The Söderfjärden pumping station

The Söderfjärden pumping station

The Söderfjärden pumping station is located on the north-eastern (NE) edge of Söderfjärden, next to the stream Munsmoströmmen.

The shallow bay of Söderfjärden was drained between 1919 and 1927. Using shovels and manpower, the pump house embankment and basin were dug, along with many miles of ditches, wide, deep canals and drainage ditches. The first pumping station was also built in the white house shown in the picture. The land reclamation of the vast bay was a colossal project, at the time the largest drainage scheme in Northern Europe. Disagreement among the landowners regarding the drainage project led to great drama – including spectacular blasting of dams. 

But a determined working group/committee led by the Sundom farmer August  Holmström  pushed the major project through. Thus the pumps were started in the midst of the spring flood  in 1926, and open water became land. By then, 150 years had passed, during which there had been several previous unsuccessful attempts to regulate the water level of Söderfjärden. By 1927, the successful drainage project had been fully completed and 1,430 additional hectares could be brought under the plough in the following years.

The main drainage channel is Riddardiket (see picture), which carries the water to the pumping station from those areas of Söderfjärden that still lie below sea level.

A new red-brick pump house was built in 1964.

Nowadays, the pumping station is shown to visitors on request by the Meteoria’s guides:

• On the outside, visitors can see the obvious difference in water level between Riddardiket/the pump house pond and Munsmoströmmen creek, which carries the water out to the bay Södra Stadsfjärden in Vaasa
• The old white-painted pump house is now a museum dedicated to the land reclamation project, where visitors can see the first pumps, the unique surveying maps and the historical photographs amongst other things
• The new brick-red pump house contains two large pumps that start automatically when the water in the pump house pond rises to a certain level – the building also houses art relating to the history of Söderfjärden. Sixteen year old Eivor Holm from Solf created three monumental murals when the new pump house was built (see the picture): 

  I.   The wetland landscape in the 19th century

  II.  The drainage works in the 1920s

  III. The grain growing in the 1960s

On YLE Arena there is a film about ivor Holm, (The Comet in the Bay) Kometen i fjärden (2025).

Further works of art have since been added: ceramic artist Paula Blåfield’s magnificent ceiling painting (“We’re all in the same boat”) depicting the meteorite/asteroid that once created the Söderfjärden meteorite crater; and murals by Sundom artist Nils Nygren (fishing and threshing) and by the Munsmo artists Tapani Tammenpää (birdlife) and Kaj Smeds (coastal pasture life), as well as views of the Söderfjärden farmland by  the Sundom residents Lars Nedergård and Uno Mitts.

Since 2024, there has been a large, stand-alone solar panel installation that contributes to the pumping station’s electricity supply. The Söderfjärden Drainage Association is a group of landowners at Söderfjärden who maintain the pumping station, canals and ditches.

Find out more about the drainage association here.