Paper short abstract:

Folklore collector J.K. Harju’s writings about marginal city life in Helsinki in the 1960–1970 are stored at the SKS archives. I ask how and why the institution took this unconventional material into its collections and argue that by doing so, the archives were (re)imagining the concept of folk.

Paper long abstract:

My presentation focuses on Johan Knut Harju (1910–1976), a self-taught writer and folklore collector who created a roughly 20 000-page collection to the Finnish Literature Society’s (SKS) archives during 1961–1977. Helsinki born Harju suffered from alcohol addiction which among other problems had left him homeless. He spent his time on the streets, beneath bridges, as well as in prisons and halfway houses where he created his documentations by writing his own memoirs and by interviewing others. He wrote about marginal city life, non-normative lifestyle of thieves, alcoholics, drug abusers, prisoners, and prostitutes.

SKS was founded in 1831 and their folklore archives were built around the collections of kalevalaic folk poetry created in the 19th and early 20th centuries in close connection to the nation-building process in Finland. The material Harju gave to the archives was different than anything else stored there before. At the time when Harju collaborated with the archives authentic folk culture was still mostly considered to reflect and embody the agricultural past and folklore was understood to fall into clear bounded folklore genres.

Against all odds Harju and his materials were, however, met and stored by the archives. In my presentation I ask how the flexible practices of this nationally important memory institution made this process possible and ask whose heritage was considered to be gained by doing so? I argue that by taking Harju’s writings as a part of their collections, the archives were (re)imagining the concept of folk.