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This 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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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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Michael Agricolas Randglossen zum Neuen Testament
Michael Agricolas Hauptwerk ist das 1548 erschienene Neue Testament, ein prächtiger Quartband von 700 Seiten mit hundert Holzschnitten. Als Grundtext dienten der von Erasmus veröffentlichte griechische Text, Erasmus’ lateinische Übersetzung, die Vulgata, die Lutherbibel und die schwedische Bibel von 1541.
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Meaning, Doubt, Memories. Finns in Aidland 1965–2000
The book approaches the history of Finnish development cooperation through the experiences of development aid workers. At its core is a small group of Finns (experts and officials from different fields) who have worked with international development aid in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Their memories and experiences, together with diverse archival material offer an interesting window into the world of development (cooperation), or “Aidland”, from the 1960s to the turn of the millennium.
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From National to Transnational. Culture, Tradition, and Literature
Tradition and literature are not held back by borders. Transnationality is, for example, geographic, symbolic, or linguistic movement and action. Different kinds of cultural transitions and migrant traditions are connected with transnationality. Studying the multilingualism of literary texts or diverse cultural identities, transnationality is a prolific angle. In the 102nd Yearbook of the Kalevala Society Foundation, the topics cover for example migration and return migration, material things crossing borders, and places of music culture. At a more theoretical level we are asking how studying transnationality enriches the disciplines with roots in the national sciences.
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The era (1981‒1991) of the high-profile politics of Väyrynen and Kääriäinen: The Centre Party of Finland 6
The Centre Party of Finland was represented in almost all cabinets for decades, and it often held the post of prime minister during the reign of President Urho Kekkonen. When Kekkonen’s deteriorating health forced him to resign in 1981, the Centre Party, formerly the Agrarian Union, was in front of the crisis. The party was deeply divided along the lines of who would be the best candidate to succeed Kekkonen. The schism had prevailed for years, and contemporaries suspected the party would split up or at least lose its dominant position in Finnish politics. Besides, the numbers of core supporters making up the party, agrarians, were constantly diminishing. In addition, the Finnish party system was in a state of flux. The Finnish People’s Democratic League was in a deep downward spiral, while the Conservative Party’s support was ascendant. The power struggle between the three ‘big’ parties, the Centre Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party, was fierce. The study describes and analyses how the Center Party survived the challenges it faced. How was the cohesion of the party rebuilt and maintained? How did the Centre Party manage to survive the inter-party contests and end up being the strongest party in the elections of 1991? The study is firmly based on source material from the party organization of the Centre Party and other relevant political actors, such as President Mauno Koivisto. The book provides new information on both Finnish domestic and foreign politics and the power struggles among the parties and leading political figures.
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Interpreting brothers-in-war. Multilingual day-to-day life during the Continuation War in Finland
This volume looks at the Finnish-German military alliance (1941–1944) as a translation zone – a multilingual network of military, administrative and civilian encounters that was held together by linguistically versed soldiers and civilians acting as interpreters and translators. It focuses on interpreters and liaison officers of the Finnish Liaison Staff in Rovaniemi, who were assigned to the staffs of the German army units with the task of maintaining communication between the two armies and assisting German troops in their daily matters. Furthermore, attention is paid to Finnish civilians, especially women whose language skills made them candidates for a range of mediation tasks in the German units. The reconstruction of military interpreters’ and liaison officers’ tasks and mediation agency between the two military cultures is based on their war-time weekly reports, whereas the civilian interpreters’ experiences are drawn from a variety of autobiographical accounts, including interviews.
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Daughters of music: Finnish Women composers from the 19th Century to the 20th Century
The book presents the biographies and work lists of 126 Finnish women composers born between 1784 and 1909. Based on large-scale archival research, it is the first comprehensive historical account of Finnish women composers and their cultural heritage. The authors draw on feminist music history and the sociohistorical approach to find out who these women were, what kind of music they wrote, and how their careers reflected European cultural and social history. The treatise highlights the influence of girls’ schools, women’s suffrage movements and other socio-political developments on the musical culture of women. Concepts such as “composer”, “woman” and “Finnish” were assumed to be open and inclusive throughout the research, in terms of both musical style and diversity in cultural background. In concentrating on music-making by women, the book opens up radically new vistas on Finland’s music and cultural history, and it rectifies previous erroneous conceptions about women’s composership and their artistic work. In short, it exposes the richness in the sonic and intellectual heritage of Finnish women composers, as well as its significance in society today.
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Lake Ladoga. The Coastal History of the Greatest Lake in Europe
Aimed at researchers, students and all interested in history, this multidisciplinary study offers a spectacular view of the history of Europe’s largest lake. Adopting the lens of coastal history, this edited volume presents the development of the vast Great Lake’s catchment area over a long-time span, from archaeological traces to Viking routes and from fishery huts to luxury villas of the power elite. It reflects on people’s sensory-historical relationships with aquatic nature, and considers the benefits and harms of power plants and factories to human communities and the environment.
The focus of the study is on the central and northern parts of the shores of Lake Ladoga, which belonged to Finnish rule between 1812 and 1944. The multidisciplinary approach permits an unusually wide range of questions. What has the Great Lake meant to local residents in cultural and emotional terms? How should we conceptualize the extensive and diverse networks of activities that surrounded the lake? What kind of Ladoga beaches did the Finns have to cede to the Soviet Union at the end of the war in 1944? How have Finns reminisced about their lost homelands? How have the Russians transformed the profile of the region, and what is the state of Ladoga’s waters today?
The volume is the first overall presentation of Lake Ladoga, which today is entirely part of Russia, aimed at an international readership. The rich source material of cross-border research consists of both diverse archival material and chronicles, folklore, reminiscence, and modern satellite images. The history of Lake Ladoga helps readers to understand better the economic, political, and socio-cultural characteristics of the cross-border areas, and the dynamics of the vulnerable border regions.
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