Paper short abstract:

In my presentation, I will approach memories of displacement transmitted within a family through material culture. I have interviewed people whose families were displaced during WWII in the Finland documenting their mementos, and analyzed their material autobiographies.

Paper long abstract:

When leaving their home country and migrating, people bring along certain belongings that include both everyday objects as well as personal mementos and family treasures. In the course of time, some of this memorabilia disappears while other artefacts gain new meanings and values in the hands of next generations. In my presentation, I will approach memories of displacement transmitted within a family through material culture.

The family histories I explore include experiences of forced displacement that took place during WWII in the Finland. I will introduce histories of both families who were evacuated and able to return to their home regions in Finnish Lapland as well as families who left and could not return to the ceded areas in both Lapland and Karelia. I have interviewed family members of different generations and documented their mementoes. Drawing on the notion that material objects have a capacity to elucidate memories of silenced experiences, shameful and painful, and speaking for complex and abstract issues (e.g. Povrzanović Frykman 2016; De Nardi 2016, 33-96), I have compiled material autobiographies that enunciate experiences of loss and disconnection, suffering and longing that are not articulated through narratives or words.

De Nardi, S. 2016: The Poetics of Conflict Experience. Materiality and Embodiment in Second World War Italy. London and New York: Routledge.

Povrzanović Frykman, M. 2016: Sensitive Objects of Humanitarian Aid Corporeal Memories and Affective Continuities. In: Jonas Frykman & Maja Povrzanović Frykman (eds.) Sensitive Objects Affect and Material Culture, 79-104- Lund: Nordic Academic Press.