Paper short abstract:

The poetics of home is a key element in Karelian folklore. The paper treats autobiographical poems portraying the loss of home and identity. Representation of homelessness is based on inversions and negations that link political allegiances and historical events with the symbolism of the otherworld.

Paper long abstract:

The poetics of home and belonging is a pervasive theme and stylistic feature in Karelian oral poetry. The paper discusses autobiographical poems and laments that portray losing one's home and identity. From the early nineteen-twenties to the early nineteen-forties, the Viena Karelian people on the Finnish-Russian border experienced a series of dramatic historical developments including military campaigns, a civil war, a revolution, the gulag, two occupations by alien forces, and exile. People who had to leave their homes gave shape and meaning to their experiences, fears and hopes in poems that build their imagery on the traditional portrayal of the mythic otherworld, mythic adversaries and death. Representation of homelessness is based on inversions and negations that link political allegiances and historical events with the symbolism of the otherworld grounded in the pre-modern belief tradition and the fictive universe of epic poetry. In this intricate poetics of displacement the predicament of exile and political persecution could be verbalized, communicated and even used for building new bonds, symbolic abodes and ideologies.