FOLKLORISTIC ORAL HISTORY RESEARCH IN FINLAND

Anne Heimo, Ulla-Maija Peltonen

A historian, Jorma Kalela, introduced oral history – “peoples history” as it was first called - in Finland . Jorma Kalela made use of the theoretical and methodological possibilities of oral history in a project on the history of the Finnish Paper Workers Union in the beginning of the 1980s. The intention of the project was that “people would write their own history themselves”. (Kalela 1983; 1986.) New trends spread quickly to cover comprehensively the so-called history from below, that is, the history of workers, women, children or other groups of people bypassed by conventional history research.

At the same time folklorists had also started to pay attention to the great possibilities of oral history sources. (Knuuttila 1984, 1996; Lehtipuro 1982.) The Finnish Literature Society Folklore Archives (www.finlit.fi) organized it's first collection of oral history 1965-1966 on oral history and  folklore of the 1918 Finnish Civil War. The very first oral history semin ar in Finland was organized by the Finnish Literature Society Folklore Archive in 1984. The speakers included among others Seppo Knuuttila, Outi Lehtipuro and Jorma Kalela. (Peltonen 1984, 38-39.) The breakthrough of oral history in folklore studies began in the 1990s and is still continuing. In addition to contemporary interview material scholars began to pay more detailed attention to the contexts of traditional data. What and how people tell about their own past and to whom and with what purpose they tell about it as well as how they themselves interpret their narration orally and in writing were also considered important questions. The past question ‘what do community members tell about themselves?' was expanded with the important question ‘how do they tell about themselves?' The narratives are partly individual but in their commonness they can refer to collective concepts of, for example, good or bad lifestyles. On the other hand, the narratives also bring light on how oral history and tradition are applied as exemplifying arguments of a communal identity.

After the middle of the 1990s, oral history has become an important part of folklore studies. (See, for example Peltonen 1996, 2003; Pöysä 1997; Salmi-Niklander 2004; Ukkonen 2000.) Oral history can be both the theoretical basis as well as the research method. It is important to create a picture of the narrator's own concept of history and truth. In research, tradition has more and more consciously been analysed as a factor of social knowledge by bringing the multi-significance of oral history and folklore studies as well as the questions of interpretation to the surface. The methodical problems of the interviews have also become central questions when the aim has been to make visible the interpretations of the past made by the narrators.

At the moment, about a dozen doctoral theses on folklore studies, which present oral history both as the research method as well as the basis of study, are conducted in various Finnish universities. These theses are closely tied to locality, social conflicts and social relations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kalela, Jorma 1983. Ihmiset kirjoittavat oman historiansa – Paperiliiton historiahanke. In Tiede ja edistys 3.

Kalela, Jorma 1986. Näkökulmia tulevaisuuteen. Paperiliiton historia 1944-1986. Tampere: Paperiliitto ry.

Knuuttila, Seppo 1984. Mitä sivakkalaiset itsestään kertovat – kansanomaisen historian tutkimuskoe. – In Saloheimo V. (ed.), Yhteiskunta kylässä. Joensuu: Joensuun yliopisto.

Knuuttila, Seppo 1996. Miten sivakkalaiset itsestään kertova. In Kyläläiset, kansalaiset. Tulkintoja Sivakasta ja Rasinmäestä. Karjalan tutkimuslaitoksen julkaisuja no 114. Joensuu: Joensuun yliopisto.

Peltonen, Ulla-Maija 1984. Muistitiedon ongelma. In Kotiseutu 1/1984.

Peltonen, Ulla-Maija 1996. Punakapinan muistot: Summary: Memories of the Civil War. A Study on the Formation of the Finnish Working-Class Narrative Tradition after 1918 . Helsinki : Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Peltonen, Ulla-Maija 2003. Muistin paikat. Summary: Sites of Memory - on remembering and forgetting the 1918 Civil War in Finland . Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Pöysä, Jyrki 1997. Jätkän synty. Tutkimus sosiaalisen kategorian muotoutumisesta suomalaisessa kulttuurissa ja itäsuomalaisessa metsätyöperinteessä. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Salmi-Niklander, Kirsti 2004. Itsekasvatusta ja kapinaa. Tutkimus Karkkilan työläisnuorten kirjoittavasta keskusteluyhteisöstä 1910- ja 1920-luvuilla. Helsinki : Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Ukkonen, Taina 2000. Menneisyyden tulkinta kertomalla. Muistelupuhe oman historian ja kokemuskertomusten tuottamisprosessina. Summary in English. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.