Paper short abstract:

Two perspectives to past traditions, of nostalgia and of cultural heritage, will be juxtaposed and compared here in the light of the case of the Finnish dance culture called Pavilion Dances, popular in the 20th century. Nostalgia is defined as an emotion, longing for the unreachable, while heritage refers to the use the past can be put to serve.

Paper long abstract:

I will talk about my ongoing study of popular dance culture in Finland in the 20th century. The research material consists of reminiscent texts that were written, by more than 500 respondents, to an inquiry titled "Pavilion Dances", of the Finnish National Board of Antiquities, in 1991. The writers tell about dancing in their youth; the narrated events took place between 1930 and 1970. The study is defined as historic-ethnographic: on the focus are individuals' experiences in particular dance events in the remembered past. Here, I intend to analyze the narrated nature of the research material, and the ensuing narrative approach, by concentrating on nostalgia as an emotion and a narrative device in the writings. Folklorist Jyrki Pöysä has argued that folkloristic and ethnological research is largely defined by nostalgia, in the aim of preserving the "disappearing traditions" of agrarian society; but that today, the perspective of cultural heritage is a new and different perspective from nostalgia. Now, since the pavilion dance culture was acutely declining by the time of the inquiry, this can be seen to have set the stage for nostalgia as a prevalent mood of telling about the dances. Still, the narrators are not simply responding to a call for nostalgia, but in many ways modifying and contesting such a call. The dance culture has been put to serve, not only as an object for longing for the unreachable past, but also as a means for creating a desired kind of future.