Paper short abstract:

In the late 18th century autobiography of Pehr Stenberg, dwelling is a constantly recurring theme. A narrative analysis shows how questions of personal economy, social relations and responsibilities, and ideas of a “good living” are addressed in the descriptions of dwellings.

Paper long abstract:

The Swedish peasant son Pehr Stenberg (1758-1824) could, with support from his family and the farmers of the parish council, go to the university to study to be a priest. In taking on educated ways of living, he not only kept a diary and archived letters and poems, but also continuously re-wrote them as a "life description" that eventually ran to 4000 hand-written pages and has just recently been published. Since it was written during the course of his life and gives detailed descriptions of everyday situations, it can be described as an auto-ethnography as well as an autobiography.

The themes of dwelling, lodging, and housing conditions recurs constantly through the manuscript. This is due to his many positions before he gets a steady occupation, as well as to the many travels he has to undertake as a student and later in his duty as priest. A narrative analysis reveals four different uses of the themes. It is a problem in Stenberg's daily life - something to be arranged, and to keep at decent standards. It is used as characterization of others' economic and moral standards. Furthermore, it also brings up the social relations and responsibilities of sharing a household, and finally gives indications of Stenberg's opinions on what a "good living" ought to be.

Paper short abstract:

Though created mainly for administrative purposes, archival sources from the “long 18th century” not only allow to get insights into dwelling conditions of different groups of society, but also into the desires regarding furnishings as a means of distinction.

Paper long abstract:

Sources for the dwelling conditions during the "long 18th century" - and especially for the poorer parts of the population - are rather rare and often the result of some administrative process, which implies the view from a more or less "official" perspective. The main goal often is the calculation of tributes or taxes. Nevertheless these sources can give important hints of the material basis of dwelling, as it is the case with probate inventories.

Especially inventories which are written down room by room allow us to get insights into dwelling conditions. Besides the basic needs visible in these sources, they frequently offer access to the inhabitants' special wishes and desires. The differentiation in front stage and back stage according to Goffman by the arrangement of higher and lower-quality furnishings in special rooms or the wish to make a distinction to neighbours or other burghers by laying stress on a higher quality in furniture, textiles or knick-knacks often find their evidence in these sources. A sufficient economic basis is necessary in these cases or otherwise economic difficulties up to bankruptcy can arise.

Besides the inventories, other archival sources - e.g. reports of physicians or topographers - tell us about ways of dwelling, e.g. by reporting irregular or deplorable dwelling conditions.

Paper short abstract:

The aim with the paper is to reflect over how slandering and gossiping might be investigated in written sources. The paper presents two cases from royal media scandals, journalism, rumours and street slandering. The investigation comprices the late 19th century to the early 21st.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will deal with methodology, with regard to the question of what methods and actions are available to capture the acutely ephemeral for posterity and how this may be executed. The aim with the paper is to reflect over how slandering and gossiping might be investigated in archives and written sources.

The paper presents two cases from royal media scandals, journalism, rumours and street slandering. The chosen scandals have Swedish kings and forbidden sexuality in centre of focus. The first scandal took place in the late 19th century, the second in the early 21st century.

Via the concept of media system we will track the spoken word through archived texts such as social media forums, novels, newspaper articles, singing chapbooks and poetry. We will open a methodological discussion and connect to Carlo Ginzburg's concept of clues. We are also inspired by Robert Darntons way of listening to texts and his claim that no history of communication and mass media can be executed without taking the oral word into account.

As a part of our methodological approach, we will present archive work as a process of dwelling; how the work in itself depends upon a feeling of at-homeness, continuity and community. Archive work raises feelings of frustration, even despair sometimes, but it is also a place for curiosity, where the researcher gets lost, in a positive sense, and can experience flow. During our work, we have become sensitive to these experiences, as specific qualities of archive environments.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines 'the emotionality' of protected official archival material on Croatian anti-Yugoslav diaspora that is collected by Yugoslav secret service. It also explores issues related to Croatian national archive as a dwelling place for those protected materials.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines 'the emotionality' of protected official archival material on Croatian anti-Yugoslav diaspora that is collected by Yugoslav secret service and it is covering the period from the Second World War to the emergence of the new independent Republic of Croatia in the 1990s. As Sara Ahmed argues, we can talk about 'the emotionality of texts' and different material, including archival material, if we think what these texts and materials are 'doing', 'how they work through emotions to generate effects' (2004:19). Following Ahmed, in this paper, we analyze how the impossibility to examine archival material, due to some legal restrictions in Croatia, is affecting contemporary political debates on the archive as a home of national cultural heritage, by investing them with feelings, and how these 'words for feelings' or 'images for feelings' circulate, move, or attach themselves. To be more precise, by looking at contemporary political speeches in Croatia related to archive, the paper focuses on analysis of the controversies surrounding 'protected official archival material' and the role of emotions in creating its cultural visibility. It also explores issues related to the archive as a dwelling place for these protected materials.

Paper short abstract:

Estonian National Museum has collected materials from Estonians living abroad since the end of the 1990s. One way of understanding their motives and lives is to analyse their memories of home-making and the concept of homeland in the stories of expatriates.

Paper long abstract:

Estonian National Museum has collected materials from Estonians living abroad since the end of the 1990s, mostly memories and life stories, both from those who fled after the WW2 and their descendants, and those who have emigrated since the end of the 1980s. The museum archives and mediates their stories to become a part of Estonian history and heritage. The interest in emigrants' stories has been growing as almost every Estonian nowadays has relatives or friends who had moved away from homeland.

To propose the understanding of emigrated Estonians' motives and lives, the museum can analyse and exhibit their experiences. It has circulated focus group questionnaires, ethnologists have conducted life story interviews, and distinct items have been collected to the ENM. In these stories and artefacts, the theme of dwelling and home has been one of the main concerns, as this is inherent to all people.

In the paper, I'm interested in emigrated Estonians memories of creating home abroad, making oneself feel home, their understanding of the concept of homeland, as these come out from the materials archived at the museum. I would also like to delve into the question of ENM as a home for materials of Foreign Estonians, and how it mediates their life experiences to the public.

Paper short abstract:

In the years of the Soviet regime, it was considered safer to collect material related to folk healing as a disappearing thing of the past. In the freer society, since the 1990s, material on folk medicine could be collected without limitations.

Paper long abstract:

The paper studies how the folk medicine tradition of Estonians living in the Minussinsk region, eastern Siberia has changed in time. I will observe the collecting periods influenced by political ideologies characteristic of certain periods and shifts in the views of the transmitters of folklore and folklore communities, collectors and supervisors of collecting which are reflected in the material on folk medicine collected and stored in the Estonian Folklore Archives (EFA).

Material related to folk healing has been collected from Estonians in Siberia since the late 1960s as part of broader collecting work. The material collected in the 1960s and 1970s was the most affected by the governing ideology and supervised folklore collecting. In the years of the Soviet regime, it was considered safer to collect and preserve material on folk medicine as a disappearing thing of the past. In the freer society, since the 1990s, material on folk medicine could be collected without limitations. As late as in the 1990s, the use of popular ways and methods of healing in the Estonian communities of the Minussinsk region was part of the wisdom shared by the entire folklore community, and it was believed that anyone can access and learn the necessary skills and healing spells. A few decades later, the folk healing skills were held exclusively by few wise women, as there were not enough people to continue the tradition in the aging village populations.

Paper short abstract:

Sovietization of Estonia changed the ways of dwelling: collectivization of agriculture restructured the farms and villages, increased urbanization and therefore reshaped the meaning of home. Kolkhoz folklore from 1950s reflects these changes through the crooked mirror of Soviet ideology.

Paper long abstract:

Estonia as a nation state was founded when most of the Estonians lived in the countryside. Estonian Republic was an agricultural country where farms were the typical living environments. Farms are economical units, but at the same time places for dwelling. The collectivization of agriculture in early Soviet Estonia meant that the private farmers only had a right for a small piece of land for themselves and their families. This created a different relation to the land and to the borders of the area that one would call home.

Already in 1950, a year after most of the farms had rapidly been collectivized in Soviet Estonia, first folklorists and students were sent out to collect kolkhoz folklore: songs, tales, sayings, but also factual data about the collective farms. The process of collecting kolkhoz folklore had twofold importance. To start with, collecting materials about collective farms showed the contemporary nature of folkloristics and its importance for cultural politics. At the same time, the term "folklore" has connotation of traditionality and collecting folklore about kolkhozes made them appear more traditional.

Kolkhoz folklore was actively collected for less than ten years. The impulse of collecting was loaded with ideology and the more critical voices were rarely represented. Kolkhoz materials are peripheral in the Estonian folklore archives due to their ideological load and sociological nature. Nevertheless, they represent an interesting document of the times of changing lifestyle and of the ideological influences on folklore collecting.

Paper short abstract:

Based on a written recollection in the Folklife Archives, I trace the movements of George who, now in his 70's, uses bicycle riding to describe his childhood in a small town. By focusing on descriptions and memories of dwelling, I ask what kinds of places are mentioned and what meaning they come to have.

Paper long abstract:

In 2015, I received a document entitled "Bicycle memories" by George, a man in his 70's. He had learned that the Folklife Archives, where I had previously worked as an archivist, ran a project documenting bicycling and bicyclists past and present. This spurred him to recall the role that the bicycle had played in various periods of his life, and to remember specific bicycle rides. Based on his own memories and bicycle diaries, together with conversations with childhood friends and his father's photographs, he compiled a document of 128 pages. In this presentation I will concentrate on the first part of the text, which centres on his boyhood years in Gamleby in southern Sweden. Though the bicycle is central in the different narratives that the story consists of, and the very reason for retelling them at all, it is often used as a starting point for recollections of various aspects of growing up in a small town in the 1940's and 1950's. Reading the text closely I intend to trace George as he moves in and around Gamleby, focusing on descriptions and memories of dwelling. What kinds of places are mentioned in the narrative, which experiences are they connected to, and what meaning do they have? What can a biographical story, initially set out to centre on a specific aspect such as bicycling, tell us about experiences of dwelling and everyday life in a local community?

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at exploring ethnographic fieldwork methods at the world heritage site Suomenlinna in Helsinki, Finland. Furthermore, in terms of dwelling and changing living environment, I will discuss what sort of materials my research will produce for the cultural archives.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims at exploring ethnographic fieldwork methods at the world heritage site Suomenlinna in Helsinki, Finland. What sort of materials will be produced to the cultural arhives? Whose voices are heard? Furthermore, in terms of dwelling and changing living environment, I will discuss how Suomenlinna has been transformed from an idyllic small island to a mega tourist attraction. In addition, I will investigate how the attachment to a place is maintained and identity fostered, although the place is going through major changes.

I will especially focus on two points of view. Firstly, at the unofficial heritage level, how local residents and communities have experienced the changes that have occurred in Suomenlinna since 1991 and what do they think about its future. Secondly, at the official heritage level, I will examine what sort of pasts are chosen to present common heritage, why, where and how. I will pay attention to the relationship between official and unofficial heritage(s): How do local people see the public representations of Suomenlinna and does heritagisation leave out local people's views on heritage: places, landscapes, histories, sounds, narratives, and traditions most meaningful to them?

The Archive of the Finnish Literature Society will hold the interview collections.