Paper short abstract:

I will explore the notion of ‘traveler’s freedom’ as represented in late 19th and early 20th-century Finnish travel literature and contemporary newspaper articles on Finnish national parks. The focus of presentation is on the material conditions of transportation to and within the parks.

Paper long abstract:

Put in crude terms, nature tourism is a product of Romantic and American Transcendentalist thought, and in its core lies the idea of ‘freedom’ of wandering. This freedom is characterized by the wanderer’s solitude, his connection to nature and independence from society, and the (ostensible) absence of modern infrastructure. When national parks became a mass tourist destination in the postwar United States, the car-driven society was fascinated with another form of freedom, namely, the false freedom made possible by the use of fossil fuels. Thanks to oil – asphalt and automobiles –, Americans were free to drive to Glacier National Park (Going-to-the-Sun Road) or Rocky Mountain National Park (Trail Ridge Road).

In my presentation, I will first explore the notion of the ‘traveler’s freedom’ as represented in late 19th and early 20th-century Finnish travel literature, and then compare that notion to respective representations in contemporary newspaper articles on Finnish national parks. The focus of the survey is on the material conditions of transportation to and within the parks.

Is the traditional idea of the national park any longer sustainable, in light of today’s visitor numbers, visitors’ continuously changing notions of recreation and activities and the carbon footprints of visitors’ transportation and national park infrastructure maintenance? The Romantic idea of freedom, which manifests in several ways in national park visitors’ expectations and desires, seems to have potentially negative environmental impacts both locally and globally.