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Magic, Past and Present
Magic, Past and Present brings together the latest interdisciplinary research by Finnish scholars on magic and witchcraft. The authors come from fields such as history, art, literature, religion, and culture. Geographically, the articles are set in Finland and its surrounding areas, and the time span is from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book’s chapters discuss magic and magic-users in a wide context, from medieval church paintings and their portrayed gender roles to the neoshamanism and paganism of the present day. They also address issues such as witchcraft accusations from the perspective of othering and groundbreaking figures like one of the first Finnish female magicians at the turn of the 21st century. The book is intended for scholars in various humanities fields, such as history, religious studies, folklore, and literature. A general audience will also find the book thought-provoking and informative.
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The Era of Cultural Television - Another History of Finnish Television in the 1970s and 1980s
The Era of Cultural Television offers a new interpretation of the Finnish television history of the 1970s and 1980s, which has previously been interpreted as a transitional period from the politicized 1970s to the liberalization of the late 1980s. The book suggests that Finnish television of this era was characterized by an ethos in which television was seen as a cultural resource for all, playing an important role in social planning and cultural citizenship.
While Finnish television has been studied mainly as a medium for entertainment and information, The Era of Cultural Television offers a new framework by approaching television from the perspective of cultural policy. At the same time, the book brings to the forefront programme types that, despite their importance, have been overlooked in previous research: television drama, international films and series, service programmes as well as educational programmes for children. The book challenges the convention of emphasizing the differences between public service and commercial television and shows that the commercial television company Mainos-TV (MTV) shared largely the same ethos as the public service Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yleisradio). The book highlights forgotten aspects of MTV’s history by describing how the company invested in art and history documentaries and developed new forms of addressing the challenges of modern life in its service programmes.
From the perspective of the current abundance of channels and streaming services, television of the 1970s and 1980s may seem scarce and limited. The Era of Cultural Television shows that scarcity is a retrospective interpretation that does not correspond to contemporary understanding of television. Television addressed an audience that was expected to be highly curious and inquisitive. Television viewers were catered for with a diverse selection of arts programmes, documentaries and educational programmes as well as entertainment. Television brought world cinema, contemporary drama, literature discussions and music education into homes. Current social issues were discussed in educational programmes as well as in drama and situation comedy. Through international programme cooperation, imported programmes and films, television broadened the world view of Finns and increased understanding of foreign languages, cultures and geography. Television programmes also dealt with controversial issues of history and brought out perspectives on the recent past that were not addressed in the history curriculum.
The Era of Cultural Television is based on extensive archival research. The work analyses both programmes, their press reception, and documents from television administration and production. The book is intended not only for readers interested in the history of television, but also for readers more broadly interested in Finnish culture and contemporary history. The book helps to understand how television has been a part of social planning, cultural policy and democratic development, and how television’s cultural programming supported the transition from agrarian Finland to postmodern urban Finland. The Era of Cultural Television is not a nostalgic look at the past. Rather, it invites us to think about what television means today, when the cultural programming of television has spread across different platforms, addressing small taste groups rather than a diverse national public.
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Guests on Stage – Finnish and Estonian Theatre and Dance Relations
This book is a collaborative project by a joint Finnish-Estonian research team that explores Finnish and Estonian theatre and dance from the 19th to the 21st century and the rich interactions between the scenes of both countries. The aesthetic interactions have commonly been mixed with political and ideological objectives.
The book contributes to the recent debate on transnationality by examining the activities of theatre makers and institutions, such as visits, tours, and drama translations. Although Estonia and Finland are geographically and linguistically close, their societies, theatre systems, and cultural influences have diverged. This situation has produced links, clashes, and cooperation characterized by a mixture of familiarity and strangeness. The transnational links have in many ways also raised questions of national identity.
Finland and Estonia are still countries with active theatre scenes whose cooperation continues to find new forms.
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This anthology ‘The Culture of the Finnish Roma’ is a highly needed collection of articles intended for a wide audience, in Finland and internationally. The editors of the anthology, when participating in many international conferences and seminars, have often been asked: Is there Roma research in Finland? What is it like? Which perspectives does it utilize?
The main function of this anthology is to reply to those questions. It compiles an array of contemporary Roma research done in present day Finland, both by Finnish, Finnish Roma, and international scholars. It will be of interest to both academic as well as lay readers interested in Roma culture and Roma life in Finland, past and present.
The chapters focus on the research and the life of Roma in Finland. Bringing to light the various sides of the Romani way of life, scholars from different fields include historians, linguists, anthropologists, and cultural and social researchers.
Many of the previous books have suffered from a recycling of materials that mythologize and stereotype Romani people. Including the viewpoint of Roma scholars and diverse research branches ranging from culture, language, religion, and gender, the anthology aims at overcoming the stereotypes and bring knowledge of aspects of Romani life.
The eternal contemplation and negotiation of identities lies in the heart of any culture. We hope that the way The Culture of the Finnish Roma discusses these issues brings forth interesting topics to consider for any reader, regardless of national or ethnic origin.
Book DetailsThis edited collection re-examines the long history of Finnish-Namibian relations through the lens of colonialism without colonies as well as anti-colonialism. The book argues that although Finland never acquired colonies, Namibia was once treated in the areas of culture and knowledge formation in a manner now recognised as colonial. Namibian people’s ways of being in the world was transformed when the Finnish Missionary Society started its work in Owambo in 1870 and introduced Christianity and European modes of education, medicine, material culture and social practices. In time, cultural colonialism faded and during the Namibian struggle for independence from South African rule in 1966–1990 Finns took an actively anti-colonial approach. The book was written as a collaborative effort of Namibian, Finnish and South African scholars.
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The Writer’s Poetics. Poetics as an Approach to an Author’s Body of Work is an introduction to the writer’s poetics as a distinctive research orientation, as well as a collection of case studies focusing on authors working in different eras and languages. While the 20th Century traditions of poetics have produced studies on the textual styles and techniques that characterize the writing of particular authors, the research orientation has not been explicitly defined and sufficiently theorized. The Writer’s Poetics frames the research orientation theoretically, and the 14 case studies making up the chapters demonstrate the diversity of viewpoints available within it. The contributors study authors ranging from 19th Century Finnish-Swedish female writers to 20th Century African-American novelists to postmodernist and contemporary authors of prose and lyric – and to the most successful Finnish rap artists of the 2010’s.
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Biographical approaches to early modern history
This book contributes to the debates on the role and theory of biographical and life-writing research in historical research and methodology. The first part of the study analyses how biographical approaches have until now been used in research into the early modern history of Finland. It explores how the trends in biographical history have evolved from the eighteenth century to today. Church leaders and bishops were emphasised in a country that could boast of few statesmen. Early modern women’s biographies have been strongly influenced by fictional traditions. The second part presents four attempts at new ways of producing and presenting biographical histories that yield new kinds of information on early modern society. These chapters are influenced by the so-called new histories (which by now have become rather traditional social and cultural histories), microhistory, gender history, and the history of experience.
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This edited volume looks at the spread of settlements and the development of living conditions favorable to permanent peasant habitation in Finland during the pre-industrial period. The case to study in this volume is the relatively late settled northernmost part of Savo, now known as the Upper Savo (Ylä-Savo in Finnish) region, which was a border region between Sweden and Russia until the first half of the 17th century. The aim of the volume is to deepen conceptual and empirical knowledge of what kind of living conditions the late-populated frontier offered to settlers and their descendants from the beginning of settlement to the early industrialization. At the end of the 19th century Upper Savo was known as an example of misery, poverty and backwardness in Finland. This volume, however, shows that this perception of exceptional poverty and backwardness is not unambiguous, let alone self-imposed by the people living in the area. Despite its land resources, Upper Savo has been in a position to catch up with the core areas of settlement throughout its history, such as the later settled peripheries and border regions in general. In this work, we show that the development of the conditions for living in Upper Savo has been strongly path-dependent: the region can do nothing about its history and location.
The photographs of Ahti Rytkönen (1899–1989) are at the core of the rich artwork of this volume. Rytkönen’s black-and-white photographs of the northern Savo countryside with its inhabitants and slash-and-burn fields from the 1920s and 1930s are unique depictions of the life of Upper Savo rural society.
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Finnish-Russian Literary Relations 1800-1930
Current volume examines Finnish-Russian literary contacts that have not been thoroughly studied previously – the translation and reception history of Russian literature in Finland, and Finnish literature in Russia from 1800 until 1930. Personal contacts have influenced the decisions of what to translate and by whom more than the evident European context of Russian literature. In Finland, the relationship with Russia and attitudes to its literature have always been a political issue. Hostile relations have meant a remarkable decrease in translations, but maintained active discussion of Russian culture. During more friendly times, the inquisitive interest has increased and led to more intensive translation activities. However, since the early days of Finnish literature, only few intellectuals have known Russian well enough to translate literature into Swedish or Finnish. Consequently, translating has been highly dependent on individual mediators, often with a transnational identity.
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This book is about how urban linguistic landscapes reflect and create sociolinguistic, societal and urban dynamics, and how these relations can be scientifically explored. Focusing on the linguistic landscapes of selected cities in northern and southern Europe, it sheds light on how urban areas with diverse profiles differ, and how the linguistic landscapes change through tourism and migration, or in times of crisis. The chapters put forward sophisticated and novel ways of approaching urban sociolinguistics and they enhance understanding of the challenges and opportunities included in the study of sociolinguistic variation in these linguistic landscapes.
The book is targeted at scholars in the field of urban sociolinguistics and those wishing to approach the subject through the lens of linguistic landscapes. It also gives interesting suggestions to people involved in language planning and policy reflection, as well as those engaged in urban redevelopment planning. Last but not least, it offers theoretical and methodological guidance to students and researchers in a variety of disciplines.
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