Paper Short Abstract:

Ethnology played a role in the construction of Greater Finland during the Continuation War (1941–1944). What does Finnish ethnological research during the war look like when analysed through the concept of "strategic ignorance"? The archival materials show what ethnological knowledge was collected and what was ignored.

Paper Abstract:

In 1930’s and during the Second World War there was a popular idea in Finland that the country should expand further east and form Greater Finland due to the Finno-Ugric history of Karelia, east of the Finnish-Soviet border. When Finland occupied large areas of East Karelia during the so-called Continuation War against the Soviet Union (1941–1944), ethnology was one of the disciplines whose results were sought to support the Greater Finland ideology: to find evidence of the historical Finnishness of the conquered East Karelia region and thus the legitimacy of its conquest.

However, East Karelia was an ethnically and historically diverse region, where historical Finnishness, the “land of (Finnish national epic) Kalevala'” was still present, but sometimes as a thin and ambiguous layer. By asking the right questions and leaving many questions unasked - and unwritten - the thickness and relevance of this layer could be greatly enhanced in interpreting the history of the region.

The study of the history of knowledge, the concepts of which I use in my thesis, might call such knowledge production "strategic ignorance". If ignorance is defined as knowledge of the limits of knowledge, strategic ignorance is the conscious exploitation of those limits. What does ethnological research in East Karelia during the Continuation War look like when analysed through this concept? My work examines the topic in the light of the instructions, reports and diaries of the ethnologists who organised and carried out fieldwork in East Karelia, and the artefacts they collected.