant institutions, control, discipline, care, and contemporary ideas of a respectable life all intertwined.
In principle, social assistance was available to everyone, but it came with strict conditions. Not everyone was able or willing to conform to them. People could end up in a workhouse for failing to repay poor relief, vagrancy, avoiding maintenance obligations, alcohol use, or behaviour considered inappropriate by the authorities.
Labor in the workhouses was mandatory, and everyday life was strictly regulated. Windows could be barred, and the areas were often surrounded by barbed wire. Good behaviour and work earned points that could shorten a person’s confinement. Many spent years in these institutions.
The history of Finnish workhouses is a history of lost individual freedom and a highly regulated Finland, but also a history of a developing welfare system, poverty, addiction, and alternative ways of living. Were the workhouses punitive institutions or reformative care facilities? The answer does not fit neatly into a single category.
The exhibition in Oulu Museum examines the phenomenon especially through the Oulu County Municipal Workhouse in Ruukki, later known as the Pohjola Workhouse. Through photographs, objects, documents, and personal stories, the exhibition opens a view into a silenced chapter of recent history: what everyday life in the institution was like, how power was exercised, and what kind of marks the system left on people.
The exhibition script has been created in cooperation between the Oulu Museum, writer Katariina Parhi, and photographer Vesa Ranta. It is part of a larger body of work that also includes Parhi and Ranta’s non-fiction book Punished without a Crime – The Nonconforming in Finnish Workhouses (Siltala, 2026), published in April 2026, as well as the exhibition at the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas in Tampere from April 30 to September 20, 2026.
Punished without a Crime is part of the official Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture programme. The exhibition has been supported by the Oulu Culture Foundation, the Finnish Association of Science Editors and Journalists, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, and the Finnish Heritage Agency.
