Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the experiences of two Finnish minorities, in Russia and in Sweden during the 1980s and the 1990s and compares the emotional ties between them and between their places of belonging. Their stories reveal different connections with the past, the present and the future.

Paper long abstract:

Where do people belong when they have lost their home country or moved voluntarily to another country? This theme was one of the most central questions when I interviewed two Finnish minorities. In 1984 I met a group of Finns in the Swedish county Dalarna, and in 1992-1993 some Ingrian Finns south of St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1954 a free Nordic labour market was created and in the years after many Finns migrated to Sweden which suffered a labour force shortage. Almost all of my 13 interviewees still had active ties with Finland, but their emotional relations with Finland and Sweden were differed. Some of them had found their place in Sweden while others thought their engagement was temporary, suffered from homesickness but continued nevertheless. But why didn't they return to Finland?

Ingrian Finns (28 in number) belonged to a group, which in the seventeenth century and later left Finland and settled across the border. During the WWII they were victims of Stalin's ethnic cleansing. Some had been able to return to their home villages. They lived a good but poor everyday life but talked about their bad experiences as if it were yesterday. Emotions were present in them, even though fear, irritation, anxiety or hate did not break out in words. During the interviews tears could burst out suddenly, yet a moment later could stop. My informants were worried about the future because time and again in the past authorities had let them down, and no-one could be trusted.