Paper short abstract:

We will present our ongoing research related to the methodology of environmental biography. As cultural historians and life-writing scholars we will present two case studies of writing the lives of past people from the perspective of environment in a particular context of archipelago and islands.

Paper long abstract:

The focus of our present research project "A grove of stories – Sagalund. Home museum, environment and life narrative" lies in the archipelago of Turku, on Kemiö island and the museum surroundings of Sagalund. Sagalund was built by a local teacher Nils Oskar Jansson. In this research project Jansson and other local teacher Adèle Weman and their home museum Villa Sagalund as well as its nature surroundings will be analysed. Sagalund offers a unique possibility to study archipelago milieu and its cultural heritage. Our aim is to study the rich cultural historical material of Villa Sagalund from the perspective of environmental biography.

The ongoing project grew out of a book by Leskelä-Kärki where she together with her colleague Otto Latva wrote about the artist Tove Jansson (1914-2001) and her relationship to the sea and archipelago. In this book, "Meri ja Tove. Elämää saaristossa" (Sea and Tove. Life in the Archipelago, 2022), the life of Jansson is approached from the perspective of her relationship to nature and sea on the islands where she spent her summers for many decades. Both the actual life narrative i is studied, but also the ways how Jansson depicted archipelago, islands, seashores, animals and nature in her art.

In our paper, we will develop further the connection between life writing studies and environmental humanities as a biographical approach, and ask how this methodology could be used in the case of Jansson and Weman in the context of Sagalund.