Sulo Karjalainen is known across Finland as the Bear Man of Kuusamo. In a 2014 Barcroft TV film, the then 73-year-old hugs and plays with fully grown brown bears he raised from orphaned cubs at the Kuusamo Large Carnivore Centre in north-eastern Finland. The footage of a man hugging an animal that can weigh 400 kilos went around the world.
Who is Sulo Karjalainen?
Karjalainen became involved with bears through a research project on Finland’s large carnivores. When orphaned cubs needed a home, he was asked whether he would take some in, and in the 1990s he founded a private centre for them in Kuusamo. He ran it with his brother Jalo, and by 2014 more than 20 orphaned brown bears had lived there over the years.
The centre also cared for injured and orphaned lynx and wolverines. Its most famous resident was Juuso, a bear of around 400 kilos and Karjalainen’s companion for life; in summer the keeper would take bears such as Vyöti, brought in as a small orphan, for walks in the forest and even fishing trips.
Kuusamo and Finland’s brown bears
Kuusamo is a town of about 15,000 people in the Koillismaa area of Northern Ostrobothnia, on Finland’s eastern border. It is wild country: forest, lakes and marshland, the Ruka ski resort, and Oulanka National Park with its 80-kilometre Karhunkierros, the “Bear’s Ring” hiking trail.
The brown bear is Finland’s national animal, and the country has an estimated 2,000 of them. Wild bears are shy and usually avoid people, and guided watching hides are the safest way to see them.
Explore more: Santra’s much-photographed stretches; managed bear viewing at McNeil River.
Related reading: Casey Anderson and Brutus: A Captive Bear’s Story.
The Barcroft TV film
The 2014 film showed Karjalainen inside the enclosures in close, everyday contact with bears he has known since they were cubs. The relaxed behaviour between man and animal is what made it famous, and the trust visible between them is the result of decades of daily care, starting from when they were cubs.
The centre after 2014
That trust has limits. In April 2022, at the age of 81, Karjalainen was attacked by a four-year-old male bear that had escaped its enclosure with another bear; he was bitten on the neck and buttock, drove the bear off with pepper spray and was treated at Oulu University Hospital, and the bear was put down. Inspections that spring found shortcomings in the enclosures and feeding, and the regional authorities threatened to close the centre. In September 2022 a 20-year-old female, Nätti, walked out through a gate left open and was shot about three kilometres away after a tranquilliser attempt failed.
Even bears raised by hand remain powerful wild animals. Watch them in the wild from an official hide with a guide, and enjoy films like Barcroft’s for the rare bond they record.
Sources
- Photo: Barcroft TV
- Laughing Squid, 30 May 2014
- Books from Finland: Bear-faced cheek (2010)
- Yle News on the Kuusamo centre, 2022
- Kaleva, 13 April 2022
- Kuusamo · Eurasian brown bear
More bear stories: Casey Anderson and Brutus: The Bear Behind Montana Grizzly Encounter · Mark Dumas and Agee: A Polar-Bear Filming Relationship · Doug Seus and His Trained Bears: The Film and Its Context · A Black Bear Retrieves Her Cub Beside a Road in Kootenay · Black Bears on Santa Elena Canyon’s Wall: A Kayaker’s Video · Helsinki Zoo’s Brown Bears Return to the Snow
No comments