Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This study examines the narratives of nature that ethnographer, teacher, and photographer Samuli Paulaharju collected in northeastern Lapland, Finland, in the 1930s and 1940s. The descriptions tell us about disappearing ways of life, and nature that no longer exists or is very different today.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines narratives and notes from the 1930s and 1940s that describe the nature of Finnish Northeast Lapland. These narratives and notes were collected by Samuli Paulaharju, a teacher, ethnographer, writer, and photographer. Paulaharju lived and worked in Oulu, the capital of Northern Ostrobothnia. During the summer, he traveled around the heartlands of Finland, far from urban centers, collecting folklore. During the winter, he wrote books and taught at a school in Oulu. His extensive collecting trips resulted in a substantial archive at the Finnish Literature Society comprising over 65,000 notes and 4,000 pages of ethnographic notes and narratives. The collection also includes thousands of his drawings and photographs.

Paulaharju's trips and collections reflect his interest in nature and people living far from urban centers. His descriptions tell of a way of life and nature that had already begun to disappear in his own time, and which is very different from today. What kind of representations and imagery of the area's nature and rural ways of life do Paulaharju present through his written and photographic descriptions? Are the notes about preserving disappearing folk traditions and nature, or something else? The study focuses particularly on material from the Sompio area that has been stored in the archive. The analysis of the material uses methods from narrative research and environmental humanities.