Paper short abstract:

This presentation discusses how a sense of home and belonging was created on the battle front by soldiers during WWII, and how this process of place-making was connected to and urged by the civilian family mainly through epistolary dialogues.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on four extensive collections of letters written by Finnish soldiers and their families during the war 1941-44, I will discuss how the lodgings on the front gradually were turned into home-like places among the soldiers. The sensory experiences of 'being at home' were constructed through everyday practices, material objects, and civilian traditions and by evoking a sense of warmth, comfort and safety. In addition, the experiences of home were created and mediated in the soldiers' correspondences with their loved ones.

The civilian families participated actively in the process of home-making on the front. They offered to send material objects to make living on the front more homelike and comfortable, and in their letters they acknowledged the feelings of being at home on the front. In relation to the civilian home the lodgings on the front were, however, never perceived as home. The civilian home was the "real home" and the place the soldiers longed for and hoped to return to.

By appropriating the foreign non-place on the front and by turning it into a place of belonging on an emotional level, some sense of normality, continuity and stability could be achieved in the extreme crisis of war. The "home" on the front thus served as a refuge against destruction and chaos on the battle front. This was of great importance in the efforts to overcome the strains of war and in the attempts to bridge the spatial and experiential gap between the front and home.