Nationalism In Modern Finland

This open access book uses Finland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an empirical case in order to study the emergence, shaping and renewal of a nation through histories of experience and emotions. It revolves around the following questions: What kinds of experiences have engendered national mobilization and feelings of national belonging? How have political and societal conflicts turned into new communities of experience and emotion? What kinds of experiences have been integrated into, or excluded from, the national context in different instances? How have people internalized or contested the nation as a context for their personal, family and minority-group experiences? In what ways has the nation entered and affected people’s intimate spheres of life? How have “national” experiences been transmitted to children in the renewal of the nation? This edited collection points to the histories of experience and emotions as a novel way of studying nations and nationalism. Building on current debates in nationalism studies, it offers a theoretical framework for analyzing the historical construction of “lived nations,” and introduces a number of new methodological approaches to understand the experiences of the nation, extending from the investigation of personal reminiscences and music records to the study of dreams and children’s drawings.

Finland, during both prehistoric and medieval times, has been the subject of numerous studies, but none of these have previously considered the nationalist essence of the integral, underlying history culture' or public archaeology' of the nation. Even quite obvious political interpretations, visions, and imageries of an ancient Golden Age have all too easily been dismissed as the consequences of mere patriotism, Kalevala enthusiasm', or Karelianism. This study presents the case for how the conceptions of a distant, glorious past have been advanced and actively developed within the national project of constructing a modern ethnicity of Finnishness. Accordingly, a conception of an original ancient greatness was paramount for the nationalist movements in both the Grand Duchy and the early Republic of Finland, especially so when the perceived nation was considered in need of intellectually unifying defences against the many conceived threats of Russianness after ca 1890. The author traces the construction of a Finnish Great Myth of National Origins from the 16th century until the end of the Second World War, and provides richly illustrated examples of how the process of nation-building influenced and amplified the deep historical core of the emerging Finnish national consciousness.

Examines Finland's search for a national identity.

By analysing the experience of Finland, Risto Alapuro shows how upheavals in powerful countries shape the internal politics of smaller countries. This linkage, a highly topical subject in the twenty-first century world, is concretely studied by putting the abortive Finnish revolution of 1917-18 into a long historical and a broad comparative perspective.