Landscapes of Affect and Emotion: Nordic Environmental Humanities and the Emotional Turn 9004470093, 9789004470095

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Landscapes of Affect and Emotion: Nordic Environmental Humanities and the Emotional Turn
 9004470093, 9789004470095

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Landscapes of Affect and Emotion

Studies in Environmental Humanities Managing Editor Mark Luccarelli (University of Oslo) Co-editor Steven Hartman (Mid Sweden University) Editorial Board Þorvarður Árnason (University of Iceland) Eva Friman (Uppsala University) Maunu Häyrynen (University of Turku) David E. Nye (University of Southern Denmark) Advisory Board Sigurd Bergmann (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Lawrence Buell (Harvard University) Thomas Hallock (University of South Florida, St. Petersburg) Ursula Heise (University of California at Los Angeles) Amanda Lagerkvist (Stockholm University) Phillip Payne (Monash University) Aaron Sachs (Cornell University) Kate Soper (London Metropolitan University) Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir (University of Iceland) Cary Wolfe (Rice University) Donald Worster (University of Kansas)

vol

e 7

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/seh

Landscapes of Affect and Emotion Nordic Environmental Humanities and the Emotional Turn

Edited by

Maunu Häyrynen, Jouni Häkli and Jarkko Saarinen

leiden | bo on

Cover illustration: Andreas Eriksson, Trädstam (skugga) (Tree trunk, in the shadow), 2009. Acrylic and Oil on Canvas. 252 x 235 cm. Courtesy: The Artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and Galerie Neugerriemschneider, Berlin. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : , , . | , , . | , Jarkko, 1968- editor. Title: Landscapes of affect and emotion : Nordic environmental humanities and the emotional turn / edited by Maunu Häyrynen, Jouni Häkli and Jarkko Saarinen. : : , . | : , . | . : | | | 9789004470095 (ebook) Subjects: : . | . | . | . Classification: . | | 152.40948–dc23 record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021041381 ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021041382

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Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill , Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, , , . All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, . / addressed to Koninklijke Brill via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents

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Introduction 1

Maunu Häyrynen









PART 1 Place-Based Identities 2 3

4



: Simo Laakkonen and Antti Linna





Movements, Care and Dispersed Periurban Landscapes Evoked by Dacha Tarmo Pikner and Hannes Palang Hannes Palang and Annemarie Rammo

PART 2 Affective Landscapes 5

M. Christine Boyer

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7



Hilja Roivainen











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Perceptions of Winter in the Notebook of Eva Christina Lindström Silja Laine

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PART 3 Nationally Laden Emotions 8

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‘The Penguin is to be a Norwegian Bird’: Nationalising and Naturalising Peder Roberts : Juha Hiedanpää and Lasse Lovén Norwegian friluftsliv Werner Bigell







,



Figures 3.1

Settings of the studied allotment areas in Narva. Data: Estonian Land Board. : . . 3.2 The constellation of the dacha garden located in the Kulgu area of Narva. : . . 0 3.3 Extension of the allotment and engaging with nature on the shore of Narva . : . . 3 3.4 Encountering affinities and boundaries on the Narva’s water reservoir. Photo: . . 7 . . . . : . . . . . . . . : . , . . . . . : . , . . . 4.7 Kangru in 1935. The location of the Soviet-era military area is indicated with a . : . . . : . . . : . .. . . . : . .. . 6.1 John Kørner. Human Architecture. 2015. Acrylic on Canvas. 150 x 180 cm. : . © . 6.2 Astrid Nondal. Om Hundre År Er Allting Glemt. 2003. Oil on Canvas. 160 x 230 cm. Photo: Halvard Haugerud. ©Astrid Nondal and the National , . 6.3 Eggert Pétursson. Untitled. 2006–2007. Oil on Canvas. 195 x 285 cm. Photo: . © . 6.4 Andreas Eriksson, Trädstam (skugga) (Tree trunk, in the shadow), 2009. Acrylic and Oil on Canvas. 252 x 235 cm. Courtesy: The Artist, Stephen Friedman , , , . 6.5 Anna Tuori. Icaria. 2005. Oil on Canvas. 130 x 130 cm. Photo: Jussi Tiainen. © / , . 6.6 Petri Ala-Maunus. Vaara-Suomi (Tree-Covered Hill-Finland). 2012. Oil on Canvas. 150 x 170 cm. Photo: Kansallisgalleria / Hannu Pakarinen. © Heino Art , . 6.7 Petri Ala-Maunus. Nature’s Invasion. 2012. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas. 50 x 41 . : . © . . .

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Koli hills by Lake Pielinen – the highest summit in Southern Finland. : . Antropomorphic Ukko-Koli rock with sacrificial altar. Photo: Jorma Siitonen, . Misty refuge for frontier fugitives – the Black Hill of Koli. Photo: Tuomo , . Koli settlement created a new cultural ecosystem by fire. Photo: Lasse . Eero Järnefelt. Autumn landscape by Lake Pielinen. Oil painting, 1899. .

Notes on Contributors Werner Bigell dr. philos. (University of Tromsø, UiT, 2008), is associate professor of English in teacher education at UiT, campus Alta, with a focus on intercultural communication. He has worked on the topic of landscape (anti-landscape, German , / summer camps for children. M. Christine Boyer who joined the faculty in 1991, is an urban historian whose interests include the history of the city, city planning, preservation planning, and computer science. , , Columbia University and Harvard University. At Princeton she is the William . . . from the Department of Art and Archaeology Publication Fund, for publication of Le Corbusier: homme de lettres (1910–1947) (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). Her publications include Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning 1890–1945 (Cambridge: The Press, 1983), Manhattan Manners: Architecture and Style 1850–1900 : , , The City of Collective Memory (Cambridge: The Press, 1994), and CyberCities (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). Juha Hiedanpää PhD. (University of Tampere, 2004) is research professor on natural resource land (Luke), Finland. He co-authored Environmental Heresies: The Quest for Reasonable (Palgrave, 2016) with Daniel W. Bromley. Jouni Häkli . . , ) at Tampere University. His research lies at the intersection of political geography and transnational sociology, with focus on the study of borders and national identities, political subjectivity and agency, urban planning and civic participation, and forced migration. Among his recent publications are articles in journals Progress in Human Geography, International Political Sociology, Journal for Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and Political Geography.

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Maunu Häyrynen Ph.D. (University of Helsinki, 1995) is professor of Landscape Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. His research interests include the history of public parks and park politics, the construction of national landscape imagery, transboundary landscapes as well as cultural mapping and cultural planning. He has published monographs, edited volumes and articles, the most recent ones on cultural mapping and planning in Finland as well as the emotional/ affective turn in landscape studies and art history. Simo Laakkonen Ph.D. (University of Helsinki, 2001) is a senior lecturer of landscape studies at , . pollution and protection of the Baltic Sea. Among his recent publications are two co-edited books on the global environmental history of the Second World War and two edited special issues on the environmental history of the Cold War. Silja Laine Ph.D. (title of) Docent (University of Turku), is postdoctoral researcher at the Åbo Akademi University, Finland. She specialises in urban cultural history and landscape studies. Her latest publications include an edited book The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History and several essays on 19th and 20th century Finnish urban culture and environmental heritage. Antti Linna M.Soc.Sc. (University of Helsinki, 2006). He is mostly interested in the history of the Baltic Sea region and the history of travel. Currently he is working in the field of records management. Lasse Lovén . . , and Koli ) and until his retirement in 2012 as development manager at Metsähallitus. agement. Hannes Palang PhD (University of Tartu, 1998) is professor of Human Geography at Tallinn University, Estonia. He has written on landscape changes and abandonment, his most recent articles address boundaries, ideology and identity in landscapes.

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Tarmo Pikner Ph.D. (University of Oulu, 2008) is senior researcher at the Centre for Landscape and Culture, Tallinn University School of Humanities. His research is focused on cultural-spatial aspects of evolving urbanity and contested environmental legacies in transformations. He has published in several peer-reviewed journals and book chapters. Annemarie Rammo , geography and later communications. She has always had a special interest for old discarded buildings and spaces. Currently she is enjoying life outside of the academic community. Hilja Roivainen M.A. (Fine Art, University of East London, 2011) is a painter and Ph.D. in Art . painting and the intersection between the intellectual history of utopia and the history of landscape painting. Among her recent publications are an edited special issue on utopia in Ennen ja Nyt and on mobilities in Tahiti. Peder Roberts PhD (Stanford, 2010) is associate professor of modern history at the University of Stavanger, Norway. He has written extensively on the history of science, politics, and the environment in the polar regions. Currently he leads the funded project “Greening the Poles: Science, the Environment, and the Creation of the Modern Arctic and Antarctic”. Jarkko Saarinen Ph.D. (2001), University of Oulu, is Professor of Human Geography at the Uni , , of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests include tourism and development, sustainability and resilience studies, tourism-community relations and nature conservation and wilderness studies. He is Editor for the Tourism Geographies. His recent publications include co-edited books: Tourism, , , , , .

Introduction

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Emotional Turn in the Study of the Environment and Landscape Maunu Häyrynen This volume aims at mapping out the emotional and affective turn in the Nordic and Baltic scholarship on landscape and environment. Strict Cartesian divisions between mind and body, or an experiencing human subject and the external world, are not useful in studying emotions and their relation to landscape and environment. The book at hand is rather attempting to follow the processes in which noncognitive perceptions, sensations or affects become cognitive emotions and vice versa. The attempt is not systematic but a sporadic collection of accounts about different locations in space and time, some focusing largely on cultural symbols and semiotics or artistic meanings, others on the shaping of everyday social practices and collective memories. Their shared focus is a landscape, or place, of emotions, examined in multiple overlapping scales. The volume originated in a seminar on landscape, the environment and , . the seminar were to study the roles of emotion and affect in shaping human relationships with landscape and the environment. The foci were the entanglement and hybridity of culture and nature, the overcoming of their constantly re-created boundaries and the ways in which emotions relate to landscape, the . The seminar took place at the crossroads of two broad and interdisciplinary research angles, environmental humanities and landscape studies. , , and contributing fields may differ but they also have a lot in common. As Steven Hartman (2017: 3–6) has pointed out, the emphases and disciplinary profile of environmental humanities vary globally according to research com Eetvelde 2017: 23). Disciplines such as cultural geography, arts studies or environmental politics contribute to both fields. The volume represents landscape studies and environmental humanities with a wide disciplinary scope and a geographical focus in Nordic and Baltic © koninklijke brill nv, leide , 2022 | 

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countries. Landscape, the environment and nature are generally considered to be central elements in their culture and have accordingly been much studied in their respective fields of cultural geography, social science and culture and arts studies. Well-established research themes such as national symbolic landscapes or the relationship with nature coexist with studies on environ , . diversity emotions and affectivity offer a viewpoint bringing these topics together, reflected in the volume’s cross-section of different approaches to place attachment, landscapes of memory, affectivity in art and architecture, everyday encounters with nature and environmental dimensions of national belonging. 1

What are Emotions?

Following Setha Low (2016: 146), emotions are key elements in the creation, . , however, emotions have been dismissed as irrational, subjective and volatile mental states, misleading rather than contributing to a proper understanding of the world. The dichotomy made in this context between emotional feeling and knowing is akin to the dichotomy between mind and body, ‘higher’ rational thinking taking precedence over ‘lower’ emotional reactions, often understood to be linking with instincts and drives. One is reminded of Edmund Burke’s aesthetics, in which he associated a beautiful landscape with sociability and ultimately the sexual drive, the Sublime being coupled with fear and survival instinct (Burke 1998 [1757]). , the environment are common enough and easy to recognise: Attachment to childhood settings, fondness and reverence of symbolic sites of a community, or aversion from places carrying threats or traumatic memories. Emotional meanings frame and evaluate cognitive understanding. They are slippery as objects of research, constructed, encoded, learned and mediated in culturally , ally shared (Low 2016: 148–149). An individual landscape of fear may turn into a homestead and an entire emotional register of space may become reimagined in major societal points of rupture – such as the one the world is undergoing now in the pandemic. , from mental and linguistic constructions and codes and ultimately outside the realm of the subject. What matters then are the immediate sensations and

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embodied connectedness to the material world. Brian Massumi explains affect as a non-subjective bodily capacity to influence and to be influenced, varying in its intensity (Massumi 1995). Affects may also be seen as wholly embedded in the material world and its relations, following Sarah Ahmed (2004). Affectivity rather than cognition is at play in the physical affinity with familiar terrain or in the visceral rejection of a destroyed environment. However, authors such as Low or Margaret Wetherell (2012) connect affects with emotions, inseparable from cognitions, individual life histories or discourses. Understood in this way emotions and affects remain two sides of a coin, both necessary for the . : . 2

Why Emotions Matter?

Moving about in the everyday environment is to navigate in and between , with material space. Our mental maps are profoundly emotional, spatialising affinities and alienness with intensities that vary from routine indifference to peak experience. Emotions are not merely abstract categorisations of places but play a key part in our embodied interaction with them, directing routes, framing landscapes, conditioning spatial activities as well as creating and . . , , . , political behaviour, environmental attitudes, urban spatial practice and art. At the same time, their study is framed by a bewildering array of theories and emphases from neo-Marxist critical theory, poststructuralism or phenomenol / , , , biosemiotics. From this follows that the concepts of emotion may vary or be wholly dismissed as distortions of affective relations; emotions may be seen indistinguishable from embodiment and performance or studied separately; they may become represented or not, and so forth. , , one may speak about an emotional or affective turn during the recent years. This is shown in study approaches that highlight the multisensual, embodied, performative, relational and material aspects of landscape or place. Such a turn may partly be seen as a reaction to the former constructionist focus on representation of, and as, landscape and its politicality, which foregrounded its role in the articulation of national, gender and racial identities. While , shifted the focus to the individual and communal scale, in which symbolic

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representations and collective identities intermingle with the practices of everyday life. Emotions or affects are increasingly seen to play a key part in the framing and performing of identities, as in the sense of belonging reaching from local to transnational scale. Dealing with concepts such as landscape and environment as well as emotions or affects embedded in them, this volume sets out to cover a potentially vast territory, bringing together a wide range of disciplines as well as both recent and more permanent discussions. Since 1980s, the study of landscape representation and its articulation of emotions and identities has attracted . humanities the relationship between landscape, environment and emotion is again being re-examined, following the emotional or affective turn of the last twenty years. 3

Emotions in Ecocriticism and Landscape Studies

The two fields of study behind this volume are environmental humanities, originating from ecocriticism, and landscape studies. While ecocriticism, understood as criticism informed by an ecological consciousness and method, became a part of environmental humanities since the 1960s (Garrard 2012), : . has focused on analysing how environment and environmental problems are treated in literature and other cultural text. Lawrence Buell defines environmental imagination followingly: […] acts of environmental imagination […] potentially register and ener . nect readers vicariously with others’ experience, suffering, pain: that of nonhumans as well as humans. They may reconnect readers with places they have been and send them where they would otherwise never physically go. They may direct thought through alternative futures. And they may affect one’s caring for the physical world: make it feel more or less precious or endangered or disposable. All this may befall a moderately attentive reader reading about a cherished, abused, or endangered place. (Buell 2009: 2) Buell has taken distance from the earlier environmentalist agenda of ecocriticism, calling for a wider scope that brings it close to landscape studies:

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Literature and environment studies must reckon more fully with the interdependence between urban and outback landscapes, and the traditions of imaging them […]. Although their reach in principle extends to any literary transaction between human imagination and material world, in practice they have concentrated […] on “natural” environment rather than environment more inclusively, and taken as their special province outdoor genres like nature writing, pastoral poetry, and wilderness romance, neglecting […] naturalist fiction, muckraking journalism, and the poetics of the urban flâneur. No treatment of environmental imagination can claim to be comprehensive without taking account of the full range of historic landscapes, landscape genres and environmental(ist) discourses. (Buell 2009: 8) A common intellectual ground between environmental humanities and landscape studies is offered by a critical approach to the concept of landscape. Such a view largely originates from cultural studies and has partly been spread . The Country and the City liams defined visual landscape as an individually centred external observer’s view. The detached position would separate the onlooker from the everyday social realities, which Williams elsewhere characterised in terms of a historically evolved ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 1977: 128–135; Cf Nye 2014: 11–13). For Williams feelings were social, emergent, interpersonally communicated and actively lived and enacted: ‘thought as felt and feeling as thought’ (Williams 1977: 132). Structures of feelings may be related to new forms and conventions under formation in the arts, articulating more widely experienced social processes of change. 4

Landscape, Identity and National Sentiment

social identities – gender, racial, class or national – has attracted particular : : Daniels 1993; Facos 1998; Häyrynen 2008). Even as imaginary constructs, identities carry the potential to rearrange everyday experience and actions, sensitising subjects to cultural expressions across wide fields of everyday life and thus symbolically invading it. An example in the context of national identities is the feeling of Gemeinschaft within the imagined national community (Cubitt 1998: 3–5; Paasi 1996: 57; Anderson 1991: 7, 12–19). This feeling becomes reaffirmed by the repetition of banal imagery (Billig 1995) and nostalgic

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: , fear created by objectifying the non-national Other (Paasi 1996: 13). Emotionally charged associations of different areas help in producing imaginary maps of national space, performed in spatial practices such as tourism in ‘liminal’ places (Häyrynen 2008: 504–505; Shields 1991). The emotional registers of national space have partly coincided with the old aesthetic or artistic categories of landscape, such as the pastoral, the pic, , with the sensing of pleasure, fear or sadness (see e.g. Monk 1960). Classical landscape painting used an established code of landscape genres to create an emotional tone corresponding to the motif of the picture. Having originally acted as a background for action or portraiture landscape gradually became represented by its own right, directly hooking to the feelings of the spectator. , cal textual meanings but retaining its visual code as well as nostalgic or uto : . landscape was based on emotional responses to it rather than on its visual : : : . Eventually the moral landscape categories also became nationally reframed, the classical ideals being replaced by more domestic and familiar ones and the generalised emotions by a search of ‘authentic’ nationhood and mythologised past (Andrews 1989: 40–42; Brett 1996: 58–59). The categories of landscape representations were eventually translated into moral orders of physical landscape by means of tourism and conservation (Matless 1997: 151–153; cf : . to how landscape images and imagery have used perspective, tropes, framing and montage to position and direct the spectator, emotionally tagging images and places and areas associated with them and eventually connecting them into ideological frames (see e.g. Häyrynen 2008: 487–492; Agnew 1995; Duncan 1995; Green 1991; Bermingham 1982; Barthes 1972; Berger 1972). Although popular landscape representation has gradually detached from landscape painting, the moral orders persist in it (Hemingway 1992). As Hannes Bergthaller and Peter Mortensen (2018: 3–6) have rightly pointed out, framing can be a device for communicating individual experience in a socially meaningful way rather than just an ideological trap. This however is not to say that its political effects should be overlooked. According to them framing is ‘a necessity of communication that pares down complex information, charges it with emotional meaning, and gives greater weight to some considerations rather than others while conforming to what is commonly known about a subject’ (op. cit., 5). Whereas representational landscape studies have

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made us aware about the role of frames in stitching subjectivities together with social reality and ideologically double-coding the latter, Bergthaller and Mortensen remind us about the importance of conscious choice of frames and their associated emotionalities. 6

Emotions, Body and Memory

enological school of landscape studies has underlined situated and embodied being as the key to place experience and the feeling of belonging. One of its foremost precursors, Yi-Fu Tuan, has famously named the positive place relationship topophilia (its opposite being topophobia, the fear of place). According to him, ‘[t]opophilia is not the strongest of human emotions. When it is compelling we can be sure that the place or environment has become the carrier of emotionally charged events or perceived as a symbol’ (Tuan 1974, 93). At-homeness or even ethnocentric renditions of emotive space, for instance, may be understood as common enough human traits (op. cit., 215, 246, 269). , relationship, calling the landscape of a place an objectification of its past, its . This sentiment is partly derived from the feelings of identification people have with places, from childhood memories to profound experiences later in life. , , and significance, superimposed on the physical environment and invisible to . : . Opposing the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and body, Maurice MerleauPonty has maintained that emotions are felt with and through the body. He has , phantom limb. Feeling an emotion, then, means being involved in a situation that one is not managing to face but does not either want to evade. A feeling is always true once it is felt. Emotions are retraceable back to the environment that has triggered them and that is allusively indicating them. However, authentic feelings may be superimposed by ‘situational values’ invoked by the emotional categories of the environment that one has internalised by learning (Merleau-Ponty 2004: 97, 176, 178; Cataldi 2008: 166–167). Christopher Tilley adds to this that to understand a landscape truly it must be felt, but to Mortensen 2018). Communication and experience from serial everyday move ,

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a fundamentally narrative understanding, in which previous experiences are present. (Tilley 1994: 31.) What is remembered is fragmentary, though, and is characterised by displacements and absences of the past, making place histories inward-turning, ambiguous and transient (de Certeau 1988: 108). The authenticity of the sense of place is a problematic notion, especially when defined exclusively in terms of long-term belonging or rootedness and at the same time as an essential part of the human condition. However, even as imagined the ‘rooted’ sense of place does not lose its significance at least if it is being supported and acted upon. A search for an authentic sense of place has been attacked as ‘militant particularism’, often building only on the memory or identity of specific groups. (Cresswell 2004: 43–49, 61–62). Doreen Massey has called for a more inclusive definition of place, refuting a simple connection between a place and a community and offering instead the idea of throwntogetherness, multiple and evolving group and place identities, the coexistence of lived and mediated place and the intertwining of local and translocal / global – together contributing to the specificity of a place rather than forming a singular and shared place identity (Massey 2005: passim). 7

Affective Landscapes

During the last couple of decades, the interest on phenomenological . has largely taken place in the evolving of the nonrepresentational (or ‘morethan-representational’) theories. Apart from phenomenology these theories are drawing from neovitalism, biophilosophy, perception psychology, actornetwork theory and the performativity of language. Among their key concepts is affect, usually sharply differentiated as an independent, unmediated and non-, pre- or transpersonal capacity from emotion as a cognitive and evaluative reaction to a world outside. The circulation of affects is seen to catalyse corporeal practice and performance, denoting the shifting mood . , Wylie 2005: 236; Massumi 2002: 27; Waterton 2013: 84; cf Cataldi 2008: 163– 164.) The totality of affects would act as a field of force that relationally joins people, things and spaces, triggering affective atmospheres or spatial reso , : : 16–17). The focus of nonrepresentational landscape studies has accordingly shifted to the performative role of landscape in everyday life, summed up by a redefinition of the verb ‘landscaping’ to foreground notions of practices and process.

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At the same time the scope has widened from merely visual to the full range of sensory experience and the once strict borderline between materiality and perception has become blurred. Landscape is at the same time seen, sensed, thought, remembered, felt about and enacted in interaction with its other . tered and understood through action. (Waterton 2013: 85–86; Thompson, How : . , , were prioritised in earlier representational landscape studies, have received less attention under nonrepresentational theories. Engagement with landscape may also prove negative, constrained and marginalising, forcing certain subject positions and hierarchies. Also, the above discussed connections between landscape and identity may have been overlooked. (Waterton 2013: 87.) Even though the fixity of spatial identities is increasingly denied, it does not mean that spatial imaginations have lost their force. On the contrary the importance of borders and other spatial metaphors may have grown due to the . : . To avoid the downside of nonrepresentational theories – solipsism, presentism and the lack of historicity or the fact that there cannot be research without representation (Harvey 2015: 912–918) – temporality and memory have in the recent years made a vigorous recovery in landscape studies and cultural geography, also returning the issues of politics and justice back to the , : . hand this development also marks a new rapprochement between landscape studies and other environmental humanities. The combination of affectivity, performativity and embodiment both with the critical and ethical approach on landscape politics and justice have had a refreshing effect, offering new theoretical perspectives that enable a better understanding of the dynamics of human-environment interaction and a balance between the symbolic and material aspects of landscape. An example is provided by Divya Tolia-Kelly’s study on the Lake District of Cumbria, UK, mixing iconography of landscape with an artistic study of its embodied emotional registers among different ethnic groups and together producing an account of landscape memories and their relation to identities. (Tolia-Kelly 2013.) 8

Introduction of Chapters

This section presents the contributions to the volume and their study approaches. The ways in which each and every one of them relates to the

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emotional or affective turn in environmental humanities and landscape studies sketched above is summarised in the afterword. related identities. Their methodological angles range from oral environmental history to a comparative interview-based study building on cultural semiotics and further to a less rigidly structured ethnographic approach informed by phenomenology and non-representational theories. The focus of each study is the everyday lives of communities, but the levels of analysis differ: while the Finnish case dwells on multisensual experiences in the liminal space of a holiday island, the chapter on ex-Soviet military sites in Estonia concentrates on local heritage processes dealing with a traumatic past. The third chapter shifts the focus to small stories, opening up an actor-network perspective to the emotions, materialities and spatial practices in Estonian urban gardening. , The Red Island, working-class leisure culture in post-war Helsinki, Simo Laakkonen and Antti Linna start the section with a short history of outdoor recreation in the city of Helsinki, focusing on the working-class recreation areas that were located rather marginally in the urban space. One of the areas was an island set aside for the members of the Finnish People’s Democratic League, a left-wing party only made legal after World War ii. The memories of leisure in the island largely correspond to mainstream Finnish cultural models, not unlike those discussed by Werner Bigell in Section iii, although here collective activities appear more pronounced. Togetherness has blended with individual nature experience. The island has clearly offered a respite from both worklife and political activity. , Movements, care and dispersed periurban landscapes evoked by dacha allotment gardens of Narva Hannes Palang and Tarmo Pikner examine the landscape of the border city of Narva as a patchwork created by law, ownership, land use policies and local practices. Small islets of mostly privately owned dacha . , , dacha owners, occurs in everyday practices and in materialised use patterns. Emotional boundaries across the landscape are drawn and maintained by . , connecting with the everyday spaces of urban life and also across the Estonian . , Roadside picnic? Overcoming the military past, moves roughly in the same era and in geographical vicinity of the setting described by Laakkonen and Linna, although on the . Soviet domination of Estonia and their existence was largely but unofficially

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resented. After their falling into disuse, the local attitudes started to evolve. Although the memories of the bases are still contradictory, their fast dilapidation appears to be regretted by most in the interviews. The material sites, having lost their previous discursive status and out of context in the presentday Estonian society, seem both forgotten and open for new meanings. Section ii shifts the attention to the affective, multisensual and material . , vernacular writing and landscape painting. The first one is a close reading of . ters with the environments to the subliminal and prelinguistic aspects of architectural creative process are laid bare. A parallel process is observed in the diaries of a Finnish peasant woman from nineteenth century, revealing her acute perception and nuanced expressions of weather and seasonality. This chapter focuses on the study of history of perception and feelings, bringing to the fore less privileged source materials. The third contribution studies the ambiguous emotional registers of contemporary Nordic landscape paintings, using wide-ranging art historical methodology from the more traditional iconography of landscape to ecocriticism understood as hermeneutical aesthetics. The section is opened by the Chapter 5, Architectural memories of places and things, by M. Christine Boyer. She discusses how the place memories of , , and the gradual evolving process of a building. The architects she studies – , writing the memories, feelings and observations that have moved them. Their texts describe emotionally laden materials, objects and landscapes, which are only partly grasped by language. Yet, together with place narratives and myths, these help to shape their architectural imagination. , From acidified groves to virtual mountains: The continuum of Utopian landscape types in twenty-first century Nordic art, studies the ironic reuse of classical utopian topoi in contemporary Nordic painting. By them she means the combination of typically Pastoral, Pictur as the surreal brightness of colours, darkness or the use of abstract signs. Her analysis combines the theory of utopian thought by Ernst Bloch and landscape iconography inspired by Denis Cosgrove with ecocriticism. As its outcome she suggests that the landscapes refer to the narratives of wild nature and promises of future happiness in early Capitalism, linking with objectified landscape as a socially conditioned way of seeing. Their hopeful visions are now being dislocated due to the environmental crisis.

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The section is concluded in Chapter 7. Silja Laine’s Perceptions of winter in the notebook of Eva Christina Lindström (1823–1895) dwells on both seasonality and its different societal interpretations. While the budding Finnish academia of the time initiated the systematic study of climate, seasons and weather, lay people started to record minute, if untrained, observations on them to be able to predict weather on their own. Eva Christina Lindström, a peasant woman living in the archipelago, made in her diary rich use of language to describe , , feel or smell. Covering the disastrous famine years of 1866–1868, her records , scientific and lay knowledge in Finland. Section iii deals with the emotional and affective dimensions of nationalism. The first chapter represents both the history of ideas and human-animal studies, demonstrating the politicisation of penguin as a part of the claim for Polar supremacy in Norway. The second chapter, although generally representing environmental history, builds on literature rather than primary sources, its principal method being the study of the genealogy of cultural ecosystem services by means of Peircean abduction. The last chapter is also using literature, here as a basis for building an ideal type of the Norwegian friliftsliv, complemented by an autobiographical reflection of Cuban outdoor life. ,’The penguin is to be a Norwegian bird’: Nationalising and naturalizing an alien animal, how an ill-fated attempt was made in the 1930s to make use of penguins in Norwegian nation-building by . Norway’s areal claims to the Antarctic, following the polar expeditions, and to . episode, fuelled by right-wing nationalism, to exemplify the power of fauna to represent culture. The emotion under scrutiny here is national sentiment in the peculiar form of Norwegian polar imperialism. Juha Hiedanpää and Lasse Lovén map out the key cultural ecosystem services of a single site Chapter 9, Making the National Landscape: The case of Koli, Eastern Finland. Koli, a place associated with Finnish art and national movement, has been tagged as ‘the national landscape’ of Finland since the 1980s and became a National Park in 1991. The authors study it through time in terms of human-ecosystem coevolution. Culture, understood here as habits and customs, epitomises according to them the continuous but changing symbolic significance of the site. Following the authors, Koli already gained iconic status as the prehistoric site of the Bear Cult and later evolved from local to national identity symbol. As a cultural ecosystem service Koli has provided a space of individual and collective imagining, supported communities

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by strengthening their creative capacity and contributed to social cohesion through times. The volume is closed by Chapter 10 with a discussion of a key aspect of , . Norwegian friluftsliv (‘outdoor life’) as an interpassive ritual, Werner Bigell presents an ideal type of Norwegian outdoor life, arguing that the Northern nature is used as a shared setting for , with an antimodernist and antiurbanist undertow. Despite the superficially collective character of outdoor life, the modes of nature experience it entails are highly individualistic, centred on the staging of personal or small group identities rather than a national Gemeinschaft. According to Bigell, outdoor life constitutes an interpassive ritual based on practices, sociabilities and lifestyles understood as traditional and enabling a temporary retreat from the . . Bibliography ,

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, . : 251–271. Ahmed, Sarah. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. : . Anderson, Benedict. 1991 (1983). Imagined Communities. : . Andrews, Malcolm. 1989. The Search for the Picturesque. Landscape aesthetics and tourism in Britain, 1760 – 1800. Aldershot: Scolar Press. , , . . , . Landscape Perspectives: The Holistic Nature of Landscape. Berlin: Springer. , . . Mythologies. : : Berger, John 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: . , , . . : Bergthaller, H. and Mortensen, P. (eds) Framing the Environmental Humanities. Leiden: Brill: 1–12. Bermingham, Ann. 1982. Landscape and Ideology. The English Rustic Tradition, 1740 – 1860. : . Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. , , , , . . : ‘Emotional Turn’’ in Emotional Geographies. Abingdon: Ashgate: 1–16. Brandt, Jesper. 2017. ‘Our Common Landscapes for the Future’ in Antrop, Marc, and , . Landscape Perspectives: The Holistic Nature of Landscape. Berlin: Springer: v-viii.

r nen Brett, David. 1996. The Construction of Heritage. Cork: Cork University Press. Buell, Lawrence. 2009 (2001). Writing for an Endangered World. Literature, Culture and Environment in the United States and beyond. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. , . . Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. , . . , . , . Merleau-Ponty, Key Concepts. Stokesfield: Acumen: 163–173. Certeau, Michel de. 1988 (1974). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chase, Malcolm and Shaw, Christopher. 1989. ‘The dimensions of nostalgia’ in Shaw, C. and Chase, M. (eds) The imagined past, history and nostalgia. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press: 1–17. Cosgrove, Denis. 1984. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. London: Croom Helm. , , . . , . , . Thinking space. : : . Cresswell, Tim. 2004. Place, a short introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. , . . , . . Imagining Nations. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 1–21. Daniels, Stephen. 1993. Fields of Vision. Landscape imagery and national identity in England and the United States. Cambridge: Polity Press. , . : , , . , . Place / Culture / Representation. London: : . , . . : , , , , The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. : : . Facos, Michelle. 1998. Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination. Swedish Art of the 1890s. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gallagher, Michael, Kanngieser, Anja and Prior, Jonathan. 2017. ‘Listening geographies: Landscape, affect and geotechnologies’ in Progress in Human Geography 41(5): 618–637. Garrard, Greg. 2012. Ecocriticism. : . Green, Nicholas. 1991. The Spectacle of Nature. Landscape and bourgeois culture in nineteenth-century France. Manchester: Manchester University Press. , . . , . . Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies. Oxford: Blackwell: 596–632. Hall, Cheryl. 2014. ‘Beyond ‘gloom and doom’ or ‘hope and possibility’: making room for both sacrifice and reward in our visions of a low-carbon future’ in Crow, D. and Boykoff, M (eds) Culture, Politics and Climate Change: How Information Shapes our Common Future. : : .

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r nen , . . . . , . . . . Landscape and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 5–34. Monk, Samuel. 1960 (1935). The Sublime. A study of critical theories in XVIII-century England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Nye, David. 2014. , . , . The Anti-Landscape. : : . Olwig, Kenneth and Mitchell, Don. 2018. ‘The landscape path to spatial justice: , , , ., , . , Defining Landscape Democracy. A Path to Social Justice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar: xv-xxi. Paasi, Anssi. 1996. Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness. The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border. New York: Wiley. , , . . Landscape Research: Landscape Research 41(4): 385–387. , . . Place and Placelessness. London: Pion. , . . Mapping the Invisible Landscape. Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place. : . Setten, Gunhild and Myrvang Brown, Katrina. 2013. ‘Landscape and social justice’ in , , , , The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. : : . , . . Places on the Margin. : . , , . . : Conceptual Challenge’ in Landscape Research 36(3): 321–339. , , , , . . , , , , The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. : : . Thrift, Nigel. 2008. Non-Representational Theory. Space, Politics, Affect. London: . Tilley, Christopher. 1994. A phenomenology of landscape. Oxford: Berg. , . . : , , Journal of Material Culture 11(1/2): 7–32. Tolia-Kelly, Divya. 2013. ’Landscape and Memory’ in Howard, Peter, Waterton, Emma , The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. London: : . Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1974. Topophilia, A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press. Waterton, Emma. 2013. ‘Landscape and non-representational theories’ in Howard, , , , The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. : : .

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Wetherell, Margaret. 2012. Affect and Emotions, A New Social Science Understanding. London: Sage. , . . Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wylie, John. 2005. ‘A single day’s walking: narrating self and landscape on the South West Coast Path’ in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30(2): 234–247. Wylie, John. 2007. Landscape. : . Wylie, John. 2016. ‘A landscape cannot be a homeland’ in Landscape Research 41(4): 408–416.

PART 1 Place-Based Identities

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The Red Island: Working-Class Leisure Culture in Post-War Helsinki Simo Laakkonen and Antti Linna Abstract A basic notion for the proposed paper is the lure of the sea presented by Alain Corbin. Some attention has been paid to the history of the relationship between the sea, leisure, and the middle and upper classes. By contrast the relation between the sea, leisure, and the working class has been largely neglected so far. This paper focuses on the post-war period when the number of industrial workers reached its peak in . emerged as a notable political force. The aim of the paper is to explore the impacts of these economic, social and political structural changes on the human-nature relationship in a Nordic city. How the strengthening of the position of the working class was , , governed by members of the socialist and communist trade unions and parties.

Keywords Helsinki – social ecohistory – Finnish e environmental oral history

i

labour movement – leisure culture –

Helsinki was founded in 1550 as a harbour in the south-eastern Baltic, on the Gulf of Finland. Helsinki was to tax the local residents’ traditional sailingvessel trade and compete, if possible, with Tallinn on the opposite shore for international trade in the gulf. Nevertheless, the city did not begin to grow in earnest until the late 1800s, when it became Finland’s largest industrial centre and harbour town. As a result of substantial regional annexation in 1946, the city’s land area grew five-fold, after which approximately two-thirds of the area © koninklijke brill nv, leide , 2022 | 

:10.1163/9789004470095_003

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administrated by the city consisted of an expanse of sea containing nearly 300 islands and islets. Helsinki became one of the world’s most maritime capitals. , city’s maritime character. For approximately 600 years of its history, Finland was ruled by Sweden, which meant that the building stock of the seaside historical centre of Helsinki remained under the ownership and political control of the primarily Swedish-speaking upper class and bourgeoisie (Åström 1957, 261). The Swedish-speaking elite owned, in addition to the blocks of apartment flats that lined the urban coastline, most of the villa-dotted shores and islands outside the city that remained in a near-natural state. The available public parks on the seaside were not administered by the working class themselves, these places were not theirs. Most of the working-class families were forced to live in the inner city, which was cut off from the sea by a wall formed of shoreline residential blocks, factories, harbours, related facilities, dumps and polluted shoreline waters (Haapanen 1999; Tikkanen 1999; Laakkonen 2001, 198; Haapanen 2013, 32–33). For the growing Finnish-speaking working class of Helsinki, the sea remained behind a wall that was socio-economic, cultural, political, and environmental. The only landing place for workers in the early 20th century was , , , ern part of the city, which the city’s upper class and middle class did not find suitable for their purposes. This bay’s deepest inlet is where the city’s organised working class first leased land for its members’ summertime enjoyment. The , , could come here by rowboat for a day or spend the night. On weekends, thousands of workers rowed to the bay to enjoy the area’s nature and each others’ company. As leisure-time recreation gradually gained a permanent foothold there, the first community of easy-to-dismantle huts rose in the 1920s (Haap, . , centre of leisure-time activity for Helsinki’s working class until World War . , lahti Bay was located far from the countless islands, fresh winds and free-flow . , working class finally managed to break through the historical-social wall to the shores of the open sea and how workers experienced this change. 1

Research Topic, Approach and Sources

Our article investigates the history of summer hut culture in Helsinki. The subject of our research is the summer hut association that began functioning

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a small island off the coast of Helsinki after World War ii. island were members of the Communist Party of Finland (Suomen Kommunistinen Puolue, k ) or of the Finnish People’s Democratic League (Suomen Kansandemokraattinen Liitto, kdl). This organisation was founded in 1944 to unite those politically left of the Finnish Social Democratic Party ( d ), that is, mainly communists and socialists. . , of seashores for leisure-time recreational use as ‘the second discovery of the sea’. Alain Corbin (1995, 265) describes the mentality behind this phenomenon , . history of spending leisure time at the seashore began in the 1700s with the upper class, spread in the 1800s to the bourgeoisie, and then on to the working class in the 1900s. The study of summer resorts has followed much the same social ladders. Substantial research has been conducted on the summer villas and the villa life of the upper class. The history of the summers and summer cottages of the middle-class has also begun to be investigated, if more recently . ., , , , . , been much less research on the ways the working class has spent its summers . ., . , lier research sees the recreational activities of the working class in coastal Helsinki in terms of Sunday excursions that took place prior to World War ii (e.g., Knapas 1980; Koskinen 1990). As a whole, the leisure-time activities of the working class have been studied remarkably little. We have found no studies on the history of summer huts in Finland or abroad. The subject of our research is, then, a new theme on an international scale. Environmental history refers to changes in the interaction between humans and other elements of the natural world across time. Environmental historical research has focused on the history of the relationship of the upper and middle classes to nature, disregarding the role of the working class (Laakkonen, Louekari, Lahtinen 2019). Correspondingly, research on the working class has focused on the history of material conditions and organised political activity. Aside from a few delightful exceptions (e.g., Schwab 1994; Dewey 1998; Taylor 2002; Montrie 2008; Franklin 2012; Barca 2014; McCammack 2017), the history of the working class’s relationship to nature has remained for all intents and purposes, almost unexamined. Therefore, the aim of our essay, from a methodological point of view, is to bring together the history of the working class and environmental history (Laakkonen 2002; Peck 2006; Mosley 2006; Bailey and Gwythe 2010). We argue that both red and green history should pay more attention to leisure and nature because of their importance in the everyday life . ,

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in capitalist society. Due to the dearth of previous research and historical sources, we examine only one summer hut colony. The archival sources cited in this study were examined at the People’s Archives (Kansan Arkisto), which was established in Helsinki in 1945 as the central archives of the Communist Party of Finland. The archive collects and preserves material related to the social and cultural history of the communist and socialist labour movements, and popular organisations. , . sources provided valuable material on the social history of the hut community. However, other methodological approaches were needed to explore the environmental history of the working class. Environmental oral history proved to be the most fruitful method for gathering information on workers’ reminiscences regarding their own community and the environment (Laakkonen 2002, 31; , . tance of studying the everyday relationship of individuals to the environ , . study were semi-structured interviews conducted by Antti Linna with eleven . represented among these narrators. The oldest narrator was born in 1914; other study participants were born in the interwar period and some not until after the war, which enabled recording experiences of adults and children from the post-World War ii period. . remembered, however, that memory is heterogeneous and multilayered. An individual always interprets the past through the prevailing social hierarchy . view some things are communicated directly, some are modified, and others are not addressed at all. While some oral historians are mostly concerned with addressing polyphonic interpretations of the past, our aim is to analyse reminiscences in order to compile as realistic narrative of the past as possible (see , , . , over a period of about two decades, 1945–1964. The working class arrived at the island in the summer of 1945 and most of the summer huts were forced to move elsewhere by 1964, at which time ownership of the island shifted from the State of Finland to the City of Helsinki. We attempt to investigate how the . What sort of community formed on the island, and how did its relationship

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five senses – sound, vision, touch, taste and smell – are essential to all human . Effect; the sensory and emotional turn in the humanities (Hamilton 2011, 219; Tolvanen, Laakkonen 2018; Häyrynen in this volume). , the community. We conclude by examining the characteristics of the working class’s relationship to coastal nature as an integral element of summer hut culture. 2

World War II as a Turning Point

Finland shared in principle Nordic outdoors culture with its Scandinavian neighbours, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway (Tin et al. 2019; Bigell in this volume). However, on the local level the cultural, political and natural setting of Helsinki differed in many ways from those in Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm (Andersson 1987). Helsinki was the only Nordic capital that was located on a peninsula, had a major archipelago, represented Finno-Ugric culture, was deeply affected by world wars, and had a strong communist political movement as well. Generally, World War signified a turning point in the political, social and environmental history of the 20th century (see Laakkonen 2016; Laakkonen, , . labour unions to operate until January 1940, after the Soviet Union had attacked Finland. Once the wars with the Soviet Union ended in peace in 1944, the activities of the leftists to left of the social democrats, the so-called people’s democrats, were legalised. After its legalisation, the Communist Party of Finland, founded in Moscow in 1918, became one of the strongest communist parties in Western Europe. The unified national front of the communists and socialists, the Finnish People’s Democratic League, or kdl, received almost . Together with conservatives, social democrats, and a rural party it was one of 1998; Saarela 2008). The post-World War ii rise of the political left was also evident in the attempt . elsewhere, new areas for working-class recreation were sought, this time along

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the seashore proper in addition to inland saltwater bays. As a result of the search, the Helsinki municipal organisation of the kdl succeeded in leasing , , from the Ministry of Defence in 1945. The agreement was presumably signed because the minister of defence at the time was Mauno Pekkala, a member of the kdl who later became prime minister and his party’s presidential candidate. The municipal organisation of the kdl rented an area of approximately 10 hectares as a venue where its membership could spend their summers. The summer residents who appeared on the island in 1945 were manual labourers from Helsinki. For the most part they were carpenters, bricklayers, painters, plumbers, chauffeurs and factory workers. The group also included housewives, pensioners, schoolchildren and infants. Most of these islanders lived in the cramped working-class blocks of eastern Helsinki, where the buildings were large and tall and the yards small and dark ( 1). Many of the buildings lacked running water or indoor toilets, and waste collection was substandard (Kivistö, Laakkonen 2001, 155, 162). Subletting was common in the . , people lived in each residential room in the area (Koskinen 1990, 34). The northeastern part of the city of Helsinki, where these people lived, had the fewest parks in the city (Häyrynen 2001, 46). The factories and other facilities in proximity to the residential blocks emitted smoke, soot, dust and other , . remembered the living conditions of his childhood as follows: ‘That was also a one-room flat in town and the gas plant was right there, spewing out coal dust, and it was everywhere when they made coke’. The shoreline waters of this largest of Helsinki’s industrial areas had been so badly polluted that they were unsuitable for swimming (Cajander 1965, 55–60, 170–176). ‘With the onset of summer, it’s not likely that many city dwellers will want to spend weekends in this dusty town; instead, everyone yearns to get out into , , . is everything to us’. So wrote the anonymous ‘Pooh’ of the workers’ summertime craving for nature in 1950 ( 1). Jarmo Henriksson portrayed the yen for the island in brief: ‘Yeah, you just sort of had this itch to get to the seashore’. American labour and environmental historian Chad Montrie (2008) has contended that workers became interested in nature and environmentalism because of the disconnectedness with nature imposed by their status and a desire to re-connect with it. This was definitely the case in eastern Helsinki as well. After the war Helsinki like much of the world was politically strictly divided.

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kdl municipal organisation ers. Belonging to the kdl or one of its member organisations was another condition of leasing a hut ( . , were members of the Communist Party of Finland ( k members of the league of socialist and communists ( kdl). The remainder belonged to the women’s and youth organisations of these two bodies ( 1). The islanders owned their own summer huts, but approval of the island asso , ber of the kdl ( 2). After World War ii, , , , Helsinki inhabited by labour union activists, socialists, and communists. 3

The Working-Class Community on the People’s Democratic Island

The island was approximately three kilometres from the centre of Helsinki , accident. According to the interviews, people almost always heard about went to have a look at it. Summertime residence on the island grew and stabilised rapidly, and by the late 1940s, the island was served by a boat that passed by the island several times a day as well as by motorboats ( 4). By the 1950s, of the working-class neighbourhoods. The boat trip to the island took about . , were five departures on weekdays, seven on Saturdays, and as many as eight on Sundays (Kansan Uutiset, 31 May 1960; 5). Some hut owners also had little motorboats. Others might travel from nearby islands by rowboat, which many residents owned; the Helsinki of the 1950s was not only a walking town, it was a rowing town as well. . to interviewee Saimi Oksanen, people initially rigged up shelters by stringing blankets across ropes hung between trees, while some lucky souls made tents by nailing canvas to wooden frames and others built simple huts out of card. , to buy large army surplus tents for which one could then build a wooden platform. By the early 1950s, modest plywood and wooden huts appeared alongside the tents and the cardboard huts ( 6). The construction of summer huts during the post-war period was not always easy, because there was a shortage

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of construction materials. Wood, nails, or tools were not available the way they would be today, nor could people necessarily afford them. This is why building . recalled the construction of summer huts as follows: Yes, and all manner of goddamn waste wood, because you couldn’t get proper construction material or anything so then we’d go around to these construction sites and collect all kinds of boards and punch out the nails and straighten them and… you’d have to make them from waste material like that and scrape stuff together wherever you could... Yeah, those who had connections to car import companies, you know, when these Moskvichs and Pobedas would come in from the Soviet Union, they were able to buy the crates the cars came in and then they’d make them from them, from the boards of those automobiles’ import crates. But that’s really the way it was, wherever you happened to get those boards and that waste wood, that’s what we’d use to cobble those huts together. Soviet cars were imported to Finland after the war due to the scarcity of foreign currency. The trade with the Soviet Union was based on bilateral clearing arrangement where hard currency was not used (Laurila 1995). Boards taken , , ( 6). The huts were small cottages built on top of cornerstones and made of lightweight boards; they were only intended for summer habitation. Hence, there was no insulation per se, but the walls might be covered in newspaper or tar paper to block the draught. Felt or sheet metal was used as a roofing material. The interiors were formed of two sleeping berths, a small attic and a couple of cupboards. Children or adult guests bunked in the attic. One reason why the huts were lightly built was the proximity of the Soviet . ii and worlds (see Chapter 3 in this volume). Helsinki was surrounded by a chain of . . , able to dismantle the huts within two hours if the order came from the Finnish . of the men had fought in the Finnish Army against the Soviet Union during ii. Without their patriotism Finland would not have been able to halt the .

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The summer huts were not allotment or community gardens, because planting fenced vegetable and flower gardens in their proximity was not . , running water or sewers. Water could be drawn from a well, but food had to be brought from town. Holes were often dug next to the huts to act as cold storage. A small rubbish heap and outhouses were available for shared use. Food was prepared outside; initially over open fires and then over gas or ethanol camp , . : porridge on a camp stove for hours on that big rock for my three-month old . . community, and they were located in a relatively compact area (10.8 hectares) in very close proximity to each other. The huts were numbered, which made it easier for visitors to find the proper address on the island. These huts housed an estimated 600–700 people in the summertime. When there were special occasions during the summertime the number of people may have reached approximately one thousand. , , tee consisting of about ten members from among their midst to manage their . , , an island manager, who acted as overseer for internal island affairs ( 2; 7). One of the committee’s and islanders’ first common activities was arranging dances. Since dancing had been forbidden during the war, the islanders were young, and the Nordic summer nights were filled with light, the hunger for life was insatiable. When the temporary dance floor built in the middle of the island proved unsuitable, an empty army barracks was rented from the defence forces and the islanders built a wooden dance platform and an orchestra stand. could get smoked fish in addition to coffee, soft drinks and snacks. Dances were held almost every Saturday. Well-known schlager and tango singers of the era would come and perform at the island’s dances ( 8). At times dances were held to gather funds for common needs. The income from such dances might be used to pay for drilling a well, gaslights for the restau, . funds through other events, such as jumble sales. One year a boat excursion to the archipelago was organised to raise funds for a children’s summer camp ( 9). Co-operation for the common good and the good of fellow islanders was taken for granted as an element of community life in the summer hut community.

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. The opening of the summer season was the first of the annual parties to which all islanders were invited. Another big celebration was Midsummer, the year’s biggest holiday in the Nordic countries throughout the ages, where people gather at the waterside to eat, drink, listen to music, dance, and enjoy each . included the burning of large bonfires at midnight. The third big celebration of the summer was the end-of-season fete. For such celebrations the programme was often commissioned from the working-class youth organisations, orchestras or theatre companies. Many of the dances and parties were open to all and they were advertised beforehand, for example, in Kansan Uutiset (People’s News), which became in 1957 the main newspaper of the left-wing parties ( 10; 11). A central aspect of life on the island was the volunteer work parties. According to the study participants, spring began with a cleaning party, and the skilled, hard-working residents handled other maintenance and repair work as necessary. There were numerous carpenters, metalworkers and bricklayers among the men who could practically do construction and repairs in their sleep. Annual work parties were arranged to chop wood so the sauna . fell trees on the island, and therefore firewood was transported from the mainland; sometimes driftwood was chopped up or occasionally a tree would ‘blow over in the wind’ ( . their own initiative and expense. , onwards the children’s camp committee of the kdl Helsinki municipal organisation began to organise pioneer camps at the island ( 13). They were needed because ‘opportunities for the children of low-income families to get away from the dust of the city and into natural surroundings remain limited, and for this reason, our camps are perhaps more important than ever’. ( 14; 15.) The camps, that were supported financially by the City of Helsinki and other organisations, were initially free of charge for all, and remained free for children from the poorest working-class families (Kansan Uutiset, 5 Jun 1960). According to Saimi Oksanen, the camps lasted two weeks, during which time the children initially slept in army surplus tents and ate in a canteen set up in a barracks rented from the army. Pentti Karlin emphasises that the pioneer camp programme consisted of games and companionship supervised by trained camp counsellors. No great emphasis was placed on political indoctrination.

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Workers’ recreational and athletic activities have often been tightly . nity was an integral part of the Helsinki Workers’ Association sports and gymnastics club, Jyry, resurrected after the war. During the post-war shortages, the Jyry youth organisation arranged weekend camps at and Sunday , were integral activities. A large oil silo had been destroyed in an earlier explosion on the island, and according to some of the narrators its sand foundation . , 2). Among other things such events provided important role models for children. Sport was not just a hobby for workers because already in the mid-20th century Finland was in relative terms the most successful competing country . , Workers’ Olympics were organised separately from the official Olympic games. Finland was represented at the Workers’ Olympics by l, whose members did not have access to the Olympics proper in inter-war Finland controlled by the political right. Helsinki was designated host of both the Olympics proper in 1940 and the Workers’ Olympics in 1943, neither of which was held because of World War ii. The Olympic games were held finally in 1952 in Helsinki and this time athletes from Finnish right-wing and left-wing sports organisations participated. Nevertheless, the tradition of workers’ Olympics continued at organisations from the metropolitan Helsinki area participating. Competitions included fishing, air rifle, darts, and tug-of-war. Naturally, these Olympics closed with a dance as well ( 16). However, the most important part of the summer was the daily interactions . : . help, they always got it; it was a very community-minded group. Folks exchanged news during trips to the well, we’d talk for hours, the spirit of the place was ‘we’! There wasn’t individuality that way. , show up unannounced. One did not, however, enter another’s hut without being invited in. During these visits coffee, tea and soft drinks were served. Occasionally stronger drinks were imbibed, but rarely to the point of disturbance ( 17).

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. , ness there. Not disturbing others was a matter of honour’. According to the , . Tolmunen’s depiction of island summers crystallises much of what the experience was like: Well, evidently the place as a whole, because there was never any fighting there. People were friendly and everyone said hello and when we kids were running around, no one ever said a bad word to us or drove us away. And when Lehtonen… when he had fish, he’d offer us some, go on take some, he’d brought in more than he needed for himself, help yourselves… And then if you didn’t go into town yourself, you’d just tell someone who was going to bring you back whatever and they always would – that sort of neighbourly help and harmony… And all kinds of rides and everything, if someone went by boat then you could always hitch a ride and there was . , , did and away you’d go… So it was that sort of really fun stuff. The leasing of the island had also involved political aims ( 18), but, in practice, there were not many political dimensions to summers on the island. Some hints of political activity nevertheless remained. For instance, at the end of , , mer hut community was known, included a discussion group that dealt with political issues, such as social policy, unity within the workers’ movement and revamping the national pension act. Presentations on the topic at hand were given at these gatherings, and sometimes workers’ songs were sung. Participation at these events was in the range of an average of fifty islanders per meeting, which represented a relatively small segment of the hut owners ( 11; 19). The socioeconomic homogeneity and clear political identity of the islanders also presumably played a role. Cold and barren it may be, yet our hearts doth it greatly warm , A newfound courage it sparked in us, what we can do as one The will to build our happiness, to fight until we’re done Our standard bright now to unfurl, to bear our strengths into the world. The Vasikkasaari March, dedicated to the island by its writer and composer, one of the islanders ( 20), clearly indicates that even labour activists, socialists,

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and communists did not want to bother with politicking while they were on holiday. Class struggle had to wait. 4

A Community Surrounded by Nature

Historians of leisure, Peter Borsay and John Walton (2011, 4–8) argue that in practice the growing cities forced nearly all their inhabitants to seek seaside resorts, and in this way a deep interactive bond was formed between the two. This argument describes well the situation of Helsinki after World War ii. , , capital city’s sole accessible ‘wilderness’, rose to a prominent position. , . Helsinki and other coastal Baltic cities, it was still common practice in the . refuse, turds, and condoms: ‘And there, next to the boat, there was a black glove sticking out of the water, and our departure was delayed for an awfully long time […] because there happened to be a man attached to that glove. A body’. , potatoes and carrots, see jellyfish, and go swimming every day. The distinction from the city’s waste-polluted waters was crystal clear. , residents considered this a natural state of affairs, as the majority of the northern shores of the Gulf of Finland were of similar granite. Besides, the stony surroundings could be enhanced if desired by planting flowers in the gaps between the rocks. The islanders went so far as to excavate a small artificial pond in the middle of the island, which with its trees formed a lush, shady con , . ries, lingonberries and mushrooms and collect branches and cones to heat the . , and the passing ships, picnicking, swimming, or simply resting. The islanders would make excursions to nearby islands in their rowboats or further in the Gulf of Finland in their motorboats. Children had no shortage of playmates and places to play on the island. The island had the thrilling remains of oil silos and weapons stocks that had exploded . old shells, cartridges and grenades. The other side of the island was off limits, but children would sneak over in search of adventure. They would climb on the island’s rocks, run down its paths, build huts and play whatever games

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they desired. Circling the island’s shores every day was mandatory, as the waves carried in interesting objects, sometimes from the closed Soviet Union. During their summer holidays, older schoolchildren might gather plants from the island that then had to be dried, pressed and labelled and brought to their biology teachers that autumn (see Laakkonen 2011). Young islanders might also just swim, rest and sunbath on the rocks, which offered interesting views of its . : the girls knew they were being spied on, they’d always flash a little for us’. Toini Kärkkäinen, an employee of Helsinki specialty dyers, had vivid memories of seaside nature: , , up early and go down to the shore to watch the waterfowl and take in the morning. Yes, and the ducks would swim back and forth and the gulls would scream so loud your ears would ache! , , rels, seagulls and waterfowl, and with regular feeding some individual animals . and might come down to welcome a boat at the shore. Some of the islanders had birds named after them; the mother of narrator Jarmo Henriksson had christened one friendly seagull Kalle. Hunting was naturally prohibited on . strictly forbidden ( . , the seabirds’ nesting season. The islanders strove to care for the island’s nature. . attitude also for working class people in everyday life. Bathing in the sauna is an age-old tradition in Finland, and so the sauna was . into the sauna to bathe in the steam and scrub themselves, after which, according to Finnish custom, they would go for a dip in the sea in the nude. Saimi Oksanen warmly recalled the sauna bathing, which took on semi-nudist traits: For years and years people bathed there and you’d use seawater to soap up with, what could be better when you could go out on the dock and . , better, we’d go in our birthday suits, no one ever mentioned it and no one seemed to have much interest in looking, either, if someone happened to , ... ... cheap about it, that anyone was spying on anyone else.

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Swimming in the cold seawater hardened the islanders and promoted their physical and mental wellbeing as well. . . also common to drop fish traps and trawl lines with baited hooks on short lines into the surrounding waters. Angling on the island’s shores and nearby islets was usual. However, there were not too many worms in the island’s poor, barren soil, and so bait of this type was occasionally collected from the city’s , . gradually grew in popularity after the war as the Swedish company Abu began exporting modern reels and spinning rods to Finland. Saimi Oksanen recalled fishing as follows: ‘Well, men were fond of the sea and fishing... And why not , , , . The islanders’ diet was particularly healthy in the summertime, since it consisted primarily of fish and potatoes. One islander recalled, ‘And of course if we got fish, then it was the main dish, at least in our household it was the main dish. And we got plenty of fish’. Fish was cooked into soup, fried, lightly cured, salted . , : roach, Baltic herring, bream, pike, perch, pikeperch, flounder and eel. Fishing was notable also in that it was only now that the working class was allowed, after redeeming a fishing licence, to fish more extensively for sport in the seas surrounding Helsinki. Fishing brought food and variety to working class diets, but the islanders’ post-war relationship to nature was based more on an emotional connection than a directly material perspective. People no longer went out to sea simply for the catch but to experience and enjoy nature as well. , thing there was no way they could find in their neighbourhoods: the opportunity to enjoy clean marine nature. Nature entered the summer homes both symbolically and concretely. The huts were often decorated with sea- and . , est view or seascape would flood in through the windows. An entire family of mallards might wander in uninvited through a door that had been left open. . and simple windows of the huts did not prevent inhabitants from sensing changes in the weather and the seasons – in wind, air pressure, temperature, and humidity. The narrators remembered the scents, smells, and sounds of nature carrying into the huts from the island, the shore, and further away from the open waters of the Gulf of Finland. The huts were surrounded by a wonderful coastal realm of senses that differed completely from the grim black and grey world on the urban mainland.

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From the perspective of urban existence, island life included two other sig . , and 6 , , , were no noise-producing cars, machines, loudspeakers, or activities on the island. There was no music to speak of either, because by and large people saved the power on their battery-powered radios to listen to the evening news. The stillness of the island was important to the residents, since most of them . , of the men had grown sensitive to noise during the war (see Ampuja 2007) and therefore welcomed silence. Darkness was another impressive element on the island. “When you left the city, you could expect to find darkness, and it was dark! Pitch dark”, is how one of the residents described the island’s nights. Since there was no electricity on the island, when night fell, residents would spend evenings sitting inside or in front of the huts in the dim light provided by candles, oil lanterns or gas lamps, , . revealed to the islanders another significant natural element that was missing in the city – the Milky Way. Due to light pollution, the starry sky was not vis , . remembered the island’s nocturnal views and sea as follows: ... in the city... Even though you were alone there, you didn’t feel lonely. And it was exciting in the dark, you could see the stars, we’d climb high up on the rocks to sit and the lights of Helsinki would be reflecting in the water, it was nice to see... When the moon was full there wasn’t a more lovely , ... , tell you, simply paradise. 5

End of Seasons in the Sun?

The importance of the island was increased by the fact that people did not just spend Sundays on the island, or even simply their short summer holidays, but most islanders spent the entire northern summer there, in other words, two or even three months. The first boat left the island for the mainland on weekdays and Saturdays early in the morning, at 5:45 , and the last boat from the city returned to the island at 9 , so it was perfectly possible to live on the island and work in the city.

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Because people from many different generations spent their summers at the island and a neighbour’s helping hand was more the rule than the exception. without worry on workdays, under the care of relatives or neighbours. Thus, it was indeed common for people with families to commute to jobs in the city from the island. On the way to and from work, people could drop by the grocery store; mail and newspapers also travelled to the island this way. : ‘They’d say that when it rained in the city, it didn’t rain there – the sun shone . , mering spot practically in the middle of the City of Helsinki, which could be considered a palpable improvement in their living conditions. winds of autumn announced summer’s end on the island. One anonymous penned poem ( 21): Another summer comes to an end, Our hearts are heavy with grief Guffaws galore, good times we’ve spent Yet the season was far too brief We’ve fired our rifles, thrown our darts, Bathed and cooked and fished Danced and sung with all our hearts Some lovers even got their wish Here we’d run when work was done Our cares would fade to bliss On our island paradise in the sun Untouched by time’s “crisis” For ease of mind and respite from the fray Nothing can surpass our island gay. . was nearly impossible, too, because the huts had only been built for summer use. And yet most of the narrators remembered visiting the island on week , . ,

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, ficiently for the ice to carry a person’s weight. The desire to visit the island in the wintertime could be profound, as is revealed in the following recollection from Saimi Oksanen: There was, you see, a very strict prohibition against living there in the wintertime, but we were there every weekend anyway, every single weekend, as often as we could, if we couldn’t go by boat then we’d ski over and if we couldn’t ski there then we’d have to wait until the ice came. My , water from one tip of the island, we had a rowboat there, lots of folks had rowboats there, over half... And we lowered the boat into the water and there was so much ice that my husband broke through it with the oar, he , made it to the open water. And then the workers on the nearby island – because there was the oil harbour there and it was their lunch time – they were all there and they, it still makes me laugh, they were all singing “and we’ll go out and break all the ice” ... (laughs)... we’ll go out and break all the ice... (laughs)! [The chorus “and we’ll go out and break all the ice” was from the Finnish version of The Beatles’ hit Yellow Submarine] The access of the people’s democrats to their ‘paradise’ was, however, uncertain, since the Ministry of Defence which was the island’s Saint Peter, its gatekeeper, did not take kindly to his renters and would only renew the island’s rental agreement for a year at a time. When ownership of the island shifted from the State of Finland to the City of Helsinki in 1962 as part of a regional land-transfer agreement, it eventually led to the eviction of numerous summer hut owners. According to Jukka Mahlamäki, chairman of the island commit, as nothing more than a summertime camping area for the people’s democrats, and the islanders’ huts were ordered dismantled or moved by the end of 1964. Exceptions were granted for invalids and pensioners until 1972, which was supposed to be absolutely their last year on the island. After some consideration, the city nevertheless came to the conclusion that allowing the summer huts to remain was the best solution, because the residents took care of the island. This being the case, the summer hut culture was allowed to continue on the island. ‘The old depart and the new appear, but once the seaside life gets into your blood, it is passed down from one genera . , , , . Once the working-class finally gained permanent access to the seaside, island life was stamped by cross-generational continuity until the present day.

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All of the memories of the island exuded a general satisfaction with island’s community life as well as its nature. The overall significance of the island is nicely encapsulated in Maija-Liisa Jokinen’s recollection: The island has always been a part of my life. As a schoolgirl and a young . coastal island in the glow of the Suomenlinna maritime fortress lighthouse provided some of the most unforgettable experiences of my youth. The places and porticos where we played in the city transformed into a sea-ringed paradise, with our hut at the heart of it. (Berg, Suominen, , 6

Conclusions

Getting access to the seaside was a struggle about landscape and power. The organised workers succeeded in punching through the historical-social wall in Helsinki only because they achieved sufficient political power once World War ii came to an end. The necessary structural changes needed to effect a summer holiday for the working class included the National Holiday Act, the legalisation of the trade unions and the political left, success in parliamentary and municipal elections, the healthy post-war labour market as well as the desire of the leading socialists and communists to maintain the well-being of its vanguard forces. Communism can be defined as a political ideology whose supporters accept the Leninist principle of a proletarian dictatorship. But it is difficult to understand the leftist summering culture in terms of this ideological basis. A more (1994, 17), according to which communists were people ‘who wanted a better life’. When ideologically defined, the better society of the communists was an abstract and distant utopia, but according to the practical definition, it was to be found in everyday life. The first summer hut colony by the seaside was, , . people had finally gained access to the same maritime landscape that was previously strictly reserved for the middle and upper class. Landscape justice . While politics of landscape was a necessary first step to gain access to a particular place, the next step was how people were to organise living on that space. The summering culture of the upper and middle classes was marked by private property and privatisation. Whereas the middle class followed the upper class in developing its summertime culture, the working class developed

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its summertime culture independently. Working-class summering culture was marked by collectivism. When everyday life in the class society was hard, one’s own organised, community was one’s only security. Members of the multigenerational community provided helping hands, food, water, firewood, transport, daycare, companionship and when necessary, a comforting shoulder. Dances, festivities and work parties were organised together at own initiative and expense. Co-operation for the common good was a basic strait of life. The unhierarchical social landscape of the island community provided a safe haven for its members. The self-managed community, in connection with a strong identity and stable social relationships allowed people to experience and enjoy coastal landscapes at will. On the one hand, serene nature helped working people to relax and rest and, on the other hand, it encouraged people to row, swim, and fish in the sea and practice sports and arrange playful competitions. Coastal nature also inspired people to use their senses. The open sea, starry sky and colours of nature invited people to use their eyes and imagination. Salty sea, smoked fish, forest berries and mushrooms provided seasonal tastes and smells. The sounds and silences of the archipelago formed memorable sonic pleasures. On the island it was possible to walk barefoot on warm cliffs or swim naked in the moonlight with someone special. Such experiences triggered strong affects and emotions that strengthened sense of place and feeling of belonging, which ultimately turned the seaside and all its wonders into landscapes of hope, something to anticipate during the cold, dark, and long winters in the city. Taken together, the post-war era provided working people with democratised leisure, safe human community and contact with rough but inspiring nature, facilitating well deserved political, social, and corporeal feelings of contentment. After a long common struggle, they had finally achieved something truly special in their lives. Thereby workers’ changing culture of leisure became an unseen but powerful socio-political factor that enabled leftist workers to accept living in a capitalist society. After all, class struggle was not about bread only but about life as a whole. Thus, we need both red and green approaches to explore and explain the changing place of workers, leisure, and landscapes in the Western societies. long way from shore. Nowadays in Helsinki there are a total of four summer hut associations and a little over 1200 summer huts, all of which are located at the seashore or on islands. The summering areas of the labour unions are also at the workers’ disposal. Many have even managed to build their own summer cabins on the seashore. Taken as a whole, however, the workers’ break-through to the

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. , . ues to remain strictly in the ownership of the upper and middle classes, the city, and the state. Workers of weaker socio-economic status live for the most part in . , . otherwise blue, that is, conservative shores of the Baltic Sea. Bibliography 1.

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kkonen nd inn Tikkanen, Sallamaria. 1999. ‘Paratiisit ja niiden varjot (Paradises and their shadows)’ in , , . Nokea ja pilvenhattaroita. Helsinkiläisten ympäristö 1900-luvun vaihteessa (Soot and soft clouds: the environment of Helsinki residents at the turn of the 20th century). Helsinki: Helsinki City Museum: 30–61. Thomson, Alistair. 2007. ‘Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History’, The Oral History Review 34(1): 49–70. Tolvanen, Mika, Simo Laakkonen. 2018. ‘Kohti vedenpinnan alaista humanistista maise. : , . , , Elore 25(1): 50–73. Tin, Mikkel Bjørseth et al. (eds.). 2019. The Nordic Model and Physical Culture. London: , . , . . Vasemmistolainen työväenliike Suomessa, osa 1. SKP - parlamentaarinen ja vallankumouksellinen puolue 1918–1988 (The leftist workers’ movement , : tionary party 1918–1988) (Publications of the journal Kommunisti 1/88). Pori: Porin painopalvelu Oy. , . . Kesähuvilanomistus Suomessa, kartoittava tutkimus kesäasutuksesta ja huvilanomistuksesta taloudellisena ilmiönä (Ownership of summer villas in Finland: a survey of summer residences and villa ownership as an economic phenomenon). Turku: Publications of the University of Turku C:3. Walton, John. 2000. The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press. , . . History’, Environment and History. 26(2): 207–231.

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Movements, Care and Dispersed Periurban Landscapes Evoked by Dacha Allotment Gardens of Narva Tarmo Pikner and Hannes Palang Abstract People make cities to fit for living by assembling urban character with meaningful entities of nature. This means that people rework their emotions as a result of mobility and shifting perspectives. Thus, emotions can be approached in terms of movement or motion as kinds of trajectories of force. These lines form a meshwork become essential components of being alive. The current paper aims to understand these kinds of affective trajectories that are generated and experienced along dacha allotment gardens , , : emotional interactions contribute to caretaking of landscapes and evolvement of peri Union provides several dimensions to the thematic focus as well. The empirical mate . study results indicate the rural dimension and multiple engagements with nature in wider urbanisation dynamics of Narva area. The plural mobility and emotional care motivated and maintained by allotment gardening constitute the dispersed landscapes as a connective tissue of peri-urban features. Landscape histories of the periurbanity indicate particular ruptures and reassembles along the state-border regimes. The analysis on peri-urbanisation should take into account the active role of fringes and of countryside ideals.

Keywords Narva – periurban landscapes – urban gardening – social networks – performativity – affectivity

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Introduction

‘Somehow constant living in the city makes you tired...’ These words are from an interview with an elderly person in his dacha garden located near the city of Narva in north-eastern Estonia. This sentence captures an emotion while explaining the importance of having a summer cottage in addition to a city flat. Thousands of people in Narva are used to spending their extended summer season in dachas, and they move back to the city in the autumn. This seasonal rhythm of living has existed since the 1960s. However, some signs of transformation are appearing in allotment garden areas and related collectives, which organise common infrastructure. Therefore, it is important to analyse this kind of coexistence between the city and the rurality that brings together the contested lines of (post)socialist planning and the vernacular of . paper focuses on how tensions and the movement of caretaking connected inhabitants. This focus of the paper brings together elaborated phenomenological approaches to landscape formations in discussing trajectories of movement, , , 2008, Tilley 2004 and Wylie 2005). These approaches provide inspiration for looking at and listening closely how people in Narva articulate and live with various tensions, like nature/town and proximity/distance in dynamic periur . , and peri-urbanisation. Thus, the proposed landscape approach in the current paper will indicate particular mobilities and engagements with nature assembling contextual peri-urbanisation dynamics, which does not always correspond to the typical urban sprawl. The tensions and trajectories of the emergent periurban landscapes are the triggering encounter of the paper. Emotions and shared sensibilities become rendered visible along movements of care-taking, which bring closely together block-house flats, dacha gardens and wider geopolitical settings in Narva. The caring for the landscape we live in can be essential for wider environmental stewardship, which brings together , . . paper contributes to this wider theme by indicating historical contingencies and plural mobility in practiced emotional care for a periurban landscape. 1 The notions of dacha garden, allotment garden or cottage’s garden are used as synonyms in the Narva context. We are aware of different allotment cultures across countries.

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People can somehow make the city fit for them, even if this process of fitting is only partly voluntary. This means that people rework their emotions as a result of mobility and shifting perspectives. Emotions can be approached in terms of motion as kinds of trajectories of force (Thrift 2008). These tra : . sensibilities with which : . , like proximity/distance and culture/nature are essential parts of these emotional trajectories of landscape formations. This paper discusses these tensions : , things and situations of walking, gardening, building, driving, and ongoing process of relating and un-relating. The landscaping practices and habits are partly formed by socio-economic systems and affect in actuality emotional . , and capacities become drawn together for meaningful landscapes, and movements can be seen as a connecting tissue in this process. Therefore, the current and entwined materialities and sensibilities in practices of landscaping. These practices of landscaping indicate relations between urbanity, nature and countryside as part of ambivalent peri-urbanisation. The dispersed landscapes formed and maintained by Narva allotment gardens are approached in the cur : emotional interactions contribute to care-taking of landscapes and evolve An ethnographic study was carried out in summer 2013 in areas of allotment gardening (dachas) in Narva. Observations were combined with 35 thematic interviews and the taking of photographs in five wider areas of gardening prac , , , . from the Kulgu area, near the Narva water reservoir (Figure 3.1). Most of the interviews in the study took place in gardens and often people showed some . , ducted with a spatial planning specialist from the Narva municipality. This empirical material enables to discuss some important tensions and movement of care embedded to the peri-urban landscapes of Narva. The location and historical context of Narva are important in understanding tensions and practices of landscaping associated to allotment garden areas. , ,

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bridges. But the river has also facilitated the establishment of political borders, which have shifted several times over the centuries. The character of Narva as , . . access to the Baltic Sea and to serve as protection against expanding western forces (Eesti Entsüklopeedia 2014). These two towns, which are both divided and connected by the river and bridges, form wider trajectories of (urban) change and of accessible movement. The nineteenth century was a period of ,

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and its hydro-power (see Jauhiainen and Pikner 2009). However, these linked border-towns coexisted with the national borders dividing the territories of . lic of Estonia (1919–1940) extended its borders slightly towards the east, also . A dramatic shift took place in , : . , buildings were substantially damaged (Weiss-Wendt 1997). The establishment , , and the building of areas of prefabricated blocks of flats were the main tendencies in Narva’s transformation in the first decades of the Soviet period. Dachas and related amenities were connected with these trajectories of ideological change. The most recent turn happened in 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and Estonia’s regaining of independence re-established the . , . dacha areas are scattered around the city of Narva at a maximum distance of ten kilometres. The importance of summer cottages as recreational facilities becomes visible via current interactions between the city and accessible territories in the wider region of north-eastern Estonia. From this perspective, klint (rocky coastal escarpment), the water reservoir, swamps, the industrial hills of . , which people used to visit freely in the Soviet period, are currently located on . people in various ways, which are dealt with in this study. 2

Understanding Periurban Landscapes in Terms of Emotions and Care

The dynamic characteristics of urban living can be approached through connections to rurality (Massey 2005). For example, Benjamin (2006) describes Moscow in the 1920s by arguing that the city streets hid villages, which still appeared in its urban character. The landscape from a holistic perspective brings together bodies, movements, places and, therefore, can provide topo . , sets of relationships between places, a structure of human feeling, emotion, dwelling, movement and practical activity within a geographical region which

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may or may not possess precise topographic boundaries or limits’ (Tilley 2004: . , entities of land, nature or space. Thus, the reality of ecologies becomes in practice mingled with the phenomenology of experience. The current paper tries to connect these two sides of engagement within evolving dispersed periurban landscapes. The formations and appearances of landscape can be considered as ‘the real connective tissue’ of peri-urbanisation (Siverts 1997/2008, : , . Peri-urban areas have a rural history of land use largely influenced by agricultural politics, and therefore there is need to consider landscape histories of peri-urbanisation (Palang et al. 2011). The main criticism of traditional phenomenology has been about forcing , entanglements with ideological and socio-economic systems (Wylie 2007). Therefore, more recent landscape studies have integrated insights from , phenomenologies of the body, materiality, perception and performance’ (Wylie : . . , order to argue for lines of movement and mesh-work as essential components of being alive. The peri-urban area is characterised by strong influences of city and different situated gradients of urban-rural, therefore peri-urban terrain shold be considered as extension of the city rather than as entirely separate . . tics towards surrounding terrains, there is option to follow multiple mobile associations between urbanity and countryside nature informing periurban landscapes. Urban as process includes multiple relations with nature and greenery (Angelo 2017), and it is important to understand how these relations (and binaries) merge along practices of urban commoning and modalities of informality (Pikner et al. 2020). Movement is one basic means of generating and holding together diverse materialities and sensibilities within practices of landscaping. Emotions become part of plural mobility connecting and remaking multiple places. According to Thrift (2008), emotions can be understood as movements indicating broad tendencies and lines of force extending beyond individual perception. This approach enables us to consider emotions in terms of affect (and its spaces) as a means of thinking and thought in action. The approach , : (affectus)

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the body is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time , , def. 3; cf. Thrift 2008: 178). According to this approach, in the world everything is part of thinking and doing simultaneously, and knowing proceeds in parallel with the body’s encounter in interactions. An individual subject and conscious interpretation . thoughtfulness in a new way, extending its activity into nature. This inspiring approach “detaches ‘the emotion’ from the realm of responses and situations and attaches them instead to action and encounters as the affections of substance or of its attributes as greater or lesser forces of existing’ (Thrift 2008: 62). Thus tensions and emotions as trajectories of modest forces in regard to practices of landscaping can indicate some shared thoughtfulness extending into nature. For example, Paul Cé . : . a complex virtuality, ‘producing new forms of vitalism, a stance to feeling life (in the doubled sense of both a grasp of life, and emotional attunement to it), which explain many of the strong, sometimes even fanatical investments that are placed on the “natural”’ (Thrift 2000: 67). These emotional attunements affect movements and intentionality of care between meaningful places, and become entwined with socio-economic settings. As Conradson (2005) argues, to move between places is to transition between ecologies of people, bodies and things. Besides everyday commuting, there exist instances where individuals move self-consciously in an effort to nourish their emotions. For example, regular walks in a city park or seasonal trips can help to create breaks from rigid routine situations. These paths and practices become part of how people . tendency as following: [T]hese haecceities are not what we perceive, since in the world of fluid space there are no objects of perception. They are rather what we perceive . , things to be found in it, or to discern their congealed shapes and layouts, but to join with them in the material flows and movements contributing : . This means that practices connected with urban green areas or, particularly, dacha allotment gardens influence people’s perceptions and capacities to act in everyday life. Landscapes and landscaping can accumulate and reanimate some sensibilities about surroundings. Often people develop particular tactics

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embedded in landscape practice to cope with accelerated social changes. Emotions form an essential part of these tactics, keeping certain desires and . scapes. Thus, there is a challenge to follow the trajectories of soft force which pushes people to take care of their dachas and/or re-frame their attachments. Nassauer (2011: 322) argues that evidence of human intention that is visible in the landscape can termed as ‘cues to care’, and ‘care as stewardship links the immediacy of a particular place and time with more extensive scales of space and time, implying future resource availability or off-site effects’. Multiple lating care in the process of peri-urban landscape formations. The care dimension of landscape stewardship contributes to identifying and understanding ‘how more sustainable human-nature relationships can merge and persist over . : . 3

Coexistences between the Town and Countryside: A Focus on Narva’ Dacha Allotments

Towns and urban life are related to their fringes or hinterlands through different movements, circulations and emotions forming peri-urban settings. Products are transported to shops, people travel to work: these are two movements with . , performing emotional affinities: for example, recreation and gardening assemble the process of peri-urbanisation. Luka (2017) presents dispersed peri-urban amenity landscapes, which connect Canadian coastal cottages with wider . tives in Narva reveal interesting (post-socialist) tendencies because in parallel with prefabricated housing areas, a particular pulsating assemblage has developed, which comes to life in spring and becomes dormant in late autumn. Narva is located right on the eastern border of Estonia (and the Euro . was destroyed in World War and the former urban fabric was extensively replaced by modernist Soviet structures. These structures include large residential prefabricated blocks of flats, and dachas usually consisting of allot . work in factories in and around Narva. The extent of the allotment gardening phenomenon in Narva can be illustrated by the fact that the territory of

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gardening cooperatives covers 679 hectares, while parks and public green areas cover just 23 hectares (Eesti Entsüklopeedia 2014). State-owned factories and the local government started to assign allotments at the end of the 1950s. There was a general plan and detailed plans for establishing allotment areas, but they were loosely interpreted or were never finalised. The rebuilding of cottages and surrounding gardens took an unexpected direction at the beginning of the 1990s during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Users of allotments were able to privatise the land within the land reform period of 1992– 2001. Currently, most of the allotments have been privatised and transferred . Small groups of cottage owners rent land according to long-term contracts. Altogether there are 52 gardening cooperatives in Narva. Some large allotment areas (e.g. Kudruküla and Olgina) are located outside of Narva’s core (about 10 km), but are still administratively part of the town. These settings provide a specific context for peri-urbanity dynamics, where dacha allotments are distantly located from the city, but still part of the administrative territory of Narva municipality. The current settlements of dachas have been influenced by historical processes. The summer manors of wealthy people became less exclusive because of urbanisation and the development of transport in the 19th century in Europe. , escape from city noise and find inspiration. After the 1917 revolution, private property was nationalised, and the existence of dachas became publicly asso . gardens was provided only for an elite group in the first decades of the Soviet Union. As time passed, a widespread ideological statement emerged that allotments could be delivered extensively for city dwellers. Dachas became critical in the context of Soviet planning ideology after , when society faced . became simpler in order to provide vegetable gardens for millions of people. Approximately every fifth household had a dacha (all together 14 million Nefedova 1998, Leetmaa et al. 2008). Gardening practice with involved environs can be approached from various perspectives, covering such themes as the production of the nation (Tilley , , networks between plants and people (Hitchings 2003). The empirical example of the paper focuses on co-existences and embedded tensions between the city and the countryside along plural movements and emotions related to car .

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are essential characteristics of dachas. Therefore, this study discusses some , (see Tilley 2008). There exist different allotment cultures across countries, but the current paper does not elaborate a comparative approach. However, allotment plots can reveal diverse motives with complementarities and affinities, which also change over time. As DeSilvey (2003: 462) argues, ‘collected memories, archival scraps and material traces embedded in the landscape helped me understand how allotment practices embody a plural mobility of goals and desires – an art of manipulating and enjoying’. 4

Plural Mobility and Peri-Urban Features Triggered by Engagement with Nature

The allotment garden and cottage form a kind of second home, which is extensively seasonally used in Narva. This pattern of movement, dividing the year (May-October, November-April) is rather widespread. Seasonal patterns of landscape practice can be noticed in various contexts (see Palang et al., 2005). spring and spend the summer season in their dachas. They mostly use public buses or their children may drive them to the dachas. Public buses running , eratives, and social relations with neighbours are a few aspects that diminish the need for commuting between the city centre and the dacha. The younger generation is used to commuting by car more often because of the modest distances (a maximum of 10 km, some gardening cooperatives can be easily reached by bicycle and even on foot). The city of Narva can become rather empty on sunny afternoons, with many people visiting supermarkets before rushing to their dachas. People expressed in interviews the need to get out of the small city flat, which stands in sharp contrast to the active openness of the allotment. Contrasts between the city flat and the allotment garden are expressed in following interview: Somehow continuous living in the city makes me tired. All the time city , , retired. Sit on a bench near the apartment block, go shopping and […]. But here at the dacha all the time it is necessary to do something and to work, otherwise nothing will grow (Boris, interview 10.07.2013, translated .

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People look for alternatives to the rigid environs of the Soviet apartment blocks, and an allotment garden is experienced as the opposite, providing a flexible activity space and generating energy. This tendency indicates particular ways of inhabiting the outdoors and the ‘contemporary significance of mobility and relocation for the reflective management of one’s emotions’ (Conradson 2005: 114). This means that embodied movements are partly dynamic proximities in engaging with nature. The garden can be seen as ‘an imaginary psy : . the interviews, active retired people often offered cucumbers or strawberries . for personal use and partly this is encouraged by a common habit, as expressed : ... led for winter’. This embodied engagement of using nature as a resource for . grown in well-ordered rows and very often there is one greenhouse or there are even several greenhouses on the allotment as well. The construction of the greenhouses indicates the art of , often using second-hand materials. The greenhouse makes it possible to extend the warm season and elaborate skills. people’s bodies and private spheres for being-together with more-than-human entities. Greenhouses create specific micro-climates for growing plants and developing personhood. Greenhouses, with their own original designs and constructions, can be spacious or stuffed full of all sorts of things next to the plants, serving as make-shift storage rooms. This combination of plants and other things tells various stories and reveals movements of caretaking. The growing of edible plants was strongly encouraged by the deficit economy in the Soviet era. This condition has changed, but people continue allotment gardening in Narva. One reason is that growing your own food and taking care of gardens is part of the social relations between generations. For example, one allotment was taken care of by a woman (and her children), who remembers well all the summers together with her grandmother spent in the Kulgu area of dachas. The grandmother, who was born in Narva, got the allotment while working at the Kreenholm textile factory. Therefore, four generations worked and played in the garden in the summer season. Their allotment is rather intensively cultivated. Apple trees and flowers grow near the garden’s . , the house. People can move along the small path (Figure 3.2) between the bean beds and the chicken-run leading to the grill-corner and wood-storage area. The generations do some gardening work together, although children may only

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attend to their preferred tasks (e.g. picking berries and grilling meat, rather than digging soil). Some elderly and retired gardeners mentioned that growing their own food helps their (grand)children to save money as well. However, the importance of growing food has diminished and people use the allotments for various means of engaging with nature, as articulated in the following interview: , . , . weekends, and then walk, go bathing and do things with the grandchildren. ... . , , . . , . The means for having a rest at the dacha is contrasted with the work of grow . terms of the tidy lawn or wooden sculptures in the yards. This tendency is also visible on waterfronts near the dacha cooperatives, which afford convenient recreational activities in summer. Movements and activities involving water are evident if we consider the rebuilding of former boat garages. Many of these simple iron boxes near the canals (with cooling water for the electricity plant) and the Narva water reservoir have become two-storey shelters during the last two decades. Such hybrid structures stand empty in early spring, but the warm weather fills them with activities and joyful voices. People go fishing and

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swimming, and men are often busy working on vehicles. These kinds of selfmade shelters indicate the vernacular handicraft of building and of recycling materials. For example, cargo vans are used for constructing summer cottages and, according to stories, some dacha houses are completely built using bricks and wood from demolished buildings. Beside leisure, bodies of water near dachas are associated with worries as well. Many dachas in Narva were established on former mires. This means that people had to work hard to drain the land and make it usable for gardening. Ditches were dug in the gardening cooperatives, but in the last decade many ditches have filled with organic matter and have not been cleaned. Spring floods result from these blocked ditches. Similar tendencies appear in many summer cottage areas elsewhere in Estonia, where systems based on collective ownership do not function in the more recent framework of private property (Leetmaa et al. 2012, Noori et al. 2016). Some elderly gardeners emotionally blame the municipality for the floods, which hinders their access to allotments. The general water infrastructure of the allotment area was planned for the summer season, and later gardening cooperatives and some households developed it further. However, a collective water supply exists in a few dacha cooperatives and this kind of collective system usually delivers non-drinkable water (e.g. for washing or watering plants) at certain hours per day only in the summer season. People carry water from near-by wells or bring larger amounts . , , is particularly good for preparing pickled cucumbers. This practice indicates that people may find rather surprising solutions related to water. However, make it difficult and expensive to establish permanent living places near the city. The poor water infrastructure and the shrinkage of Narva’s inhabitants hold back the dynamics, which has transformed former summer house areas into permanent living settlements of urban sprawl around bigger cities (e.g. in Tallinn). However, the allotment gardens may become a site of contention, , not, essential water use (Chappells et al. 2011). More generally, the water infrastructure and water flows in Narva became part of the neoliberal process of commodification that materialised in a particular socio-technical assemblage (Jauhiainen and Pikner 2009). These assemblages of (falling apart) infrastruc iting different forms of integration between the body, technology and social practices’ (Gandy 2005: 41). Diligent gardeners harvest and prepare cottages for winter before moving back to their city flats. One person clearly stated reasons for this move as

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follows: ‘firstly, there is no water here, or or heating: in the city it is more comfortable... But sometimes we come here with seeds to feed the birds, and then we clean the roads as well’. A few people nevertheless live permanently in their summer cottages. They may be employed as guards by the gardening , edges of the city. Burglars are mentioned as one reason for not cleaning the roads in winter, because the snow hinders access for unwanted visitors and makes it possible to see their tracks as well. 5

Shifting Boundaries and Contingencies in Taking Care of Landscapes

‘The land here, it belongs to me’, is a statement articulated several times in the interviews. This notion is not strictly manifested in terms of the fences . cooperatives, although this two-word landmark has become very common in . each other in long lines: fishtail patterns or chessboard patterns. Usually, the fences between allotments are not high; they do not obstruct vision and may be replaced by bushes or be missing completely. This tendency indicates some social trust and unofficial agreements. People explain that their relations with neighbours are good and do not mention particular issues of negotiation. Different opinions are expressed about this matter by municipal officials, who must deal with complaints often concerning rubbish disposal, smoke from saunas or sewage water. Unofficial agreements last until there are sharp disa. , more privacy on their plots and later started turning saunas into sheds. This activity still causes conflicts between neighbours, although the municipality has regulated the building of small structures on allotments. The privatisation . , the borders shifted through actual practices and people made informal agreements without leaving any traces on official registers. Additional conflicts with property boundaries are caused by the changes in the coordinate systems in the National Land Board. Tension between the municipal regulations and vernacular practices still exist in many ways. The claiming of (new) land along waterfronts reveals some tensions related to vernacular practices embedded in dachas. One can extend a private plot by dumping filler offshore at the Narva water reservoir, although there are some .

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the new land extracted from the muddy shore of the reservoir while she fed a small injured duck and drank coffee (Figure 3.3). This small duck seemed to be blind and lost. Many tiny perch with red fins were swimming nearby too. Tatiana asked if it would be possible to take a photograph of the fish and later send it to her. Tatiana’s family likes the location near the water a lot. They bought the allotment in 1994 and later improved the access to the waterfront. Later a neighbour started to argue with them because he wanted to use the waterfront as well. The municipality said that both neighbours should have access to the water. But this solution was not very acceptable to Tatiana: ‘then maybe the neighbour will become like a landlord here’. She worried about the sauna, which was recently built near the shore and the municipality was still demand . : , expected more flexibility in regard to her land-use as a result of the decentralising of state regulations. According to her emotional statement, the ownership of the land should be achieved according to how much work and care are put into it. This tendency indicates dispersed tactics as ‘embodied practices that take root in the allotment soil, individual inscription of value expressed on a shed wall, or in the shape of a garden bed’ (DeSilvey 2003: 462). This energetic woman (who worked for many years as a chemistry teacher) prepared a construction plan for the new cottage, taking into account that existing furniture

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should fit into the rooms. Tatiana was very proud to show the interior of her two-storey cottage, which still smelled of fresh wood resin. Outside, the vegetable gardens had been replaced by bushes and flowers in the last decade. Places for public gatherings are rare in gardening cooperatives because this aspect of the spatial plan remained unrealised in the Soviet era. On the unrealised plans, there are playgrounds, sports facilities and even favourable species of trees in the dacha areas. According to the Narva municipality, the holder of an allotment received a folder giving a prototype of a cottage. But actually only a few built according to the prototypes because they did not like them . , rebuilding and avoiding formal housing plans actually goes back to the beginning of the establishment of the gardening cooperatives in Narva in the 1960s. During the fieldwork, it was possible to see at least one outdoor public gathering area, with simple wooden benches and a lectern. Although there is a lack of pre-designed spaces for gathering, people visit each other, meet on the street, or neighbours just talk over the fences of their allotments. Once or twice a year, the cooperatives organise collective work afternoons to clean ditches or improve roads. These ditches often serve as modest borders between gardening cooperatives. Some people mentioned that in the Soviet era people helped each other much more often in allotment related work. However, nowadays interview in Narva). Every year the municipality organises a competition for the most beautiful garden of Narva. Candidates have to register in person; this means that candidates cannot be proposed for the competition without their agreement. According to the municipality, there is usually a lack of participants, although the Narva dacha cooperatives are full of excellent gardens. The peo of exhibiting nominations them. Municipal officials think that these kinds of modest habits are influenced by the Soviet era, which punished remarkable deeds and personalities. This explanation may seem simplistic but it does indicate the lingering alienation between the people and the (local) government. This alienation can lead to silent tension growing out of public discussion. ment in Narva near Oru Street. This particular assemblage of allotment gardens is located approximately a hundred metres from a new industrial construc . , fenced in. Most of the illegally occupied plots are used for growing edible plants; some greenhouses exist as well. The plots are accompanied by shabby

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and minimal shelters (without infrastructure connections) built from diverse second-hand materials. Over several decades, there was enough land and there were no restrictions if somebody wanted to start gardening work in the area. As one gardener put it: ‘this land was not useful for anybody. We use it on the basis of our own initiative. This entire construction site was used for gardening plots’. These practices of informal allotment gardening were able to continue because of their allocation on the un-reformed land of the state. Once the land fell into the hands of private owners, the development of industrial infrastructure began. The launch of construction work was not clearly stated, and therefore, people worried about whether they could harvest in autumn. The current users of these temporary informal allotments belong to vulnerable social groups more dependent on self-cultivated food. Although they have put in several years of work, they are ready to accept displacement from these self-appropriated allotments. The current users of the land have not organised any collective body to represent their concerns in public. This means that the embedded work on the allotment is not associated with claims of extended use or even of property forms. The municipality uses the rationale of the land’s non-ownership and limits on budgets for finding alternative plots for . , organising practices can temporarily continue to exist because of the legal void and border-area restrictions that influence land property issues. Legal matters completely over-shadow any discussion related to the needs of the local inhabitants. 6

Embedded Cultural Affinities in Landscaping Practice

The durations of the seasonal rhythm of dacha allotment-related practices appear in several stories of Narva’s inhabitants concerning sudden ruptures . Soviet Union made it possible to move freely to the east, and families in Narva / . , the eastern side of the river were full of berries and mushrooms. This kind of forest is rare on the klint-based land near Narva. The changing geopolitical situation and border regime affected people’s access to allotment gardening and places that were meaningful to them. Here, the peninsula character of the plural mobiliy. This rupture is clearly described in the following interview:

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, . , . . . stove. The new regime erected the damn barrier here. By walking it would , . . . , afterwards we sold the dacha. Since then we’ve never gone there again , . . , .

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This story reveals the importance of movements in maintaining an affinity within the landscape. The new state border divided the Narva region and forced people to change their vernacular trajectories of movement. Some peo in the Narva area. These ruptured affinities can be associated with the divided area of the rivers and the water reservoir because in former times it was pos . boundary line also transformed the soundscape of the allotment cooperatives located near the waterfront. The noise of motorboats was an essential component of the Kulgu area allotment cooperatives because of the many active boat garages. Often the users of these garages had dacha allotments in Kulgu. These boat owners were actively involved in water motor-sports, and this example was presented in the widespread journal Katera i Jakhty (‘Speedboats and Yachts’) in the Soviet Union. The garages and related cooperatives still exist, but the boat-related activities have decreased considerably and the . expensive hobby and many people sold their boats. Some empty boatsheds later were used as shelters or saunas. During the study, Gennadi took us on a short ride in his boat. We walked a few minutes from his allotment to reach the boat garage located next to the canal. This trip on the Narva water reservoir had to be approved by a phone call to the border guards. Cheap gasoline for the . , was possible to notice that many allotments ran down to the waterfront. On the open water reservoir, Gennadi pointed out several significant sites on both sides on the border (see Fig. 3.4). The historical brick-buildings of the Kreenholm textile factory, the golden domes of an Orthodox church, radar stations of border guards, wind energy generators of oil shale ash plateaus: all that and

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much more comes together and is divided within movements on the water . , , for Estonia before EU membership and dark red for the EU) and its influences . affinities possible that another colour may restrict. These affinities include relations with family, friends or familiar places for vacation. The spatial dimensions of limited access coexist with sociocultural inwardness, because . towards language use appears in the street signs in the gardening cooperatives as well. The street signs (usually located on dacha houses) are mostly in Estonian, but the names of the cooperatives (written often on entrances or . , , their streets, but it did not bother them. This situated ignorance indicates , may become visible in allotment gardens in the selection of house colour, gar cal signs as flags. A large part of these migrant people came to Estonia a half century ago with high expectations and solid social status in the Soviet Union. These people remain somehow separated in the Narva region and the related dachas, as expressed in the following:

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[…] with people it is like they are in a cage. My generation, about 70 years , . travel and received random education. […] A location on the border as Estonia’s is, it’s 300 km and 200 km to the other side. Like you’re in a corner if you want to move further. There is a need to get out. One of my , . , that there was more air on the other side of the border’ (Boris, 10.07.13, . . of landscaping embedded to dacha allotments can balance some aspects of these splinters. The movement of care-taking brings together the habits of the . ited mobility of elderly people is due to their low salaries and pensions. People mentioned in several interviews that for them the summer cottage was the only affordable means to spend a vacation outside the city because it did not demand much travel and saved on accommodation costs. This means that the dacha makes it possible to practice and affirm several dimensions of affinities. For example, in one dacha garden we met two elderly sisters who had been born in Narva. One sister currently lived in St. Petersburg, but every summer . , pointed out meaningful hand-made sculptures in their garden or pictures on the walls that were associated with particular people or places. Several interviewees were particularly proud of their children and grandchildren living abroad, and even of them often not having time to visit their parents in Narva. 7

Conclusions

The study indicates movements and tensions in the practices of landscaping embedded to the Narva allotment gardens. The habit of gardening pushes people to move between the block-house flats and the urban fringes. These movements can be seen as a connective tissue which brings together materialities and sensibilities enabling the inhabitants of Narva to perform cultural affinities. The growing of edible plants supports the active engagements with nature, which offer more flexibility compared to the formal green areas of the town. This means that the allotment gardens of Narva affect perception capacities and orientations in landscaping practices, which bring together urbanity and diverse engagements with rural nature towards peri-urban features. Embodied movements between meaningful places affect the gathering

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of care, which include emotions as broader lines of cultural habits extending beyond individual perception. The design of dacha gardens can indicate multiple movements of goals and the art of enjoying. The current study reveals some shared socio-cultural capacities and materialities in the formation of peri-urban landscapes. One can argue that the fringes of the city of Narva reorganise its centre by affecting people’s sensibilities towards the surrounding environments and partly influencing categories of urbanity in mundane practice. Dacha allotment gardens can be seen as a certain reservoir preserving . that analysis on peri-urbanisation should take into account the active role of fringes and of countryside ideals. The plural mobility and emotional practices connecting allotment gardens with urbanity of Narva indicate that dispersed landscape can be considered . rialised and taken care through various forms of land ownership and related boundaries. The majority of the plots of land have been privatised, although long-term rentals of smallholdings and self-appropriated allotments exist as well. The privatisation of the dachas allocated additional responsibilities to the owners and gardening associations, which had varied abilities to solve the ensuing problems. Areas of private care-taking co-exist with the falling-apart common infrastructure mostly established in the Soviet period. The dispersed landscape appears and becomes lived through frictions indicating vernacular skills and passions with reference to informal rebuilding and extensions. People developed modest tactics to overcome the uncertain conditions caused by shifting regimes and city transformations. However, these tactics are not only confined to vegetable allotments, but indicate emotional and mobile relations between the city and countryside, which could be integrated also into urban planning rationale and dynamics of landscape stewardship. The tactics bound to allotment gardening ‘bleed out into the social, political and ecological contexts which frame them, borrowing influences and reworking claims to : . , and land use categories lead to more rigid boundaries in the landscaping of Narva dacha allotments. There is a lack of platforms and process that would categories. Based on the stories told in Narva, the landscape opens up as a creative moving of care and the dream of having an assemblage of places which makes the world coherent and whole. Moving between a flat in Narva and a summer house, taking care of cultivated plants, putting pictures of (the former) home

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on the walls of the summer house, and wooden sculptures in the garden: these few things and activities are a part of a meaningful and dispersed sensibilities of peri-urban landscape that provides the opportunity to act and feel. Landscape histories of Narva’s periurban features indicate also particular ruptures along the state-border regimes, and affected people had to reassemble the connective tissue of their landscapes. The example of Narva allotment gardens indicates the importance of urban fringes or green areas that make it possible to perform presence and affinities within landscaping surroundings and positions along soft lines rather than ideological landmarks. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the book editors for elaborating comments. Merilyn Metsar’s contribution was helpful for preparing the field work in Narva. This 3-2 Culturescapes in Transformation and . Bibliography Angelo, Hillary. 2016. ‘From the City Lens Toward Urbanisation as a Way of Seeing: Country/city Binaries on an Urbanising Planet’ in Urban Studies 54(1): 158–178. Benjamin, Walter. 2006. Berlin Childhood around 1900. Harvard University Press. , , . . : Social and Cultural Geography 12(7): 701–715. , . . , : , , Emotional Geographies. Aldershot: Ashgate: 103–116. , . . Cultural Geographies 10(4): 442–468. , ., , . , . , . . : Linking Care, Knowledge and Agency’ in Landscape and Urban Planning 179: 17–37. . : http://entsyklopeedia.ee/artikkel/narva3 (accessed 20.05.2014). , . . : Contemporary City’ in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29(1): 26–49.

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, . . , : and the Material Pleasures of the Private Garden’ in Social and Cultural Geography 4(1): 99–114. , . . The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. : . , . . Being Alive. Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: . , . . : Moskow’ in Europe-Asia Studies 50(8): 1325–1356. , . . . : Journal of Baltic Studies 40(3): 415–436. , , , . . Home Settlements in Post-socialist Suburbanisation’ in Urban Studies 49(1): 3–21. Luka, Nik. 2017. ‘Contested Periurban Amenity Landscapes: Changing Waterfront Landscape Research 42(3): 256–276. Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. London: Sage. , , . . : Landscape and Urban Planning 100: 321–323. , , , . , , , , , . . . , , , , , , , Urban Allotment Gardens in Europe. : : . Palang, Hannes, Gary Fry, Jussi S. Jauhiainen, Michael Jones and Helen Sooväli. 2005. : Landscape Research 30(2): 165–172. Palang, Hannes, Theo Spek and Marie Stenseke. 2011. ‘Digging in the Past: New Concep Landscape and Urban Planning 100: 344–346. , . . : Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 96(1): 83–94. , , . . : pere and in Narva’ in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. , . Geoforum 33: 455–467. , . . Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(4): 475–479. , . . ance: The Case of Community Gardens in Berlin’ in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34(3): 548–563.

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, , . . of Cities in Developing Areas’ in McGregor, Duncan, David Simon and Donald Thompson (eds) The Peri-Urban Interface: Approaches to Sustainable Natural and Human Resource Use. Londond: Earthscan: 1–12. , . . : Body and Society 6(3–4): 34–57. Thrift, Nigel. 2008. Non-Representational Theory. Space, Politics, Affect. London: . Tilley, Christopher. 2004. The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Oxford: Berg. , . . : Banal Nationalism and the Concept of the Garden’ in Home Cultures 5(2): 219–250. , . : on Urban Sprawl’ in European Planning Studies 26(1): 115–132. Weiss-Wendt, Anton. 1997. Must-Valge Linn. Vana Narva Fotoajalugu [Black-and-White . . : . , . . : Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 30(2): 234–247. Wylie, John. 2007. Landscape. : .

er 4

Roadside Picnic? Overcoming the Military Past Hannes Palang and Annemarie Rammo Abstract . on two former Soviet military bases in Estonia, Pärispea and Kangru. Since the Soviet Army left in 1994, most of the military installations have been abandoned and destroyed; some are used by the Estonian military, some have been turned into different kinds of development projects. We focus on two installations, one that has been unused and one that has been developed into a residential neighbourhood. By interviewing the locals, we explore how the military past is handled by the present inhabit. the other the community believes the future lies in ignoring the past. Both cases show that the continuation of a place as a material-discursive phenomenon depends on the interaction of its two components.

Keywords Kangru – Pärispea – ex-Soviet military landscapes – cultural semiotics – community heritage

1

Introduction

The legacy of the Cold War is huge and manifold. But among all other aspects the legacy also has a local dimension. Most of the global tensions were one way or another translated into the everyday practices of local people, who then had . Estonia have to cope with the military heritage the Soviet Army left behind. By the end of 1994 the Soviet Army left Estonia. They took along everything they could but had to leave buildings, installations etc. behind. The military areas were taken over by the Estonian Ministry of Defence. Now, twenty-five years later, some of the bases are still in military use, some have been turned

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into business or real estate projects, but many of the former bases have been raided and looted. What happens after the troops have left and a base is given back to non that has been left to decay and another that has been turned into a real-estate development. The paper studies these two sites through the eyes of the local people – how they perceive the landscape, how they shape the landscape with their everyday practices, how they see the past of their landscape and let it . from behind a fence has been turned into a place of inhabitation. of the twentieth century are much more visible than anywhere else (Palang et al. 2006). We have taken our point of departure largely from Cosgrove (1984), who showed how each socio-economic formation tries to create its own landscape. He (Cosgrove 1984/1998: xiv) argued that landscape history should be understood as part of the wider history of economy and society. So every socio-economic formation tries to create its own landscape, by wiping the uses and symbolic values of previous formations off the land and replacing them with ones of its own. We have used this approach to study the past of Estonian landscapes. We have identified four layers in the twentieth century landscapes in Estonia and the time barriers between the layers that prevent understanding how the previous layer functioned (Palang et al. 2006). We have tried to comprehend the essence of the time barriers – what changes when landscape changes – and find a link between how a new political system creates the image of the desired changes and how these changes are then carried out (Palang 2010, Soini et al. 2006). We have also described how the past survives beneath the new layer, forming what can be called counter-landscapes (Palang, Peil 2010, Palang, Sooväli-Sepping 2012, c.f. Maandi 2009 or Bryant et al. 2011), thereby expressing the contested nature of landscape that is often forgotten in studies (Widgren 2006). The emergence of the Soviet military landscapes can be understood as an outside interference with the ‘natural development’ of landscape in Estonia. They were created to enforce the new political order, and thereby always perceived as alien by the local population; the fence surrounding the military base was a border between two different worlds. What happens when these landscapes are abandoned and people have to deal with the aftermath, both The justification, or rather need, for such research derives from Juri Lotman’s cultural semiotics. While most other semioticians focus on studying

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translation between (usually two) separate sign systems, Lotman (2009) pays primary attention to borders within one system, and the translation possibilities that the border creates, i. e. the continuity or persistence and the change of . (which he calls explosion) the culture must be able to describe its own change. . able to describe the explosion, the pre-explosion becomes part of the culture. , . , nitely were not part of the Estonian cultural realm during the Soviet times, but that have been in military use by an alien power could be returned to ‘normal use’, not in an ecological but rather in social and cultural sense. 2

Military Sites in Estonia

The Soviet military installations appeared in the Estonian landscape soon after the breakout of ii. Following the so-called Treaty on Military Bases between Estonia and the r, signed on 28 September 1939, the Soviets were allowed . . following year the territory given to the use of the Soviet military increased further, and by the time the coup d’état was staged in June 1940, the Soviet military in Estonia added up to 25,500–31,600 men who used 33,000–34,000 hectares of land. . : that the Soviets used 1565 military objects in 800 different locations and , , , . mid-1980s to have ben be as high as 122,480; family members should be added to this number. The biggest military installations were the training grounds in , , , , peninsula (Peil 2006 has given an account on that area) as well as some islands. After Estonia became independent again in August 1991, it took several . Estonia by 31 August 1994. That deadline was met.

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Research Into Military Landscapes

. have tried to estimate the number of military personnel in Estonia and docu . ., . an extensive volume that inventories the environmental damage caused by the Soviet occupation in Estonia. Kadri Etverk (2000) has defended an MSc thesis that explores the possibilities of using the Soviet military objects for tourism and concludes that the possibilities are minimal since the local population finds it difficult to identify with the Soviet past. Others have focused on some particular installation, as a chapter on military damage is included in every publication that deals with the nature or history of the northern coast of Estonia or West Estonian islands. A larger study by Tiina Peil (2006) explores the mappings of Paldiski, one of the most militarised areas in Estonia, which . Palang (2000) studied the development options for the Aegviidu military training grounds after the Soviets had left and found that there were four interest groups present. Nature conservationists wanted to keep the land as untouched as possible; former landowners and their heirs wished to make as much profit as possible; the Estonian defence forces needed the area for their own training purposes; and finally, the area had become a popular recreational . , discussed the geopolitical developments connected to the militarisation and demilitarisation of Estonia. Woodward (2005) and Chris Pearson (2011). Many other studies focus on the environmental history of specific military-related areas, such as Camargue . . studied the need to preserve the former Dutch defence line – a land strip that could be flooded during an invasion. Hugh Clout (2000) explored the rebuilding of four towns in Brittany that had been ‘annihilated’ during ii. Only a few works however touch upon the topic of former military bases and their faith after abandonment, and these studies mostly focus on the US, Britain or Germany. Jeffrey Sasha Davis (2007) edited a special issue of GeoJournal, which pointed out that military activities do not just destroy nature, they also . , , A landscape architects’ view on the restoration of military landscapes is , .

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is a rapidly urbanising area between the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, and the Camp Pendleton region is the largest remaining near-natural area in that part of California. With the help of the ‘alternative futures modelling’ tech, the area. The study suggested that by 2010 the existing development trends would result in a fragmented landscape, loss of critical habitat, increased fire risk, and major downstream flooding. The military base is the core of the studied area, defining in many ways its future, but, importantly, the authors never touch upon the place aspects of the region, linking them neither with the military base nor any other aspect. A conservationist approach is demonstrated by Bettina Burkart and Kenneth Anders (2005). They studied the former military training areas in Germany and found that these could be considered the last reserves of valuable open landscapes in Europe, this assessment mostly coming from the biodiversity point of view. But these areas also contain relicts indicating the former land use, in many cases including unintentionally preserved medieval structures, for example, structures indicating ancient boundaries, relicts of digging and mining, as well as old trees. Such areas appear to be isolated and cut off from . , re-appropriated, and there seems to be competition between the different groups concerned. They claim that the ‘new “colonists or settlers” are mostly nature conservationists, forest rangers, hunters and scientists with profound knowledge of and a good orientation on the sites. Therefore, they have a great strategic advantage over other land users with comparatively ‘sluggish’ forms of establishment, for example, agriculture, tourism or industry.’ Jeffrey Sasha Davis (2005) explored the representation of the Bikini atoll . , . . , whole population relocated to neighbouring islands and Bikini itself devastated by explosions and nuclear waste. Davis describes how Bikini was first represented as unhealthy and marginal in every sense of the word as the location (and locale) – or even a non-place – for the tests, and then, after the tests ended and the mess was cleaned up, as a renovated paradise. However, due to contamination, the resettlement of the Bikinians failed, and now the atoll is being promoted as a tourist destination safe for shorter stays and rich in cultural heritage. Artifacts from the times of nuclear testing are now seen as cultural and economic resources. There is a concern that the underwater wrecks need to remain ‘pristine’ and intact. Discursively, Davis (2005: 619) refers to Howe (2000) that ‘the Bikinian government has been able to unlink Bikini from the image of contamination (even though, as discussed above, the safety of the atoll is still an issue of intense debate) and successfully links Bikini Atoll

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to place-images about tropical paradises on deserted isles that have been cir . A cultural geographer’s approach was applied by Sophia Davis (2008). She invites the reader to walk with her in a former military area and experience site, and by slowly moving through it to (re)discover and (re)interpret the area and thereby paying tribute to the times gone by. Tiina Peil’s (2006) account . , explore the ways in which former military landscapes have been reclaimed by local people. While Palang’s (2016) work provides an insider’s look into a military landscape, the special issue of the Folklore journal discusses the issue further. The authors state that: Abandoned training areas and formerly crowded garrisons turned into ghost towns evoke their extraordinary, indeed, extraterritorial, status in the past, as do the costly, often feeble top-down attempts to integrate this infrastructure into the surrounding civilian life. Success stories seem to be rare and to hinge on the availability of affordable housing, public services and transport connections to nearby bigger centres with better . , , , : Finally, Samer Ghaleb Bagaeen (2006), summing up different approaches to , . , policy to redevelop military land is driven by the need to reduce government spending and the objectives of income generation and the promotion of

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. , version has generally been developer-driven, where economic interests prevail . demonstrates how community activism can play a central role in redeveloping a military site. Bagaeen concludes with a statement that a growing challenge in military base redevelopment will be to guarantee competitive advantages through revenue-generating activities that can transform these sites into reliable economic opportunities while looking after the interests of all the parties involved.

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Study Sites

For our study, two different sites were chosen. One on the Pärispea peninsula, some 60 km east of the capital Tallinn in the territory of the Lahemaa National Park, and the other, Kangru, just outside the boundaries of Tallinn, 2 km south of the city limits. 4.1 Pärispea The village of Pärispea is located in the Kuusalu community and has 114 inhabitants today. The village is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, at the tip of a peninsula between two bays, and has been inhabited since at least the 13th century. The people earned their living from fishing and to some extent agriculture, later also from trade and the smuggling of salt and spirits. The Soviet military appeared on the scene on July 26, 1940, when they took . by the invading German troops, who started building coast guard artillery batteries in Mähuotsa. The Germans left on 18 September 1944, after having blown up the batteries as well as the buildings of the two farms they had been using . . the Soviets arrived, during 18–26 October, about half of the village population had fled to Sweden. , , . , Suurpea. The nearby Hara Bay is rather deep, so the institute dealt with studying the demagnetisation of vessels, their defense against sea mines – acoustic, , . tom of the bay and they measured the characteristics of the ships passing over; experiments were made almost every day. The camp housed some 250–300 soldiers and 300 officers; there were also a primary school and a kindergarten for the children of the officers. Most of the officers working in the laboratories were trained engineers; everybody working in the camp had received at least secondary education. The camp had 18 multistorey apartment buildings, in addition to warehouses etc. , on the peninsula. Three visual observation posts – one south of Suurpea, another in Pärispea, a third in the main building of the institute – observed the movement of ships in the Hara Bay; an anti-aircraft radar station was situated at the tip of the peninsula.

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, , local inhabitants recall. The military buildings were abandoned; the apartment buildings were used by those who remained. Since the number of remaining inhabitants was relatively small, the people relocated into the newer buildings. The older ones were abandoned and handed over to a real estate company, and they remain unused. The school, the kindergarten and the other public buildings were looted but are still standing. The buildings with a military purpose were sold to real estate companies, windows and doors bolted, and left to stand unused. The buildings that were less important or more interesting to the locals were looted. , in the Pähknemännik pine grove, a former village common. Since the property reform of the early 1990s did not concern common lands, the future of the plot . , abandoned buildings ‘property without owner’ and sold the ruins. The buyer also got the possibility to privatise 0.7 hectares of service land. Despite the villagers’ protests, the ruins were sold. Later that year however the remaining land was taken over by the state, so the buyer of the ruins could privatise just in public use. 4.2 Kangru The Kangru military base was erected in 1954–1958 in a location that had never been inhabited; it is a sandy pine forest with the closest farms situated some kilometres to the south and south-east. The base was used by the technical . , , for the officers’ families. The latter include three two-story buildings and two detached houses. By now all the flats have changed owners and none of the former residents lives there. After the Soviet military left, the territory was given to the Kiili Municipality: the buildings were handed over by November 1993 and the land by March 1994. Estko rented some of the buildings, the rest remained unused until 2000, when the municipality decided to divide the land into plots and start developing the area for residence. Some plots were sold to real estate developers, some directly to future homeowners, the main aim being to earn money for the 1

Produces ‘efficient and environmentally friendly cleaners for agricultural and food industry and cleaning agents for car service and industries’, as their website www.estko.ee states.

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municipality and increase the population and thereby the existing tax base. By December 2009, all but one plot had been sold. The development has been carried out at different speeds, meaning that most of the houses are ready but some streets that started to be constructed in an earlier stage still lack asphalt or streetlights. 5

Methods

Thus, the two different locations reflect a similar land use during the Soviet times but two different trajectories after the military left. Kangru was built in an .

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Pärispea, the military bases were implanted into formerly existing villages and did not find a direct use after the military left, and the locals have some sort of relationship to the areas. To study these processes closer, 10 interviews with local inhabitants in Pärispea and 16 in Kangru were carried out in 2009. As the key point of this study was to explore how the military past has been and is handled by local inhabitants, interviewing them was considered the best possible method for gathering the necessary information. The aim of the interviews was to find out about the local inhabitants’ thoughts about their place and landscape; how they feel about the former military bases; what their actions so far in place-making and the reasons for the actions have been; what their vision of their place is and where the military relics stand in that vision. . to face gives the interviewer an opportunity to go beyond words – everything , / , / tone of voice and body language, gives information about the subject of study. . The interviews took place in two phases. The first half of the interviews were gathered in early spring 2009. We found the interviewees in Pärispea through Anne Kurepalu, a long-time employee of the Lahemaa National Park – her per . , with the help of the village association Kangru Küla Selts. As we didn’t

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succeed at gathering enough interviews at that time to sufficiently represent the two communities, it became necessary to conduct more interviews. Also, in the case of Kangru, the interviews conducted in the first phase seemed to be biased, since most of the interviewees were connected to the village associa. , door method. At the same time, we tried to cover all the different parts of the villages, as the location of the interviewees’ houses in relation to the military bases might also affect their opinions. This appeared to be especially relevant in Kangru, since different parts of the village were developed in different times. For example, the private houses tend to be clustered at one end of the village and were mostly built earlier. The larger, terraced houses that were built later are concentrated at the other end of the village. So, depending on the type of house and its location in the village, an inhabitant might have more or less contact with the military ruins. All the interviews were conducted based on , freely about the topics he/she found important and encouraging him/her to talk about any topics interesting for our case study that might emerge. The , so to let the interviewees reveal their own thoughts about their place. This course of action allowed pinpointing topics important for this case study, and through that, analysing the acceptance or denial of the military past. 6

Results

6.1 Pärispea The road to the village passes by forests and beaches, but also the abandoned military buildings. The main building of the former institute is situated right next to the main road, the other buildings are a little further to the right – both appear to be in ruins. The former radio-location division is located in Pärispea, some distance away from the village. The doors and windows are batted off, the walls covered with graffiti. A building that was completed right before the military left has never been in use. Weaker buildings have been looted by someone, everything that could be reused has been reused somewhere – metal, plumb, , , , , . ever, behind the abandoned military base lies a well-kept picnic site marking . , The interviews conducted in Pärispea on 21 April and 30 October 2009 and in Suurpea on 13 September focused on two main issues. First, how did the place function during the Soviet times and how did the military presence

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i re 4.5 The former gym of the Suurpea school. Photo: H. Palang, 13.9.2009.

influence the lives of the local people, and second, how are the military instal years old, one was about 20 years old, one was over 65 years old. Half of the interviewees live in Pärispea year round and had grown up there. Three had grown up in Pärispea, but live elsewhere now (two in Tallinn, one in the neighboring Suurpea). One interviewee asked to be called a summer resident, as he had spent his summers in Pärispea ever since he bought a farmstead there in 1972. For ethical reasons, all the names of the interviewees have been changed in this paper. Most of the interviewees felt depressed and powerless when talking about the military installations. The overall understanding seemed to be that letting the buildings stay empty and fall apart would not be an acceptable solution. The memories about the military differed, depending on the age and char . , grudge against the soldiers, and the former situation was currently seen as an inevitable peculiarity of the past, fortunately over by now.

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Decaying buildings offend the eye and the common opinion was that . what exactly, but the current state of neglect was unacceptable. Two of the interviewees said that tearing the buildings down was a good idea, the rest felt , business plan and a decent investment. , , tenance as necessary: ‘Something should be done, either build it up or tear it , . it 20 years later with a profit’. She feels that private buildings should not be allowed to decay and that there should be some state regulations concerning the matter. She also believes that the Lahemaa national park, which the village belongs to and which sets strict obligations for the locals regarding the renovation of their houses , should react somehow: But either way, Lahemaa is here, it is somehow the territory of Lahemaa. On one hand they pitch into you about everything, but they don’t notice the bigger issues. And the Ministry of the Environment, if they regulate how my sauna should look they should also care about the bigger picture. , , ings. Since the beach is beautiful and many people from Tallinn come camping

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there in summer, there should be some kind of a resort. For her it is most . that important is to clean Pärispea from the Soviet meanings. , , . thought about the future of the military buildings, a hotel or spa would be a good solution – locals would get jobs and Pärispea would no longer be so marginalised. , , : , , , . : opinion it is better to tear them down than to let them stand there decaying. Empty land is better…’. , most probably there would not be enough guests. All these comments express the wish of the locals to make their home surroundings beautiful, clean and well-kept. There seems to be a hint of conflict with the national park: on one hand the park tries to regulate small details in the locals’ everyday life, but at the same time it overlooks the bigger problems. , , some sort of a recreational facility, but at the same time she is afraid of getting too many strangers in the village. At some point we thought that some seminar centre should be established. That people could come and have their lectures and rest a little. That sort . . are used to living this way, we are a small village. We can see what is going , , . , , [this would not please us]. We already get so many people in the summer. She finds the idea of dividing the land into lots and developing summer cottages on them acceptable. Any solution that would not bring along a number of tourists would be acceptable. She has also heard of the idea of establishing a spa in the institute building in Suurpea, although the plan did not materialise. , would need to think seriously about how to get work communities to come … Yes, there could be something there, it would be nice if it was repaired’. The over 65-year-old man is the only one who says that life was better in , no strangers. Now lots of people come to the beach in the summer, they drive their cars and everything gets wrecked. The military buildings should be torn

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down since they have no value and their preservation makes no sense. And they do not fit in the context of the national park. Why this has not been done, . . The Pähknemännik case has left a sense of embarrassment among the . : buy that building and close the road to the beach. But one can still go to the beach and no problems have arisen’. Still, many of the interviewees brought this topic up when they started discussing the issue that no one will listen to the interests of the locals, and that people can always express their opinions, but the decisions are made by someone else. , , : wanted to destroy that shooting range in Pähknemännik, it does not fit in there. But power goes top down, not bottom up’. Leidi is afraid that the buyer might obtain more land, fence it off and limit the access of the villagers: . . , the local government not to sell it, to keep it in the village’s ownership like it used to be [before ii]. But it was sold, the municipality needed money. Now we the villagers have to see to it that the buyer does not get the woods, as there are more items there. There used to be some kind there. He has a chance to get these as well … anyway he wants them. Fortunately Lahemaa also keeps an eye on the situation but curiously even Lahemaa couldn’t do anything to prevent the selling. A man (50, local) added: ‘Well, there’ll be a residential building and nothing one can do about it. Once that direction has been taken. This is not decided by us, but higher up … so we can be against it, but what’s the use’. The case symbolises disappointment in the civil society, the attitude regard . , understand why the national park lets these things happen, or why it lacks the power to prevent them from happening. Our initial idea that nothing has been done in the military areas because everything Soviet and military has been somehow rejected. Annika comments: .

, , . . stand everything differently now and we would like to see our surroundings also differently …

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Mäido finds that the problem is not that they were military buildings but rather that no good solution has been found. He illustrates this with the example of Kaberneeme, where a residential neighbourhood is being built on the site of a similar military base. that the ruins are ugly and mar the view to the coast. A woman in Suurpea who came there as the wife of an ensign in 1960 remarks: [N]o it does not feel sad, it was what it was. The military left in 1994, right after that the locals started to dissemble things. They didn’t call it stealing or robbing but taking away… Plumbing has been excavated, everything that might be useful has been taken away. Now we have two drunkards selling bricks by the piece … What kind of people would turn a schoolhouse into a waste dump… The overwhelming emotion seems to be indignation. Solving the problems would need a degree of enthusiasm, but nobody seems to be interested in the locals’ worries and instead of anyone looking for solutions, the buildings have . , use, fenced off and cut off from the local life, they had less meaning for the locals than these days, when the coast and also the decaying buildings are open to them. When the military left, the buildings lost both their function and their . , , to it was limited. Access was regained when Estonia became independent again, but the coast is not the same as it used to be sixty years ago, as it is still remembered today. The difference is in the depressing abandoned buildings. Since they have been privatised, the villagers have no say in their future. At the same time the villagers are the ones that will have to live with that future. The outcome is a hybrid landscape visually dominated by the Soviet military herit . live in a landscape which in a way belongs to the village but where the villagers can do nothing to maintain and domesticate it. 6.2 Kangru The village of Kangru lays just a couple of kilometers away from the boundary of Tallinn, where the settlement ribbon is briefly replaced by a pine forest. The buildings look new, scattered under the same pines, the only remnants of the past are a row of concrete piles along the road. The houses have two stories maximum and they are detached or semi-detached. All the inhabitants are newcomers; they are still connecting with the place. On one hand,

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. area is indicated with a bold arrow. Map: Estonian Land Board.

trees give the village more privacy than is typical of the developments of the 2000s, which are usually located in former fields. But trees in courtyards are not typical of a traditional village that has slowly evolved over decades or centuries. On the other hand, the only public building in the village is the production facilities of Estko – there are no shops, kindergartens or other such , . way Kangru is a rather typical suburb. The interviews were done on 23 April and 7 November 2009. Of the sixteen interviewees one lived in a Soviet-era apartment block, the others in detached or semi-detached houses. Of the latter, one had previously lived in the apartment block. The first interviewee to have moved to Kangru had lived there since 2001. The owners of private houses (six people) had lived in Kangru somewhat longer than the inhabitants of the detached houses (five people), who in turn had lived in the village a little longer than the ones living in semidetached houses. The vast majority of the interviewees described their habitat in a positive way. Eight of the interviewees even gave an extremely positive review, four interviews contained a note of doubt or regret, and two reflected an indifferent opinion. People felt positive about the location of the village, the trees, the local village community and the locals in general. The overall impression was of a busy village with extremely active people who get along with each other

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very well – even the people who are not active in the local community have a good word to say about it. When asked whether they are satisfied with their neighbourhood, the answers remind one of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The happy ones listed similar pros: closeness to Tallinn, the trees, an active village community, nice neighbours. The only thing that bothered them was the unfinished development, but even that appears to be completed by now. The ones who expressed some sort of dissatisfaction all had different reasons. But none of them said straight out that they do not like the place they . , , , was a little concerned that so many new houses have been erected since he moved to the village in 2003. He remarked that in 2003 ‘there wasn’t much of . . . . . . : would become so full. There were much more trees and more greenery. The wilderness has retreated by now.’ When asked whether the surroundings have changed, he answers no, but his voice still reflects some regret. , , of the village, but before that had lived in an apartment block at the edge of the village since 1998. She is also satisfied with the development, but a little disturbed by the semi-detached houses that were recently erected next to her

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house. She considers all changes positive, as before homeless people used to wander around in the military area, but she says: ‘everything is positive except those semi-detached houses which unfortunately are situated right opposite us’. According to her, there still exists a kind of disdainful attitude towards the inhabitants of the apartment blocks, although all the other interviewees said the opposite. And in addition, she ‘got burnt out’ working for a water company that supplied the village, which made the village meetings difficult for was doing this or that’. She does not take actively part in the village commu, . . , , ferent story. He is satisfied with the place where he lives, but does not want to comment on the new village. He says that when he moved in in 1996 the : . . . the military it was a closed area for a long time, no one could enter. The natural habitat survived as it was. Compare it with other peri-urban areas with free access, they are not too pretty.’ He considers it rather positive that a new vil : , had they had put up some sort of a production facility here it would be worse. . completely different story.’ There was just one interviewee whom the discovery that the area is a former military base made think twice. The woman (35) had lived in Kangru since 2003. When asked about finding out that it was a former military base she : , , , , , , . came back and it had all been demolished already.’ She obviously could not imagine that one could make a home in a former military area – the place looked so strange at first. Seven of the interviewees had been well informed that it was a former military area. They were all people who came from the area or had had summer cottages or relatives living nearby. One even worked for the local municipality. And none of them considered it awkward or strange. None of the interviewees was worried about pollution. They mention barbed wire that can be found in gardens during the spring work, but nothing more. Only two conversations hint at the topic. When asked whether she had looked into the possibility of pollution, Katrin answers: ‘You could feel it, when you hit

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the spade into ground you could smell oil […] But the soil here still smells of oil and petroleum. We have now brought new soil into our yard. But somehow our lot is the warmest in the whole village.’ When asked whether he hesitated about settling down in a former military base, Enn answered: ‘Not directly. Yes, there were thoughts about how and what. […] that perhaps there is something unhealthy in the ground or God knows. You can’t rule out anything.’ Besides these exceptional opinions, none of the others had had a problem. pollution. The later a person had moved in, the less of the military legacy was . , military base as follows: [P]ollution, radioactivity – don’t think so. There wasn’t anything like this in Estonia, perhaps in Paldiski (a former Soviet naval base), that’s all. The pollution we have in Estonia can be everywhere regardless of whether the military had been there or not. Pouring fuels into ground, burying whatever rubbish, this is not primarily the work of the military, it was , , . . in three different places in Tallinn and they were all different.







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You like couldn’t see anything here that indicated that there was something like wrong with the nature. Other settlers were here already and nobody complained that you can’t take water, that the water is toxic… The rest is probably visible already. Otherwise they wouldn’t have allowed a residential area here, if some measurements had shown that something was wrong. Thus, the pragmatic attitude prevails: there probably are no seriously polluted areas in Estonia and if this site had been polluted no residential construction would have been allowed. 7

Discussion and Conclusions

, tion short novel titled Piknik na obochine (Roadside Picnic). The novel describes

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aliens having visited Earth and then departed, leaving behind all sorts of pieces of their advanced technology, which were then picked up by the people liv . , . restrial ‘roadside picnic’ – after the picnickers had departed, nervous animals (i. e. humans) ventured forth from the forest and discovered the spilled motor , , , . and the gadgets. The Soviet filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky based his movie The Stalker (1979) on this text. This novel/film was often mentioned in the interviews – as if the material legacy of the Soviet military resembled an alien visitation. Now the military are gone and the places they used have lost their functions. Whose places are At first glance, the only similarity between the studied villages seems to be the presence of the military installations – in Pärispea the buildings are still in ruins and unused, in Kangru the ruins have been dismantled and buried under the layer of a modern suburb. Pärispea is an old village with an established structure and history, and also awareness about that history. The village has a

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clear identity, its inhabitants value their home and lifestyle. Kangru is a suburb that is still searching for its identity. The people do many things together, but the structure and community are not yet fully established. The presence of the . , where the military legacy is less visible and one can easily ignore it, there is no direct conflict with it, or at least none is recognised. While the people of Pärispea try to ‘re-capture’ the former village, re-integrate the military areas in everyday life, the Kangru villagers are busy with place-making. A simple way to tackle the problem is to handle the former military sites as empty spaces, or brownfields that need restructuring. Bagaeen (2006) describes many ways that are used in this sort of restructuring. He argues that “military . . lack of funds is also addressed in other studies, as pointed out by Seljamaa, . , ideas and funding – all the interviewees pointed out that something should be done with the buildings, but none of them seemed to have a clear idea of what exactly should be done. Kangru, which has a much better location, did not suffer from this, it seems to have used all the benefits Bagaeen calls for: the local government needed money, the developer had both ideas and funding, and finally the community stepped in, i.e. the new inhabitants organised them . Bagaeen (2006: 351) suggests the new EU members face: ‘They will need to find their own competitive advantages when it comes to redeveloping their military heritage and putting forward priorities for clean-up, redevelopment and building strategic, reliable and sustainable partnerships.’ Most of the abandoned military bases in Central and Eastern Europe were , . , (2010: 238) describes a court case where two members of the Soviet military who were accused of murdering a man explained that they did it partly because the local inhabitants treated Soviet soldiers so badly. The judge replied with a : , (2010) remember, locals treated soldiers like their own sons and problems of the kind described above did not occur. This may have fuelled hostility towards . (2006: 46) concludes his introduction to the inventory of environmental damages with the paragraph: ‘The former military bases were built here by an alien power, to defend a country that was not ours, and at the same time to display the power of that state, as a reminder – we are here and we are not afraid to use power. But now these landscapes are abandoned, buildings are empty. The

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military bases have lost their former meaning, and now they are just a silent monument to the past’. This conciliation was also articulated in our interviews: the past is over, the ideology that was there is gone, so the meaning is indeed lost. They are just decayed buildings, not buildings of the enemy. They are not ours yet, either. A similar attitude is also described by Marju Kõivupuu et al. (2010) who argue that the military heritage is ignored by both the locals and the authorities and should be incorporated into the present-day landscape and heritage discourse, as it might have some tourist value. And, as a wicked twist of history, Lorke (2018) describes a situation where refugees were housed in a former Soviet military installation in Germany and how this brought back to their minds ‘the good old days’ when the Soviets were there. The past is forgotten and the more the distance, the better it looks. Being in-between makes it difficult to find ideas for a good use for the installations. Kadri Etverk (2000) studied the possibilities of using military areas for ecotourism, and found that they don’t speak to ordinary Estonians, they cannot be linked to Estonian history. This point was also stressed in one of the , : . umaa finds that it’s a naturally cool place and the municipality is wealthy enough that together with private partners they can do something there. Or some guy discovers a bunker and builds a house next to it, in some cool style. But if you take it politically, in that all this is a remnant of the Soviet times and because of that we should now level or cover it – in my . am old enough to remember those things. But perhaps ten years from now a ten-year-old boy shows up there and knows nothing. At least an info board telling what it is and what it was for… : : . read much anymore. You drive to visit someone and usually you drive around a little. And when you see these things it’s a good chance to edu . , , . just to educate yourself. Until a better solution is found. There shouldn’t be anything tragic about it, it’s not a 200-year-old tree that needs to be protected. We started the paper with the notion that a place is a material-discursive phenomenon. Let us elaborate on this from three viewpoints.

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From the military viewpoint, the fate of the bases follows a well-known track to oblivion. The political processes that created the need for Soviet military bases ceased, and due to that the bases lost their function. Time and people – decay and demolition – took care of the rest. The military landscape was functional for a certain period of time; when the function was lost, the place ceased to exist. For the contemporaries, the military places carried a meaning of (alien) power, even threat, but also stability and control. Today they still bring forward nostalgia, while the former threat has been turned into a joke. From a community point of view, the military places constitute a challenge . , , as described by Davis (2005). And like the Bikinians, the Pärispea people try to re-domesticate a place that once was theirs but has been out of their control . over the once lost lands. For Kangru, the lack of knowledge of the past – or a deliberate attempt to ignore it– allows the community to indeed start from the scratch, as if the place they inhabit had no past. Finally, from a theoretical viewpoint, the cases lead us to the following conclusions. The discursive-material phenomenon, as Davis (2005) called place, has also limits in time. The discursive and material parts of this phenomenon interact; if one of the two ceases to exist, the other one does so as well. This way we can find places which are characteristic of a certain socio-economic formation – as Cosgrove (1984) argued – and which are ‘withered out’ when

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the formation changes. And we also witness that knowing the past of a place is a key to its survival. Lotman’s concern was that if we are unable to create a link with the past, the past landscapes will lose their meaning for us and we will be unable to incorporate them into our heritage. Military sites and their development differ from the mainstream. Abandoned now are the Soviet military landscapes Acknowledgements 3-2. We are extremely grateful to the people who commented on the early version of the paper. Bibliography ,

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, . . , , . . . . Landscape Perspectives of Land Use Changes. Boston, MA: Press: 19–81. , ., , . . Estonia’ in Environment & Planning C: Government & Policy 20(5): 679. , . . . : , tainability and public participation’ in Cities 23(5): 339–352. , , , , , . . landscape’ in political ecology and rural studies’ in Land Use Policy (28): 460–471. Burkart, B., Anders, K. 2005. The Unique Character of Military Training Areas as an Opportunity for New Forms of Interaction between Society and Landscape. http:// danah.milieuinfo.be/uploads/b59.pdf (approached 14 Dec. 2009). Clout, Hugh,. 2000. ‘Place annihilation and urban reconstruction: the experience of four towns in Brittany, 1940 to 1960’ in Geogr.Ann. (82 B): 165–180. Cosgrove, Denis, 1984. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. , . . : of Bikini Atoll’, in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (95), 607–625. , . . : : ment’, in GeoJournal, (69), 131–134.

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Davis, Jeffrey Sasha, 2008. ‘Military landscapes and secret science: the case of Orford Ness’, in Cultural Geographies, (15), 143–149. Etverk, K., 2000. Tourism: a possibility for redevelopment of former Soviet military . , . Hergauk, M., Pärn, J., Õun, M. 2006. Punalaevastik Eestis. Sentinel. , . ., . The knowing of Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Jauhiainen, J.S., 1997. ‘Militarisation, demilitarisation and re-use of military areas: the case of Estonia’, in Geography, (82), 118–26. , ., . : , Environmental History, (24.2), 253–275. , ., , ., , ., . . : . . . , . , . , . . , The Cultural Landscape Heritage Paradox: protection and development of the Dutch archaeological-historical landscape and its European dimension. University of Amsterdam Press. , . . : , , Appropriation of Space in Wünsdorf’, in Electronic journal of Folklore, 70. Lotman, Juri, 2009. Culture and Explosion. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [First published . Maandi, P., 2009. ‘The silent articulation of private land rights in soviet Estonia: A geographical perspective’, in Geoforum, (40), 454–464. ., , ., , ., , ., , ., , ., 2006. ‘The forgotten rural landscapes of Central and Eastern Europe’, in Landscape Ecology, (21.3), 347 – 357. Palang, H., 2010. ‘Time Boundaries and Landscape Change: Collective Farms 1947– 1994’, in European Countryside, (2:3), 169–181. , ., . . : , , . Landscape Values. Place and Praxis. Galway, . : , . . Palang, H., Peil, T. 2010. ‘Mapping future through the study of the past and present: Estonian suburbia’, in Futures, (42), 700–710. , ., , ., . and invisible power lines’, in Landscape Research, forthcoming. , ., . : the Camargue Wetlands, 1940–1944’, in French Historical Studies, (32.3), 479–509. Peil, T., 2006. ‘‘Maps of meaning’: Landscapes on the map and in the mind - discovering Paldiski, Estonia’, in Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography, (60), 110 –122.

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, . , . Nõukogude okupatsiooni poolt tekitatud keskkonnakahjud. Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus. , ., , ., . : . : . , . . Forest tourism and recreation: case studies in environmental management. Wallingford (England): , pp. 41–53. , . ., , ., , . . , : Military Space and Post-Military Place’, in Electronic Journaf of Folklore, 70. , ., . . . , . , . , G. Setten (eds), European Rural Landscapes: Persistence and Change in A Globalising Environment. Boston and Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 67–82. Soini, K., Palang, H., Semm, K. 2006. From places to non-places. Landscape and sense . . . , . . (eds.) Landscapes of a New Cultural Economy of Space. Springer, pp. 117–148. , . . . Roadside Picnic (S.F. Masterworks). : . Tammer, E. (comp.) 2010. Nõukogude armee ja eesti mees. Tammerraamat, 471 p. , . . Meenutusi kadunud maailmast. Eesti Päevaleht, Akadeemia, 255 p. , ., , . ., , . . . : able design and land use of an ancient flooded military defence line’, in Landscape and Urban Planning, (70.1–2), 153–163. , . . . the 22nd session of , Berlin, September 2006. , . . : engagements with the geographies of militarism and military activities’, in Progress in Human Geography, (29).

PART 2 Affective Landscapes

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Architectural Memories of Places and Things M. Christine Boyer Abstract When architects write they often recall memories of places from their childhood, from travels, from site visits. They remark on how these memories shaped their identity and extended their language of architecture. This chapter explores how architects responded to a sense of place; wrote down their memories, drew inspiration from , . , , 1923–2003).

Keywords tive process – sense of place – materiality









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When architects write they often recall memories of places from their childhood, from travels, from site visits. They remark on how these memories shaped their identity, extended their language of architecture. The British architect, Alison Smithson wrote about ‘growing a landscape of lyrical appropriateness’ in the 1970s, being concerned with a landscape that would extend outward the language of their buildings, support their meaning and complete their connec . , architect, she maintained, is acting both as a remembrancer and a continuer . of the mind, which give off previously unimagined illuminations. This talk will explore how architects respond to a sense of place; write down their memories, draw inspiration from landscapes, attach emotion to materials and objects. When architects write they often recall memories of places from their childhood, from travels, from site visits. They remark on how these memories shaped their identity and extended their language of architecture. While the © koninklijke brill nv, leide ,

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scape studies, such a turn has yet to grip the architectural profession. This paper explores, however, how architects responded to a sense of place; wrote down their memories, drew inspiration from landscapes and places, attached emotion . , , and the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson (1928–1993; and 1923–2003). Architects are mainly designers, absorbed in self-referential acts of creativ. . , of multiple lines in resonance with ideas, perceptions, and experiences. Thus, literary writing is most adept a creating these intertwined atmospheres or environments. But so too is architecture. Even though architects are criticised for being too visual, that all they do is create representations of buildings or landscapes, there is also a multi-sensory atmospheric impact of the structures they build. And there are architects who write, who tried to bring to the surface their pre-intellectual perceptions that emanate from objects, matter, and . , most architects are to expressing themselves in words, these four did commit to paper not only drawings but thoughts. Their writings are not merely descriptions of how architecture, landscapes, or matter are perceived visually, but , , . , , architectural details; they remember artifacts held in the hand in childhood; they travel becoming perceptive to the atmosphere of place and things, and their words enable us to glimpse how these environments and details punctuate their sense of being, effect their emotions. We follow the path of their writings, reading their words, listening to their thoughts, about how environmental atmospheres evoke moods, or ambience, fill up space, transfer to architecture as a background for our own imaginations. Writings on Architecture. He noted how difficult it was to commit his thoughts to words and yet:

... . . Because every text has to become necessary or it will not mean very much. The same thing happens in the practice of architecture. (Angelillo 1997: 15) with others, sketches made at a site become a way of learning, transforming,

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and designing which draws on the emotional impact of certain sites and precious works. ‘All gestures [...] [he writes] including the gesture of drawing [...] are laden with history, with unconscious memory, with incalculable anonymous wisdom.’ (Angelillo 1997: 17) These drawings and memories affect his architectural constructions. Thinking Architecture. He opens with the following sentence. , . these images are connected with my training and work as an architect. . 2010: 9) Atmospheres: Architectural Environments – Surrounding Objects. He is not interested in describing architectural forms or his design intentions in a manner that would enable his architecture to be included in architectural publications or histories of architecture. , : Quality architecture to me is when a building manages to move me. What on do people design things with such a beautiful, natural presence, things . : The British architects Alison and Peter Smithson wrote copiously in the 1970s and 1980s on ‘Lyrical Appropriateness’, trying to extend the language of modern architecture to include the landscape environment. They likened their concern for the renewal of architecture to embroidery on the canvas provided by the heroic period of Modern Architecture, their needle moving away then returning to the canvas, each time tracing in the air considerations from the inheritance left by two generations of architectural forbearers. (Smithson, Alison and Peter 1993: 22.) , , writing down their insights and the theoretical underpinnings of what they . lent to their ‘place-response’ urbanism in which what already exists on site was reassessed in the ‘coming-into-being’ of the work in hand. Thus, writing and drawing alternated, the ephemeral and the permanent intertwined, the graphic work and built work intermixed – always extending the associated

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ideas and sensory experiences outwards towards built form. Essays resulted from insights gained in construction work, more essays as the construction work dropped, fewer when design and construction work picked up. They believed they were continuing a tradition set by Le Corbusier where reflection and construction went hand-in-hand. (Smithson, Alison and Peter 1993: 101–102.) 1

Following the Flow of the Written Line

Bennett in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things calls the vitality of material objects when they exceed their status as objects, thing-power. She notes that ‘[…] things […] as vivid entities [are] not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them’. (Bennett 2010: Kindle loc 230) Animals, plants, earth, and objects have power, a kind of force, intensity, and vibrancy. (Bennett 2010: Kindle loc 424.) Whatever it is, the power of things or ‘aura’ effect humans emotionally; it is Thoreau’s ‘Wild’ defined as the ‘[…] uncanny presence that met him in the Concord woods… Wildness was a not . an irreducibly strange dimension of matter, an out-side’. (Bennett 2010: Kindle loc 202.) The power of objects and things is something intangible and imponderable . , pre-intellection, a felt force, an invisible presence. Architecture, then is more than a rational proposition but also a conjurer of emotions and feelings. What kind of dialogue does an artist or architect set up with objects that , , Klee advised art teachers to take their students to nature, not in order to make naïve or romantic depictions of nature, but to show them how forms are actively constructed. Let [your students] experience how a bud develops, how a tree grows, how a butterfly opens its wings so that they become as prolific, as agile, as idiosyncratic as the great nature. Do not allow them to imitate nature’s forms but through close observation and direct experience enable them to establish the precondition / . 2008: 101–102)

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For Klee, and the generation of artists who followed his advice, nature was a process of genesis and growth, as the seed grows into a plant, or the point set in motion becomes a line. , rial objects over time. An architect, he admonished, should avoid imposing . gress and that ‘Architects don’t invent anything, they transform reality. They work continuously with models which they transform in response to the problems they encounter.’ (Bouman and van Toorn 1994: 1.) : giving material form to an idea, that, by trying to grasp all facets simultaneously, refuse to impose limits on reality. The point, then, is always to avoid static images and a linear development in time’. (Bouman and van Toorn 1994: 3.) , in anticipation of what might emerge, a process likened to improvisation. He compares a building contractor responsible for the implementation of an , , . Matisse Ener, a contractor who explains: Architects think of a building as a complete thing, while builders think , , , , etc. The separation of design from making has resulted in a built environment that has no ‘flow’ to it. You simply cannot design an improvisation . . Others continue commenting on the forward force – an imperceptible intensity – that gives rise to the construction of forms. As the anthropologist Tim : ‘To read things “forwards” entails a focus on […] improvisation. To improvise is to follow the ways of the world, as they unfold, rather than to connect up, , . : . been able to build a ‘real’ house. This seems a strange confession! But his words are intended to make us see, feel, understand what this coming into being of a house might entail. A ‘real’ house he likened to the idea of a complicated machine, in which every day something breaks down: a lamp, a tap, a drain, a lock, a hinge, a socket, and then a cylinder, a stove, a fridge, a television or video; and the washing machine, or the fuses, the curtain springs, the security bolt. (Angelillo 1997: 47.)

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Living in a house, in a real house, is a full-time job. The house owner is at the same time a fireman (houses are always burning down, or flooding, or gas escapes soundlessly and usually explodes); and a nurse (have you seen the splinters of wood from the bannisters getting stuck under your , , a specialist in physics, in chemistry, he is a lawyer [...] or he does not survive. (Angelillo 1997: 48) . process of form-making, a lived experience accepting both forces natural and metaphysical. Experiencing architecture is about learning to see, perceive, listen to, and read a door handle, a house, or a city. , , , , with the monuments still to see but with a feeling of idleness overtaking him when suddenly his pencil or biro starts putting down images, faces, details, the hands which draw them. The hand grasps the materiality of the space, rendering visible the things that give rise to feelings, and eventually to forms. The mind opens onto the ambience, mood, atmosphere – impressions placed in memory to be evoked in the flow of future form-making. ‘When you really travel, your eyes and through them your mind, take on an unsuspected power. We learn hugely and what we learn reappears, dissolved in the lines which we later draw.’ (Angelillo 1997: 113) Walking in a city, in this case Bogotá, , there are things there to be found and stories to tell. The details reveal: A doorhandle, an unusual iron window, a Spanish house which is no longer Spanish, a façade in Dutch or German brick, which is nevertheless different, an irregular classical column which looks like a tree, and , , , , , . There is an imperceptible breath, which runs through everything and transfigures everything. For an architect, travelling with his eyes and ears open, is the best food : animates his drawings, and which has roots, and which possesses the enormously long arms of branches. (Angelillo 1997: 118) , , acknowledge the influence of a detail – a precisely handcrafted door handle – when it comes to adding something evocative to the city.

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Drawing, writing, traveling, seeing are the interpretive tools by which the architect nourishes his sensibility to place and things that in turn filter . exists and what is desired. (Angelillo 1997: 17–18) Architects make drawings – they produce lines, they carve a path between . . 2

Affective Atmospheres

The Finnish architect and writer Juhani Pallasmaa criticises that atmosphere, ambience and mood are rarely discussed in schools of architecture where the focus is predominately placed on space, form, structure, scale, details and light. Only recently there has been a turn toward an experiential and embodied point . a place is transformed by a fusion of many factors synthetically grasped as an overall atmosphere, feeling, or ambience. Such multi-sensory experiences are embodied, perceived in a diffused and peripheral manner, not precise and conscious observations. An atmosphere of place is linked to a strong presence of materiality and of things that engage the senses. Gernot Böhme defines the character of atmosphere by the way it communicates a feeling to us as participating subjects. Atmospheres are totalities: they tinge the entire surroundings, bathe everything in a certain light, and draw a multiplicity of impressions into a single emotive state. There is something irrational about atmospheres. They exist not as things, but in-between a thing and a perceiving subject. (Gernot Böhme 2013.) : . The roots of architectural understanding lie in our architectural experience: our room, our house, our street, our village, our town, our landscape ... , , compare them with the countryside, towns, and houses that we experience later on. The roots of our understanding of architecture lie in our , . : Memories drawn from childhood still surround him, still hold the power to inspire and effect his imagination. He too writes about door handles; one from

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childhood he can still feel in his hand, shaped like the back of a spoon. The handle, however, is but the opening detail into a world of smells, light, atmos. : That door handle still seems to me like a special sign of entry into a world . , , kitchen, the only really brightly lit room in the house. Looking back, it seems as if this was the only room in the house in which the ceiling did not disappear into twilight […]. Everything about this kitchen was typical of a traditional kitchen. There was nothing special about it. But perhaps it was just the fact that it was so very much, so very naturally, a kitchen that has imprinted its memory indelibly in my mind. The atmosphere of this room is insolubly . : the deepest architectural experience that he knows. These are the architectural . : . , , how they perceive the magic of real things, how these things touch them. He aims to instill this ‘magic of the real’ in his designs, creating atmospheres of , . , , ... second – have this feeling about it. We perceive atmosphere through our emotional sensibility – a form , . : Architecture has the ability, he argues, to collect different things and materials and combine them to create a space – a space that gives off radiance, sound, temperature. Architecture is also a temporal art; it involves movement, , , . , : […] to plan a building as a pure mass of shadows then, afterwards, to put in light as if you were hollowing out the darkness, as if the light were a new mass seeping in [or] to go about lighting materials and surfaces

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. , to choose the materials in the knowledge of the way they reflect and to fit . : . : 66.) Heavy stones, soft textiles, polished granite, pliable leather, raw steel, polished mahogany, crystalline glass, or soft asphalt. The architect learns to handle these materials with awareness. ‘To experience architecture in a con , , , . : . believes we have lost this awareness in contemporary times. We now live in a state where objects beyond our own personal lives seem vague, blurred, or unreal. The ‘real’ thing remains hidden so that no one ever gets to see it. , , gered they may be. There are earth and water, the light of the sun, landscapes and vegetation; and there are objects, made by man, such as machines, tools, or musical instruments, which are what they are, which are not mere vehicles for an artistic message, and whose presence is self. : Atmospheres impress themselves upon us; affective atmospheres punctuate our being, they change our moods, our imaginations, they gather up our spirits, and they calm our imaginations. They are real but invisible, indeterminate and dispersed. They are not things in themselves but relations in between an architect or spectator and an object. And they are able to drawn many feelings, memories, perceptions into a single emotive state. 3

The Prelanguage of Architecture

Pallasmaa writes that Colin St. John Wilson in a 1979 lecture to the rib talked about the irresistible force of architecture and physical settings. , lated into words, which acts directly on the nervous system and imagination, at the same time stirring intimations of meaning with vivid spatial . so directly and vividly upon us because it is strangely familiar, it is in fact the first language we ever learned, long before words, and which is now recalled to us through art, which alone holds the key to revive it… (Pallasmaa 2011: 4)

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Alison and Peter Smithson were colleagues of Colin St. John (Sandy) Wil, . an unpublished essay entitled ‘Growing a Landscape of Lyrical Appropriateness’ (1984), Alison Smithson reported that is what they called their landscape language. : our instinct is that we are on the threshold of a new romantic period […] A time when people begin to look about, to see how their acts could . in the spirit-stirring, all pervading, European sense. (Smithson, Alison 1984a: GGL.5) We have always been concerned with a landscape that would extend outwards the language of our buildings […] support their meaning and complete their connection to place. (Smithson, Alison 1984a: GGL.1) Making meaningful connections demands that an architect be both a ‘remembrancer’ and a “continuer” of a given culture, both going back to the past and . the mind, which later give off previously unimagined illuminations: ‘that is, connections to pre-language are not all direct, obvious; indeed must not be literal if they are to have generative life beyond passing fashion and develop to seed a style.’ (Smithson, Alison 1984a: GGL.3.) Obviously, any beginnings of a language are personal and bound up with . case, [writes Alison Smithson] the power of the undulating surfaces in the Dales (waking up at Easter time to see the ankles of cows in their first let out of spring, skipping across the green field rising to fill a rear bedroom window), overlaid by a familiarity with Durham pit spoil, most economically heaped up in cones, together might be considered the pre : [sic] the G. L.C.’s [Greater London Council’s] landscape section explaining spoil is spread about English Landscape Garden style. But shapes without meaning, without a cultural cohesiveness, do not make a new language of landscape (Smithson, Alison 1984a: GGL2). An art of topography is one of these pre-languages of form, not always literal but filled with emotional meanings and perceptions that resonate within and move the observer. Alison Smithson claims meaning has to do with how the

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land is used: slopes invite climbing, running down, rolling, calling from, tops for kings-of-castles, jubilee bonfires. (Smithson, Alison 1984a: GGL.3.) Meaning also has to do with ordinary language use: ‘Park”’ means green place, ‘Walk’ means gravelled, shaded or sheltered place for strolling, ‘Mall’ means sheltered route but with an elaborate pattern of associations, for strollers, horsemen, carriages. The careful deployment of language with an acute sensitivity to century and extends those ideas into the present. 4

Of Idylls and Enclaves

For the Smithsons, their idea of ‘lyrical appropriateness’ encompasses how pavilions in the landscape are positioned as ‘idylls’ and ‘enclaves’. Alison Smithson turns to a dictionary definition of ‘idyll’: ‘a description of a pictur , . , : .. embodied for her this meaning of ‘idyll’: Farnsworth House (Mies van der , , (the Smithsons). Each one of the pavilions was a place where one’s energies could be restored to oneself, where one experienced a stress-free way of life. All three were set in a controlled and selected domain, often in nature. (Smithson, : .. All three pavilions were effective ‘form-inventions’ for a fragment of a would-be enclave placed in nature, whose integrity depended on the decent . to appraise, contemplate, consider, re-assess, the city.’ (Smithson, Alison 1985: . , : What we have really been looking at, is the territory necessary To allow the illusion of idyllic life. That is important in this story Not the formal solutions Which are very personal . , : . These three pavilions offered the possibility for a new kind of ‘light touch inhabitation.’ (Smithson, Alison 198b: T.P.1–4) The idea of the idyll in modern

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referred to above with certain inherited commonalities. All three accepted the sun; all three had stable surfaces immediately outside their interiors into which the pattern of inhabitation could be extended; all three took position in their territory, which became the ‘right’ inhabitation of ‘field’; and all three had a sense of vertical territorial depth. The spaces – inside the pavilion and within the territory – could be more or less empty of things, or could accept a collection of objects as natural extensions of the life created by their inhabitants. The spaces can be used in a number of ways. The spaces do not feel empty when departed from as possible by a single person a number of occupants can each find a sense of . immediately outside looks through glass at the window trees looks out at the middle ground looks towards the territories’ fringe trees; that is, the eye has a sense of possession of a particular aspect of nature in each field of vision, all within the territory. (Smithson, Alison 198b: T.P.2) A retreat, an enclosed and enclosing world, dreams of a future of ‘lyrical appro the Smithsons during the 1980s. Since every part of England had been marked by some period of inhabitation, imprinting layer upon layer of occupation, throwing a mesh of earthworks over the countryside, they reflected on their ‘changed sense of territory’ both in England and elsewhere. (Smithson, Peter 1985, 1986: 23T.134) ‘Lyrical appropriateness’ gave rise to poetic devices, as Alison’s writings show. A snapshot of time, caught as if in a kaleidoscope, twisted and turned to give yet another view, allowed disparate fragments and ideas to be collected together. ‘Lyrical appropriateness’ allowed for spaces of imaginative exploration: children’s fairytales of secret gardens, places where real-world problems could be reworked in safety. Thus ‘lyrical appropriateness’ offered the chance to present ‘once upon a time’ narrations: to discover an Arcadian future of idyllic landscapes and to recall that environmental sensibility is dependent on topography, soil, climate, weather, aging and more.

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‘Paradis Éloigné’

Fairytales - or stories to think with - form the narrative basis of the short fictional work ‘Paradis Éloigné’, written by Alison Smithson (1975–86). As her handwrit–ten aside implies, the style is like that of ‘a child talking to an invisible companion’. (Smithson, Alison 1988.) She writes of stones that normally are inanimate, and how the land is transformed by many generations of human action. But in her fantasy stones will reassert themselves, the landscape will manage its own growing, and man will begin to appreciate a self-renewing world: .

The whole tone of the short writing is of sharp sky’d yet reassuringly soft earth’d autumnal afternoons; the intention being to announce the tentative ‘green’ romanticism beginning in the 1980’s: a style of ‘lyrical appropriateness’. The fantasy’s character of disconnection from the world we know, together with the vignette-like descriptions of a paradise imagined, evoke an achieved ‘green peace’ […] Paradis Éloigné, is, in many of its vignettes, a tribute to Charles and , , tively on this planet. (Smithson, Alison 1975–1982 1) Alison Smithson opens her story telling with the following explanation. The time had come and was now past when all that had been founded on base impulse and all that had been displeasing to the eye had gradually and cleanly disappeared. dilapidation […] and so decayed into soil. Things badly begun never came to fruition […] Everywhere this process resembled Penelope’s weaving, there remaining nothing of a day’s unwanted work. (Smithson, Alison 1975–1982, 1) The ‘fabric of this world’ having been destroyed, a great cleansing took place; the entire world was refreshed until it created ‘places of happy memories, kindly nature, its decoration and scene according to the season . . .’ (Smithson, Alison 1975–1982: 2) Fewer inhabitants remained, but those who did took pleasure in their work, finding life on earth peaceful, attractive, enjoyable. ‘The balance re-achieved is such that it seems as if the idyll might free-wheel on forever.’ (Smithson, Alison 1975–1982: 4.)

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The fairytale unfolds as Odysseus travels the earth; set in Greece, dappled with sunshine, shadowed with clouds passing by, the sounds of waves lapping . , . the reader is told that every five hundred or so years, Ulysses (Alison uses many : , , ney. On his last retracing he found to his surprise that all the things that had been antagonistic were wonderfully in ruins: ‘the world almost empty again: : , : the air again honied [sic]: Utuse found he journied [sic] more easily […] He remained to watch […] He thinks he might journey, intermittently, forever.’ (Smithson, Alison 1975–1982: 110.) There are people to meet: ghosts of Greek heroes, pigeon fanciers, a crusader, a minotaur, a child, a white unicorn, a picnic party, the observer, the spectator, the watcher, the pilgrim, the walker, the monk, the bard, the curator, and the balloonist. Some characters are taken from the writer’s imagination, others from life. The reader becomes adept at following the rotating images . explains: By holding to the forehead, the small imageability box, by moving it in a tender, circular motion, a Seurat-like image can be obtained of a scene remembered […] Depending on the state of mind of the rememberer: an irresolute image might contain precise details, as if by Carpaccio; another remembrance might produce a faded image with almost indecipherable blotches similar to those on a found Daguerreotype [sic]. However, as the first image obtained can be aide-memoire, a series of remembrances might develop. (Smithson, Alison 1975–1982: 54) Alison’s cyclical reverie unfolds with the months of the year, the seasons, every turn of the earth. The reader discovers different aspects of sunlight and shade, , , , that move over the landscape, and light rain that falls on a dampened ground. Scenes of remembrance intermingle with scenes of inhabitation caught by an odor as it passes by on some breath of air. Times of day, kinds of days, meanderings, and adventures prompt the immateriality of memory, becoming collector’s items in this scrapbook of associated imagery. (Smithson, Alison 1975–1982, 10)

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Conclusion

ing about architecture, places and objects tells us about what moves the archi , , the past, they are sensual memories drawn from childhood images, from places traveled to, from objects loved, listened to, touched, and sensed. Acts of remembering come from various directions: from images, moods, forms, words, signs or comparisons. We understand the work of architecture from different points of view simultaneously: historically, aesthetically, functionally, personally, and . , , crossing, looking out, looking in, all verbs to describe how an architect turns space into place, how emotions and memories form not only the architects sensibilities but in turn give rise to emotions in the art of inhabitation. Bibliography Angelillo, Antonio (ed.). 1997. Alvaro Siza Writings on Architecture. Milan: . Bennett, Jane. 2010.Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University. Böhme, Gernot. 2013. ‘The Art of the Stage Set as a Paradigm for an Aesthetic of Atmospheres’ in Ambiances International Journal of Sensory Environment, Architecture and Urban Space. On line at: http://ambiances.revues.org/315. (Consulted 11.10.2014). , , . . : The Invisible in Architecture. London: Academy Editions Ltd.: unpagenated. Brand, Stewart. 1994. How Buildings Learn: What Happens to Them After They’re Built. London: Penguin. , . . Bringing things to Life: creative entanglements in a world of materials. Online at: http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/1306/. (Consulted 11.10.2014). . . . Cambridge Journal of Economics 34: 91– 102. Pallasmaa, Juhani. 2011. ‘Space, Place and Atmosphere – peripheral Perception in Existential Experience’ in Ghost 13, 1. On line at: file:///Users/mcboyer/Down/loads/6584_space-place-and-atmosphere-2011-ghost-13.pdf. (Consulted 11.10.2014). , . . Marking Time On the Anthropology of the Contemporary. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

o er Smithson, Alison. 1984a. ‘Growing a Landscape of Lyrical Appropriateness’ in Private Smithson Archive. Box Lectures as Evolved: GLL.1–7. Smithson, Alison. 1984b. ‘The Territory of the Pavilion’ in GSD Smithson Archives. Folder E076: T.P. 1–4 Smithson, Alison. 1985. ‘A Fragment of an Enclave’ in Private Smithson Archive. Box : . . Smithson, Alison. 1975–1986. ‘Paradis Éloigné (Paradise Fiction)’ in GSD Smithson Archives. Folder F006: 1–110. Smithson, Alison. 1988. “Paradis Éloigné Outline’ in Private Smithson Archive. Photocopy: ELO2 . Smithson, Alison and Peter Smithson. 1993. Italian Thoughts. Copyright: Alison and Peter Smithson. Smithson, Peter. 1985, 1986. ‘Territory’ in Alison and Peter Smithson, The Space Between. Unpublished manuscript: 23T.134–7. Wilson, Colin St. John. 1979. ‘Architecture – Public Good and Private Necessity’ in RIBA Journal 3:): 107 – 115. , . . Atmospheres Architectural Environments – Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhauser. , . . Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhauser.

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From Acidified Groves to Virtual Mountains: The Continuum of Utopian Landscape Types in Twenty-First Century Nordic Art Hilja Roivainen Abstract , , : i, 1976), Petri Ala-Maunus ( i, 1970) and John Kørner (dk, 1967), problematise in their twenty-first-century paintings the historically utopian topoi of landscapes, such as the paradise and Arcadia. This is done by repeating the topoi’s landscape iconography. Secondly, the paintings renew this iconography by mixing it with dystopian moods and elements, such as the emotive colour moods and visual signs from the contemporary living world. For example, painters use ironically intertextual references to various clichéd meanings and forms of consumption, that have been attached to the utopian landscape types, such as, the leisure industries’ marketing imagery. The utopian Arcadian, pastoral or sublime landscape types are translated in these paintings into simulacra of imagined reality (Baudrillard 1994), and turned into mere aesthetic triggers, that formally compose the painting. Often abstract marks or patches and colour moods contrast the presented utopian landscape views, and thus dialectically confuse or distance the spectator from the utopian scene. Thirdly, the landscape paintings formulate a hermeneutical understanding of the global world and exemplify philosopher Ernst . , in a contradictory way, ecocriticism, is that they contemplate nature aesthetically and . . build my interpretation and analyse the ideas of utopian landscapes, from a Marxist perspective on landscape art, in the light of the research by human geographer Denis . , , (1885–1977; 1986) and cultural theorist Malcolm Miles (2014). The themes pointed out by Cosgrove (1998 and 2008): the individual perspective, the emotional understanding of the world or self, both in European colonialist and romantic thought, and ‘the landscape way of seeing’ are visible in the discussed paintings.

© koninklijke brill nv, leide , 2022 | 

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Keywords Anna Tuori – Petri Ala-Maunus – John Kørner – ecocriticism – hermeneutics – landscape iconography – utopian landscape

1

Utopian Landscape for Consumers

The living world, surrounding geographical environments, and the societal changes caused by global capitalism are reflected in twenty-first-century Nordic art. These themes are visible in the works by the following Nordic painters: Anna Tuori ( i, 1976), Petri Ala-Maunus ( i, 1970) and John Kørner (dk, . chosen paintings from the above artists, as the object of my study, because as , rative to their respective countries since childhood and have developed into actors in the global art world and globalised societies. Global capitalism can be : 547) as the ‘transnationalisation of production networks’, a phenomenon that has rapidly changed the structures of twenty-first-century societies. Thus, these paintings from the 2000s exemplify the discourse between the local and global regions (Jones and Olwig 2008; Eller 2008). Doreen Massey’s sense of multilocal place-experience (Häyrynen’s introduction to this volume) is communicated in the paintings through atmospheric colour moods and landscape elements. , , recent art criticism, and other similar Nordic painters of the utopian land: , . . . the visual conception of dystopian-utopian landscapes presented by these . , . paintings in the context of the cultural theorist Malcolm Miles’ (2014) concept of Eco-Aesthetic and Marxist nature philosophy, as discussed by Ernst Bloch : . . , , article with some further remarks about the relation of twenty-first-century . , types, and through the colour moods, the paintings exemplify the idea that landscapes include utopian thought. The article evaluates, from the perspective ,

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utopian landscapes and display an ecocritical, aesthetic appreciation of nature as something unknown or nostalgic. The article is based on my Ph.D. Art History dissertation project about utopian landscape in the twenty-first-century , Finland. , , , mentioned repeat the traditional iconography of utopian landscapes. Secondly, they renew the utopian types of landscape with dystopian and clichéd elements, such as emotive colour moods, abstract surfaces or gestural brush marks. , displays a hermeneutical understanding of the idea of a global landscape and . in the article, how the colour mood and utopian landscape elements build up this emotional relationship with nature in the studied paintings. , term modus that is based on musical theory and on Nicolas Poussin’s writings : : . Modus is the tone or scale of expression of emotions or psychological states (Kuusamo 1996: 218, 220–222). Mood as a word refers also the German term Stimmung, as , . (Fernsicht). (Barasch 2000: 159–160). Drawing from these various definitions, . , pheric landscape simplified on the surface of the painting into a colour plane. , real light conditions, such as the sunset yellow or grey light filtered through . the utopian landscape that displays an environmental emotion. , . Boyer in her essay in this volume remarks that the atmosphere in architecture reflect particular sources of imagination. Similarly, these painters depict the atmosphere of imagined or experienced places, or landscapes perceived from popular culture imaginary or history of art. : , ties for travel, such as aviation, and the digital revolution of landscape images. Through an iconographical analysis and an intellectual thought history anal . of utopian landscapes on the Marxist perspective on landscape art, in the light of the research by human geographer Denis E. Cosgrove (1998), literary scholar

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, cultural theorist Malcolm Miles’ (2014). The themes pointed out by Cosgrove (1998 and 2008): the individual perspective, the emotional understanding of the world or self both in European colonialist and romantic thought and ‘the landscape way of seeing’ are visible in the discussed paintings. , topos (topoi in the plural) to refer to a commonly understood and shared place or location in landscape art, such as the pastoral (Hesk 2007: 362). The term comes from the Greek word tópos (topoi) . , topos as synonymous with type, , art as a repeated form (see i.e. Gombrich 2002: 20, 262, 267; Kuusamo 1996: 115– 116). Topos can also be understood as a habitual manner of presenting the sur : , . , valid for the discussion of visual representations of utopia (eu-tópos, ou-tópos . , , , , , , , . the latter, pastoral and sublime are also modi (modus) and paradise a commonly used motif. These are marked by the iconography of, for example, grove, garden, park, meadow, verdant vegetation, distant blue mountains, and the . , , , , meadows and groves. The pictured landscapes are both local and global. , worthwhile to emphasise the fact that the idea of a controlled and cultivated landscape is part of the geography of More’s Utopia. Since Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), fictive utopias have expressed the desire for and models of a better society and human life. Thomas More’s (1964) Utopia, a story about a fictive, good, non-existent place in the hemisphere of the Southern seas, is most of all an ideal city and society model, but it is also located in an ideal landscape. Utopia’s cities, for example, every house has a garden (ibid.). Cultivation of nature appears often as a common theme for utopias. Whereas, in the modern twentieth-century anti-utopian novels, such as H.G. Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes . dystopias, in other words, stories about nightmarish places, which must also include the huge genre of science fiction novels, nature is often destroyed by human infrastructure or it is presented as being in the middle of the process of destruction (Kumar 2000: 261). tion to the historical ideas of utopian landscape and Cosgrove’s (1998) notion of ‘the landscape as a way of seeing’. ‘The landscape way of seeing’ presents a

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view-based attitude to the world (Cosgrove 1998: xxvii, 1). As Cosgrove (2008: 109) states, ‘Wilderness, garden and city are repeatedly mapped into the imaginative geography of European nationalism.’ Here Cosgrove (2008) highlights the link between the idea of a utopian society, colonialism and a landscape way of seeing. Similarly, Williams (2016) and Bloch (1986) have recognised the utopian function of ‘the landscape as a way of seeing’. The studied paintings problematise the historical and utopian ‘landscape as a way of seeing’ by , , , , ley, mountains and grove, as well as their related colour moods. , , , definition of utopian wishful landscapes. Bloch (1986: 800, 819) defines the elements of wishful utopian landscapes, in addition to the above mentioned, , , , painted gold ground of every moment: peace’, a state of ‘repose’ that appears in the background of the Mona Lisa, as the distant mountains of “eternity” in Dante’s Paradiso or Giotto di Bondone’s The Flight into Egypt (1304–06, , , . : , most ‘philosopher of utopia’ whose key concepts are utopian too. Geoghegan (1996: 145) sees Bloch’s concepts as ‘free-flowing utopian energy’ that can appear in multiple cultural forms. 2

Contemporary Tendencies in Nordic Landscape Painting

late certain types of utopian landscapes, such as the mountain, the island and , , . , into these contemporary utopian landscapes by the three painters. 2.1 Petri Ala-Maunus Art historian Hanna Johansson (2015) recognises the romantic landscape tradition in the paintings of the Finnish artist Petri Ala-Maunus, as depicting ‘the pure natural landscape beyond human time’. Thus, nature as painted by AlaMaunus is an objectified landscape in a dialogue with the landscape way of seeing’ (Cosgrove 1998). Ala-Maunus was born in the flat land area of East Bothnia in Finland. He started his career, first by painting sunsets, and then mountainous valleys, seascapes

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and forests, all representing an idealised utopian landscape, and kitsch subject matter of popular culture, i. e. religious paradise imagery (Ala-Maunus 2013). Furthermore, with their dialectical utopian–dystopian discourse, Ala-Maunus’ idyllic pastoral in a way that can be called ecocritical. The aesthetic apprecia mass-produced paradise imagery that he refers to in his paintings. Ala-Maunus’ semiabstract 2D paintings also recreate the mountainous Arcadia familiar from the fifteenth and sixteenth-century Dutch pastorals and world landscape types (Cosgrove 2008: 26), where different mountains from around the world are composed into one view. Ala-Maunus (2013) describes the reason for the utopian mountain motifs to be the longing for faraway places. Additionally, the nine : , , , , of beauty. The former Finnish Ateneum Art Museum director Susanna Petters , nature is depicted as enormous in relation to man (Ateneum 2017). Ala-Maunus (2013) states that the motifs for his paintings emerge from the , ing of the Düsseldorf School, the kitsch mountainous paradise valley imagery Vartiotorni) and the paintings regarded as low value in the market, including landscape . . . John Kørner . (2013: 9) states that Danish John Kørner’s work is a calculated play with a ‘[…] formal and chromatic naïvism’ that is more psychedelic than idyllic. On first , beach bathed in a Lorrainian golden pastoral sunshine in yellow, white, and . , , , . our, as a sky or as a background in Kørner’s works, represents happiness and , : . Cosgrove (1998: 157) notes, the pastoral golden sunset mood is typical in Claude , . . Pastoral Landscape, 1645 or Ideal Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, 1663). 2.2

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Kørner’s paintings often contrast various styles and combine abstract, , , tensten 2016: 24). For Kørner (2018), landscape acts in the main as an image . , : , , paintings often represent an archaic reality. This utopian archaic landscape is contrasted with the dystopian human world symbolised by staffage figures and the elements of modern architecture, such as tunnels or skyscrapers, for example, in the series Life Attacks You (2016). Thus, the signs of contemporary culture combine with the pastoral sunlit mood to create a sense of degrading. These local landscapes maintain a nostalgic colour mood. Art critic Michael Bank Christoffersen (2013: 111) sees in the paintings’ scenic elements a link to Caspar David Friedrich and the romantic landscape painting’s concepts of ‘nature and love’. For example, the series of landscapes in Life Attacks You (2016), including the painting Human Architecture ,

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. Human Architecture. 2015. Acrylic on Canvas. 150 x 180 cm. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. © John Kørner and Galleri Bo Bjerggaard.

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or sublime landscape elements, such as, the sea, high mountains and a vast sky , : . Nevertheless, for Kørner (2018: 112), a ‘dialogue’ with the community and people’s lifestyles is more important than the personal nature sentiment. Kørner attempts to bring the social world to his landscapes instead of romantically merely picturing the self. He uses a variety of ‘[…] media, processes, and messages’ to do so. Kørner describes his art as democratic in the way it ‘[…] generally appeals to all people on an intellectual level, and on a basic human level’ (ibid.: 112). Kørner’s painting practice is in fact largely socially concerned and his paintings refer to contemporary society’s problems, such as capitalist . . 2.3 Anna Tuori The seashore, island, and forest grove appear in Finnish painter Anna Tuori’s . , , (O’Brien: 2015), Barbara O’Brien (2015) and together with my interview with Anna Tuori (2014) have shown that Tuori has examined in her paintings the idea of a utopian landscape. Art critic Mika Hannula (2015) interviewed Anna Tuori along with four other painters for his study that aimed to examine the various processes of contem . , being a way to be in the world, contrasts completely with the capitalist values of productivity (Hannula 2015: 8–9). Tuori responded to Hannula that for her: ‘[…]the painting also relates to the dream, both to escapism and utopia.’ (Han : , . . Furthermore, Tuori’s paintings connect to the romantic tradition of landscape painting, as the paintings utilise the metaphor of landscape as a mirror of human emotions similar to that implied by the late nineteenth-century Nordic painters. Moreover, Tuori explores the psychology of meeting the . : . : ture of carefully considered expressionist marks constructing the background and the painted landscape space with ‘menacing or oppressive overtones’ . , a psychological effect, Tuori utilises colour mood and places faceless staffage figures in the landscape. Similar use of figures in escapist dystopian-utopian Arcadias are also found, for example, in the Finnish painter Saara Piispa’s landscapes.

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Fairytale Forest and Meadows

wider phenomenon of utopian landscape painting that is also present in Nor . , Pétursson and Andreas Eriksson. Norwegian Astrid Nondal’s paintings illustrate the classical Arcadian paradise in a similar manner than Anna Tuori’s. Based on observations and memories, Arcadia is depicted, for example, through the iconography of mountainous valleys, forest groves, flowers, three trunks, and verdant vegetation or foliage. According to art historian Cecile Skeide (2006: 10, 19), Astrid Nondal’s paintings suggest the Norwegian national romantic landscape painting of the early nineteenth-century. Nondal’s major œuvre consist of ‘fantastic forest landscapes’ with ‘evergreen foliage’ (2006: 19), such as in Om Hundre År Er Allting Glemt (In Hundred Years Everything Will Be Forgotten). Paintings interpret reality and the known landscape types in an unconventional, even surreal manner, and represent landscape through a personal narrative (Skeide 2006: 10). As Skeide (2006: 19) states, Nondal’s ‘pictorial world’ is fairytale-like and related to storytelling.

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. Om Hundre År Er Allting Glemt. 2003. Oil on Canvas. 160 x 230 cm. Photo: Halvard Haugerud. ©Astrid Nondal and the National Museum of Art, Oslo.

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Boyer (in this volume) describes how architect Alison Smithson’s writings . larly, Nondal’s paintings reimagine childhood fairytale forests, such as those pictured by Theodor Severin Kittelsen (1857–1914). As a city dweller in Oslo, with her regular walks in nearby woods, Nondal (2016) discovered the forest as Arcadian source of pictorial imagination. Nondal’s paintings of the 2000s alter Arcadia using surreal and dystopian tones. The imagined illusory nature is combined with perceptible landscape elements that are highlighted with ‘artificial’ colours and composition, such as an extremely verdant forest grove. Often the overly pink or yellow skies transform the otherwise classical landscape into an unusual and unnatural mood (Skeide 2006: 10, 19–20). Likewise, Anna Tuori’s paintings alter in dystopian the section 2. , and globally spread vegetation. Therefore, the paintings recreate the paradisiacal image of a wishful utopia as a verdant land in blossom. These paintings are worth of mentioning as another example of the contemporary Nordic utopian pastoral. Pétursson’s floral canvases are a response to the 1980s neoexpressionism as well as conceptual art (Pétursson 2012). Pétursson (2012) considers himself more as a flower painter than a ‘utopian’ landscape painter. , dic landscape painting. One of the influences on Pétursson is, for example, (1885–1972). The strong use of colours creates both a merry and threatening atmosphere in the paintings. , , , ticularities of a certain geographic topos, a meadow where the flowers grow. icate nature, such as, moss. With botanical expertise, Pétursson (2015) classi . Pétursson, however, discusses the botanical idea of national species with irony . , flowers he paints, are in fact found around the world. Yet his works are filtered with the personal sense and experiences of his local native environment. Since childhood Pétursson’s eyes have wandered along the ground in search . Íslensk flora með litmyndum,

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Bjarnason, Á.H. 1983 and gouache drawings reprinted in Flora Islandica, Pétursson and Bjarnason 2008) are the conceptual basis for the larger flower paintings. These he installs in the manner of minimalist conceptual practice, guiding the audience to look at the painted surface, in his exhibitions. His art studies at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and seven years spent in England further encouraged Pétursson to produce conceptual paint . human beings should learn to adjust to the perspective of flowers to under . highlight this micro perspective and thus increase interest in their protection (Pétursson 2012). The flower-scapes build a painted surface of plants on a map . The Swedish visual artist, Andreas Eriksson, pictures the idea of landscape and local environment, in the Pétursson’s manner, that is, from the microscopic perspective. The paintings contrast the wide perspective landscapes of . . Eriksson translates the moss and soil structures into formal brush strokes (af Petersens 2011). He compares the aesthetic perception of nature with the perception of the paint material’s behaviour. The often dark paintings reflect his living world, observed in daily walks at the Southern Swedish agricultural .

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:

. Untitled. 2006–2007. Oil on Canvas. 195 x 285 cm. . © .

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relationship he builds with his living environment of Kinnekulle; latitude that is familiar to the painter from his childhood and that he has recaptured after a prolonged stay in Berlin. The tradition of landscape painting is repeatedly mentioned in the critical reviews of Eriksson’s work (Hahn Møller 2013, af Petersens 2011, Moderna Museet 2011, Obrist and Birnbaum 2011, Jantjes 2014, Elgin 2014, Khan 2013 and . , , Eriksson’s paintings as being successful in the way they unite the metaphorical . presented conceptually, as well as, formally and technically in the behaviour of the paint materials. Hahn Møller (2013) claims that Andreas Eriksson’s work describes his living sphere as a ‘bucolic environment with its surrounding nature and isolated relation to the outside world’. The term bucolic apparently refers to Eriksson’s reflections on the harmonic Arcadia of a peaceful forest. Through colour moods, Eriksson’s paintings transmit the emotions related to human relationship with nature. Art critic Tabish Khan (2013) describes Eriksson’s use of light as fantastical. Similarly, Badura-Triska and Eriksson (2009) have concurred that the emotions of calmness are conveyed formally / coming close to monochromy creating a feeling of vastness of nature, of loneliness. The trees are ‘heroic’ and offer a sense of communion with nature. His paintings represent natural objects as metaphors of human life (Lünsmann 2014). As in the paintings of the nineteenth-century German romantic Caspar David Friedrich, trees are a recurrent landscape element in Eriksson’s paint , . , reflects why certain branches attract him and why they are related to each other (Obrist and Birnbaum 2011). Eriksson’s paintings thus display the nineteenth-century painters’ empathetic responses towards the Nordic landscape, emotional moods, such as the aesthetic awe, and the self-reflection imposed by the landscape, yet without transcendental connotations. The above presented painters communicate emotional experiences of local places and Nordic nature. They picture the forest and meadows as a paradise . , , selected to focus the discussion in the article in the problematisation of the . , clearly across in the colour moods and repeated landscape elements in Tuori’s, Ala-Maunus’ and Kørner’s paintings.

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, Trädstam (skugga) (Tree trunk, in the shadow), 2009. Acrylic and Oil on Canvas. 252 x 235 cm. Courtesy: The Artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, and Galerie Neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

The Moods of Appreciation

, and natural elements are reinterpreted especially through colour moods, for example, as monochromatic paint areas. Culturally shared emotional moods are associated with the history of the landscape painting. These moods, as Cosgrove remarks, are familiar from the history of landscape painting, for example, the sublime emotions of awe and terror, the pastoral sensations of , , : , , , : , : . , ,

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a crystal sky light in cerulean tones, and the cloud shine, that Bloch (1986) includes in his definition of wishful utopian landscape types. The twenty-first-century paintings under discussion build a simulacrum of these moods related to Arcadia, the pastoral or the sublime. Painters transform . view, the dystopian reality is also depicted with colour moods and iconographical elements that point to the problems of contemporary society, such as, the brainwashing narratives of media images. These paintings present the idea of a utopian landscape, for example, as an emotional metaphor for both the imaginary and contemporary global world. , . reflect upon the positively valued features in nature: the sense of human connection with the world, and the recognition in our lives that there is a part of nature that is unknowable. These paintings preserve the thought that human beings are part of nature, as in William Morris’ utopian aesthetics, for example, as actualised in the garden city landscape in News From Nowhere (1890). , , have become a cliché in art since the advent of twentieth-century modernism and postmodernism. Further, in contemporary art, ‘landscape painting’, does not solely exist on its own as a category as in the history of the landscape genre. , . , abstract art, where a single brush stroke or a layer of colour are independently meaningful. The applied abstract splashes on top of the representational utopian landscape view, often distance the spectator from the viewed scene and create another contextual layer, often with a dystopian, meaning. The case of these paintings also points out the fact, that landscape is always . , . word Landschap originally meant a shared use of land and a constructed idea of nature made by humans. Art historian E.H. Gombrich (2002: 53, 61, 64, 76, 99, 149, 308) reminds us that landscape painting consists of a learned vocabulary and a system of schemata for picturing the world. Art and the construction of an image are based on concepts. The learnt schema and ‘reactions to the world’ guide what is seen in the landscape (Gombrich 2002: 76). The aesthetic and emotional ‘landscape way of seeing’ is characteristic of . , elements, such as mountains or trees, exemplifies the landscape way of seeing. For example, Ala-Maunus’ contemporary paintings are a comment on the cultural, emotional, and symbolic meanings of mountains in the history

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of landscape painting. Even though presented as apocalyptic or dystopian, these twenty-first-century utopian landscapes contain a positive mood for the . , . 5

Utopias as Social Criticism

Landscape as a medium of expression has acted as a form of criticism in the . . scape painting displayed by the studied painters’ acknowledges this dark past of the medium. Together with Cosgrove (1998) and Williams (2016), Bloch (1986) argues that the concept of nature in the West has been largely formulated by the bourgeois class of capitalists. Or as art historian W.J.T. Mitchell (1994: 5, 7) declares: ‘[…] Landscape is a particular historical formation associated with European imperialism[…]’ and not only the product of internal national ideologies. He refers to English literature scholar Philip Fisher’s approach to look at ‘[…]the “hard landscape art that emerged in the seventeenth-century and lasted till the early twentieth-century (1994: 7). For example, the Dutch landscape paintings were at the same time possibly both, ‘[…]imperial and anticolonial’. They both glorified the Dutch country with its wide skyscapes as well as the nation’s southern , . imperialism, especially, was closely related to the flourishing of landscape painting at the time (1994: 10). : : guage” of Western imperialism, the medium in which it “emancipates”, “natu that the concept of landscape already has symbolic cultural meanings emerging from the context where it is used. Mitchell notes: ‘The familiar categories that divide the genre of landscape painting into subgenres – notions such as , , , , , that may be represented by paint’. (Mitchell 1994: 14.) Therefore, landscape is a ‘[…] physical and multisensory medium’ that we signify with already existing cultural values and symbols through learned categories of landscape types (ibid.). Mitchells’ statement aligns with Gombrich’s (2002: 76) notion of the learned landscape schemata. Utopian thought is part of the progress of landscape painting and the idea of a landscape. With a historiographical approach, and through historical

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case studies, Cosgrove (1998) points out that the history of pictorial and literal depictions of utopia proves that a ‘landscape way of seeing’ is related to the myth of utopia as an ideal land. The idea of Utopia (More 1964), originally meaning a good non-existent place, was influenced by the myths of the Golden Age, Arcadia and paradise (Sargent 2000: 8–9). As Cosgrove (1998: 69) argues, the development of the idea of landscape . , the idea of perspective was used to control and organise both the natural , , . , Williams (2016: 1) points out that since the classical times in English history, literature has represented the city as the centre of learning. The country, in contrast, has been described as the pastoral location of a simple and peaceful natural life. The ideas of utopias, especially in the classical utopia fiction, often unify the country pastoral with the ideal urban city. Cosgrove (1998: 170–172) draws parallels between the colonial nature of North America as presented by two contradictory landscape images: firstly, the wild nature that needs to be domesticated, and secondly, a utopia seen from a distance. American land was seen as a solution to the insufficient and high . : , basis for utopian pressures in colonial undertakings. , landscapes of these three Nordic painters problematise the above-mentioned imperial history of the utopian ‘landscape way of seeing’. They combine the familiar utopian landscape types with their related moods and the contemporary dystopian features. 6

Pastoral Harmony […] nature remains part of the fundamental essence that makes up most , nature, and even though other subjects may at times be given priority , . a beach, which is one of my favorite subjects, they experience a natural sense of pleasure in seeing it again; a spontaneous joy and an interesting process involving mankind and nature[…]it seems to be something that human beings can relate to and use. (John Kørner in Bank Christoffersen 2013: 111)

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This statement above by John Kørner, the Danish painter, emphasises the prolonged source of nature as an inspiration for artists and proves Kørner’s . , beach landscapes refer to his world in Denmark and the surrounding environments of Frisland, as in the series of paintings entitled Fallen Fruit from Frisland (2013). These ‘rural idylls’ are depicted as mysterious places. Their . , Paradise’s fruit trees. With nostalgic sentiments Kørner presents his world in Danish Frisland as such. Thus, the theme of utopian escapism is linked to the landscapes. Nature is a solution or an escape from the human problems. , . Cosgrove (1998) all recognise, that the pastoral landscape type contains the utopian tone of harmony, that suggests that man and nature live in balance with each other. Cosgrove (1998) and Williams (2016) discuss pastoral as one utopian type of landscape painting, visible for example in Claude Lorrain’s use of golden light (Cosgrove 1998). Bloch (1986) and Cosgrove (1998) define the pastoral as the archetype of a utopian landscape in the history of the idea of landscape. English literature scholar Greg Garrard (2012: 40) further acknowledges the pastoral’s central influence on the ecocriticism of Leo Marx (1964) . , : , erature, a utopian pastoral trope or topos signifies the emotional relationship between human beings and nature. Both landscape art and the utopian types of paradise, Arcadia, sublime and , . utopian landscapes are Theocritus’ Idylls (3rd century b Eclogues (1st century b ) which depict the landscape of the myths of the Golden Age, Arcadia and the pastoral. The latter were all relative places of harmonious existence with nature, as English Literary Scholar John Barrell (1980) points out. Barrell (1980) discusses the recurrent pastoral and Arcadia in English eighteenth and nineteenth-century painting. For example, Barrell interprets Thomas Gainsborough’s painting Landscape with a Woodcutter Courting a Milkmaid (1755) as having a harmonic tone in its Claude Lorrainian shimmering light. The subject matter presents collective closeness of a rural society with a natural landscape. The pastoral metaphor is a utopian reflection of human happiness, as well as representing ideas of a good life and society (1980: 49, 52). The pastoral refers to the utopia of ‘Merry Old England’, where, however, only the rich have time to enjoy the landscape and the products of hardworking labourers. Nevertheless, in the picture’s harmonic tone, the community lives peacefully with nature and each other (1980: 52).

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7

The Signboard of Cracked Society

Like Thomas Gainsborough, Kørner implies in his idyllic pastorals a societal criticism by problematising the pastoral with dystopian tones and elements. Kørner’s landscapes present culturally symbolic elements, such as, Adidas shoes, faceless young people, portraits of prostitutes, sign boards from global capitalist institutions, and abstract brush marks that refer to the psychology of the apparently lost contemporary individual. Similarly to Anna Tuori, John Kørner includes in his landscapes staged elements, such as faceless human beings, cyclists, or abstract shapes. Through his pastoral landscape paintings, John Kørner, also comments on contemporary life in Danish society. The capitalist game of artistic success within the cultural industries is one recurrent theme (Bang Larsen 2013: 9, 11). Most of all, the landscapes act as stage set for social interaction and modern problems performed by contemporary human beings. Kørner’s paintings comment on, for instance, the ideological use of landscape aesthetics in advertisement and film industries. , broken modern families. Kørner’s exhibition entitled The Family at Galleri Bo Bjerggaard (2013) reflected Kørner’s interest in people as members of a community (Høgsbro 2013). The families are also seen as members of the ‘[…] consumers’ community[…]’ and part of the ‘network’ of individuals, as Høgsbro (2013) notes. The spotlight is on the marginal, unofficial, and homeless families that form communities in hidden public spaces, such as, ‘[…]bikers, prostitutes, red-heads [sic!] and park bench bums’ (ibid.). Kørner therefore contrasts the utopian landscape stage set with global world problems, such as war, human and neo-liberal trade, industrial tensions between local and global, and the cultural control of society run by multina . , , Union (e ) countries to form a cohesive political ‘family’, is apparent. Politi : that seeks ‘[…]to identify the unregulated free-market capitalist order as the crucial ground for all efficient resource allocation.’ This ideology is critically commented on by Kørner. Kørner thus guides the spectator to critically reflect on contemporary problems through the utopian landscape. . to Cosgrove’s analysis of landscape paintings (1998). Furthermore, Kørner critically points out, with the landscape idea, the world views that the media feeds to people. The paintings fluently handle through the medium of paint

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the critical interpretations of contemporary culture. After a second inspection, and by rereading the titles, the paintings start to reveal the dystopian reality , , or sublime. An example of this can be seen in the three-dimensional trade image close ups of online shops which become the main actors in the landscapes. The pastoral agricultural industry landscape is placed in a dialogue with fashion shots of shoes in Adidas in Front (2015, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 120 cm). The topics from Cosgrove (1998) are visible here: the idea of landscape is closely related to land profit – thus the agricultural product taken from the land is compared to shoes. Paintings criticise the learned colonialising ‘landscape way of seeing’. Both shoes and vegetables are products sold globally whose industrialisation . , mountains with the utopian crystal light sky (Bloch 1986) provide a contrast to Adidas Spezial (2015, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 180 cm). This is a typically Kørnerian way to build a landscape. The postmodern presentation of fragmented and detached landscape elements refers to the rapid changes that are occurring in the shaping of twenty-first-century landscapes . further highlights the power of advertisements and sets the advertisement imagery in dialogue with the idea of a pastoral agricultural or sublime wilderness landscape. 8

Shimmering Horizons and Skies

Kørner’s emotive landscapes often present the sky and sunlight, or a broad . elements, such as, the light in the sky, gives an underlying positive mood of hope, and thus expresses the wish of a utopian space: like in the vast panorama as Life Attacks You I and ii (2015, acryl on canvas, 200 x 800 cm). The golden dusk or dawn hints at an Arcadian peaceful summer light. The still , something in the distance and a sign of the state of becoming in the ‘pro . of romantic landscape painters are ironically hinted at in the title. The view by the empty white areas in the painting – a gap in human existence together with the virtual reality.

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The painterly function of the sky light originates for example, from the , , / 1682) skies. The clear and cloudy skies are recognisable vistas from the various interpretations of the pastoral landscapes, and to most of us aesthetically . of vistas that give space for the viewer to imagine the world (Cosgrove 1998 and Gombrich 1966). Nonetheless, sometimes Kørner’s skies are filled with the dark clouds of melancholy (2016: 9, 33–34). , landscapes from foreign lands, especially in the paintings about the global sex worker trade in Denmark. Foregrounded with images of prostitutes, the landscape is then given a symbolic mood that suggests the longing and happiness that these women represent for their consumers. The landscape is mostly , , utopian Arcadia. Architecture, Apples + Vegetables (2015, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 240 cm) displays a carrot, a faceless man walking towards the viewer, and a nineteenth-cen . , by the loamy carrot that still has leaves, is contrasted with the modern architectural pattern at its side. The schematic approach to landscape constructs a painting with these slightly unconnected symbolic elements. The dominating element in Architecture, Apples + Vegetables is the light blue monochromatic background. The tone transforms the landscape into a dreamlike vision. Half of the architectural modernist pattern, depicted in the foreground, disappears into this ‘unknown blue’ that creates the painting’s fractional tone. The depicted objects float against gravitation, as Bjerggaard et al. (2016) state. The mood is similar to that discussed by Ernst Bloch (1986: 799), as the wishful blue of distance and infinity ‘[…] non-frontier of a sky fading away in the clouds’. The mood is, for instance, present in the background in renaissance paintings as the landscape window. The cinematic sky-blue tone is used in conjunction with the yellow hues as a dominating ground colour in Kørner’s landscapes. Tuori’s soft pastel sky hues. Paintings Elisa’s True Dream (2004, oil on canvas, 130 x 130 cm) or Honey ii (2012, oil on canvas, 155 x 145 cm) utilise the utopian, golden evening light tone of Claude Lorrain and Arcadia. The Forever Mute (2008, oil on board, 120 x 130 cm) displays a dystopian pastoral of an abandoned farm by golden fields, in murky cloudy light. Similarly, Melancholy iii (2006, oil on canvas, 120 x 130 cm) represents a dreamy window emerging from

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a soft pastel fog into a verdant pastoral. At a distance a train passes by. The . 9

Exoticism – Dystopian Escapism

Exoticism is a central part of the history of utopian landscapes. The idea of exoticism is connected to the presentation of paradise and the pastoral. The term exotic originates from the Latin and Greek words – exōtikos meaning ‘foreign’, and from exō . paintings, the natural world beyond the Nordic hemisphere is hinted at, for instance, by references to ‘foreign’ plants, such as palm trees in Tuori’s Honey ii. , island paintings of the 2000s, the utopian escapism of the landscape space is . need the mental images of paradise islands to cope with reality. Tuori’s island paintings display this interest towards the polarity between utopian idealism and dystopian reality – the impossibility of utopian imaginings. The paintings picture the possibility of imagining oneself somewhere else and the aesthetic experience of painting fantasies. Utopia is a mental space that only takes shape in the process of a painterly act (Tuori 2014). Art critic Saara Hacklin (2011) recognises Tuori’s approach to utopiandystopian landscape when she describes Tuori’s painting Icaria (2005): , it, to a kind of ideal landscape […] The paradisiacal scene is a beautiful dream, too good to be true. Just like a utopia, paintings entail the idea of something better. This glimpse is enticing even when thought of as unreachable. Tuori’s paintings involve a similar twist – we must bear the conflict aiming at the unattainable. Painting about the exotic Icaria Voyage en Icarie, a sketch about a utopian ideal society on an island signified by Arcadian mountains, valleys, and paradisiacal gardens. A series of landscape paintings during the 2000s followed Icaria. , imagination and paint materials the idealism of utopian places. Tuori’s Icaria visually explores the fact that utopias include dystopian colo. . ing to Cosgrove (1998), the idea of landscape has been used in the utopian

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. Icaria. 2005. Oil on Canvas. 130 x 130 cm. © Kuvasto / Anna Tuori, Kansallisgalleria.

, , , . , ans exploited the found New World by means of perspective, the mathematic ideology of the golden rule, the geographic developments of mapping and architectural principles. The latter forms were used by the European landscape , pian landscape of Arcadia and the pastoral (Cosgrove 1998: 231). As Cosgrove (1998: 269) notes, the landscape way of seeing perceives and imagines the . , , paradisiacal. Tuori’s Icaria describes this distant good place as idealistically unreachable.

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Window to the Grove of the Self

, expressing the personal worldview. Especially environmental emotions come . : 195) claims that even in the secularised world, artists continue to project onto their pictures ‘the sacred’ as emotions aroused by the shapes of nature. Thus, he (1975: 195–218) asks if the landscape forms and emotions, such as the sub . , a characteristic of the history of landscape painting. The discourse on nature’s emotional reception is already present in the early , b ) with their pictorial representations in paintings. The pastoral paintings have reflected, for example, the sensations given by the verdant vegetation. Thus, the emotive humanisation of the forms of nature in visual arts is closely linked to the utopian topoi in art and literature. Even though nature in Anna Tuori’s painting is an imagined fantasy, it often clearly belongs to the Nordic geographical region. Thus, the paintings can be seen depicting an emotional response to the local environment. The Director of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Barbara O’Brien notes (2015: 92) that Tuori’s paintings contain the ‘repetition of memory’, that is in O’Brien’s interpretation: […] a symbolic emotional connection between the human figure and the natural world […] [that] […] is also powerfully present in the work of Edvard Munch (1863–1944) […] They share in the Northern European legacy a knowledge that nature is both primal and always new; offering both danger and pleasure. Probably, O’Brien refers here to Munch, due to his art historical status. How, . and Nordic knowledge about nature can be read as a psychological underlying tone in Tuori’s paintings, one that Tuori also depicts with irony. The process of dealing with emotions and building a relation to the world impacts the way Tuori conceptualises nature in her landscapes. Tuori (Hannula 2015: 165, transl. : […] the protection mechanisms of the psyche, in other words the ways in which the mind processes reality – for example through or with help of

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repression – or what the mind offers as an alternative. That is to say, from what perspective the seeing and the facing of an issue occur – the whole mechanism. Tuori thinks that irrational painting activity can be a way to process emotions (Hannula 2015: 169). Tuori uses landscape elements often as features in this artistic self-comprehension process. However, subjective self-reflection through the idea of landscape is something innate in the landscape genre. : : element of personal control over the external world[…]’, such as, in the ideas of . : , , world view and emotions that are directed towards the external natural world. Self-understanding, the meaning of life, a worldview or a life-narrative are themes often processed through the idea of landscape, as Cosgrove (1998) has recognised. , , . , through an aesthetic representation of nature the paintings highlight the . cism, the criticism lies in the fact that human emotions belong to the process of making sense of the surrounding world through the ‘idea of landscape’. Thus, what Cosgrove (1998: 1) sees as an emotional and aesthetic view on landscape, , . The forest groves or garden interiors, pictured in Tuori’s works, such as in Into the Wood I Made, are especially present in paradisiac, Arcadian, pictur . , painting, the distant landscape was often depicted as a glimpse behind a gap of foliage. tries, as they are in Nondal’s, Eriksson’s and Tuori’s work too. For example, art historian Michelle Facos (1998: 194, 102) argues that the primitive other, discussed in continental arts, was for the Swedish nineteenth-century artists the self and habitus found in the ideal peasant-life and Swedish forests. Facos describes how Swedish artists presented in their landscapes the idea of folk’s communion with nature. Facos (1998: 104) notes how the idea of Swedish primitivism was paradoxically used as an ideal pictorial type to articulate the . , : , pagan heritage’ is also inherited in the geographical surroundings because ‘[…] the thickly forested Nordic regions have a special affinity for trees’.

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Similar to Eriksson, Tuori has a visual interest to trees. They become painterly elements. The snowy Arcadian grove, familiar, for example, from the Düsseldorf School’s sublime landscape type (Pennonen 2020), reappears too in Tuori’s work, but in dystopian tones. For example, Tuori’s painting Party in Kadykchan (2010, acrylic and oil on board, 160 x 150 cm) refers to a once popular remote Soviet mining city. Tuori depicts the subject, as a window to a wintery Arcadian grove. Kadykchan sia and has been transformed since the fall of communism into a ghost town : . , Pripyat (2009, acrylic and oil on board, 155 x 135 cm) refers to the Ukrainian abandoned town after the Chernobyl reactor disaster. Both of the above are places where nature has taken over . Kadykchan the dystopian aspects appear as the ghostly connotations of the title. Furthermore, the air is muted by the grey toned sky and slushy ground. A dystopian mood is created within the grove by a painted horse with a swollen hoof that stands beside a snowball shaped head. 11

Apocalyptic Kitsch Mountains

. : , especially in the advertisement industry and media aesthetics, as well as in mass production. Kitsch, as a landscape, presents itself in Kulka’s (1997: 24) words especially in the natural elements that raise automatically strong sentiments in the viewer, such as sunsets, flowers, stormy seashore, palm beach . , beautiful, or utopian landscape types is fluid (Kulka 1997: 27–29, 34). scapes into dystopian colour moods. The current apocalyptic climate change discourse is readable in the paintings. Furthermore, the utopian moment that human beings keep searching for in the contemporary presence is indicated by the titles, such as, the metaphoric mountain scape entitled Nightclubbing in Never-Never Land (2013, oil on canvas, 137 x 170 cm). The utopian sense of nature is mostly emphasised with kitsch elements, such as the promising crystal light of white mountain peaks, behind a green valley or neon light colours. The skies above the mountain, ocean, or valley landscapes vary between a uto . Ala-Maunus’ landscapes, the apocalyptic tone is often hinted at with an almost , .

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A reference to Apocalypse is made in painting Nature’s Invasion (2012, oil and acrylic on canvas, 50 x 41 cm) as well as in the image of the Deluge (The Great Deluge, 2016, oil on canvas, 220 x 850 cm), that both hint at destroyed states. The combination of utopia, dystopia, and the metaphor of an Apocalypse is a link to Ernst Bloch’s (1986 and 2000) utopian philosophy, which . , ish romantic landscape painters, such as John Martin (1789–1854) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). Mountains are the most known sublime elements of romantic landscape , , belong to the geography of the myths of utopia and Arcadia in pictorial and written depictions. Dutch landscapes often created fantastical spaces that combined landscape elements, especially mountains, from different geographical locations. This idea of a global landscape was made familiar as the Dutch sixteenth-century concept of ideal world-landscapes (Weltlandschaften), for example, in Joachim Patinir’s Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx (c.1515–1524, oil on wood, 64 x 103 cm). These create an image of an unknown territory that combines vegetation and visual signs from worldwide landscapes, such as mountain regions, oceans, and southern plants. As in Patinir’s world-landscape, in the paintings of Ala-Maunus the mountains function as a backdrop for contemporary reality. Ala-Maunus’ painting Hinterland (2014–2015) depicts the typical ‘worldscape’ of placeless mountains; yet it mutates this sublime mood. The emotions familiar from nineteenth century mountain paintings, and paradise imagery, are modified in dystopic dark tones, as a response to the current eye-catchingly affective storms spread by contemporary media imagery and social media (Aarnio, Hacklin and Miller 2016: 17–19). Ala-Maunus shows aesthetic respect for this sublime awe and its kitsch connotations that are connected to the landscape way of seeing pictur . of painterly production in a studio environment, in response to the twentyfirst-century cultural phenomena of the democratisation of landscape art. Digital camera users can easily replicate the landscape way of seeing, for instance, , as the golden section grid. Ala-Maunus’ representations of the human longing for faraway places, is very much in contrast to the clichéd holiday pictures , , , . paintings the materiality of the oil and acrylic paints responds with a hand .

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Ala-Maunus’ paintings reflect critically on the role of clichéd utopian images, the learned ideal landscapes, and the historic landscape way of seeing in twenty-first-century culture. Art Historian Hanna Johansson (2015) points out that Ala-Maunus’ mountainscapes, such as, Hinterland (2015, oil on canvas, 200 x 510 cm) combine the idea of an abstract paint surface and the idea of untouched wilderness in nature. Johansson views Ala-Maunus’ paintings in the continuum of the tradi , . the abstract sublime appears, for example, as a cosmic vision of the origin of the world, as in painters like Jackson Pollock’s or Barnett Newman’s surfaces of colour, light and planes. , Finnish hills have also become actors in Ala-Maunus’ painting Vaara-Suomi (‘Hill Finland’ 2017). The painting is a pastiche of Eero Järnefelt’s Kaski/Raatajat rahanalaiset (1893); Eero Järnfelt (1863–1937) is the late Finnish nineteenthcentury Golden Age painter. Ala-Maunus’ Vaara-Suomi was on display in 2017, the year Finland celebrates 100 years of independence, in the Finnish National Art Museum Ateneum’s collection. Vaara-Suomi pictures a central Finnish landscape of a slash and burn clearing in a woody hill region. The landscape is the same as that depicted in Järnefelt’s nationalist-toned Kaski (1893). Furthermore, Järnefelt became known from the national romantic landscape of Koli, Autumn landscape by Lake Pielinen (1899). By referencing to the romantic landscape painting’s vocabulary of slash and burn clearing and the wilderness, Ala-Maunus reinterprets the Finnish cultural landscape and contextualises it to the apocalyptic global narrative of climate change. Furthermore, he makes his emotional response to the forest ecosystem as a source of human culture and the cultural narratives of the transitional power of fire to change forest into feeding pasture (Hiedanpää and Lovén in this volume). Kaski, poor Finnish people are burning the forest for cultivation and selfsurvival purposes. The depiction of the poor is a familiar subject matter from the . human survival within the capitalist economy and the utopian sentiment of . Vaara-Suomi the same scene is, however, depicted in year 2893, after the disappearance of man. The painting’s dystopian–utopian motif shows nature’s invasion over the landscape that was previously destroyed by man in Kaski. The utopian hillside serves as the setting for this fantasy about nature. The painted landscape space is removed from its native Nordic context onto a fantastical plane.

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. Vaara-Suomi (Tree-Covered Hill-Finland). 2012. Oil on Canvas. 150 x 170 cm. Photo: Kansallisgalleria / Hannu Pakarinen. © Heino Art Foundation Collections, Finland.

Thus, in Ala-Maunus’ interpretation, a utopia of nature is a dystopia of . world condition of over consumption of natural resources into a fantasy nature. Therefore, Vaara-Suomi can be seen in line with science fiction’s dystopian narratives. For example, eco-aesthetician Malcolm Miles (2014: 71) refers After London (1885) as a utopian apocalyptic vision. , Eden. Following the laws of evolution, it is invaded by the strongest plants and trees. The novel was a response to urbanisation and the misery it has caused to London’s poor (Miles 2014: 71) as was Morris’ News from Nowhere (1890). Nature’s Invasion (2012) can be seen as a discourse on the dialectical relationship between human creativity and its imaginative interaction with nature, and those human actions that shape the character of nature. Bloch’s apocalyptic view and the idea of the nature subject, as intellectual thought

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i re 6.7 Petri Ala-Maunus. Nature’s Invasion. 2012. Oil and Acrylic on Canvas. 50 x 41 cm. Photo: Gallery Sculptor. © Petri Ala-Maunus.

historian Hans Jørgen Thomsen (1985: 49) has recognised, can be interpreted as one layer in Nature’s Invasion, that is, the visible act of pouring paint on a . ing over the top of the scenic mountainous valley signify a nature that invades the human centred landscape way of seeing. The painted landscape object of a , , , . The main purpose of this visual effect of pouring paint over the neatly articu , , , the painting work visually. The paint splashes poured directly on top of the landscapes, which are rendered in detail, highlight the artificial illusory nature of the genre of landscape painting as a utopian expression. Therefore, the approach of Ala-Maunus to landscapes critically reformulates the traditional conception of ‘seeing landscape’ and the objectifying idea of landscape (Cosgrove 1998). The chemical reaction of the paint on the surface becomes a natural agent that disturbs the painted landscape image and its aesthetic polish. The visible selfreferential paint marks on top of the landscapes, thus discuss the painterly con .

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12

Eco-criticism as Hermeneutic Aesthetics

, . ther add that landscape painting, with the genre’s objectifying and colonising of history, discusses a culturally symbolic human relationship with the natural . , . scape way of seeing and responding emotionally to the surrounding natural . , : criticism, that is a ‘way of reading’. This means that the artworks contribute ‘[…]to the environmental debate as examples of rhetoric’, such as ‘[…]pastoral imagery and apocalyptic rhetoric[…]’. Therefore, the paintings can be read as ecocritical as they re-interpret pastoral and other utopian landscape rhetoric. , above discussed landscape paintings display a hermeneutic understanding of the world. Hermeneutics is in philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer’s (2005: 40) definition the skill of interpretation or explanation that is based on the skill of . , : . , , repeating the utopian landscape, how the relationship between human being and the world has been culturally understood. Landscape aesthetics reflects the self–world-relationship. , . , scape art also contains a wishful tone. Miles (2014: 8) suggests, with reference to the sociologist John Holloway, that one way to struggle against capitalism, is to do something agreeable in life, such as art, and ‘[…s]top creating the system that is destroying us’. This view is parallel with Bloch’s idea of a utopian process . : Bloch’s (1986) idea that art can give people cause to wish for what they are currently lacking. For example, in Bloch’s (1986: 799, 810, 820, 837) view, landscape paintings contain a wish for utopia. . evaluate conflicting worldviews. On the one hand, the paintings depict landscapes as a utilitarian space for capitalist land use and advertisements for the tourist industry; while, on the other hand, the paintings are concerned with the visual aesthetical experience of nature or the concept of landscape as the mirror of the world – and the self in the world.

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However, at the same time, the dystopian environmentally destructive con . As philosopher Alfred Schmidt (2014: 163) mentions, the technological development of the twentieth century changed the nineteenth-century socialists’ , Fourier’s, into dystopias of ‘total destruction’. , meneutic understanding of the world displays utopian hope, is comforting. The hermeneutical understanding of the world is in my view in this case relevant terms for understanding how landscape paintings reflect the self’s position in the world. Furthermore, the self-mirroring of the world implies, according to Miles, the possibility of developing an empathic way of living with the world ‘[…] rather than exerting power over worlds[…]’ (Miles 2014: 49, 50). Ecocriticism can also be seen in the fact that the paintings discussed comment on our future relationships with the land and the local environment. For example, increasing urbanisation due to global mass movements and digitalisation are tending to enclose human daily life indoors and in city environments. City dwellers are beginning to perceive nature mostly with the help , , , , , . . that human beings keep increasingly projecting psychology onto nature, and . Perhaps something has changed in our relationship to these utopian land, , : Inclusive Path . , , television nature programmes of aestheticising nature from a utopian perspective by ommitting human beings (ibid.). These types of ideal landscapes, that reflect the histories of the Golden Age and Arcadia as utopias, are emotionally effective and their distant unseen locations imaginatively inspiring. For the artists, the clichéd utopian topoi offer material to be altered, problematised, . 13

Problematisation of the Landscape Object

,

, , , , . the living worlds surrounding the artists, either through fantastical imagined

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landscapes or through the observation of nature. Predominantly, these paintings hint at the living worlds where the artists have grown up, including both the natural world and the surrounding cultural imagery in which they have become absorbed. As Cosgrove (1998: 105) states, the artist’s environment and living world have often become visible in their paintings, such as, the Alpine region in the sixteenth-century paintings by Titian. , , . , can return to study the history of landscape painting and further reflect upon why we are attracted and feed on landscape aesthetics in the daily media and . are aware of the Arcadian golden dream as a utopian landscape. By simply presenting such utopian landscapes, the paintings prove their cultural role as signifiers of utopia. The paintings point out that utopian landscapes play a role in our cultural exchange, such as the symbolic ideas of the good life, and what Bloch (1986: 799, 810, 820, 837) has termed as the wishful landscape, the cultural signifier of utopian hope. , ings discussed, becomes apparent through the historical ideologies of the ‘landscape as a way of seeing’, that Cosgrove (1998) discusses. These include, for example, the exoticism of colonised utopia, the natural park ideology, the . , of landscape in the Nordic context reflects, for example, the European Union , . , European self-identity is being re-shaped by contextualising the self in the , . perform the main actor or setting for films, v, as well as the advertisement industry, and thus exemplify the cultural continuum of the ‘landscape way of seeing’ (Cosgrove 1998: xxiii–xxiv) and wishful thinking (Bloch 1986). Currently, ownership of land can be easily rented for suitable periods via electronic travel industries. For city dwellers, the utopian escape from the addictive world of Social Media and the psychologies of social roles performed in life or , and idyllic natural resort. Furthermore, a polemic exists between the personally experienced world landscapes and the culturally meaningful native landscapes or landscapes of permanent residence. The aesthetics of land, such as, a fertile cli, . appear as almost something biologically obvious. Cognitive religion studies scholar Jani Närhi (2009: 98) suggests that there are some generic environmental preferences in the paradise myths around the world. True or not, the remote

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rural environment continues to maintain its leisurely pastoral and wishful value. Ernst Bloch’s (1986) philosophy recognises this in: the travel industry, , . , the help of wishful pastoral, sublime or paradise landscapes. All these variations connect to the concept of utopia. Landscape painting as a genre can be further seen as characteristically utopian. The only difference is that originally Utopia was an ideal city and society. However, as Cosgrove (1998: 96–97) has , one step towards the ideal landscape and Arcadia. tion of utopia, but it is utopian by nature. Western landscape paintings have made use of the concept of utopia and its varying types of paradise. Anna Tuori and Petri Ala-Maunus have especially brought the utopian nature of this landscape genre into public discussion with their paintings that specifically explore the idea . , ther guided me to research this topic in my ongoing Art History PhD Thesis. , as eco-criticism by Garrard (2012) and Eco-Aesthetics by Miles (2014) in their emotional representation of the image of landscapes and relationships with natural environment. Cosgrove’s (1998) study clearly points out that one can interpret the ‘landscape way of seeing’ as an ideological, cultural, and political . , Nordic paintings is the ideology of global capitalism. This appears in the places the paintings depict. The placeless, global landscape and the imaginative landscape, for instance, in the form of virtual networks, are familiar to today’s art lovers and digital nomads. The landscapes, through the aesthetics of painting, add hermeneutical reflections of the world to the clichéd utopian landscapes that we all can experience and easily reproduce. This ability to make the spec pian landscapes is the stage at which ecocritical thinking interposes. Acknowledgements research: the foundations TOP-säätiö and Turun Yliopistosäätiö, Turun yliopiston tohtoriohjelma Juno, Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse and Koneen Säätiö, the gen . the editors and my PhD supervisors, the members of staff at the University of Turku School of Art History and colleagues a the Department of History, Culture and Arts Studies for precious comments. My acknowledgements also

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include the University of Turku First Article Language Checking Service as well as the Department of History, Culture and Arts Studies for their generous support. My gratitude also goes to the artists Petri Ala-Maunus, Anna Tuori, John Koerner, Eggert Pétursson, Andreas Eriksson, and Astrid Nondal for kindly participating in my interviews and providing research material. Bibliography Primary Sources

Aarnio, Eija, Hacklin, Saara and Miller, Arja. 2016. ‘Curatorial Statement’ in Hacklin, Saara (ed.) Kiasma’s Collection Exhibition 22.4.2016 – 29.1.2017 (Publication 151). Helsinki: The Museum of Contemporary Art: 18–19. , . . . Andreas Eriksson. Moderna Museet: Sternberg Press. Ala-Maunus, Petri. 2013. Interview by Hilja Roivainen. Turku. 18.5.2013. Audio 93min. Ateneum. 2017. ‘Nykytaiteilija Petri Ala-Maunuksen teos Ateneumiin Kasken tilalle’. On line at: http://www.ateneum.fi/nykytaiteilija-petri-ala-maunuksen-teosateneumiin-kasken-tilalle/ (consulted 03.12.2017). Badura-Triska, Eva and Eriksson, Andreas. 2009. ‘Talking while Driving 360 Kilometres From Medelplana to Oslo’ in Edelbert, Kob and Badura-Triska, Eva (eds.) Andreas Eriksson: Walking the dog, Lying on the sofa. Co. . . . , . . . John Kørner: Caught. : : . , . . . John Kørner: Caught. : : . Bjarnason, Á.H. 1983. Íslensk flora með litmyndum. : . , , , , . . John Kørner / Maleri. Denmark: Strandberg Publishing. Bloch, Ernst. 2000. The Spirit of Utopia (tr. A.A. Nassar ). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bloch, Ernst. 1986. The Principle of Hope (eds and tr. N. Plaice, S. Plaice and P. Knight). Cambridge: The Press. , . . Voyage en Icarie. Paris: Au bureau du Populaire. Coomer, Martin. 2013. John Kørner: Fallen Fruit from Frisland. : Gallery. , . . Atlas of Lost Cities: A Travel Guide to Abandoned and Forsaken Destinations. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. Elgin, Dag Erik. 2014. ‘Painting as Discourse’ in Jantjes, Gavin (ed.) An Appetite for Painting: Reader. Oslo: Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arkitektur og Design: 45–57.

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Eriksson, Andreas. 2016. Telephone Interview by Hilja Roivainen. Turku. 20.5.2016. Hacklin, Saara. 2011. ‘From Where You Are, You Can See Their Dreams’ in Köönikkä, Laura (ed.) Anna Tuori. Blow Out Your Candles, Laura (Tampere Art Museum Publications 147). Helsinki: Lönnberg Print. , . . . Krux: Lidköpings konsthall, 2.2–10.3, 2013 / Andreas Eriksson. Hällekis: Blå himmel. , . . , . : http://www.susanneottesen.dk/artists/texts/53/69 (consulted 22.07.2017). Hannula, Mika. 2015. Maalauksesta – esseitä ja keskusteluita. Helsinki: Parvs Publishing. Høgsbro, Cecilie. 2013. John Kørner: Familien / The Family. Copenhagen : Galleri Bo Bjerggaard. Jantjes, Gavin. 2014 (ed.). An Appetite for Painting: Reader. Oslo: Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arkitektur og Design. Johansson, Hanna. 2015. ‘Petri Ala-Maunus: Hinterland 18.4.2015 – 17.5.2015’. On line at: :// . . / . (consulted 03.12.2017). , . . , , (ed.) Ernst Bloch. Utopia, Luonto, Uskonto. Helsinki: Kansan Sivistystyön Liitto: 42–58. Kumar, Krishan. 2000. ‘Utopia and Anti-Utopia in the Twentieth-century’ in Schaer, , , , Utopia – The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 251–267. Khan, Tabish. 2013. ‘Andreas Eriksson’s Coincidental Mapping at Stephen Friedman Gallery’. On line at: http://onestoparts.com/review-andreas-eriksson-coincidentalmapping-stephen-friedman-gallery (consulted 12.02.2018). Kørner, John. 2018. Interview by Hilja Roivainen. Helsinki. 29.5.2018. , . . schaft im künstlerischen Werk von Andreas Eriksson. diss., Berlin: Technische Universität Berlin. Moderna Museet (ed.). 2011. Andreas Eriksson. Moderna Museet: Sternberg Press. More, Thomas. 1964. ‘Utopia’ in Gallagher, Ligeia (ed.) More’s Utopia and its Critics. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company: 1–68. Morris, William. 1890. News from Nowhere. London (no name of publisher). Miles, Malcolm. 2014. Eco-Aesthetics: Art, Literature and Architecture in a Period of Climate Change. : Bloomsbury Publishing. Nondal, Astrid. 2016. Telephone Interview by Hilja Roivainen. Turku. 15.7.2016. O’Brien, Barbara. 2015. ‘Encounters. Anna Tuori’ in Bolton King, Michelle (ed.) Dark Days, Bright Nights. Contemporary Paintings from Finland. Kansas City: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art: 90–93. , , . . Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum at Moderna Museet on 11 February, 2011’ in Moderna Museet (ed.) Andreas Eriksson. Nordic Pavilion 54th Venice Biennale, 2011. Berlin: Sternberg Press.

oiv inen Pétursson, Eggert. 2012. Eggert Pétursson. Paintings. : . Pétursson, Eggert and Bjarnason, Ágúst H. 2008. Flora Islandica. : . Pétursson, Eggert. 2015. Interview by Hilja Roivainen. .13.5.2015. , . . Frieze Magazine 14 (April). , . . The Marine Research Laboratory for Humanities and Social Sciences (AHA-meritutkimuslaboratorio) and the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS) (University of Turku, 26 May 2017). , . . ARTnews (February). , . . Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition. Friedrich to Rothko. : . Schmidt, Alfred. 2014. The Concept of Nature in Marx (tr. B. Fowkes). : . Skeide, Cecilie. 2006. Undergrowth. Lillehammer Kunstmuseum: Labyrinth Press. , . . : , , , , . Utopia. The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 8–17. Tuori, Anna. 2014. Interview by Hilja Roivainen. Helsinki. 2.1.2014. Audio 162min. Wells, H.G. 2005 (ed. P. Parrinder). The Sleeper Awakes. London: Penguin. , . . The Country and the City. : .

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Facos, Michelle. 1998. Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination. Swedish Art of the 1890s. California: University of California Press. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2005. Ymmärtäminen tieteissä ja filosofiassa . . . . : . Garrard, Greg. 2012. Ecocriticism. : . , . . Ernst Bloch. : . , . . . Norm and Form. Studies in the Art of Renaissance. London: Phaidon Press. Gombrich, E.H. 2002. Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Oxford: Phaidon Press. Hesk, Jon. 2007. ‘”Despisers of the Commonplace”: Meta-topoi and Para-topoi in Attic Oratory’ in Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 25 (4): 361–384. , , . . Nordic Landscapes: Region and Belonging on the Northern Edge of Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. , . . Higher Education 64 (4): 543–556. Kuusamo, Altti. 1996. Tyylistä tapaan. Semiotiikka, tyyli, ikonografia. Tampere: TammerPaino Oy. , . . Taide ja Kitsch (tr. E. Balk). Helsinki: Like. Marx, Leo. 1964. The Machine In The Garden: Technology And The Pastoral Ideal In America. New York: Oxford University Press. McTighe, Sheila. 1996. Nicolas Poussin’s Landscape Allegories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, W.J.T. 1994. Landscape and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press cop. Närhi, Jani. 2009. Paratiisien synty. Ihmismieli, evoluutio ja taivaalliset puutarhat. Jyväskylä: Gummerus Kirjapaino Oy. ‘Oxford Online Dictionary’. 2017. On line at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ (consulted 01.12.2017). Pennonen, Anne-Maria. 2020. In Search of Scientific and Artistic Landscape : Düsseldorf Landscape Painting and Reflections of the Natural Sciences as Seen in the Artworks of Finnish, Norwegian and German Artists (Finnish National Gallery Publications 3). Helsinki: Finnish National Gallery. , . . . ajattelu’ in Ennen ja Nyt – historian tietosanomat 2/2017. , . . : satelliittiperspektiivi Petri Ala-Maunuksen 2000-luvun öljyvärimaalauksissa’, Mobilities: Artists, art works and a concept in change, conference proceedings, Tahiti -verkkolehti 9 (1): 65–76. https://tahiti.journal.fi/issue/view/5511 , . . Modern Political Ideologies. 3rd edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell: 337.

er 7

Perceptions of Winter in the Notebook of Eva Christina Lindström (1823−1895) Silja Laine Abstract Seasons have a natural rhythm caused by Earth’s rotational axis, but they are lived in embodied, material encounters, and interpreted, understood and shared culturally. Knowledge about seasons and the skills needed for living with them are formed differently in various parts of the world. Even cultures at the same parallels of latitude have created different words, artefacts and practices for living with seasonal change. This chapter concentrates on writing practices and seasonal change in 19th century Finland, with a case study of a personal notebook written by Eva Christina Lindström (1823–1895). The period is particularly interesting, because the emerging natural sciences were affecting ways of understanding seasons, and at the same time writing skills were becoming increasingly common. Fishers and farmers were observing the weather and the changing seasons in their everyday landscape, but at the same time, more and more government officials, including medical doctors, were observing nature in a systematic way. Scientific observation methods were used side , . tion, surviving the seasonal change and especially the winter was a common theme . , meaning of seasonal change merged when people were trying to predict the weather and understand the possibilities of living and surviving with the harsh conditions of northern nature.

Keywords Eva Christina Lindström – seasonal landscape – weather – perception history – mnemohistory – history of emotions

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470095_008

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Introduction

‘1859 New Year’s day, the first time to town. There has been no snow. The winter has been mild’. These are the opening words of the diary-like notebook of Eva Christina Lindström, a Finnish woman living with her family on an island called Pohjainen on the southwestern coast of Finland. Her notebook, written in Finnish between 1859 and 1893, was published in 1999. The notebook does not tell explicitly of the writer’s inner thoughts and emotions, but with its detailed descriptions of household tasks, farming, fishing, the sea, and , , . non-human encounters and how the seasons are intertwined with dwelling; in the experience and belonging to place. , inexorably embodied. Bodily movements, sensory experience and affects have been essential to phenomenology-based theoretical thinking, which in landscape studies has been called non-representational theory (Waterton 2012: 68). Writing, however, has been seen as a decisive point in human-nonhuman relationship, and for example, David Abram has argued that in premodern societies, humans were able to communicate with non-human nature, but this ability was lost with the advent of written, disembodied, language, which led to alienation from nature. Among the self-educated writers in the nineteenth century Finnish countryside, however, no clear distinction existed between oral and written culture (Kuismin 2016: 52). Diaries, notebooks and other autobiographical writings can be valuable sources for understanding the nuanced, mixed, and changing ways of living with seasonal change and the language that has been used to describe it. Peasant notebooks and diaries can be found throughout the European countryside. The period varies according to the 1 “Uude Wuod päi Ensi kertaa kaupu Ej lunta ole olut Behiätä Talvi”, . The diary was written in Finnish, but the language shows influences of Swedish. The vocabulary, the number of abbreviations and local expressions that now have vanished from use, make the diary somewhat difficult to read and understand. The diary was published in 1999. The publication consists of a transcription of the original and a version adapted to modern language by the editor. The English translations follow the original writing which includes spelling , . diary (Norima 1999), which features the original text side by side with the original text and an “updated” version in modern Finnish. The English translations are based on the original text, . , , . . 2 Abram 1996: 183–185. On phenomenology, eco-phenomenology and embodied language see , .

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development of school systems, but the 19th century can be seen as a heyday : . , bondesdagbok, although not all the writers were peasants; for example, sealers also wrote notebooks (Edlund : . , . Eva Christina’s notebook has rich and beautiful descriptions of life and nature in the severe conditions of everyday life in the archipelago, but it has received remarkably scant attention from academic environmental historians, or from researchers of marine studies and biographical writing. For those interested in maritime history, the diary does not reveal much about the history of seafaring because the writer stayed mostly at home or moved in the nearby surroundings and thus described the sea from the more or less fixed point of . , does not in her writings, at least explicitly, address the issues of her personal life, emotions or motivation for writing, like many of the other diarists of the same period do (Kauranen 2009: 8). The diary is not written in the first person . , her life and her sister Alexandra Gustava presumably more or less wrote the last entries on her behalf (Norima 1999: 7). Her writing is highly prosaic and scarce to the point of being impersonal, and the genre is somewhat difficult to define. This chapter aims to analyse the perceptions of winter in Eva Christina Lindström’s writings in the context of life writing and nature observation practices in the latter part of nineteenth century Finland. How was winter described, Firstly, this is the first known diary or a notebook from Finland that has been written by a non-elite woman, one who does not represent the gentry. Being the only one, it has no comparison material. Secondly, the notebook covers a long timeline of perceptions of seasonal change. As such, it is a rare source into everyday life and experiences of winter. Her social class alone makes the diary a rare evidence of the life of a Finnish-speaking crofter family in the archipelago. The first entry is written in 1859 and the last in 1893, the notebook thus covers almost half a century. The period includes many winters that were , , when eight percent of the Finnish population died from hunger and hungerrelated diseases. The population dropped from 1.840.000 in 1865 to 1.730.000 in : . , : .

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on economic and political structures, while the grassroots experience and the aftermath of the events have been studied only recently, first within the microhistorical tradition and recently in the mnemohistorical frame. 2

Writing Practices and Literacy in the 19th Century

Landscapes and places are felt and experienced individually, but representations are needed to communicate these experiences to others (see . . diary is usually written by one person, it can also be thought of as a literacy practice, which is a key term in the new literacy studies that emphasise the social and cultural character of reading and writing. The approach also takes into account that reading and writing are not only cognitive skills of individuals but social practices that are learned and appropriated in a cultural context (Edlund 2013: 90). Although the number of literate people was steadily rising in the latter half of the 19th century, most of the common people were still illiterate, or they only knew how to read, but not how to write. Most of the literate people were of all Finnish women had enough literary skills to write a diary at the time . , , reading and writing in Finland, as well as in Sweden and Norway, were usually regarded as separate skills, and in the nineteenth century writing skills . , , had been in the interest of the church since the seventeenth century (Kuismin : . opment of literacy as such, but also in material and cultural writing practices and the entanglement of oral and written culture (Keravuori 2007, 131). Anna Kuismin has called the texts, produced by rural people with no formal education, ‘life writing from below’ (Kuismin 2018: 5). Eva Christina was the firstborn daughter of a crofter family. She remained unmarried and lived at her birth home on her home island for her whole life. Her many tasks included outdoor work on the island selling the fish and provisioning food for the workers at the nearby dockyard (Norima 1999: 7). She belonged to a social class that was not wealthy but living in the archipelago where the climate was warmer than inland provided means for a reasonable livelihood even during the years of crop failure. Eva Christina did not get a formal education and she was more or less self-educated, as most of the ‘common’

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writers of the time were. This meant, probably, that she was in contact with literary culture in some ways as a child and in her adult life. We do not know whether or how much she was appreciated for her writing skills in her family, but writing skill usually had societal dimensions (Keravuori 2017: 149). Anna Kuismin has argued that talking about common or ordinary people is misleading, because at a time when such a small portion of people had writing skills, writers were exceptional in their communities (2018: 51). literature she had access. From the content of the notebook, and also from what is known of other more or less typical peasant families, one can draw the conclusion that the family had at least a book of catechisms, an almanac and in the later years maybe newspapers. The accuracy and a certain formality of Eva Christina’s expressions imply that she was familiar with bookkeeping . , expressed by a rich and varied vocabulary describing the surrounding nature and seasons, which give a rhythm and a frame to her life and writing. The trips to sell fish in the nearby town were short, but they gave a chance to be in a regular contact with people outside the family circle and might be one of Eva Christina’s reasons for writing the notebook. Writing was also a way for her to keep record of her trips, the price of fish, and the weather conditions, which affected everything else. Although the statistics of literacy in the nineteenth century are not accurate, it has been assumed that the literacy rate was higher in the archipelago than inland. Both reading and writing were important for people involved in commerce and seafaring. The statistics, however, include only men, so the number of literate women remains remarkably unclear. , the elite and education. Written Finnish language was net yet fully standardised and the spoken language had an under-privileged position in the society (Kuismin 2018: 51.) , in a larger frame of evolving writing practices. Perceptions and observations on the weather and seasons are a basic content in all letters and diaries of 19th , . national culture of the 19th century, seasons were also under special attention 3 She did not attend school, but learned how to read and write under the supervision of Tuomas , did not have the formal status of a teacher. Norima 1999: 7. 4 The statistics regarding 19 century literacy are gathered by C. Ch. Böcker, secretary of the Economical Association of Finland in 1830s. He based them om reports by priests and municipal officials. On literacy in the archipelago, see Keravuori 2012: 58–59.

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in literature, historiography and the emerging sciences of meteorology and geography, as well as in landscape art. Of all seasons, winter was considered as a defining feature of Finnish geography, history and landscape. The most influential individual in describing and characterising the Finnish landscape, , , . , Finnish nature and people could only be understood through nature and the , . , , nexus were essential in the Finnish tradition of geography and history (Tiitta : . all the seasons, including winter (Tiitta 2004: 329). During his long and wideranging career, he was an author, a historian, a geographer and an amateur meteorologist (he had, for example, a rain gauge, which he used regularly). He initiated the practice of collecting plants in the Societas pro Fauna et Flora , . way, his practice as a scientist did not differ very much from the practices of amateurs (Tiitta 1994: 55). , of nineteenth century Finland. He kept a diary from early on in his life. He had learned to make weather observations and write them in a diary from his father, who was a doctor (Tiitta 2004: 93). As a teacher, he was deeply impressed by . , diaries (Tiitta 1994: 354). Writing a diary was, in his opinion, a good way to learn . writing for him was not only a way to get published and find readers, but also a method for making observations and recording perceptions; seeing, naming . Both keeping a diary and observing the nature were part of the 19th century culture of the gentry, and one way to understand the diary of Eva Christina is to set it in the wider context of these other diary-writing practices of the time. , on the other may also help to analyse the notebook and the way seasons are written about. Diaries and notebooks written by common people could even be seen as a vernacular genre of nature writing. Thus, Eva Christina’s diary might not be as elaborately written as that of Topelius or other gentlemen of the period. Her writing could be considered as vernacular writing, a term used by Ann-Catrine Edlund to describe everyday

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, . , according to Edlund, opposes dominant literary forms, because vernacular writing is not valued as highly, being connected to everyday life and experiences and in language that is not as formal or elevated (Edlund 2013: 92). 3

Writing about Winter

Winter is a common topic in the non-analytical tradition of popular ethnography publications which are based on ethnographical collections but are nonanalytical by nature. Seasons and seasonality are often taken for granted in the Western urbanised world, and even researchers in landscape studies and landscape history have often studied time and space separately. Even in Finland, a Northern country, where the seasons affect almost every spectre of life, the seasonality of culture has not been given much attention in modern research by cultural geographers or historians. A book-length study Winter in Finland, . . and Helmer Smeds was published in 1967, but the topic has not been dealt with extensively after that. Still, the 19th century literary culture provides a vast amount of material from all strata of society for the study of the topic. Using a notebook to understand a landscape brings about certain challenges. First, it does not give a sense of the whole in a same way that a visual representation might give. Eva Christina’s language is, however, extraordinarily rich in expressions concerning the material, bodily effects of winter weather, , . , vast number of words describing the different states of snow in early win, . , often depended on the durability of the ice and whether it was strong enough to hold people and horses to get to town or church. For people living on the islands thin, uneven or soft ice was a true risk, so knowing how to estimate the conditions of the ice was a necessary skill for everyone. A wrong estimation could cost the life of a person or an animal, or both. Eva Christina, too, had to witness death by drowning and the diary has several accounts of drowning incidents caused by weak ice. On these occasions, Eva Christina does not write about her emotions, but she seems to very punctual about writing about the accidents, whereas she rarely mentions death by natural causes.

5 See e.g. Hottinen-Puukko, Heli: Suomen talvi: päivästä päivään 2015. 6 Palang etc. 2007: 5.

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This, however, should not be understood simply meaning a lack of sorrow or grieving. We know from history that infant and child mortality was high at that time and although earlier research has taken it for granted that high mortality rate also meant a colder attitude towards death in the family, the latest research has shown that this is not the case. Demographic facts do not determine emotional distance, and for example in eighteenth century and early nineteenth century Sweden, both women and men grieved their dead children. Drowning was a common occurrence in insular life and having a man die (most of the drowned seem to have been men) in the family must have been an immense loss in a household involving so many different kinds of chores. Drowning is always an unexpected, sudden way to go. The affective side of drowning and other accidents cannot be underestimated, although the notebook does not reveal emotions. The death would have had a direct conse . , have meant, among other things, more work for the others, since the chores would have had to be redistributed. Eva Christina, who did not have children of her own, and was not tied to tending them, probably inherited some of the chores. When writing about the weather, Eva Christina often refers to a weather säittenriita). By this, she probably means what would be called a frost heave (kelirikko), the time between two seasons when there is so much ice in the water that moving about by boat , . 1858, Eva Christina wrote about living between two seasons and what risks it : , other, “this is going to be the last time”, and still we crossed the sea again.’ Living on an island meant a constant observation of the ever-changing sea. Crossing the sea was essential for many reasons: for going to church or going to town to sell fish and to buy food, and maybe for visiting relatives, although Eva Christina only mentions necessary tasks and visits related to practical assignments or church going, such as christenings of the children of the family. The ice was not only an enemy; when the ice was thick and safe, moving around was fast and easy, and the life at the islets could actually be more social . , , thick enough to carry a horse, gave more possibilities to move from one island to another, but the risk of drowning was always present. 7 Marjo Kaartinen has studied mothers and fathers, and their writings about child deaths in early modern Sweden. See Kaartinen 2014. 8 / / . .

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The family sold fish and probably bought many necessities in the nearest , . implies is that Eva Christina was not alone in forming her perceptions about . , . that although the family lived close to nature and had many traditions that they could lean on to survive, the traditions did not give straight answers, they had to be negotiated. Perceptions and writings about the weather are deeply embedded in shared understanding and culture, just as any other form of writing. Cold may be an empirical fact that can be measured but feeling, perceiving and experiencing, let alone writing, about a cold winter are culturally and historically conditioned, and thus changing. Although Eva Christina’s life had many features of old, even premodern traditions, she was at the same time in many ways connected to a society that was going through modernisation. The sole fact that she was writing a diary in Finnish connects her to the ideas and practices of nationalism and education emerging in the nineteenth century Finland. One thing that carries traditions in Eva Christina’s texts is the way she uses and writes about the senses. When she talks about the seasons, she often refers . accurate and precise as possible; for example, she gives very exact measures, although she does not mention what kind of a mechanical device was used for the measuring. Most often, she had to rely on her own senses, as in the following example, where she describes the cold and unsettled spring of 1861: . was ice, it held, and then in another place we had to go with a boat. The times are very cold. On the morning of Ascension Day, it snowed about three inches, then a storm came, we could not get to church. During the sowing time it was oddly warm. A week before midsummer it was very cold, at first there was a hailstorm. After that it was warm again. But the smell of the wind was always cold. These notes were written during a year, when the seasons were extremely unpredictable and cold, but a present-day reader knows more than the writer herself; that the cold wind was a sign of more cold years to come. The years 9 tänä käväl ol nii sekast säittenrita / siinkuin jää oli se piti ja toisest paatil / kovast kylmä aika / Hela Torstan atton amull 3 tuuman vaehel rupeisi Storma / ej Kirkon pästy / Touvon aikan oli Tavatoman Lämmint viiko / Ennen Mittmaaria kovaste kylmä / alku raket tuli / Jälke taas kaunista / mut se tuule haju ol aina kylmä. Lindström.

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when Eva Christina wrote her notebook were also the years that caused starva . , , tion died of cold, hunger or hunger-related diseases, such as Typhus. The Hunger Years were the last large scale famine in Europe. For the contemporaries in Finland it was, however, not a single event, because there had been cold winters and crop failures also during the 1850s and 1860s. What made the years , the same time. The previous crop failures had usually occurred locally and they had not destroyed all the grain types in a same year. (Huhtamaa, 2017, 44–48.) Eva Christina herself did not starve during the Great Hunger Years, but she . she lived some people had to go begging. She does not disclose precise names of places, and we cannot really know how far exactly her geographical knowledge and imagination expanded and how much she could know about other parts of Finland, but with other terms she seems to be as precise as possible. , almost impossible to get anywhere, she writes: Even the beggars cannot get here because there is so much snow. They say that on the continent people are dying of hunger and cold. There is so much snow that the poor can’t get firewood from the forest. Stealing is . , because the beggars steal food and clothes. The people in the villages . are thirty beggars coming every day. Even in the description of a situation, which must have been extremely difficult to endure, both having to face a possible hunger and having to deal with the starving beggars, Eva Christina seems to be, once again, precise. After she has written that there were thirty beggars, she continues to make note of the exact prices of fish, wheat and potatoes. The year before, in 1867, is the first time she writes an entry without precise details, as if to pinpoint the fact that the situation is no longer in control. Money has lost its value and she can only describe the state of ice. She writes: During the feast the frost was hard. Because of the changes (in income), no one has money, and the dead can’t get buried. Lots of people are dying. Not even the high and mighty has money. One is asking for this, the other for that, there are no potatoes left. The hunger is on the islet, and on the . , .

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, the loss of it means a true catastrophe, but it can also be thought of as an indication of a modern way of forming perceptions. The amount of the local vocabulary and the fact that Eva Christina lived her whole life in the same house, and maybe the fact that she was a woman might easily lead the researcher to study the diary as a piece of evidence of a life that was traditional, unchanging and static. This was not the case, as the family depended on fishing and selling the fish (mostly Baltic herring) at the market of Uusikaupunki, reflecting a more or less modern economy. The diary, in addition to being rich in multisensory expressions of nature and seasonal change, is also very exact with regard to , . , : The ice eased three days before May Day. They say that in town there are all sorts of fish. On Saturday the 30th, a bucketful of Baltic herrings cost 30 pennies, perches 30 pennies, and the weather was beautiful. The sheep were let out the 3rd of May, it was as warm as in Midsummer, cattle . suddenly turned to the North and it became cold. Eva Christina writes a lot about the smell of the sea, but she never writes about . what Alain Corbin, a pioneer in the study of the history of senses and especially smelling, wrote about the role of smell in the 19th century. Corbin discusses the history the olfactory sense. According to Corbin smell had in the Western culture long been understood as the lowest of the senses, as visual and audiovisual information had been valued more important. Smell, however, especially the bad smells of poverty and filth such as those associated with the miasmas of the cities, had an important place in the social imagination and . 19th century urban Paris offered rich descriptions of the smell and speak of of a new kind of sensibility of the olfactory sense. (Corbin 1986: 56). Eva Christina’s notebook can be considered modern in many ways, but there are no mentions of industry or industrial life in it, and she speaks of smells only in the context of nature. She did however visit the nearest town Uusikaupunki regularly and met seamen who had travelled further. She also mentions other towns and cities where the fish was being sold at or where the bigger ships sailed, such as Turku, Tallinn or Copenhagen. Uusikaupunki was a small in , . , not mean an isolated life, nor a life committed only to fishing and agriculture.

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This is important to note because the cultural tension between urban and rural culture has traditionally been strong in Finnish politics and historiography, starting from the first decades of the twentieth century, especially the 1930s, and peasants, backwardness, an anti-urban way of life and cultural conservativeness have often been seen to be connected. She perceived and wrote about nature with multiple senses, but by writing down her observations, she entered the realm of modern world of literacy, counting and predictability. Thus, her connection to nature should not only be seen in the context of locality and tradition. Although most of her descriptions relate to oral culture and discussions between people, there are a few hints in the notebook, that she gathered information also from other written . , , , . . been written in the newspapers that animals are dying of thirst’, she writes. Although direct mentions of them are scarce, it is likely that she read newspapers. Finnish newspapers had, from the very beginning, a strong geographical content. New findings were introduced and the geographical vocabulary in Finnish language was developed partly in the newspapers aiming at educating : . with geographical concepts and had a geographical imagination of the globe and places, that was wider than her immediate environment. Eva Christina visited the town regularly. The trips were part of her life and income, but there is no contestation between the two, no value judgements about urban, modern life in her texts. She could write about the trips to town , , city were often done when the weather was favourable. A close look at the hierarchies of the senses in her writing tells of a woman who uses her senses diversely. Touching, feeling and smelling are at least as important as looking and she has a rich vocabulary for describing the senses. An interesting feature in her text is that she very rarely writes about the darkness of the winter. The sensitivity she has for the winds and the ice is something that no longer exists, but it is still understandable even if some of the words are incomprehensible. However, her not mentioning the darkness of the winter leads one to think about the historicity of experiencing light and dark. 10

“Sanomisa puhu et elämekin näntyvät janon.”

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4

Folk Tradition, Astrology, Science

, , often the first format for regular writing among the peasants and crofters in the 19th century Finnish countryside. Calendars contained blank interleaves between the months, which were often used for personal notes (Kauranen 2009: 8). The calendar-like form led to writing practices detached from the physical almanac. (Edlund 2007, 29). . ble to think of seasons without calendars, whether one lives in the countryside or in a city. Calendars had an immensely important role in the 19th century in the construction of a standardised, shared conception of time. Weather forecasts were printed in the first official almanacs produced in Finnish already in 1705. The first forecasts were not based on meteorological observations, but rather on astrology. The first weather book for peasants in Finnish was published in 1773. dictions based especially on the moon movements. The book was, however, not based on local folk tradition. The weather predictions were more or less directly translated from a Swedish book called Bonde-Practika Eller WädherBook published already in 1662, which, again, was a translation of a German book Die Bauernpraktik, which had been published in 1508 and translated into several languages. These books, although claiming to derive from folk tradition, were based on astrology (Peltonen 1998: 118). Alongside the predictions of weather based on astrology, many people, especially enlightened and literate, were also coming to contact with the develop , . critical about the weather predictions based on the Moon and stellar positions. As a matter of fact, professor of mathematics Nicolaus Hasselbom, who was also in charge of the publication of the Finnish almanac, did not want to publish such predictions. After two years of refusal, he gave up and the predictions were published again in 1728, and it was not until 1888 that they were removed : . was not only practiced in laboratories or behind desks. Meteorologists needed weather reports from as many places as possible, and many ordinary people were involved in the gathering of this material. 11 12

. , removed from the calendar in 1833, but in commercially published calendars, the predictions persisted until the beginning of twentieth century. (Stoklund 2002: 95). , , wuoden juoxu, ajat ja muutoxet, yhdestä wuodesta toiseen tunnettaman pitä 1773.

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The first attempts to create weather stations in Finland were made already , , but the meteorological activities did not become regular and publicly known until the 19th century. G. G. Hällström started a new phase in the field in 1820. Official weather reports started to be set out on a more regular basis and : . of the century, announcements were posted in front of railway stations and published in newspapers. The role of scientific observation of nature took a great leap forward when the weather predictions were removed from official calendars in 1869, but it did not stop farmers or fishers from predicting the so-called traditional way. Measuring time in daily, weekly and annual periods depends on different ways of reading, using and analysing nature, but the scientific, religious, popular, agrarian and national ways of observing the nature were in many ways entwined. Understanding and writing about nature and culture merged, but also contradicted each other, overlapped or were in a dialogue with each other. Hällströms’s publication on frost (Afhandling om nattfrosterne I Finland, 1820) was groundbreaking academic study, but it was also well known outside academic, professional circles. The research report was widely read and it is for , , whose poem (written in Swedish) ‘Bonden Paavo’ was published in his first collection of poems Dikter in 1830. The poem was translated in Finnish already in 1831 in a newspaper, and after that, there have been at least ten translations. The most famous translation by Paavo Cajander is ‘Paavo of Saarijärvi’ (Saarijärven Paavo). Generations of Finnish schoolchildren have read and learned the poem by heart (it is still in the schoolbooks): the story of a peasant whose crops the frost takes year after year, but who never gives up. The story of Paavo can be understood as a foundational national narrative, and it has . an example of how scientific, poetic and national discourses merge. Bonden Paavo takes the scientific observation as its starting point and gives it a nar, . , . 5

Conclusion

The poem of Paavo was an influential story already in its own time, and the figure of the hardworking peasant has persisted in the literary descriptions of famine and survival (Jussila 2018). Alongside these highly literal romantic peasant characterisations, there is a possibility to listen to stories and

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. , kinds of stories about the survival of Finnish peasants in the cold winters. One of the key achievements in new literacy studies has been the archival work and the discovery that there are much more writings from common people than has been known. The literary stories have persisted, and they are definitively important, foundational stories, but alongside them it is possible to hear the words of people who are experiencing the cold and facing the hunger themselves. These two narratives are worlds apart, and again they are not; they share an attempt to describe a Finnish winter and it is worth studying them in the same context of seasons. The beginning of 19th century until the Great Hunger Years saw many cold winters. Discussions of famine and undernourishment in 20th century have shown that the agrarian societies were prone to crisis not only because they had to face adverse climatic conditions but also particular rural cultures (Beranger 2007: 146). The specificities of the latter can be approached through biographical sources, which can widen the perspective of environmental history towards lived experiences and a more nuanced way of understanding change and modernisation. Famines and disasters are important to study in the context of climate, politics and society, but history . lived with the seasons, to see the strategies they have created and what kind of room for personal agency there could be found. , with the examples above, academic, poetic and vernacular observations are all different ways of knowing, but in the society of the late nineteenth century they were not entirely separate but overlapping. The emerging modern culture of reading and writing was merging not only different classes but also different ways of knowing and understanding the Finnish winter. Bibliography Archival Sources

The diary of Eva Christina Lindström. The archive of the city museum of Uusikaupunki.

Literature

Abram, David. 1997 (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous. Perception and Language in a . : . 13

See also Lappalainen 2013 on the famine of 1695–1697.

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Beranger, Wolfgang. 2010 (2007). A Cultural History of Climate. (Trans. Patrick Camille). Cambridge UK: Polity Press. Corbin, Alain. 1986. The foul and the fragrant: Odor and the French social imagination . 1982). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edlund, Ann-Catrine. 2007. Ett rum for dagen. En studie av två kvinnors dagboksskrivande i norrländsk jordbruksmiljö. Umeå: Kulturgräns norr. , . . . , . . White Field, Black Seeds. Nordic Literacy Practices in the Long Nineteenth Century. (Studia Fennica. Litteraria.) Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Forsberg, Henrik. 2020. Famines in Mnemohistory and National Narratives in Finland , . . of the Faculty of Social Sciences 131/2020 Economic and Social History. University of Helsinki. , . . , , taustalla [Chilly spring, severe winter –Climate, weather and harvest underlaying : . , Nälkävuodet 1867– 1868 [Hunger Years 1867–1868]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura Hottinen-Puukko, Heli. 2015. Suomen talvi: päivästä päivään. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Jussila, Tuomas. 2018. ’Saarijärwen Paawosta ei näy wiwahdustakaan’ – Nälkävuodet . . . Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Kaartinen, Marjo. 2014. ‘”Nature had form’d thee fairest of thy kind”: Grieving , Safley (Eds) Childhood and Emotions 1300–1800. : . , . . Writers’ in Nineteeth-Century Finland’ in Ordinary Writings, Personal Narratives. Writing Practices in 19th and early 20th-Century Europe. Peter Lang . Kauranen, Kaisa. 2009. ’Menneisyyden muistiinpanojen kirjo’ in Kauranen, Kaisa (ed.) Työtä ja rakkautta, Kansanmiesten päiväkirjoja 1834–1937. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Keravuori, Kirsi. 2017. Saaristolaisia. Elämä, arki ja vanhemmuus laivuriperheen kirjeenvaihdossa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Keravuori, Kirsi. 2012. Itseoppineet kirjoittajat, kirjeenvaihdon kulttuuri ja kirjeet egodokumentteina. Tutkimus Janssonin laivuriperheen kirjeenvaihdosta 1860- ja 1870-luvulla (unpublished Licentiate thesis). Turku: University of Turku. , . . Life Writing From Below. The European Journal of Life Writing .

ine , . . . . . , . . White Field, Black Seeds. Nordic Literacy Practices in the Long Nineteenth Century. (Studia Fennica. Litteraria.) Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. , . . . . White Field, Black Seeds. Nordic Literacy Practices in the Long Nineteenth Century. (Studia Fennica. Litteraria.) Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Lappalainen, Mirkka. 2012. Jumalan vihan ruoska. Suuri nälänhätä Suomessa 1695–1697. Helsinki: Siltala. Laine, Päivi. 2003. ’Sanomalehdet oppikirjoina. Ensimmäiset suomenkieliset maantieteelliset kirjoitukset’ in Kurki, Tommi et al (Eds) Suomettaren helmoista. Tutkielmia 1800-luvun suomen kielestä. Turku: Kirja-Aurora. Lindström, Eva Christina. Luotolaisnaisen päiväkirja 1859–1893 (Ed.) Mauno Norima. , , . . : . Conversations with Landscape (Eds.) Karl Benediktsson, Katrín Anna Lund. Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception. London: . . , . , . . Winter in Finland. London: Hugh, Evelyn, London. , . . , Suomalainen sääkirja etanasta El Niñoon. Helsinki: Otava. , , , , . . , , , , Seasonal Landscapes. . / . : . , . . Ilmatieteen laitos 1838–1988. : , . Stoklund, Bjarne. 2002. Danish Peasants in the Process of Modernisation. Some note . , , . Writing Peasants. Studies on Peasant Literacy in Early Modern Northern Europe. Odense: Landbohistorisk , . Tiitta, Allan. 1994. Harmaakiven maa. Zahcarias Topelius ja Suomen maantiede. (Bidrag till kännedom av Finlands Natur och Folk.) Helsinki: Suomen Tiedeseura. Waterton, Emma. 2012. Landscape and non-representational theories in The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. : .

PART 3 Nationally Laden Emotions

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‘The Penguin is to be a Norwegian Bird’: Nationalising and Naturalising an Alien Animal Peder Roberts Abstract This chapter examines two ill-fated attempts to introduce penguins to Norway, in , . transplanting penguins could be considered a means of enriching the avian fauna of a specific region that already possessed rich bird life, thus boosting tourism at a time of economic difficulty. Attempts to render the birds a desirable, even natural part of a Norwegian environment drew on both a wider current of nationalistic polar geopolitics and a more specific sense that penguins could improve an already notable avian . , penguins tends to be told in a way that obscures one of the most important actors – the geologist, conservationist, and polar nationalist Adolf Hoel.

Keywords Adolf Hoel – penguin – cultural fauna – Norwegian nationalism – nature conservation

, broadcaster nrk’s website on 21 October 2010 (Lyngmoe and Lysvold 2010). ‘Yes, you read that right.’ Beneath a slideshow of surreal photographs of young Norwegian children sitting happily among king penguins in a decidedly domestic setting, the journalists Helge Lyngmoe and Susanne Lysvold described briefly how penguins were unsuccessfully introduced to the southwestern . some of the richest avian fauna in Norway. And within it, the islet of Svinøya – about half a kilometre across by less than three hundred meters across at its broadest point – became the home for a penguin colony. Nora Helgesen, who played among the penguins as a small girl (her father Helge was their overseer), recalled what a ‘fantastically fun (artig) time it was’. © koninklijke brill nv, leide , 2022 | 

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Unfortunately for the Helgesen family, the penguins failed to thrive. The last , History Museum in Oslo – said that they might have in theory been able to settle in northern Norway, but that today getting permission to try would be impossible. ‘Such an experiment would never be permitted today, on the grounds of environmental conservation or animal welfare. But this was the end of the 1930s, and then there was a different perspective on things, and obviously permission was given’ (Lyngmoe and Lysvold 2010). This paper is about that perspective more than it is about the actual penguins. According to an article published by the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature in its yearbook for 1942–43 (and issued in 1945), nine king penguins (Aptanodytes patagonicus) reached Norway from the Antarctic in August 1936 and were divided between Svinøya and Gjesvik, near Nordkapp in Finnmark (Anonymous 1945). The experiment seems to have been a debacle, as the penguins all escaped within a short period of time and prompted startled reactions from residents of Norway’s northern coast (who killed at least two), while the survivors continued to be sighted throughout the war – and beyond. The failure of the first settlement did not deter a second attempt at , Spheniscus demersus) and macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus), which lasted some months in 1938. My goal is to explain how these animals became symbols of Norwegian nationalism in addition to instruments for improving both the physical and economic geography of a particular corner of the nation. Helge Helgesen was just the final component of a considerable network that brought the penguins from the Antarctic in addition to justifying their introduction, and incorporating them within wider political and economic narratives. This included establishing the penguins as assets rather than threats to the particular landscapes to . , and author Carl Schøyen to write a paean to both the birds and the long-standing culture of the island’s human residents, was held to be ripe for improvement as well as preservation. Studying how the introduction of penguins came to be seen as rational and desirable reveals how the mental landscape of 1930s Norwegian nationalism interacted with the Norwegian landscape. A curious footnote to history is in fact emblematic of a particular strand of nationalist environmental thinking during the 1930s. As Dolly Jørgensen and , Jørgensen 2016). The Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature, which , became enrolled as the major institutional backer (at least in moral terms) of

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the introduction of penguins. The Society in turn bore the strong imprint of Adolf Hoel, the geologist and agitator for Norwegian polar sovereignty who took over the Society’s leadership in 1935. Without his connections to the whalers who worked in Antarctic waters, the penguins would never have arrived – and without his vision of Norway as a polar empire whose riches would benefit the fatherland, their introduction would have lacked a moral justification. 1

Polar Imperialism and Polar Fauna

Beyond the research conducted for the 2010 nrk story, the account of the venture in the Society’s yearbook has become the main reference for later accounts of the penguins, in addition to stories in both the local and national Norwegian press (Myrstad 2009, Pilegaard-Simonsen 2009). recur: those of Helge Helgesen, the local who oversaw the operation on Svinøy, and of Carl Schøyen, the writer who fronted the Society’s sponsorship of the venture. Yet the name of the most important figure in the whole story is barely ever mentioned (for an exception see Skarstein 2009). Adolf Hoel, the Society’s leader and an aggressive campaigner for Norwegian polar interests, played a puppet-master role throughout. The polar territories were sources of wealth, but also symbolic resources that validated Norwegian nationalism, a considerable concern for a state that had only gained full independence from Sweden in 1905. able sources of prestige, Norwegian hunters and trappers had long been active on the Spitsbergen (from 1925 Svalbard) archipelago and off East Greenland and were at the forefront of the booming Antarctic whaling business that , , erts 2011, Dyrdal 2019). Adolf Hoel first conducted fieldwork on Spitsbergen in 1907, beginning a career in which he sought to both know the polar regions and to control them in the name of the Norwegian nation (Drivenes 2004). These goals received a boost in 1925 when the Svalbard Treaty confirmed Norwegian sovereignty over the archipelago (while guaranteeing the economic . leader of Norges Svalbard- og Ishavsundersøkelser (n i ), a department within the Norwegian civil service responsible for managing Norwegian activities in the Arctic. n i became both a logistical service, responsible for shipping and 1



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expeditions in the Arctic, and a scientific bureau through which maps were constructed, place names allocated, and researchers given guidance. These functions in turn furthered Hoel’s concern for establishing Norway as a polar colonial power, and for inscribing polar territories with Norwegian authority . , Hoel tapped into the longer tradition of viewing environments as capable of improvement in the hands of colonial administrators (see notably Hodge 2007). Dolly Jørgensen has studied the introduction of muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) from East Greenland to Svalbard and the Norwegian mainland in 1929 and has concluded that Hoel viewed muskox colonies outside East Greenland as a kind of hedge against potential collapses in the Greenlandic populations, with the catastrophic effects that would have for fox farms and sledge dogs . an asset within the broader context of Norwegian colonial power, the introduction of muskoxen strengthening Norway’s control over East Greenland. Transplantation to a new environment was viewed as unproblematic, especially when harnessed to the goal of preserving a population in its indigenous range. At the same time, Jørgensen argues, Hoel viewed muskoxen on Svalbard as potentially useful sources of meat and wool for those living on the archipelago (Jørgensen 2013b). The animals were geopolitical as well as nutritional resources, their presence validating the improving effect of Norwegian control upon the environments of Svalbard and East Greenland. Hoel’s initial hope was to receive a mandate for both the Arctic and the Antarctic, on the grounds that Norway’s considerable economic interests through whaling ought to be safeguarded through responsible state regula : . were dashed by the government of the day, which feared Hoel’s nationalistic bent would create unnecessary problems at a time when Norway’s relationship with Britain in the Antarctic was tricky, many of the magnates shared Hoel’s dreams of Norwegian polar empire. The most important – Lars Christensen – supported Hoel’s Arctic work throughout the 1930s, including the contro tional Court of Justice ruling that all of that island was Danish territory. Legal party Nasjonalsamlingen – which infamously served as a puppet government under the German occupation. East Greenland, like Norway’s inchoate claims 2 Hoel’s biographer Einar-Arne Drivenes has linked this incident directly to Hoel’s decision to ,

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in Antarctica (held by nationalists such as Hoel to be vulnerable to theft from Great Britain), proved a rallying point for radical nationalists as the decade wore on. Christensen’s Antarctic whaling simultaneously boosted his own bottom line and burnished his status as a civic leader, a captain of industry who advanced the interests of the erl nd, as he put it in a letter to Nansen : . during the period 1926–37 invoked territorial control and economic gain, but also invoked polar fauna as resources to validate his work. When an expedition sponsored by Christensen discovered fur seals on remote Bouvetøya, newspapers soon credited him personally with plotting their introduction to Svalbard territories, potentially establishing a valuable industry in an animal whose populations had been decimated elsewhere (Aftenposten 1929, Amtstidende . , that eiders would be sent in the opposite direction (without giving a reason why the latter might be useful) (Aftenposten 1929). The plan never came to fruition. But Christensen and his allies later claimed credit for pushing Norwegian laws to ban the hunting of fur seals in the Antarctic, thus counteracting British criticisms that exploitation rather than responsible management drove Norwegian interest in the Antarctic. of Nature. The Society had long been concerned with protecting specific environments within Norway in the name of natural heritage – analogous to cultural heritage – allied to a desire to foster appreciation of nature similar to that which inspired Yellowstone (Berntsen 1994: 39–41). As Tamara L. Whited has put it, the Norwegian scientists who pushed for these measures ‘viewed nature conservation as part of the construction of a nature’s culture : . The Society also pushed for laws protecting specific animals and took credit for preserving the beaver in Norway in addition to establishing reserves for areas particularly rich in plant or bird life (Berntsen 1994). Bredo Berntsen has cited fears from as early as 1914 that poor administration of the archipelago’s natural environment would undermine Norway’s claims to authority at the international negotiating table (Berntsen : . hunting on Svalbard, to protect specific animals, and to preserve certain areas completely. Although reindeer were completely protected on Svalbard and the polar regions among its political goals. Frode Skarstein notes that Hoel met Adolf Hit . Skarstein, p. 172.

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polar bears protected on the remote Kong Karl’s Land, Hoel’s visions of large national parks or nature preserves did not become reality during his lifetime. Once Hoel took over at the Society, much of its daily business became incorporated within the structure of n i . shared many of Hoel’s nationalist leanings but took a very different course during the war) functioned as Society secretary, and other n i staff also answered correspondence and performed accounting. This integration makes it difficult to fully separate Society business from n i business, especially in areas where the two share obvious links. The Society’s archive is entirely silent on the first , n i channels with the Society’s imprimatur invoked as validation. There is colonies, though both were already known as some of the richest sites for bird , . Hoel and the whalers, who brought the penguins from Antarctica, and with the . , the small numbers and lack of infrastructure suggest, it might well have had a commercial purpose in addition to tourism. Correspondence within Hoel’s n i , ters indicate that the penguins came from the Antarctic via Lars Christensen, with whom Hoel was increasingly close. Christensen’s desire to build a civic legacy in the Antarctic was only strengthened by the bad press he received for his business dealings, leading to a concerted effort to make his last two Antarctic expeditions into legacy-building exercises. The absence of a paper trail suggests an element of opportunism to their arrival. So does the fact they were clearly not enough to sustain a colony (especially when divided into two groups), lending a further suspicion that their value was ornamental rather than economic. A larger amount of evidence exists concerning the second settlement, in 1938. Hoel felt that the fact the penguins had survived after escaping was evi . , resistance to their presence seems to have come from residents of northern Norway, many of whom were entirely unaware of what a penguin was. This was worst for the Finnmark penguins, two of whom were killed by locals who in 3 Hoel was likely aware of the Australian Douglas Mawson’s belief that Antarctica could become an economically viable colony (including through the collection of penguin eggs), and a cartoon in his papers from 1932 concerns the introduction of penguins to the north, but a direct commercial motive is missing from his records.

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both cases apparently ‘thought it was the Devil himself they saw’, as Hoel dismissively told Christensen. and newspapers could help inform the public about their new residents – and why the next attempt to introduce penguins in 1938 was accompanied by a concerted campaign to establish the penguins as legitimate members of the nation. 2

Enriching a Local Fauna

, , been well established in public consciousness as a peculiarly suitable place for birdlife. Most of the credit for this must go to Carl Schøyen. Born in 1882 in Kristiansand, at the southern tip of the Norwegian coast, Schøyen spent the , where his uncle served as the lighthouse keeper (Norby 2009). The experience left a deep impression on the young man. Schøyen returned many times to . literary name with the 1915 book Nord i værene, which described the birdlife human existence in islands dependent upon the cruel sea, and he returned to the birdlife of the area in Fuglefjell (1929). hovedfagsoppgave through to 1930, Benjamin Guérif has argued that ‘hamskiften’ – the dual process the early twentieth century (Guérif 2002). Schøyen (1915) wrote that the shift toward large-scale fishing, safer but without the element of personal engage , uncomfortable with. Even the young feared the transformation of fishing to something akin to ‘office-work’ (Schøyen 1915: 176). The absence of danger and struggle would transform the character of the people. The economic depression , fishing years toward the end of the decade. Economic change came alongside the stronger regulatory hand of the central Norwegian state. But there were also opportunities for individual entrepreneurs. Guérif (2002: 80) notes that the 1900 census recorded seven new ‘businessmen’, including a father and son from the county of Helgeland in southern Nordland who took up residence in Kårøy 4 Hoel to Christensen, 7 April 1938. Statsarkivet i Tromsø (SaTø) S-0902/D/Db/L0209/0006.

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. , , would dabble in schemes from kelp and algae processing to fishmeal and tourism promotion – and penguin farming. resource rather than simply a feature of the local cultural and physical geography. Schøyen’s rhapsodic descriptions of the birds were interwoven with his descriptions of the people who lived near and sometimes among them. His writing on the Lofoten islands exemplified the national romanticisminfluenced spirit that historian Henry Minde (2009) has identified in Schøyen’s writing about Sami in far northern Norway. Schøyen’s explanations of cultural form were rooted in the landscape, the peculiarities of Sami and non-Sami life in northern Norway a product of ‘extreme natural conditions’ (Minde 2009: 291). While Minde stresses that Schøyen did not see himself as writing in opposition to the project of Norwegian state-building, Schøyen’s distillation of Sami culture into practices based on land use (especially reindeer herding) bore similarities to the central role he gave fishing in his descriptions of life on Lofoten. Birds were also woven into the same environmental tapestry that . was important, but so too was their status as components of the cultural fabric of life in Lofoten. Schøyen’s descriptions sometimes veered close to anthropo , the human and the avian. Little wonder then that Schøyen became an increasingly vocal advocate for the protection of birds, a long-time concern for the Society for the Protection of Nature and an issue that by 1938 had in his eyes reached a crisis point (Schøyen 1938a, 1938b). While protection from hunting was the obvious step to maintaining bird populations, an almost off-hand comment reveals another strand of Schøyen’s thought – that the Norwegian situation contrasted unfavourably with other countries where people ‘sought to reintroduce bird species that have been exterminated, or added new species’ (Schøyen 1938a: 11). The crucial point for Schøyen was not the preservation of an ecosystem or even a species for its own sake, but rather the persistence of the avian part of the human-avian . , . Fuglefjell Schøyen approvingly cited the words of an unnamed wise man that ‘The people must help God’ (Schøyen 1929: 102). ‘Without the birds our beautiful coast would feel like the kingdom of the dead’, he warned in 1938, describing their : . local birdlife (unlike their counterparts elsewhere in Nordland county), but even then he insisted that by far the greatest part of the predations were the

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fault of ‘visiting strangers’ (1929: 100). A decade later Schøyen argued that the fishermen and workers of the coast had become the greatest friends of the birds – and the fox farmers who sought meat for their livestock the greatest scourge. Schøyen’s link between local people and local birds hinted that the welfare of the latter might bolster the welfare of the former. Here his work bringing the rich birdlife to public attention helped in to foster a growing sense that Lofoten constituted a tourist destination in its own right. The islands became popular with visiting artists in the 1920s and 30s, drawn to its combination of striking physical geography and precarious fishing culture, and by the end of the decade there were discussions about upgrading the ‘primitive’ accommodation the bird-tourism trade. A small grant was made for upgrades, but the owner of the guesthouse promptly died and the money went unspent, a fact not lost on the enterprising Helge Helgesen – who sought to get state subsidy for a large new building replete with hot water and electricity. There is one final element of Schøyen’s outlook that is relevant to this discussion, namely the distinction between the local and the foreign, and how penguins were incorporated into the former category. His emphasis on the role of environment in shaping culture reflected the national romanticisminfluenced philosophy of the Society, with its long-standing commitment to preserving sites of specific national importance and insistence that natural in addition to cultural heritage formed the nation’s patrimony. Schøyen’s campaigns to preserve certain areas and animals had a nationalistic angle that led to him (and Hoel) publishing in the radical nationalist journal Ragnarok, founded as part of an ‘attempt to establish an autonomous and essentially : . ing that Hoel brought Schøyen’s works to the attention of potential founders of new Society branches. The key to reconciling the organic link between nature and culture that Schøyen espoused with his willingness to support the intro from Norway’s polar colonies. Within the polar imperialism that Hoel championed, Norwegian cultural values became inscribed on lands distant from Scandinavia, and on their fauna and geology. Just as the polar territories had been made Norwegian through 5 Nord-Norges Turisttrafikk Forbund to Kommissionen for nye arbeidstiltak, 2 March 1938. , , / / / / / . 6 , . / / / / L0030/0060. 7 , . PA-0641/O/Oa/L0001/0010.

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human endeavour and judicious improvement of nature, the fauna from those territories might now benefit the mainland. This was the point Hoel made to the local chapters of the Society when he introduced his latest plan to introduce penguins in May 1938, on the grounds that it would ‘enrich the land’s avian fauna with Antarctic species’. The desirability of enrichment pre . , Antarctic rather than local was itself a matter for contestation. This was neatly captured in the subtitle of the article Schøyen wrote for the national newspaper Tidens Tegn on 4 June 1938 – ‘The penguin is to become a Norwegian bird’ . . Schøyen’s article was emblematic of the differences between the first and second attempts to introduce penguins, and the investment of material and cultural resources devoted to making the second attempt stick. Hoel’s initial plan was to procure more king penguins – thirty this time, enough for a colony – through the whaling operator Lars Klaveness. Upon receiving an , South Georgia – denied him permission to take any more king penguins, being unsure that penguins would ‘take up habitation in Norway’, but allowed him to take thirty specimens of the ‘smaller varieties’ and to come back for larger ones if their introduction was successful. Evidently this deal was acceptable, mission to take up to thirty ‘specimens of the common varieties of Penguins’ from South Georgia. Klaveness duly took thirty penguins north in the southern autumn of 1938. Meanwhile, Hoel received word from the biologist Erling Christophersen, member of a Norwegian expedition to the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha (also British territory), that he had procured thirty penguins there and wanted someone to make arrangements for their care once they reached Norway. Hoel told Christensen that he had already procured some money through the Society for their care and would consult further , Olstad, both veterans of Christensen’s great Antarctic expeditions. Holtedahl also held the post of vice-chairman of the Norwegian Geographical Society, a 8 9 10 11 12

Hoel to Society kretsforeninger, 30 May 1938. SaTø S-0902/D/Db/L0211/0011. Hoel to Klaveness, 16 February 1937. SaTø S-0902/D/Db/L0211/0011. Stephen Gaselee, Colonial Office, to Erik Colban (Norwegian minister in London). 3 June 1937. SaTø S-0902/D/Db/L0211/0011. Gaselee to Colban, 20 December 1937. SaTø S-0902/D/Db/L0211/0011. Hoel to Christensen, 7 April 1938. SaTø S-0902/D/Db/L0211/0011.

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key institutional backer of Norwegian polar exploration and the philosophy of polar imperialism. The arrival of such a large number of these ‘beautiful and remarkable birds’ was a boon, and the fact the escaped king penguins continued to be occasionally sighted in the wild suggested that the new attempt might be successful. The next step was to find somewhere to put the penguins. According to an article published in the Oslo daily Morgenposten on 25 March 1938 – and reprinted in regional and local newspapers – the penguins were to be settled on Tjømø, near the whaling towns of Sandefjord and Tønsberg (Anonymous 1938). The previous attempt had been a failure because there were too few penguins, meaning greater numbers would produce a better outcome – a logic that ignored the fact any number of penguins would be insufficient if they dispersed. The Society would be in charge of the birds’ wellbeing, and the newspaper confidently predicted that their successful settlement would right a historic wrong. ‘Hunters and fishermen have long since eradicated the great auk from the earth’s surface’, concluded the article, so ‘the penguin may thrive on our coast, so that we have something to replace that which is lost’. The crudity of this logic – that penguins from the far South Atlantic could compensate for a superficially similar animal indigenous to the Norwegian coast – revealed the lack of consideration given to what the penguins might actually need or want to survive, and the overriding importance of constructing an avian fauna that pleased human tastes. Not everyone shared Hoel’s optimistic view that the introduction of pen . Tønsbergs Blad, a local , idea had been thought through. What was their value to Norway, given that their meat tasted fishy and they were sure to interfere with the work of fish . fauna with penguins was by a goal in its own right. Despite Hoel’s acknowledgment that the introductions were something in the nature of an experiment, suggesting awareness of potential failure, the dominant theme in the Society’s conservation rhetoric was criticism of human intervention in the form of hunting. Destroying fauna was bad, enriching it good. As Schøyen’s article in Tidens Tegn suggested, the process of becoming indigenous was culturally rather than ecologically mediated, the penguins becoming Norwegian through sponsored residency rather than birthright. And yet, despite this campaign to 13

Hoel to Christensen, 7 April 1938. SaTø S-0902/D/Db/L0211/0011.

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construct the penguins as Norwegian birds, the animals themselves still had to be enrolled in the project. The man charged with acting as overseer of the penguins, Helge Helgesen, was described in March 1938 by the tourist traffic board of Northern Norway as ‘a particularly enterprising and capable man, with whom we have always dealt . The economic upheavals of the 1930s created uncertainties that in Lofoten that could portend either a bright or a dark future (Hovland 1995, Guérif 2002). Carl Hudtwalcker, a German-Norwegian businessman who travelled to Lofoten in April , local fishermen while noting that the industrialist J.M. Johansen dominated the life of Stamsund to the extent that locals apparently referred to him as “the tsar” (Hudtwalcker 1976: 48). Another painter, Albin Amelin, commented in a letter from March 1936 that many fishermen owned little beyond their boats , northern Norway) (Aaserud and Ljøgodt 2006: 28). , duced maps of the areas where birds could best be enjoyed (including landing sites) and was a member of a working group for tourist facilities. When a pro 1937, Helgesen approached the Commerce Department in Oslo for a subsidy to enable him to build a new facility on land that he owned. The viability of this expected to grow, and that birds would be the primary driver for that growth. Through 1938 and 1939 Helgesen prepared plans for this facility (including a detailed set of drawings commissioned from an architect), with the encouragement of the tourism association, but the war made it impossible to convince the Commerce Department, who baldly observed in September 1940 that ‘the whole [tourism] business is crippled’. Helgesen also propose a series of alternative schemes involving factories for , of local exports, none of which seem to have borne fruit despite Helgesen’s long and often self-pitying series of letters to the Commerce Department. A 14 15 16 17

Nord-Norges turisttrafikk-forbund to Kommisjonen for nye arbeidstiltak (within Han, . / / / / . Nord-Norges turisttrafikk-forbund to Kommisjonen for nye arbeidstiltak, 2 March 1938. / / / / . / / / / . , . / / / L0030/0060.

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recurring theme in these letters was the need to stimulate local employment through rational exploitation of local resources. The office of the lensmann backed Helgesen’s plans for a kelp factory on the grounds that ‘help for helping oneself is the right path’ – rather than alternatives such as relocation to the mainland or subsidised labor. schemes to the introduction of penguins, but the dots are not hard to join. , attempt to improve the local economy (and the wealth of Helgesen himself), . Unfortunately for Helgesen, Hoel, Schøyen, and all the tourists who might have come flocking, the penguins refused to cooperate. On 2 August 1938 Helgesen recorded the details of in a letter to Hoel that reads in large part like a justification written to a superior, including a protestation that the troubles that befell the birds had been outside his control. Many of the penguins seemed to be in a malaise (sture) and so after consultation with the local doctor and the painter Dagfin Werenskiold – who had experience with Arctic birds – Helgesen agreed to Werenskiold’s suggestion that eight of the remaining fifteen birds be released, albeit only after Werenskiold invoked his personal relationship with Hoel to mollify the worried Helgesen. Hoel had by now telegraphed Helgesen to release the remaining penguins, overriding a previous message wondering if tourists might be charged for viewing them. Even though the experiment as a whole was clearly trending in the wrong direction, Helgesen remained optimistic: discovering that one kind of penguin did better than another was a result in itself, he asserted, and the experiment ought to be tried again in coming years. Helgesen would be disappointed. The last entry in Hoel’s penguin file , the penguin enclosure was for sale. The Society’s 1942–43 yearbook – which was actually printed in 1946 – concluded by asking readers to report sightings to its main office (Anonynous 1946: 16), and penguins were spotted on the coast of Norway as late as 1949 (Myrstad 2009: 75–77). But like the puppet government Hoel supported, and the philosophy of polar imperialism that he championed, the penguins sym . 18 19

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, . S-6176/F/Fa/L0030/0060. Helgesen to Hoel, 2 August 1938. SaTø S-0902/D/Db/L0211/0011. SaTø. Pilegaard-Simonsen (40) has noted that many of the details were published in an article that same day in Lofotposten, which reinforces my suspicion that the letter was largely meant to cover Helgesen’s back. Hoel to Greger, 20 April 1939. SaTø S-0902/D/Db/L0211/0011.

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yearbook article cannot be read without consideration of its wartime context, which framed the cast of acceptable and unacceptable characters. Lars Christensen spent the war working at the New York office of the Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission (Nortraship), helping Norwegian merchant shipping to aid the Allied war effort. Perhaps this is why he was excised from the story. At the same time, by the time the yearbook reached print the war was over and Hoel was already persona non grata, name was omitted from the text entirely. Those same political commitments ensured that Hoel’s legacy within . reworked n i , ment of polar engagement within the more internationalist framework (Barr 2003, Friedman 2004). The Society faced a similar crisis. Hoel was disgraced and ultimately served eighteen months in prison for collaboration. Berntsen’s claim that the ‘almost complete collapse’ of the Society was down to the (Berntsen 1994: 95). But Hoel’s administrative control certainly left an admin . leadership pushed (successfully) for regulations protecting two transplanted species on Svalbard – the muskox and the Greenlandic hare (Berntsen 1994: 77) – in addition to pushing for penguins to be included in the category of seabirds protected from hunting on the Norwegian coast (Anonymous 1939: 5). These actions reflected an embrace of the polar imperialism Hoel championed, and . no coincidence that the 1942–43 yearbook featured penguins on its cover. 3

Conclusion

The power of fauna to represent culture should not be underestimated. Having , wreak through bringing fauna to new environments. The rabbit represented the careless self-centeredness of British imperialism with its fondness for recreating domestic comforts in an alien setting; the cane toad represented the introduction. The first cane toads arrived at Gordonvale in northern Queensland in August 1935, beginning a narrative framed in terms of tragedy rather than triumph, of invasion and despoliation of an environment. The penguins of northern Norway – who began to arrive barely a year after the cane toads – have been plotted as a curious farce, yet they were embedded within a cultural context that bespoke a similarly simplistic view of physical

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geography as capable of control and manipulation in the name of cultural or economic advancement. When Hoel wrote of wanting to ‘enrich’ (berike) the avian fauna of Norway through the introduction of penguins, he summoned a particular tradition of nature writing, a particular concept of polar imperialism, and a particular set of economic circumstances to render the penguin a logical element of the Norwegian fauna. Almost two centuries earlier, Carl von Linné had discovered that economic necessity was not enough to make tea plants grow in Sweden (Koerner 1999). Hoel’s attempts to introduce penguins were superficially more logical, given the rough climatic similarities, but they had . Had the penguins thrived, we would likely be having a similar conversation today as recently took place concerning the island of South Georgia, from which the macaroni penguins came. The reindeer settled by the whalers nearly a century ago flourished, but they are currently the target of an eradication project in the name of ‘environmental protection and sustainable ecosystem management’ (Government of South Georgia 2013). A species that once enhanced a specific environment through its presence – at least in the eyes of the humans who imported it – now finds itself in a similar category to Australia’s rabbits. As the subtitle of a popular article on the eradication program put it, ‘Sometimes it’s not pretty when we have to undo our ecological mistakes’ – firmly suggesting that a wrong was being righted, the island returned to its rightful, natural, inhabitants – chiefly the penguins (Adalbjornsson 2018). exotic, a process dependent upon the discourse of Norwegian polar imperialism and the willingness of those who most valorised Norway’s birdlife, such as Carl Schøyen, to welcome the penguin as a valued member of that fauna. The penguins would be no more natural a part of the environment than the oildrillers whose presence is currently so controversial. Acknowledgements

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Bibliography Aaserud Anne and Knut Ljøgodt. 2006. Fra Paris til Svolvær: kunstnere i Lofoten i mellomkrigstiden Tromsø: Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum.



ober , . . , Atlas Obscura (published 24 December 2018). On line at: https://www.atlasobscura. com/articles/reindeer-in-the-southern-hemisphere (consulted 1.2.2019) Anonymous. 1929. ‘50 pelssel skal overføres fra Bouvetøen til Svalbard’ in Aftenposten (16 September 1929). . . . ingsforening går i spissen for et nytt forsøk’ in Morgenposten (25 May 1938). Anonymous. 1941. ‘Sjøfuglenes skjebnetime’ in Naturfredning i Norge årsbok 1938–39: 5–7. . . Naturfredning i Norge årsbok 1942–43: 16–18. Berntsen, Bredo. 1994. Grønne linjer: natur- og miljøvernets historie i Norge. Oslo: Grøndahl Dreyer. , . . , in Tønsbergs Blad (30 May 1938). , . , . at: https://naturvernforbundet.no/lofoten-vesteralen-og-senja/sterk-allianse-foroljefritt-lofoten-vesteralen-og-senja-article36529-1467.html (consulted 30.1.2018). , . . , (eds), Norsk polarhistorie 2: vitenskapene Oslo: Gyldendal: 175–257. Dyrdal, Didrik. 2019. ‘“Whaling and the Extermnation of the Great Whale”: Norwegian and British Debate about Whale Stocks in Antarctica, 1913–1939’ in Environmental History (25,1): 87–115. , . . : tional National Socialism in Norway’ in Fascism (4): 119–133. , . . , (eds) Norsk polarhistorie 2: 331–420. . . . : https://www.gov.gs/docsarchive/ / / _ sept.pdf (consulted 5.2.2018). , . . : bygd (1814–1930 årene)’, hovedfagsoppgave in history. (Trondheim). Hauan, Marit Anne. 2004. ‘Det sterke, frie liv i villmarken’ in Drivenes and Jølle (eds) Norsk polarhistorie 3: Rikdommene. Oslo: Gyldendal: 177–217. Hodge, Joseph M. 2007. Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism. Athens: Ohio University Press. , . . . Strand (ed.) Næringslivet i nord-Norge gjennom 100 år: rapport frå historieseminariet 29.-30.10.1993 (NF-rapport 3/95). Bodø: Nordlands Forskning.

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Hudtwalcker, Carl H. 1976. Dagboksblader fra en reise i Lofoten 1936. : forlaget. Jørgensen, Dolly. 2013a. ‘The Great Greenland Hunt’. On line at: http://dolly.jorgensena. / / (consulted 30.1.2018). , . . : http://dolly. . / / (consulted 30.1.2018). Koerner, Lisbeth. 1999. Linnaeus: Nature and Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. , . . , . : http://www .nrk.no/nordland/slik-endte-pingvinene-sin-skjebne-1.7341925 (consulted 15.3.2013). Minde, Henry. 2009. ‘Litteratur og politikk i Carl Schøyens Tre Stammers Møte’ in Einar Niemi and Christine Smith-Simonsen (eds) Det hjemlige og det globale: festskrift til Randi Rønning Balsvik. Oslo: Akademisk Publisering: 289–303. , . . . Lofotboka: Årbok for Lofoten . . : : . , . . : . http://nbl.snl.no/Carl_ Schøyen/utdypning (consulted 1.7.2013). , . . Havørna (20): 40. , . . The European Antarctic: Science and Strategy in Scandinavia and the British Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. , . . Journal for the History of Environment and Society (1): 65–87. , . . : of Svalbard as a Norwegian Space’ in Social Studies of Science 46(6): 894–911. Schøyen, Carl. 1915. Nord i værene: skildringer. Kristiania: Gyldendal. Schøyen, Carl. 1929. Fuglefjell. Oslo: Gyldendal. , . . , the Agriculture Department in December 1937 and reprinted by Nordlandsposten through Bodø Boktrykkeri. , . . , Avis through Stokmarknes Aktietrykkeri. , . . Tidens Tegn (4 June 1938). Skarstein, Frode. 2009. ‘Men så kom den 9.e april’: Adolf Hoel, den glemte polarpioneren. Oslo: Happy Jam Factory. Tønnessen, Johan N. 1967. Den moderne hvalfangsts historie bind 2: Verdensfangsten. Sandefjord: Norges hvalfangstforbund. Whited, Tamara L. 2005. Northern Europe: An Environmental History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio.

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Making the National Landscape: The Case of Koli, Eastern Finland Juha Hiedanpää and Lasse Lovén Abstract . , new perspective on geographic history and use the pragmatist conception of ecosystem services ( ) as a tool to study the birth and development process of a national landscape. e are defined as ecosystem functions that are valuable for human wellbeing and livelihood, both on a personal and community level. We identify key cultural e from different eras of time, discuss what the benefit streams in each of them are, . , , . , way of understanding the role of cultural e as a constituent of, and in, constituting a national landscape. The genealogical approach to Koli enables us to create a threepartite hypothesis how habits, customs, and ecosystem features intertwine as cultural e and provide emotional inspirations, resilience and social cohesion to individuals and communities.

Keywords Koli – national landscape – cultural ecosystem service – pragmatism – abduction

1

Introduction

The geographic and environmental attributes of landscapes are under continuous spatial and temporal changes and these changes are interlinked with shifts in the culture and meaning of the landscape (Déjeant-Pons 2006: 363– 384). A landscape is not just a panorama of natural scenery or the surrounding ecological environment, nor is it a geographic system as such (Lindström, : . , , © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470095_010

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historical, multifaceted and complex and in a multitude of ways constituted , , 2004: 335–355). This complexity is present when assessing the landscape from a historical perspective. For instance, Worster has identified three lines of work within the field of environmental history, and this tripartite division of labour is built around the separate realms of ‘nature itself’, the socioeconomic interaction between humans and nature, and ‘mental interactions”’ between humans and nature (Worster 1989: 289–307; Sörlin, Sverker and Warde 2007: 107–130). These all point towards the different areas of research and different units . , unit of analysis implies assumptions concerning what actually changes, what . , , : : : . is how cultures grow and how to give cultural growth an evolutionary explanation. Our pragmatist claim is that culture grows when habits and customs of human-environment interactions take new sustained directions (Dewey 2008c: 63–188; Dewey 1980). This happens when new ways of feeling, doing committed to them (Peirce 1997: 107–285; Hiedanpää and Bromley 2016). This general claim is definitely not a new one. The classical pragmatists John Dewey, Charles S. Peirce and William James have held this, but what is novel is our abductive hypothesis that the pragmatist concept of cultural ecosystem service (e ) helps to specify this evolutionary process of landscape. Until now, the focus of studies on landscape evolution has been mainly on the physical, economic and aesthetic characteristics of landscape and land use , : . , the understanding of the role and significance of culture in socioecological change has remained undeveloped in the literature on e . Our case is the Koli landscape, lying in the region of North Karelia in Eastern Finland, which represents one of the 27 national landscapes in Finland. National landscapes of Finland were selected by the Finnish Ministry of the Finland. The 27 selected landscapes represent the special environmental and cultural features of Finland. They have great cultural or historical value and significance for the Finns (Häyrynen 2000: 5–19). , and their regional and national value defined in a working group set by the Ministry of the Environment in 1992. The working group included some 150

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rural landscapes in the landscape conservation plan. As a specific definition, the working group assigned the Koli landscape with the status of ‘the national scapes’. Simultaneously with this work, in 1992, another working group defined and nominated ‘the national landscapes of Finland’ in order to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the independence of Finland. The emerging political and economic awareness concerning the value of the status of the ‘national landscape’ encouraged most of the Finnish regions to lobby for their own special landscapes. What resulted were the 27 iconic ‘national landscapes’ that intertwine and integrate the specific aspects of relationship between nature and culture in Finland, and, perhaps especially, reveal the presumed Finnish national identity that is built upon these landscape features. ‘national landscape’ is larger than inside the rural ‘valuable landscapes’. The gallery of ‘national landscapes’ includes seven agricultural heritage landscapes, six lake landscapes, five mixed natural landscapes combining water, forests and special topography, four urban or semi-urban landscapes, three seascapes and two industrially developed waterfalls. Unmanaged naturalness iconic national landscapes. Koli manifests the co-evolutionary process of e and human activities in a . of time as periodic cross-sections in the historical case analysis and identify key cultural e focusing on those tangible and intangible benefits that locals, artists, scientists, politicians and visitors have derived from the Koli landscape in different eras. Further we shall analyse how the assigned meanings and significance have shaped the habits of mind and action in local and wider settings. 2

Cultural Ecosystem Services and Landscape Evolution

What we call natural landscapes are mostly formed by human-ecosystem inter. , , is to understand the interdependence of underlying ecosystem functions . , initiative for combining ecosystems and human systems has become widely used – ecosystem services (Daily 2002; De Groot, Wilson and Boumans 2002: 393–408). Already the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment ( e ) defined that e are benefits people obtain from ecosystem ( e 2005). This succinct def

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. , denotes to the continuous life-sustaining features of ecological interactions that keep the established settings – a human space of possibility – adaptive and resilient in the face of internal and external disturbances, and ecosystem services, on the other hand, are those historical contingent features humans have become accustomed and their livelihood and wellbeing dependent on (Smil 2013; Haines-Young and Potschin 2010: 110–139). sion, regulation, cultural, and supporting services. Cultural e , according to the e , are featuring ‘nonmaterial benefits people obtain from ecosystems’. e specifically lists ‘cultural diversity, spiritual and religious values, knowledge systems, educational values, inspiration, aesthetic values, social relations, sense of place, cultural heritage values, recreation and ecotourism’ ( e 2005). Of the four elements, the cultural e are the most neglected (Chan, Satterfield and Goldstein 2012: 8–18; Milcu, Hanspach, Abson and Fischer 2013: 3). of cultural ecosystem services have emerged (Fish, Church and Winter 2016: , : , , : , : . , four types of ecosystem services have nonmaterial and intangible dimensions and there are cases when intangible dimensions matter more to people than : . , is that human culture is strongly influenced by ecosystems and ecosystem change can have a significant impact on cultural identity, social stability and institutional change (de Groot, van de Berg and Amelung 2005: 455). Many current efforts aimed at maintaining cultural identity also often promote environmental conservation. For instance, the concept of cultural landscapes depicts the co-evolution of human society and their environment (Stevens 1997). Especially the challenges of incorporating landscape aesthetics, cultural heritage, recreation and tourism, spiritual and religious significances into planning , and Lavorel 2011: 441–449; Daniel, Muhar and Amberger et al 2012: 8812–8819; Müller, de Groot and Willemen 2010: 1–11). The explicit challenge presented in current literature is how to make sense about the interdependent dynamics of natural and cultural systems. What is Our purpose is to extend the above understanding of the concept of e and cultural e . We take up this task by employing a non-dualistic socioecological conception of cultural e to explain the historical changes of the Koli

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landscape. As e already helped us to understand, e are benefits from nature to humans. But, in addition to this, we hold – by leaning on pragmatism, especially that of John Dewey and Charles S. Peirce – that the existence of ecosystem services entails human presence and creativity. Services do not simply flow from nature to humans. Livelihoods, customs, habits and wellbeing cumulatively build on and grow in a continuum of agent-environment interactions. Ecological conditions have afforded certain human habits, and, in turn, human habits have afforded certain ecosystem features to become meaningful and useful to humans (Hiedanpää and Bromley 2016: 35–54). Our key claim is that culture – habits and customs – makes natural and humane surroundings meaningful and assigns some the features with a special significance. For Dewey (2008a: 363), culture refers to ‘the material and the ideal in their reciprocal interrelationships’. Culture is a general body of shared habits which make co-existence possible. Peirce extended the meaning of shared habits and co-existence: ‘Once you have embraced the principle of continuity no kind of explanation of things will satisfy you except that they grow’ (Peirce 1:175). According to Peirce, human-environment interactions must be understood as constituents in an ongoing process of semiosis, i.e. a continuum of feeling, effort and meaning making (Short 2007; Bergman 2009). Local habits and customs are never fixed for once and for good. Peirce insisted that the semiosis plays important role in evolutionary process: semiosis is a purpose-seeking struggle for adjustment and stability and ultimately for survival and growth in changing environments (Deacon 2012; Hoffmeyer 2008). Of course, then, landscape can also be understood as a sign process, semiosis (Farina and Napoletano 2010: 177–187). For Arnesen, landscape as a whole is a sign that stands in a triadic relationship with the object (ecosystem, land) and the interpretant (the community) (Arnesen 1998: 39–50; Arnesen 2011: 363–376). Peirce (Peirce, 2:228) regarded a sign as ‘something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity’. For Peirce ( 2: 247–249) a sign can relate in three ways to its object: […][A] Sign may be termed an Icon, an Index, or a Symbol. An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own […] An Index is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object […] A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the Symbol to be interpreted as referring to that Object. 1 Charles Peirce’s Collective Papers are conventionally cited by volume and paragraph number.

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, , . . between a sign vehicle and what it represents. For instance, the sign of foot . depends on contiguity, correlation or causal connection. For instance, physical signs of forest fire may indicate careless human use of fire, slash-and-burn agri, . , . reference is often described as being independent of any likeness or physical : . tantly, and unconventionally, Peirce ( 5:135) notes: ‘the meaning of a symbol consists in how it might cause us to act.’ Peirce ( 5:135) continues: ‘“how” cannot refer to the description of mechanical motions that it might cause, but must intend to refer to a description of the action as having this or that aim.’ , inborn)’ (Peirce 2:297). 3

Research Strategy

Our research strategy is to combine the abductive logic of reasoning with the genealogical and narrative method of studying culture. vices and identify points of discontinuities and offer plausible explanations for why these discontinuities, ruptures and shifts might have occurred, i. e. what purposes they seemed to have served. Our intention is not to prove a certain pre-formulated hypothesis right or wrong (i. e. deduction). Neither is it our purpose to test theory by piling up empirical observations for the sake of seeing how closely they agree with a theory (i. e. induction). As Peirce stated: ‘All the ideas of science come to it by the way of Abduction (Peirce 1997: 218). . only justification is that if we are ever to understand things at all, it must be in that way.’ And he (1997: 230) continues: ‘Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis.’ Our work is genealogical as we identify phases of customs and habits in history that are composed of particular cultural and natural interactions and meanings in particular place. We have not presumed a linear development, but rather a punctuated pathway of development which can be approximately traced and identified by focusing on the continuity and ruptures that constitute . , follow Michel Foucault. According to him, carrying out genealogy ‘means that

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i re 9.1 Koli area in Eastern Finland.

: . The events that make up history for a genealogist are things such as ‘the reversal of a relationship of forces, the usurpation of power, the appropriation of a vocabulary turned against those who had once used it’ (Foucault 1984: 88). : powers, i. e. how it has become one of the most precious national landscapes e have contributed to this process. We mainly use written historical documents on the natural and cultural history of the Koli area. These historical documents include learned studies and memoirs. We intertwine the theoretical insights, the conceptual tools and personal experiences with the historical materials in our analysis. The second author has a long working history as the manager of various Finnish national parks, including Koli. He has collected local oral heritage and observed local habits during the community-based fieldwork. The strategy enables us to interpret the singularity of events and critical shifts in the developmental pathways. 4

Cultural Ecosystem Services in Koli

4.1 Totemistic Landscape Since the end of the last glacial period, the Koli landscape has been undergoing continuous change. As the rocks, moraines and eskers were revealed, they

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were soon covered by pioneer species and ecosystems. Birch, aspen, willows needs. The spruce entered from the east about 5000 years ago creating boreal forest ecosystem. The post-glacial land-lift, even today 5 millimetres annually, brought the dry-land ecosystems above the post-glacial ice lake. Later, this watershed lake, today called as Pielinen, outrun periodically in three different directions. During this long era, the summit of the Koli hill grew from 150 to 250 meters above the lake level (Hyvärinen 1966: 1–72). The earliest signs of human cultures around the Koli landscape are from 10,000 years ago (Kirkinen et al 1994; Tallavaara et al 2010: 251–260). Families and small communities of hunters and gatherers lived on the shores of Pielinen and the early Finnish Lakeland. The region afforded good hunting grounds and , . . , ested hill (now 347 m above the sea), but in the Finnish context, especially in , has always been understood as a small mountain. Besides these aspects of subsistence, the most significant feature was that the Koli served as a site of communication between the people and the Pagan Gods. The ancient Bear culture, as the people are now known, worshipped Bear (Pentikäinen 2007). There was a major place for sacrifice and worship at the top of the Koli (Taskinen 2000: 94–103). The place is known as Ukko-Koli.

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Photo: Lasse Lovén.











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boulder on top of the Ukko-Koli Hill. Photo: Lasse Lovén.

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On the top of it was – and still is – an anthropomorphic rock with a crack above it, which was according the local oral tales used as an altar in sacrificial ceremonies. Ukko is the name of the highest God in nature according to ancient Finnish mythology (Ganander 1984). The gifts to the Gods were given through . . , showed their gratitude to the Gods for success in hunting, asked for advice, and spoke their minds and concerns. Strongly integrated to communication with the Gods, there was another reason to climb the Koli Mountain because one , . sparking stones were not easy to find. The people of the Bear culture used the stone as flint for fire. The ancient Bear culture and the Koli Mountain environment were tightly intertwined in the local habits of a subsistence economy and the customs of relating the daily lives with wider cultural significances, which we may call as a Totem for the community. 4.2 Black Hills Landscape The Koli landscape in the historical European Middle Ages had reached the topographical dimensions of today. The forest cover was dense and the old

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growth forests dominated the ecosystem. Due to the high level of ground magnetism thunderstorms have continuously hit the hillsides and produced storm damage and small-scale forest fires. Also the winters, especially the rather regular heavy snow loads on trees, have caused small scale ecological disturbances by breaking the treetops on hills (Norokorpi and Kärkkäinen 1985). Due to the forest damages the rocky ground of Koli landscape was almost inaccessible. and also finally the Koli landscape (Weibull 1993: 21). As the Swedish frontier moved from the west to the east, those people who resisted the power of Sweden`s Crown moved to the east ahead of the frontier. The secular reason for resistance was to avoid Swedish governance, and the religious reason was to maintain the ancient native culture and Pagan practices. Fugitives of both kinds found the Koli landscape. The forests and caves afforded fugitives and outlaws safe hiding places. The Koli landscape also provided another kind of shelter. Namely because of the long traditions of exercising the religious beliefs and practices of the Bear culture around Koli, the fugitives adopted and further developed these ancient Pagan stories, this time for their own purposes. They purposefully changed the custom of considering the effect of the God’s benevolence to a more negative view. According to the revised cultural lore, the Koli hill was now occupied by hostile gods, i.e. negative powers that bring about bad luck, sorrow and death (Tuononen 1995; Taskinen 2000: 94–103). The shield of fear prevented outsiders from entering the Koli landscape (Figure 9.4). , : . Besides affording shelter, the Koli landscape provided prey for hunters, fish for , sistence living in that period. Small scale agriculture was also practiced, mainly the cultivation of swidden turnip (Brassica rapa), which these frontier people . 4.3 Slash-and-Burn Landscape The new settlements on the Koli hillside changed the landscape remarkably; between 1775 and 1810 the area of grain fields and pastures grew from 5 to 48 hectares, and the number of cows increased from 12 to 131 (Saloheimo 2000). The direct and indirect human impacts of the increasing cultural and social interactions on the Koli landscape were rapid and tangible. The slash-andburn fires and smoke were significant signs of the Koli settlement at the landscape level. 2 http://weppi.gtk.fi/aerogeo/en/ visited in 7.9.2012.

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Saarelainen, Metsähallitus.









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Lutheran Christianity and the new economical concept of utility and enlightenment spread with the Swedish governance from the west. By 1750 it had reached Koli. The Swedish administration sent the vicar Jacob Stenius, also known as ‘Korpi-Jaakko’, to the Koli-Pielisjärvi region to spread the word and initiate a local Christian community (Cederberg 1928). Korpi-Jaakko personally took five farmer families to settle on the hillsides known as Black Hill and afforded them with the rights to use certain parts of the surrounding forest . . birth of formal communal life in the core of the Koli landscape. The families slashed down the forest, and by burning it they revealed and unleashed the fertile powers of the land for agricultural purposes (Figure 9.5). They cultivated rye (Secale cereale) and swidden turnip, and the swidden meadows and for kyyttö (Kantanen 1999: 52). The sacrifices that were earlier given to the holy spirits of Ukko-Koli were now replaced by the ‘Butter Tax’ paid to the vicar (Saloheimo 2000). Not only the ecosystem, but also the community and culture, changed dramatically. Conflict between old and new Koli dwellers were rising and still being reality in the beginning of the 20th century. The nuances and residues of the former Bear and Fugitive cultures were pushed to the margins as the Christian forms .

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priority was agricultural production. People produced food and they moved physically closer to each other. They learned to apply new methods of culti. were initiated. Markets started to take their early forms as some ecosystembased products could be sold or exchanged with the other dwellers around the Lakeland. For the local Koli farmers Koli landscape was now the concrete fatherland, creating safety and hope for the future. 4.4 Landscape of National Romantics The Koli settlement enacted a pastoral heritage landscape with the traditional constructions such as log-houses, smoke saunas and wooden fences around the pastures. Fire was used to transform the natural forests into agricultural lands. The rocky pristine forests of low agricultural potential were used as pastures. The role of lake in trade and in transportation was increasing. The com . , economic reasons for the felling of timber in the pristine forests. The cuttings were mostly selective, i. e. only the largest trees were cut, so the impact on the regional landscape was generally not dramatic. The rapid changes in industrial development, new cultural ideas of national romantics and political nationalistic ambitions brought the Koli landscape into

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: . the Koli landscape as a practical and accessible field demonstration of the . the Koli landscape in 1899. Copies of this painting rapidly found their places on . , , the new national-romantic movement called ‘Karelianism’ started to have a growing influence in society (Sihvo 2003). The Koli landscape already played a significant role in these early processes of building the Finnish national identity (Häyrynen 2005). The World’s Exposition was held in Paris in 1900. The Finnish Pavilion manifested the basic codes of Finnish national identity and its design drew from the same Karelian hinterland where the Koli existed as a physical core of the forest and lake environment (Smeds 1996). The success of the Expo activated , scape’ fresco was created in 1910 by Eero Järnefelt together with Alfred William . , , way station in Helsinki. The Koli painting by Järnefelt, and this Koli-fresco later became art-icons of Finnish culture and identity. Also, the other major Finnish artists visited Koli and found inspiration in its aesthetic powers (Lukkarinen and Waenerberg 2004: 20–91). The novelist Juhani Aho wrote a novel Panu about cultural change in the frontier community (Aho 1897). And, perhaps most famously, the composer, Jean Sibelius recovered from the collapse of his creativity in Koli during the autumn of 1909. As a sign of revitalisation he composed one of his masterpieces, the Fourth Symphony (1910–1911), in praise of Koli and his Koli tour companion, Eero Järnefelt (Tawastjerna 1997). , . , . ,

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. Autumn landscape by Lake Pielinen. Oil painting, 1899. Kansallisgalleria.

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20th century were critical to the future of Koli. The manufacture of firewood was a growing enterprise of the day, and in 1906 the area previously known as Black Hill was reserved for cutting, the firewood having already been ordered for St. Petersburg. A local school teacher contacted key people in Helsinki and brought the plans of the private forest owners to the public. The first environmental dispute in Finland on national level was initiated. The elite of , influence the decision by giving nationalistically flavoured reasons. As a con, bought the Koli Hill and designated it in 1907 as a conservation area. The Koli Hill formally became a protected area (State Park status) in Finland in the same year. , export, which did not make the Senate’s choice an easy one. However, the shift from the tangible economic benefits to intangible landscape amenities was the beginning of a new era for Koli. The reasons for using the scenic landscape . , . . Koli become considered a symbol of Finnish nationality and identity and more valuable in producing cultural values than in provisioning goods such . , nature tourism destinations in Finland (Hirn and Markkanen 1987). The Koli landscape was admired akin to a sacred place for pilgrimage, and that gallant motive was carved into the national collective iconography and imaginary. Landscape for Health and Recreation . in the fields were removed with machinery and heaped into large stone piles, , disappeared, and a new western high productive field cattle breed was introduced. New and wider roads opened up the Koli village and landscape to more 4.5

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/ . . . Metsähallitus ”sen vaaran torjumiseksi, joka uhkasi Kolin luonnonihanuudestaan kuuluisia näköaloja selänteellä aljetun metsänhakkuun kautta” oikeutettiin ostamaan Kolin ydinalueen; Karjalatar sanomalehti 24.9.1907; 108, 1907. ”Koli lunastettu valtiolle, senaatin vahvistus.” P.W. Hannikainen, Kuinka Koli joutui valtion haltuun. Suomen Matkailijayhdistys. Matkailulehti 3, 1915.

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. trails, service centres, hotels and down-hill skiing slopes remarkably changed the Koli landscape. Modern forestry practices altered the landscape; the slashand-burn forest practices were replaced by clear-cuts, sometimes several tens . During the period between the world wars, Finland experienced far reaching structural and functional changes in its economy and society (Hjerppe 1988). Typically for the 1930’s, the elite classes were worried about the national , especially that of the working classes and the landless people of rural areas . , nessed by the elite to promote the general idea of healthy people. Two arguments were put together: a nationally admired landscape and an admiration for its physically able people. Koli was, thereon, not only a national symbol of beauty, but also one of health and wellbeing (Kokkonen 2010; Saarinen and Lovén 2000: 138–145). The Koli hill was the highest peak in southern Finland, and the familiar crosscountry skiing was joined by newer forms of gravity-based winter activities like . , (Him and Markkanen 1987). During the course of the decades, the ideology of a welfare state developed, and the tourism industry expanded from its ini Koli’s environment as a holiday recreation resort were introduced. Koli was harnessed nationwide to improve the physical and mental condition of the public. For the state, the Koli landscape provided public benefits. Koli was uti . , area was assigned with new national meanings and significances by the rapidly , constituents of the Finnish welfare state and the yet evolving national identity. , . challenges and conflicts were brought to the fore. 4.6 Formalised Landscape , national interests on nature conservation ended up in a severe conflict in Fin : . , n o of signed by 87,000 individuals. The purpose was to address negative aspects of the development in the mass tourism industry in the Koli landscape, and

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demand a new legal protection status for Koli, i.e. that of a national park. The Finnish Parliament reacted to these claims by renewing legislation in 1991 and designated the Koli Hill as a new national park under i n category ii. . , origin. During the past two decades, the management practices of the Koli authorities such as the ministry of the environment, regional environmental , , , (since 2008). They have planned and decided many formal arrangements for , ity of nature-based tourism and providing an inspiring learning environment for environmental education. The purpose of the environmental authorities has been to secure a steady but diverse flow of aesthetic, knowledge-related and health-oriented benefits without disturbing the basic ecosystem functions producing and maintaining biodiversity. , , , , . , , . , , lines to further development in the Koli National Park. The key site types such , , , biotopes, natural boreal forests and peat lands are formally included in and protected by the European Union’s Natura 2000 program (Metla 1996; 2006). The municipal and regional authorities have focused on the development of the infrastructure for nature-based tourism. For instance, managing national park authorities have, by means of partly e -funded development projects, built three centres for visitor services, one national park hotel, one harbour, renovated 12 heritage farms and provided six huts for hikers. Parks managers in cooperation with local business partners have tried to guarantee models, not only with the status of ‘national park’ and ‘national landscape’, but also by other international arrangements, such as the e ro r Sustainable Tourism Charter Certification and e /li e . minister of education and culture placed Koli as a part of Saimaa-Pielinen Lake System on the tentative list of ne o`s World Natural Heritage Sites (Metla 2004).

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Understanding the Formation of the Koli Landscape

, . , cultural e have provided a continuum of ecosystem-based customs, meanings and significances that have enabled Koli to become a Finnish national landscape. We propose, on the bases of our historical analyses of Koli landscape, a three-partite semiotic hypothesis of how Koli has prevailed as such an important landscape. 5.1

The Iconic Landscape , , , especially so, for security, independence, peace, and creativity. Beauty is commonly acknowledged in the studies on cultural ecosystem services, but studies do not extent to these other aesthetic dimensions of value. (Greer, : : . The Koli landscape has always functioned as an iconic camouflage. The outsiders have been disabled to see the hidden features of the landscape. Already the members of bear culture and the refugees of Swedish crown, and, in more recent times, the various formal management schemes have in their own ways created the camouflage that has made the specific constituents of the landscape invisible or similar to the general features of the landscape, concealing . . landscape has been, and still is, a resting place, a landscape that enables wildlife tourists to find hideouts, peacefulness, silence and awareness of the presence of these particular landscape features. People have taken the advantage of these features the landscape has afforded, but the landscape is not designed for these services and purposes. This camouflage aspect of cultural e has been present in Koli through times, taking different contingent manifestation during different periods. The Koli landscape has also been a source of purpose, shared general expec. , . landscape, the possibilities changed, becoming intertwined with more secular purposes and spiritual shelter of Black Hill. The Lutheran Christianity together with the enlightenment and the utilitarian thinking adjusted the economic and religious customs and habits. The religiousity has differently joined with the political (refugees), economic (timber) or aesthetic (arts) meanings and significances from the late 1800s onwards. Currently the collectively admired future is embodied in various policies, management schemes, Koli-related art

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exhibitions moving around the country, the education programmes in Eastern , and nature-based tourism attractions (Puhakka 2008: 47–58). The iconic similarity of Koli landscape with the image of Finnish identity has remained even it has changed together with cultural and natural changes. Cultural circumstances and situations change, but the iconic relation between cultural features, i.e. an appreciation towards Sibelius and Järnefelt, and eco , . . , collectively felt eco-cultural situations and the feelings of belonging in what is considered admirable. According to visitor monitoring studies, modern Finns have not only started to like Koli, they have also developed a habit of admiring it (Sievänen 1993; Lovén 2000: 145–152). This admiration can, of course, be interpreted from the perspective of aesthetic experience that is active and engaging and that of every-day experience that is routinely undergone (Dewey 1980: 35–57). but, without doubts, it has been under purposeful construction for centuries around Koli area. Still, the image of spontaneity, freedom and creativity has been present. For their own purposes, the Finnish state and the agents of civil society have put up efforts to strengthen the image of freedom and peculiar . e proposes, freedom of action has been an underlying feature that has supported and enabled other aspects of ecosystem-based human wellbeing ( e 2005: 50). 5.2 The Indexical Landscape The Koli landscape has always been an indicator of life and death, individual and collective. Some of the ecosystem-based doings and undergoings have directly contributed to the survival of the local community as they have provided either divine support, forest shelter from outsiders or subsistence for living but they have also contributed to the aesthetic and intellectual struggles the Koli landscape has been a scene for. The whole variety of the economic and Puhakka 2009: 91–106) but unfortunately these aspects of hardship, resistance and effort are not part of the literature on cultural ecosystem services, which suffers from the privation of understanding the real-life circumstances as constituents of culture, values and meanings (see, Schröter et al 2014). 4 For example, Glenda Dawn Goss (2010) has claimed that Jean Sibelius lost his creativity once his national mission (in which Koli played a critically important part) was run dry, roughly in 1926.

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The important contributions of the Koli landscape to human wellbeing and culture are spiritual and communal grounded on raw materials present in Koli : . rock for fire and fertile soils for agriculture and the Lake Pielinen for catch . . time, habits and customs have adjusted to the societal changes and enacted a changed ecosystem and landscape. For example, the introduction of permanent agriculture by Korpi-Jaakko was based on private ownership of land and , , . , timber more intensively in the early 2000 century put the pressure on forest use and landscape features, but the active people and the general yearn for initiatives. The current scientific, societal and governmental plea for connecting sustainable development and landscape integrity is, as indicated in previous section, rather well articulated and documented. . , not only been that of protecting people from the outside threat and providing the sense of shared future but also of invigorating activities that reach beyond subsistence. For more than a hundred years, the various arts and aesthetic enjoyments of the landscape have flourished and invigorated people in and . , . , . 5.3 The Symbolic Landscape The mythical shield over the Black Hill (Koli) and the native Finnish mythol arrangements with shared collective meanings against hostile outer powers. and political arrangements as the novel rights, duties, liberties and exposures . , have been erected as social and political scaffolds of legitimacy to deal with , : . The Koli landscape could be understood as a semiotic interface between organisms (humans) and resources, where humans function as interpretants and the resources are the contingent objects of their attention (Farina 2008: 75–83). Obviously, however, the Koli landscapes’ historical significance is not

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built upon the properties that only of physical nature but also on properties which are based on collective tacit or overt agreements. These properties go beyond the physical manifestations of local ecosystem-based customs and habits. This is a symbolic dimension of landscape and the cultural ecosystem services that constitute it. One way of understanding symbolic features of landscape is to follow John Searle and hold that status function is a function that cannot be performed just by virtue of the physical structure of an object, , : . , is established when the actors become committed to the purpose of collective . Koli has become a national landscape because of its multiple symbolic meanings, status functions and national significance in different times. But it is important to notice that these symbolic features build on meanings derived . , explained, this tri-partite process is the way cultural e becomes into being. Throughout the different times, cultural e of Koli has provided people with a general idea and emotions of admired, felt meaning of purpose and direction, . , the landscape has helped to produce docile (willingly undergoing) and healthy , tivity and admiration of particular kinds. Symbols have a tendency to grow. The Koli landscape is symbolic through and through and the since cultural ecosystem services have changed continuously, emerged symbolic meanings and significances have done the same. Even Dewey thought that symbols are ‘artificial signs’ in a sense that they are the : . cussed here, also symbols, at least when we are discussing symbolic meanings of cultural ecosystem services, are for us natural signs since symbols are, according to Peirce, constituted by iconic and indexical references (Deacon 2011: 394). Landscapes are at once artificial and natural. And for this reason it makes sense to study them as cultural ecosystem services and, especially, to understand them as an evolutionary continuum of human-environment interactions. 6

Concluding Remarks

Our task has been to take a step towards understanding how landscape changes on one hand and sustains some other features on the other hand.

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The pragmatist concept of cultural e provides a means for understanding the interdependence of ecosystem functions and cultural functions and their intertwined effects in long term development processes. This study has helped us to understand why and how the Koli landscape prevails as the key icon, index and symbol of national identity in Finland. The significance of cultural e has been in their adaptive capacity to adjust doings and undergoings and hence maintain the continuum of benefit streams from the ecosystem in changing social and economic circumstances. Our findings in the longterm historical analysis of the Koli case suggest a tripartite importance of cultural e to be further developed in later studies: 1. Cultural e of a specific landscape provide a space of individual inspirations and collective creative imaginings. 2. Cultural e of a specific landscape support people in local or national communities by strengthening their creative capacity for environmental and social resilience. 3. Cultural e of a specific landscape contribute to collective social cohesion. The historical semiotic analysis, as shown in our Koli case, with the focus on cultural e , may also help management authorities and regional and national politicians in practical planning and decision-making for sustainable landscapes, a special reference being on the practices of implementation and enforcement of the European Landscape Convention. The analysis of cultural e brings geographic history and socioecological interactions to the fore , , assigned with a special status function and other landscapes are not. Bibliography Aho, Juhani. 1897. Panu. Helsinki: . Arnesen, Tor. 1998. ‘Landscapes lost’ in Landscape Research 23(1): 39–50. Arnesen, Tor. 2011. ‘Landscape as a sign. Semiotics and methodological issues in , , . Landscapes, Identities and Development. London: Ashgate: 363–376. , . . Jaakko Stenius vanhempi. Helsinki: Suomen Kirkkohistoriallinen Seura. , . . . A Framework for Constructive Engagement’ in BioScience 62 (8): 744–756. , ., . . vices to better address and navigate cultural values’ in Ecological Economics 74: 8–18.

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Daily, Gretchen (ed.). 2012. Nature’s Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. : . Daniel, Terry C. et al. 2012. ‘Contributions of cultural services to the ecosystem services agenda’ in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (23): 8812–8819 , . . Cultural and amenity services. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Current State and Trends: Findings of the Condition and Trends Working Group. : : . , . . services and values in landscape planning, management and decision making’ in Ecological complexity 7(3): 260–272. , , . . . . . the classification, description and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services’ in Ecological Economics 41(3): 393–408. , . . , Gibson (eds). Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution. London: Oxford: 393–405. Deacon, Terrence W. 2012. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. New York: Norton. Déjeant-Pons, Maguelonne. 2006. ‘The European Landscape Convention’ in Landscape Research 31: 363–384. Dewey, John. 1980 (1934). Art as Experience. New York: Basic Books: 35–57. Dewey, John. 2008a. ‘Experience and Nature’ in Anne Boudston (ed.) The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol 1, 1925–1953. : : , . , . . : : . The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol 12, 1925–1953, : Press, 1938, 57–60. Dewey, John. 2008c. ‘Freedom and Culture’ in: Anne Boudston (ed.) The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol 13, 1925–1953, Edwardsville, 1938–1939, 63–188. , , . . : perspectives powerful agency’ in Biosemiotics 3(2): 177–187. Farina, Almo. 2008. ‘The landscape as a semiotic interface between organisms and resources’ in Biosemiotics 1(1): 75–83. , , . . ecosystem services: A novel framework for research and critical engagement’ in Ecosystem Services 21: 208–217. , . . , , , . The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin: 76–100. Foucault, Michel. 1988. Politics, Philosophy and Culture. Interviews and other writings 1977–1984. : . Ganander, Christfried. 1984. Mythologia Fennica. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. (Original 1789).

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. . The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. . . . . , : Journal of Geographic History 30(4): 618–642. Goss, Glenda Dawn. 2010. Sibelius: A Composer’s Life and the Awakening of Finland. Chicago: Chicago University Press. , , . . . , , , . (eds) Landscape, tourism, and meaning. London: Ashgate: 9–18. , . . , , . . . (eds) Ecosystem Ecology: a new synthesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 110–139. Häyrynen, Maunu. 2000. ‘The kaleidoscopic view: The Finnish national landscape imagery’ in National Identities 2(1): 5–19. Häyrynen, Maunu. 2004. ‘A periphery lost: the representation of Karelia in Finnish national landscape imagery’ in Fennia-International Journal of Geography 182 (1): 23–32. Häyrynen, Maunu. 2005. Kuvitettu maa: Suomen kansallisen maisemakuvaston rakentuminen. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. , , . . review of cultural ecosystem service indicators’ in Ecological Indicators 29: 434–444 Hiedanpää, Juha and Daniel W. Bromley. 2016. Environmental Heresies. London: Palgrave. Hirn, Yrjö and Erkki Markkanen. 1987. Tuhansien järvien maa. Suomen matkailun historia. Helsinki: Matkailun Edistämiskeskus. , , . . tem services’ in Annual Review of Environment and Resources 41: 545–574. , . . Suomen talous 1860–1985. Kasvu ja rakennemuutos. Helsinki: Suomen Pankki. Hoffmeyer, Jesper. 2008. Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hyvärinen, Hannu. 1966. ‘Studies on the Late-Queternary History of Pielis-Karelia, Eastern Finland’ in Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Commentationes Biologicae 29: 1–72. Kantanen, Juha. 1999. Genetic diversity of domestic cattle (Bos taurus) in North Europe. Joensuu: University of Joensuu: 52. Kirkinen, Heikki, Pekka Nevalainen and Hannu Sihvo. 1994. Karjalan kansan historia. Helsinki: . Klinge, Matti. 1997. Keisarin Suomi. Helsinki: Schildt.

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, , . tion of Sariola and Jatuli- type rocks in the Nunnanlahti-Koli-Kaltimo area, eastern Finland: implications for regional basin evolution models’ in Geological Survey of Finland, Bulletin 364. Kokkonen, Jouko. 2010. Valtio liikuntarakentamisen linjaajana. Helsinki: Liikuntatieteellinen Seura. , , . . ecosystem services concept and its implications for their assessment and management’ in Comptes Rendus Biologies 334(5): 441–449. Legg, Stephen. 2005. ‘Foucault’s population geographies: classifications, biopolitics and governmental spaces’ in Population, Space and Place 11(3): 137–156. Lieksan kaupunki 2007. Kolin Master Plan - Ainutlaatuinen Koli. Suunnittelukeskus. Lindström, Kati, Kalevi Kull and Hannes Palang. 2014. ‘Landscape semiotics: contribu , Estonian Approaches to Culture Theory. Tartu: University of Tartu Press: 110–132. Littmann, William. 1998. ‘Designing obedience: The architecture and landscape of welfare capitalism, 1880–1930’ in International Labor and Working-Class History 53: 88–114. Lovén, Lasse. 2000. ‘Koli National Park – site of solitude and heritage’ in Lovén, Lasse (ed.) Responsible Nature Tourism. Research Papers 792. : : . , , . Suomi-kuvasta mielenmaisemaan: Kansallismaisemat 1800- ja 1900-luvun vaihteen maalaustaiteessa. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura: 20–91. 2005. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis. Washington DC. Meyer, Judit L. 1996. The Spirit of Yellowstone: The Cultural Evolution of a National Park. : . Metla 1996. Kolin kansallispuiston hoito- ja käyttösuunnitelma [Management Plan for : . Metla 2004. Submission letter on 28.01.2004 about the natural heritage of the geological values of the Saimaa-Pielinen lake system to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee by the ministry of education and culture in co-operation with the ministry . . http://whc.unesco.org/en/ tentativelists/1865/). Metla, 2006. Kolin kansallispuiston hoito- ja käyttösuunnitelma 2003–2010 [Manage . : . , . . : An Interview with Glifford Geertz’ in Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 14(1): 2–20.

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Norwegian friluftsliv (‘outdoor life’) as an Interpassive Ritual Werner Bigell Abstract , , friluftsliv [literally ‘free air life’]. There has been a debate about the nature of friluftsliv, and while some stress the intrinsic value of nature or nature experience, the currently dominating trend is to understand friluftsliv in terms of use value or functionality for health, education, and tourism. This article sees this debate in a new light and distinguishes between immediate functionality such as health benefits on the one hand and a higher functionality creating social coherence and a shared sense of sacrality (a sacre quotidien) on the other, found in traditional friluftsliv. This traditional sense of friluftsliv is marked by interpassive and playful relations between humans and between humans and nature. Friluftsliv practitioners play a role and take part in a ritual that creates a sense of togetherness, including national identity. The collective role-play in nature in Norway, staging a symbolic rurality, preserves the social and urban 19th century ideal of the flâneur in nature. Nature in friluftsliv is not primarily a recreational resource but an interventional space.

Keywords Friluftsliv – leisure culture – Norwegian nation-building – rural nostalgia –

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Introduction

Norwegian friluftsliv (literally ‘free air life’) emerged as a reaction to industri . appreciation of nature, it conveniently provided urban dwellers with the time, , . Norway relatively late, and British mountaineers found that Norwegians were © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004470095_011

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not climbing their own mountains, described for example in J. A. Lees and W. J. Clutterbuck’s humorous 1882 travel narrative, Three in Norway by Two of Them. , , friluftsliv was first seen as an elitist pastime in Norway, during the interwar era it was appropriated by the working-class movement, escaping the city as a symbol of capitalism, and searching for ‘light, sun, air, and free roaming in nature, providing physical and spiritual health as well as ideological and moral edification’ (Tordsson 2008: 45, my translation). Friluftsliv is related to similar phenom , National Park movement, as well as the German Lebensreform (‘life reform’) and Wandervogel movements. Although they might have inspired each other, national cultures have created distinct patterns of nature use and perception. ii , . , , , lowing characteristics: First, a strong labour movement has created a society where everybody has the time and means to go to nature (Tordsson 2008: 45). Second, there are short distances between urban centers and natural areas, and there is good public transportation. For example, Matti Goksøyr (1994: 186) describes how of skiing, as it made accessible areas with stable snow conditions. Third, the medieval law of allemannsretten, (freedom to roam, literally ‘all men’s law’) has been revived by the Friluftsliv Act of 1957, allowing both movement and camping in all areas, regardless of whether they are public or private. Fourth, learning how to use nature is a part of the school curriculum, and friluftsliv . , ing assistance for people interested in friluftsliv, marking trails, advising about trips, and constructing cabins using voluntary work. Sixth, friluftsliv has high social status, and Norway’s most distinguished philosophers, Arne Naess and , . , both nature and friluftsliv form part of the national identity of a young nation. Eighth, the eradication of wolves and bears made carefree and child-friendly nature trips possible. Whether the presence of new populations of wolves is a threat or a sign of biological diversity is currently debated in Norway. These elements provide a solid political and cultural base for friluftsliv. , , , , to traditional friluftsliv, which remains largely outside the commercial sphere. , ,

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and compass instead of . Much of friluftsliv infrastructure is built with voluntary work, and while one has to pay one’s stay in a public cabin operated by the dn (Den Norske Turistforening / The Norwegian Trekking Association), it . , not only lead to a veneration of nature but coincided with nation building. The most recent government white paper on friluftsliv states that ‘The government will take care of friluftsliv as a living and core element of the Norwegian cultural heritage and national identity’ (Stortingsmelding nr. 18, 2016: 7, my translation). This cultural situatedness suggests that outdoor activities in other cultures have divergent meanings. Nils Faarlund (1973a) points out that the term ‘outdoor life’ in the AngloSaxon tradition is similar to friluftsliv, but there is a stronger sense of competition and performance. He further claims that the Swedish term friluftsliv comes closest to its Norwegian counterpart. Bjørn Tordsson argues that friluftsliv in Danish has a different meaning not only because of a different geography but because the Danish state is more active to promote friluftsliv through provid : , . , : , , , achievement, distinguishing it from Norwegian friluftsliv where the element . , demands, and that those demands lead to personal growth and maturity. Friluftsliv , , competitive, and non-commercial. Traditionally this includes activities such as hiking, cross-country skiing, and kayaking. Mountaineering is regarded to be friluftsliv if not overtly dependent on technology and focused on recordbreaking, in other words if it is not classified as a sport (Faarlund 1978: 135). Downhill skiing is not regarded to be friluftsliv . , with friluftsliv practitioners. Friluftsliv may include elements of harvesting (berries, mushrooms), fishing, and hunting, in particular in its rural style. The stereotype that Norwegians are born with skis on their feet is not false, but despite its egalitarian nature, there is an overrepresentation of the educated class (Statistics Norway, 2014). However, even though friluftsliv is institutional , , parison with sports (Tordsson 2008: 50), and after the war, sport rather than friluftsliv 1970s was friluftsliv accepted in the modern project’ (Tordsson 2007: 70). On a

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national level, it is administered by the ministry of the environment, and each . . There are outdoor activities at kindergarten (foreign parents find the fact that small children play outside in winter and even take naps outside rather surprising), outdoor days in schools, where all teaching is conducted outside, it can be studied at universities, and there is also an alternative type of college in Norway, the folkehøyskole (‘folk high school’). These are one-year boarding schools without exams or credits, focusing on community creation through friluftsliv and creative activities; they attract many foreign students, and they charge no tuition fees and offer Norwegian language courses. The Norwegian Trekking Association (dn ) operates simple cabins throughout Norway, and the cabins are built with voluntary work. The dn also makes an effort to include migrants into its activities (Habberstad 2014), and there are many local projects that use friluftsliv for integration. The recent government white paper recommends low-threshold activities in close surroundings as a means for an increased level of physical activity and for better integration (Stortingsmelding nr. 18, 2016: 19). This shows that national identity is not necessarily based on ethnicity but on participation. For both Norwegians and migrants, teaching friluftsliv means to provide the familiarity and skills that are needed to venture : . While the central characteristics of friluftsliv, its simplicity and availability are constants, there is a trend in official policy to frame friluftsliv as an element of public health and to stress its use value. While the government white paper of 2000/2001 speaks of both intrinsic values in the experience of nature and , , , (Stortingsmelding nr. 39, 2001: 11), the 2015/2016 white paper has a stronger focus on health, not at least because Norwegians now are one of Europe’s physically least active people (Stortingsmelding nr. 18, 2016: 16). Friluftsliv is often seen as creating ecological awareness, ‘where the interconnectedness and immersion in the natural setting is central’ (Gelter 2007: 38). Hans Gelter interconnectedness with nature, often associated with strong emotional and spiritual experiences, as essential for developing his deep ecology philosophy’ : . . propose a societal perspective on friluftsliv focusing on how it creates a sense of togetherness and how nature functions as a social space, in other words, a stage. Friluftsliv creates national identity by an extrapolation of the sociability of traditional rural communities into modern society. Friluftsliv is not an escape from modernity but is a corrective to it, turning nature into an interventional space.

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2

Interpassivity

, : . , to art reception, and notices that spectators often appear to delegate their : . , be experienced as pleasurable (2014: 29). There are two complementary ways . , , nett calls ‘tyranny of intimacy’. Sennett argues that the pre-romantic notion of playing a role in public space relieved individuals by suspending their subjectivity. The second explanation of this joy is found in the game theory of Johan of immediate functionality, liberating participants from the imperatives of production: ‘Play, we said, lies outside the reasonableness of practical life; has , . music’ (2016: 158). Joy is thus generated by the non-functionality of play and by a temporary suspension of subjectivity in role-play. These notions can be applied to analyse the interhuman relations as well as the relations between humans and nature in friluftsliv. Friluftsliv is role-play; it is the collective re-enactment of . tives of modern society without having to suffer from the unpredictability of nature in any existential way (such as starvation after a failed harvest) or to be constrained by traditional social order. Friluftsliv practitioners play a role in a collective play where everyone is on stage, and their role suspends their . , fade. My aim here is not to deconstruct friluftsliv as a collective illusion, as practitioners are aware of its illusionary character, but to identify the element of sharing an illusion, in other words of enacting a ritual, as crucial for creating culture. The functionality of friluftsliv is of a higher order, leaving behind economic necessity and social distinction, in other words its servility, and creating a sense of togetherness, a sacre quotidien. , threat to friluftsliv the form of health, recreation, tourism, pedagogy, and ecology. An instrumen friluftsliv , interventional space. .

















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Aims and Methods

This article presents an ideal type of friluftsliv in the traditional sense, repre . ards by which reality may be recognised and described’ (Tönnies 2002: 248). , friluftsliv emerges as symbolic rurality. The main analytical terms, ritual and interpassivity, are derived from the works of the American . article is also based on personal experience. My first encounter with friluftsliv was twenty-five years ago, as an exchange student at the University of Bergen, . dent union and decided to join the friluftsgruppe, which offered hiking and cross-country skiing tours. The style of the activities was simple; no expensive , , , or snow caves. The group attracted many foreign students, and the trips were an opportunity to make new friends. That was 25 years ago. friluftsliv to frame its activities in economic terms, both directly (tourism) and indirectly (health, fitness, recreation). The goal of this chapter is to present conceptual friluftsliv. , , , and limits but also as ritual, the culturally determined collective breaking and suspension of cultural limits, temporal such as in carnival and spatial, such as in friluftsliv , , urban imagination, practiced individually or in groups, emulating community life, but creating societal identity on an emotional level. What is traditional about traditional friluftsliv is not the use of wooden skis but an understanding of identity, not as an individual choice but as participation in collectively orchestrated practices in and imaginations of a shared particular geography. , stitute and create a dynamic culture. The concepts of ritual and interpassivity mentioned above are key to understanding this collective dimension. While friluftsliv as undermining its spirit and universalist discourses such as intrinsic value or rights of nature as unhelpful, as an aesthetic domestication of nature, the acceptance of cultural and geographic particularity allows a comparative approach to ana , commemorative hiking in Cuba.

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4

The Characteristics of friluftsliv

After the wane of the traditional farming and fishing lifestyle, a new social ideal emerges in Norway, moving with simple means in nature. Faarlund (1973a) friluftsliv as a simulation of the form of life that was dominant throughout most of human history. Traditional friluftsliv is a sweat-inducing activity, with clothes made of wool and skis made of wood, and there are few words spoken during the trip. Children learn not to leave trash in nature, and adults pay and clean the public cabins without a warden being present. However, a growing social differentiation is visible in modern friluftsliv. Whereas the advent of Gore-Tex, snowboarding, and was met with initial suspicion, friluftsliv practitioner has given way to a variety of sub-species, deriving from different social milieus. A leader of my friluftsliv student group made fun of how Oslo people go to the mountains: . , . the dn about the fact that the number of hours that the official tour book stated for trips was too low. The reason was not that traditional hikers walked faster but that modern hikers wanted to enjoy nature during longer breaks. Despite the trend to enjoy nature and a growing differentiation of activities, the ideal of friluftsliv , , has survived. There is an ongoing debate about what friluftsliv is and what it is not. Faarlund, who is one of the founders of academic friluftsliv, argues: ‘We may get a feel for what friluftsliv is by naming what it is not. sport, in the sense of physical activity in a selfish, competitive way; staying fit to compensate for an otherwise unnatural and unhealthy lifestyle’ (1994: 25, emphasis in original). The competitive aspect of sport has been viewed skeptically in Norway; in schools, for example, activities that produce winners and losers are avoided . he had always admired the mountain Piggtinden in his area, and one day he learned that someone else had climbed it first. However, ‘the matter of first climb did not count for us; everyone who has been on a mountain was let into a kind of brotherhood of experience’ (1993: 41). Faarlund (1994: 25) points out that friluftsliv is not a sport because competition would drag the modern world into nature (see also Breivik 1978: 8). Furthermore, Faarlund argues that friluftsliv should not compensate for an unnatural lifestyle, in other words, it should not be recreation in the literal sense of restoring one’s body and mind for work.

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While there are different meanings of sport, one common element is that it exists in relation to modern industrial society. According to Kenneth Olwig, the role of sport in our society is supportive of the existing social order. The Olympic motto of ‘faster, higher, stronger’ is an expression of modern society, its monotonous movements along regulated lanes and its focus on measurability, performance, and order (Olwig 1995: 23–24). While sport has mostly played a supportive role in modern society, expressing physical capability in contests, traditional friluftsliv is a reaction against the industrial society. Bischoff (2000: 5) argues that friluftsliv is about the insight that nature has value in itself. This statement of the intrinsic value of nature can be understood not only in ethical terms but also implies that nature cannot be reduced to being recreational; in this configuration of the relationship between daily life and outdoor life, it could be said that friluftsliv is interventional. Friluftsliv carries values that intervene in daily life, not only in terms of nature’s intrinsic value but also of egalitarianism, anti-commercial, and anti-competitive attitudes. Fridtjof Nansen wants to get urban people ‘away from the accustomed’ because ‘urban life is after all unnatural’ (Nansen 1994: 7) and points out that friluftsliv is not about health either: ‘There may well be a little too much emphasis on sport instead of the Sporting pastime; too many “records” . , of it, but the spirit should also be included’ (1994: 7). Finally, friluftsliv, according to Faarlund is not related to the economic interests of tourism, neither to : . , : ‘sportification’ of friluftsliv. Competition, recreation, sport, health, and monetary interests are not part of the friluftsliv ideal. Certain activities in nature count as friluftsliv, whereas others do not. Bis , , : , sidered as friluftsliv. However, she includes modern activities such as rafting, snowboarding, surfboarding, kite surfing, or mountain biking; these activities are not necessarily competitive and are not ecologically or socially harmful. Whether they fall into the category that Faarlund dismisses as ‘using nature as a “sparring partner”’ can be debated. To express it positively, friluftsliv activities , , . , words of Faarlund ‘a living tradition for creating nature-consonant lifestyles’ : , . to clarify the role of friluftsliv as a social corrective, it must be seen not as an individual activity but as a collective ritual.

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5

The Norwegian Ambivalence

Norwegians tend to see nature as the ‘true home of culture’ (Dahle 1994), and friluftsliv calls Norwegians ‘Europe’s last nature tribe’ (Gjesvik 1993: 22). Anders Gjesvik speaks of the ‘Norwegian Ambivalence’, of feeling stuck between the values of a cosmopolitical and a traditional society (1993: 24). Going to nature then is a , them, the three basic elements in the Norwegian mythological world order: First, there is the clear idea that one does not gain life wisdom through social interaction but in a solitary encounter with nature in its most extreme form. Second is the importance of going outside, to travel into nature, to search for one’s real identity. The third point is that experience is not sought in cultural centers but out there, out in the unknown. : , The picture that arises here is that of an individual, feeling at unease in the city, and going into nature to escape the confinement of society in order to , . and individualistic frame of interpretation and that the encounter with nature is not solitary but collective, that it is not a search for identity but a ritual, and that it does not lead into the unknown but into familiar landscapes. Faarlund (2007: 57) points out that, ‘[a]s the terms “untouched nature” or “wilderness” imply, nature is not the home of culture’. When Faarlund speaks about friluftsliv being the ‘joy of identification with free nature’, and nature being ‘the home of our ancestors at the time of birth of this tradition as well as humankind’s home through the ages’ (2007: 56), it is interesting to note that identification is with nature, not with the ancestors. Gjesvik is right when he points out the national Norwegian frame: while , . friluftsliv is not just the expression of a national character but that its practice, as education in the humanist sense of Bildung, constitutes national identity; it is ‘a way to develop an identity for both the individual and national, through joyful : . speaks of ‘one’s real identity’, the meaning of the term identity is ambiguous lah (2008: 142) distinguishes between biblical, civic, utilitarian, and expres .

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individualism coupled with a postmodern ‘anything goes’ consumerist choice of expressivity that society has the duty to acknowledge or at least care about, an identity, rejecting social limitations and being obsessed with ‘finding one , , individualism can be seen as a constant negotiation between collective and individual demands, not the rejection of society. The two individualisms lead to different nature experiences. While a utilitarian individualist uses nature for social distinction and/or temporary escape, a civic individualist might regard nature as a space to experience community or to negotiate or challenge the conditions of that community. Tordsson points out that early friluftsliv was individualistic, with an ideal of being solitary in wilderness, and that originality and independence would grow in the encounter with nature. However, during the interwar period friluftsliv was appropriated by the working-class movement that saw nature as an arena to develop sociability, responsibility, and solidarity, in short a community counteracting the social ills of class division and oppression. This time saw the reduction of working hours and the establishment of vacation homes and summer camps (Tordsson 2007:67 and 2005: 7). However, after the war friluftsliv became a part of the administrative system, and its corrective and interventionist elements were seen as obsolete (2005: 10–11). Friluftsliv turned into a tool for therapeutic and pedagogical measures, and Tordsson warns that making friluftsliv useful might adapt friluftsliv to the attitudes that it should : . , again, but not as escape from society but in the form of using nature to stage one’s ego and identity, creating a customer-relation to nature rather than a per : . , identity and does not challenge or suspend it. 6

Nature as a Stage

, , nature has two meanings. First, it refers to the symbolic space of the past, a life of farming or of hunting and gathering. Second, nature refers to real spaces of the present with few marks of human inhabitation that are not economically productive, have no or few residents, and have a low level of social control. Being out of the ordinary social context and going to nature does not mean leaving culture, but to enter a culturally imagined space, a heterotopia. Heterotopias are, in the words of Michel Foucault, ‘places that do exist and that are

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sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted’ (1986: 24). This means that culture provides both imagination and space for contestation and intervention. Like play, nature is . and spatial limits of play: ‘Play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration’ (2016: 9). Nature is not an escape from culture but, in modern society, provides an experience of playful contrast, limited in space and time. This experience is what the American writer Edward Abbey calls a “different mode:” ‘What makes life in our cities at once still tolerable, exciting, and stimulating is the existence of an alternative option, whether exercised or not, […] of a radically different mode of being out there, in the forests, on the lakes and rivers, in the deserts, up in the mountains’ (1991: 229, emphasis Abbey’s). Nature and the city are complementary spaces. Nature in the context of friluftsliv is a stage for a ritual reenactment of the past. The actors of this historical play are aware of that their roles are different from ordinary life, and being in the play creates a sense of togetherness. The new role of nature can be traced in the meaning of the Norwegian term utmark. , was not used for plantation (that was innmark , , gathering; areas that could not be used were called villmark (wilderness). Today the meanings of villmark and utmark overlap; the online version of the dictionary Stor Norsk-Engelsk Ordbok provides two translations for utmark, ‘outlying fields’ in an agricultural sense and ‘wilderness’ in a new general sense. People have always used utmark, but the mode of this use and the meaning of the term have changed. Friluftsliv is not a permanent retreat from modern lifestyle but is temporary. Despite the stereotype of getting away from society, friluftsliv a solitary but a social activity. There is a difference between urban and rural styles of friluftsliv. , friluftsliv tends to be supplementary; one goes to nature with family or friends and engages in activities that bring food on the table, such as hunting, fishing, and berry picking, yet excluding full-time work in nature (Breivik 1978: 8). Some go to nature with a select group of family , to break out of society but to create one’s own. Bischoff describes this socia: , , with family and friends, to master different skills’ (2000: 4, my translation).

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friluftsliv, food gathering is symbolic in character, similar to allotment gardeners who plant tomatoes to show their children where vegeta . , also Bischoff 2000: 3), which means that the relation to nature is interpassive. Whereas rural styles of friluftsliv engage family and friends, urban Norwegians . rience, too, is social: public cabins are probably the place in Norway where it is easiest to get to know strangers. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten presented the best sjekkehytte, ‘checking out’ or ‘flirting’ cabin (Flaatten 2014). Even though people go alone, they engage in an activity that will both be shared after the trip through stories (including literature) and forms part of creating a national identity. This point is illustrated by Christopher McCandless, whose fatal journey to Alaska has been recounted in Jon Krakauer’s book and in Sean Penn’s film, both titled Into the Wild. His journey starts with breaking away from despised society, and while he makes friends throughout his journey through the US, he is afraid that those friendships turn into the ‘society’ . , extremely solitary vision, that he had conflated community and society, and that ‘happiness is only real when shared’. While on a personal level he is willing to tone down his solitude, on another level he has not only never left soci . American literature, most importantly by Henry David Thoreau, who also lived a solitary life in nature. The fact of the popularity of book and film show that in a national frame McCandless was not solitary but living a version of the American dream, following the narratives of Thoreau or Jack London. Accounts of adventurous and often solitary nature experiences have a central place in the , , , , . Norwegians return to their ‘true home’ in friluftsliv, on a personal level their journey may be solitary or not, but in a national frame it cannot be solitary. All styles link the practitioners to a larger community, as Bischoff describes: ‘Social values are linked to interpersonal relations and to a common sense of belonging and identity. The central element here is the value of belonging, to be seen, and to be a part of a community’ (Bischoff 2000: 5, my translation). , , ate an identity for a larger group, in other words, how society is formed with elements of community.

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Sociability in friluftsliv

We are, in the case of Norway but also the United States, presented with a paradox: a shared ideal of society is getting away from that society. To explain this paradox, it is necessary to investigate the relation between community and society. According to the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, there is a historical trend of communities to develop into societies, in particular fuelled by the . , eties retain elements of community in different forms: ‘The simplest fellowship is represented by a pair who live together in a brotherly, comradely, and friendly manner, and it is most likely to exist when those involved are of the same age, sex, and sentiment, are engaged in the same activity or have the same intentions, or when they are united by one idea’ (Tönnies 2002: 252–53). Human relations in communities are marked by trust between close indi: , existence, that ties exist between us, that we know each other and to a certain extent are sympathetic toward each other, trusting and wishing each other well’ (Tönnies 2002, 250). Tönnies contrasts this personal trust to relations in , trade’ and ‘[p]ersonal reliability fades as it is transformed into reliability as : . : is then impersonal and regulated by the state, in particular its legal system. , , friluftsliv as a symbolic return to the land and that its sociability marked by personal trust in the sense of Tönnies who writes that a ‘common relation to the soil tends to associate people who may be kinsfolk or believe themselves to be such’ and that ‘[n]eighborhood, the fact that they live together, is the basis of their union’ (2002: 257). However, this view ignores the scale of friluftsliv, which is a phe . Friluftsliv must be seen primarily as a national, not a local or global phenomenon. The nation is not built on a collection of local traditions but rather extrapolates and transforms some local characteristics and discards others in its formation (Olwig 1996: 643). The transformation can be seen in the mentioned shift of meaning of the term ‘utmark’ mentioned above but also in the transformation of the rural and local commons to the national ‘allemannsretten’ (‘everyman’s law’). According to Tönnies, the rural village community ‘attains it consummation in the cultivation of the soil practiced in common and the possession of common prop : . , these village commons have mostly disappeared, turned into private or public property, used and imagined on a national scale. However, the reconfiguration

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of rural land for the demands of the urban population was conflictual. The Friluftsliv Act was highly controversial from the interwar period until 1957, and that the idea of access to nature for all and regardless of private property lines was politically charged (Tordsson 2008: 46). 8

Friluftsliv as Passivity and Ritual

While friluftsliv is an activity in the sense of bodily movement, it is also a passivity in the sense that it is a sign of reduced immediate dependency on nature. Faarlund uses the term ‘overskuddsliv’ (literally ‘surplus life’), meaning that friluftsliv is an expression of life that is not primarily a survival activity (work for food, clothes, etc.) (1973b: 33). Breivik (1978: 8 and 10–11) points out that friluftsliv consists either of overskudd activities or of activities that have a subsidiary character. The passivity in terms of industrially mediated dependence on nature, of not having to work in nature, transforms social relations by creating a ritual enacted as a role-play. Pfaller explains that the point of a ritual is ‘my presence at the ritual, not my personal consciousness’ (2008: 59–60, my translation). Passive presence, not self-expression, leads to a ‘clandestine joy of having evaded the call and not having to be a subject’ (Pfaller 2008: 183, . of society but out of one’s subjectivity and out of the necessities of immedi . friluftsliv practitioner: ‘Family, colleagues, economic problems and stocks are forgotten. There is only one thing important in the world. The situation is here , , poles and the trout that will soon take the fly’ (2007: 27). , , , . and skiers: they carry their food with them, experiencing no existential threat, and they are liberated from their social roles; they may choose to stay alone or . , as well as the fact that friluftsliv practitioners are focused on immediate tasks such as finding their way, walking, or preparing food means that they have much in common with their fellow hikers and skiers, explaining the increased sociability of Norwegians in nature. A common experience in nature, beyond day trip range from the next trailhead, is that people greet each other, stop for , . , nature is a more urban experience than being in a city where encounters with strangers are often limited to interactions with service staff.

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Going into nature does not mean to isolate oneself from society but to play a . : , The Fall of Public Man, discusses how playing a role in public, an expected behaviour during , ticism. What Sennett calls the ‘tyranny of intimacy’ is marked by a weakening . friluftsliv this older mode of , of the city. Going into nature thus is not about finding oneself but about losing . : , people are relieved of portraying the person they are, of speaking on behalf of themselves; the participants enter a larger, shared, expressive domain’ and points out that he ‘deploy[s] the term “enactments”, rather than “presenta , : . , nature is the opposite of Facebook: rather than displaying one’s subjectivity in a virtual space, in nature one enters a real space to play a role. Nature is also a space where one evades the call for authenticity and distinction that were spearheaded by romanticism but have been appropriated by capitalism; this is paradoxical because the veneration of nature was also a romantic theme. friluftsliv adopts the veneration of nature from romanticism but rejects its subjectivity. According to Sennett, ‘the image of society as a theatre’ serves several purposes. ‘The first has been to introduce illusion and delusion as fundamental , . definition of morality can ever be firmly be deduced from behaviour’ (1977: 35). The city appears to be a natural setting for this concept of society as a theatre. Sennett defines the city as ‘a human settlement in which strangers are likely to meet’ (1977: 39). Conditions for this are that there is a ‘large, het : . the urban/rural inversion of friluftsliv, hikers and skiers experience the lightness of playing a role and being relieved from being themselves, which makes striking up a conversation as well as showing emotions easier. Sennett asks: ‘Can it be that the freedom to feel is greater when one’s personality and one’s : . to signs rather than symbols, and the artificiality of the role allows room for spontaneity (Sennett 1977: 73) when individuals are liberated from the task of ‘being themselves’. During a lecture by Faarlund, a colleague of mine made an ironic remark about Faarlund’s ‘friluftsliv uniform’, his traditional dress made . , one’s clothes were called a uniform. However, in Sennett’s sense, the uniform

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allows a relief from identity display; in fact, if Faarlund’s clothes had expressed an individual style, he would have undermined his authority as a defender of traditional friluftsliv. city, friluftsliv is a free space, as were the urban coffeehouses of the eighteenth century. Here ‘distinctions of rank were temporarily suspended’ and ‘anyone sitting in the coffeehouse had the right to talk to anyone else’ (Sennett 1977, 81). People experienced sociability ‘without revealing much about their own feelings, personal history, or station’ (Sennett 1977: 82). While in the eighteenth century, according to Sennett, a cult of nature and individuality sets in , , ever more into a compensatory role in the eyes of his audience, as a person : . : : , : . Friluftsliv in this , , , , . theatre that allows only actors to express themselves freely, the compartmen friluftsliv is temporal and spatial: everybody can be on the stage in nature for some time. , from participation in rituals. This can go along with verbal exchange, but not necessarily so. Sennett points out that those ‘silent, single people at cafes, those flâneurs of the boulevards who strutted past but spoke to no one, continued to think they were in a special milieu and that other people in it were sharing something with themselves’ (1977: 222). Despite temporary isolation, the silent people experience public life or civility, which Sennett defines as ‘the activity which protects people from each other and yet allows them to enjoy each other’s company. Wearing a mask is the essence of civility’ (Sennett 1977: 264). This explains the culture shock that the anthropologist Long Litt Woon, then a Malaysian exchange student in Norway, experienced. She encountered the Norwegian culture of sociable silence when her guest family invited her for a walk (Kløvstad 1993). While civil behaviour is associated with the city, ‘the human settlement in which strangers are most likely to meet’ (1977: 264), in Norway the mountain trail is the boulevard. The aim of ritual is ‘not self-expression; it is participation in expressive action the meaning of which ultimately steps beyond immediate social life and connects with the timeless truths of the gods’ (Sennett 1977: 267). This leads to the spiritual dimension of friluftsliv.

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Friluftsliv as Sacre Quotidien

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, , recreate the holy and spiritual element in one’s relation with nature (2000: 133) and to cultivate a sacred dimension in life (2000: 128) without an explicitly religious message (2000: 132). The social and ritual dimension is linked to interpassivity. Friluftsliv is interpassive in the sense that it reenacts traditional life without recreating it as well as in the sense that it facilitates social interaction through role-play. Both these interpassive modes are based on an absence of direct functionality or servility in human-nature and human-human relations. , . servility and beyond consumer culture. As in a religious ceremony, interaction is ritualistic; as people not take part in the Eucharist because they are hungry, . and Michael Leris, Pfaller illuminates the idea of the sacred in rituals. Pfaller picks up Leris’ concept of the sacre quotidien small and also large forms with the help of which humans interrupt their profane everyday life and create a festive and socially connecting dimension [...] [Sacrality] covers all practices that create social obligation and solidarity. (Pfaller 2011: 222–223, my translation) Pfaller then discusses Bataille: When humans only follow their material interests, then they behave, as Bataille points out, like things. The functional is, in Bataille’s view, always servile: everything serves something. Only when humans, as they do in the sphere of the holy, act beyond their material interests and show generosity or the readiness to risk everything, then they act as human beings, i. e. sovereign. (Pfaller 2011: 224, my translation) The existential sense of sacrality translates into an aesthetic dimension in the perception of nature, expressed for example in Abbey: ‘To go truly Outdoors is to escape for a while the narrow limits of previous human experience (the cultural apparatus) and to enter a world that is new, different, much greater, and : . , the link between an aesthetic dimension and existential sacrality:

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, , . . . , , , . therefore its magic can never die. (1993: 89, 92, my translation) creating a sacred dimension in it. , emotional dimension of friluftsliv. Since friluftsliv is a collective phenomenon, the emotional benefit is linked to collective experience. Paraphrasing tion of the choir in Greek theater, Pfaller writes: The choir and the processions represent the anti-individual, Dionysian emerging from this, however, correspond to the individualistic, Apollonian principle of the dream of the fine arts. , some Western metropoles: the dance events of the ‘free parades’ and ‘love parades’ have revived the Dionysian principle in a youth culture that rarely is interested in theater. The parades are collectivist and subjectless . .. , spectators is blurred. (Pfaller 2008: 213, my translation) friluftsliv to the Love Parade, but both are based on a ritual suspension of subjectivity. The interpassive elements of friluftsliv, its ritual reenactment of an earlier lifestyle and a pleasurable temporary disappearance through de-subjectification are core components. existentialist philosophers created Norway’s most humorous and lighthearted friluftsliv . : to make fires that emitted an incredible amount of smoke, and that it is funnier to roll big rocks down a steep slope than to admire their well-placedness in the : . , ets among us […] who see as a starting point the constant stream of conflict, where a full existence as a human being does not provide a meditative break in this stream, but rather an experience of freedom and a catharsis-based happiness on a higher level that causes a distance to everyday life and, among other things, is the basis for humour (1989: 228).

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. struggle to create meaning in the face of ‘the eternal sovereignty of the mineral’ (1993: 123) nature provides a temporary relief. Nature exists in relation to other spaces: ‘The white spots on the map are sacred, not because nature’s diversity is , : . an intervention into urban space when the mountaineer returns home: And what they grasp there, what happens in them when they stand at a point beyond life, in a world of spiritual rock-bottom, where the law of the stones is the only and eternal one, they carry back with them to the hothouses as a new dimension, a freedom over duty, a power in power, . 1993: 55, my translation) This means that the experience of meaninglessness is the basis for an interventionist mode where friluftsliv does not serve the interests of society but pro . intervention in a sacred performance: A sacred space, a temporarily real world of its own, has been expressly hedged off for it. But with the end of the play its effect is not lost; rather it continues to shed it radiance on the ordinary world outside, a wholesome influence working security, order and prosperity for the whole community until the sacred play-season comes round again. (2016: 14) The problem of the currently fashionable holistic views of nature, such as Deep , is that they reduce the human and social dimension of nature experience to an ecological frame, in which the notion of alterity, of the radical otherness , . , , , nature existentialism, that forms the basis for a social and aesthetic dimension of nature experience beyond necessity. 10

The Semantics of Friluftsliv: The Case of Cuba

, , , commercial, there is a wide range of friluftsliv activities. Figari et al. (2009) for example investigate the friluftsliv activities of Muslim women in Oslo, finding

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that they like walking in suburban areas and in well-tended parks but not in overgrown landscapes with reduced visibility, which are perceived as being . , friluftsliv . friluftsliv, with parallels and differences, for example the more playful attitude in : . , ies are very useful, as the identify differences and similarities allow a clearer view on the character of outdoor activities and make visible formerly overlooked activities. On the other hand, what Stokke calls her intent to transcend the Norwegian view on Norwegian friluftsliv : , . . . argued that this semantic extension obscures the specific cultural frame of Norwegian friluftsliv, . , using the term ‘outdoor activities’ as a superordinate term, and reserve friluftsliv for specific cultural contexts of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (regarding the mentioned variation of meaning in the three languages). , . , , noticed many outdoor activities: baseball practice in the streets, football on the beach, and ball games in the shallow water near the beach, similar to what . , , . concluded that Cubans were not interested in hiking, and it took me more than . , , , , , tourists, but not for common Cubans. The trip included one overnight stay at a cabin in the Sierra Maestra. The cabin looked not unlike Norwegian public cabins, with communal cooking, simple facilities, and bunk beds. At the cabin, we met a group of Cuban students from the University of Bayamo, who had been awarded this trip by their university. They said that it was common for student groups to go on this trip. The reason for their trip was not primarily recreational, but it was a ritual, following the trails of the guerilla fighters, who had started . , . the Sierra Maestra’ (Guevara 1963: 99), the impenetrable thicket of vegetation

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and steep inclines that disfavoured the government troops. The mountains became the home of the rebels: ‘We always lived in the mountain groves, only occasionally and surprisingly we descended upon a group of houses, some of us slept in them, but the majority of us remained protected by the groves and stayed under the roof of the trees during the day’ (Guevara 1963: 70, my trans. . , noticed similar reports in the newspapers about student and workplace collec . observed on the one hand and Norwegian friluftsliv on the other. Differences were found in the role of health, that is a, however contested, feature of Norwegian friluftsliv but is not invoked in Cuban collective hikes. Friluftsliv is also a regular practice in Norway, whereas those hikes were special occasions in Cuba. The landscapes were different: whereas in Norway there is a predilection for fjell og vidde , dn ), i.e. for vistas and open landscapes, the hikes in Cuba led to areas of monte, the thick vegetation, often found in mountainous landscapes that provided . linked to ecology, although ecological ideas were present in society. A further difference was the makeup of the hiking group. Whereas Norwegians hike alone (urban style) or with friends or family, Cubans hiked with their workplace or . , . than in the West, and students develop a class identity, staying together for their , . Both Norwegian and Cuban practices are national rituals and are interpassive; as friluftsliv is not a return to the land, Cuban hikers do not take up arms. Both practices create national identity, and both have an element of commemorating the past (rural in Norway, revolutionary struggle in Cuba). A difference is found in the sociability of the practices. While in Norway there is an individualist screen covering a collective practice, creating the paradox that an apparently individual escape from society is the bedrock of collective identity, the escape has a collective character in Cuba. However, in Cuba there appear to be two modes of collectivism: one is the hierarchical and institutional collectivism of the state (societal scale), the other is the egalitarian and spontaneous solidarity in a face-to-face setting (communal scale), as in the rebel groups or in workplace collectives. The second form of spontaneous communal collectivism can be seen as giving legitimacy to and rejuvenating the collectivism , .

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collective hiking is interventional, as its Norwegian counterpart. Although in Norway the aim of friluftsliv as a social corrective is to balance the effects of , . Similarities between Norwegian friluftsliv and the observed hiking practices in Cuba furthermore are their non-commercial and non-competitive nature, , , . , a result of the fact that there is no immediate functionality. Both practices, however, create a collective identity, and as rituals they form sacre quotidiens. ple outdoor activities under the term friluftsliv. , guish between predominantly recreational modes such as baseball practice in the streets in Cuba and downhill skiing in Norway on the one hand and ritual modes such as traditional Norwegian friluftsliv and Cuban commemorative . , , cultural frames, and they appear to continuously recreate societal frames in a communal setting; however, in a global scale they become abstracted from those frames and lose their meaning. 11

Conclusion

Friluftsliv is a ritual re-enactment of traditional lifestyles. Boredom, hardship, and perils of the past turn into meditative monotony, healthy sweat, and excitement. Playing a role allows a pause from the tyranny of intimacy, of the expressive individualist imperative of finding oneself. The played role is experienced as joyful and liberating because it implies an interpassive relation to nature and society. One’s social role is reduced to universal human needs such as moving, eating, and sleeping, thus creating the conditions for collective experience. Friluftsliv is an aimless, unproductive, and unprofitable example of the sacre quotidien, fitting poorly into the logic of tourism, and any costbenefit analysis of friluftsliv starts from a faulty premise. One has to remember that the discourses of pedagogy, health, and tourism are applications of friluftsliv elements, epiphenomena that do not form its conceptual core. Friluftsliv is embedded in a national administrative system that regulates development, access, and education, but which cannot be reduced to it. The freedom of friluftsliv is related to freedom in the humanist sense of education; both provide a space for open-ended reflection and intervention, both today undermined by ,

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and health on the one hand and the spirit of curricular implementation credit/ . Friluftsliv needs to reconsider its notion of freedom, not as individual choice but in Hannah Arendt’s double-tiered sense of freedom described in her essay ‘The Freedom to be Free’ (2018), as both absence of existential need and as participation in the transformations and . , friluftliv’s distancing is not an escape , , vides a testing ground for solidarity and sociability. Looking at sociability in nature allows evaluating nature activities apart from apparent similarities and dissimilarities. Cross-country skiing and downhill skiing look similar but are different; one belongs to friluftsliv, the other not. A tourist on a cruise ship may admire the same mountain range as a hiker, but their experiences are different. On the other hand, both friluftsliv and the Love Parade allow the experience of suspended subjectivity and a Dionysian affirmation of life. The debate here faces a dilemma: the semantics of friluftsliv tional life it reenacts. On the other hand, it could be widened to a degree that it . friluftsliv. Friluftsliv is threatened by the social trends that see its simple, non-competitive, . modern life, friluftsliv may develop into a support mechanism for it. While it is friluftsliv to functional discourse such as health, it should not be forgotten that the concept of health itself has suffered a semantic narrowing, visible in its etymological roots in ‘whole’ and ‘holy’. This demonstrates the necessity of a semantic awareness regarding the effects of the imperative of functionality and servility on the conceptual framing of nature experience. Bibliography Abbey, Edward. 1991. The Journey Home. New York: Plume. Abbey, Edward. 1994. Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951 - 1989. Boston: Little Brown. Arendt, Hannah. 2018. Die Freiheit, frei zu sein. : . the originally untitled text. On line at: https://lithub.com/never-before-publishedhannah-arendt-on-what-freedom-and-revolution-really-mean/ (consulted 3.2.2020) , . . Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

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, . . Conference paper. On line at: https://teora.hit.no/handle/2282/686 (consulted 12.7.2016). , . . . Løvmo (eds): Friluftsliv fra Fridtjof Nansen til våre dager. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Dahle, Børge (ed.). 1994. Nature: The True Home of Culture. : skole. Dahle, Børge, 2007. Norwegian Friluftsliv: ‘A Lifelong Communal Process’ in Henderson : . , . . Mestre Fjellet nr. 15. On line at: http://naturliv.no/faarlund/artikler/Hva_mener_vi_med_friluftsliv.htm (consulted 22.3.2016). Faarlund, Nils. 1973b. Friluftsliv: Hva—Hvorfor—Hvordan. Kompendium Nr. 32 ved NIH, Utgave 1. On line at: www.naturliv.no (consulted 23.3.2016). Faarlund, Nils. 1978. ‘Om friluftsliv kontra sport og idrett’ in Breivik, Gunnar and Haakon Løvmo (eds) Friluftsliv fra Fridtjof Nansen til våre dager. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. , . . . , . . : 56–61. Figari, Helene, Hanne Haaland and Olve Krange. 2009: Friluftsliv som Hverdagsliv: Innvandrerkvinners bruk av utendørsområder i Groruddalen. NINA Rapport 479. Oslo: . Flaatten, Camilla. 2014. ‘Dette er Norges beste sjekkehytte’. On line at: http://reise.aften. / / . . _ (consulted 18.8. 2014). Foucault, Michel. 1986. ‘Of Other Spaces’ in Diacritics 16(1): 22–27. Gelter, Hans. 2007. ‘Friluftsliv as Slow Experiences in a Post-Modern “Experience” : . , . . Natur og Miljø nr. 3/93: 22–25. Goksøyr, Matti. 1994. ‘Nasjonal identitetsbygging gjennom idrett og friluftsliv’in Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift 2/1994: 182–193. Guevara, Ernesto Che. 1963. Pasajes de la Guerra Revolucionaria. La Habana: Union de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba. Habberstad, Mette. 2014. ‘Nasjonal turdag får nye grupper ut på tur’. On line at: https:// www.dnt.no/nyheter/463-nasjonal-turdag-far-nye-grupper-ut-pa-tur/ (consulted 19.1.2016). , . . Nature First: Outdoor Life the Friluftsliv Way. Toronto: National Heritage Books.

i ell , . . Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Kettering, OH: Angelico Press. , . . : . Fjell og Vidde 6/93: 48–49. Kvaløy Setreng, Sigmund. 1989. ‘En ambolt hvorpå selv gudene hamrer forgjeves’. Norsk Filosofisk Tidskrift. Nr. 24, 1989. Kvaløy Setreng, Sigmund. 1992. ‘Etterord’ [epilogue] to Essays, . Oslo: Aventura Lees, James and Walter Clutterbuck. 1968 [1882]. Three in Norway by Two of Them. Oslo: Tanum-Norli. Nansen, Fridtjof. 1994. ‘Friluftsliv’ in Dahle (1994). , . . . Forum for Idræt (11): 21–28. , . . Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86(4): 630–653. . . : https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/ outdoor-recreation-act/id172932/ (consulted 17.1.2016). , . . . , . , . . Ästhetik der Interpassivität. Hamburg: Philo Fine Arts. , . . Wofür es sich zu leben lohnt: Elemente materialistischer Philosophie. : . . , . . On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions without Owners. : . Sande, Allan. 2000. ‘Friluftsliv som ritual i moderne virkeligheter’ in Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift (11): 128–140. , . . The Fall of Public Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. , . . Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation. London: Penguin. . . , dersøkelsen, 2014’. On line at: http://www.ssb.no/kultur-og-fritid/statistikker/fritid/ hvert-3-aar (consulted 19.1.2016). Stokke, Anne. 2008. På leting etter tropisk friluftsliv: Finnes det og har vi eventuelt noe å lære? : . : . Stortingsmelding nr. 39 (2000–2001) [White Paper of the Norwegian Government]. 2001. Friluftsliv: Ein veg til høgare livskvalitet. Oslo: Det kongelige miljøverndepartamentet. Stortingsmelding nr. 18 (2015–2016) [White Paper of the Norwegian Government]. 2016. Friluftsliv: Natur som kilde for helse og livskvalitet. Oslo: Det kongelige miljøverndepartamentet.

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Tönnies, Ferdinand. 2002. Community and Society: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. New York: Dover Publications. , . . : Unpublished manuscript. , . . : . Tordsson, Bjørn. 2008. ‘Friluftslivets politisk-institusjonelle marginalisering’ in Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift 1/2008: 42–56. , . . Norske Naturmytologier: Fra Edda til Økofilosofi. Oslo: Pax Forlag. , . . Essays. Oslo: Aventura. , . . Barske Glæder. Oslo: Aventura.

Afterword Maunu Häyrynen As this volume was finalised, the Covid-19 pandemic had redrawn the emotional maps and flows of affect in a global scale. Major research insights on the subject are yet to be published but a forced change of patterns in spatial practices . intensified use of urban green areas, in peaking visits to national parks, in rising domestic tourism and in the picking up of sales and hiring of summer cottages. Social distancing, restriction measures and stalled mobility have acted as the acute driving factors, but a search for what Anthony Giddens (1991) has called ontological security seems to be looming in the background. Nostalgic clinging to nature, the countryside and national realms of memory during times of crisis is not a new phenomenon in Finland – in the opposite, the pandemic seems to have revived national discourses and imagery hibernated for a long time. Exactly how lasting effect these changes may have remains to be seen, but they certainly attest to central role of emotions in fathoming and adjusting to the entirely new situation. The first visceral reactions appear to as well as articulated in relation to familiar spatial discourses and imagery on national territories, boundaries and external or internal threats. culturally fixed emotion and the prelinguistic and embodied affect was pointed . , together, emotions and affects appearing as continuous but layered. Some chapters focus more on the codes, according to which emotions are labelled as ‘things’. Others look at the spatial practices in which emotions occur and the relations between bodies in which they are situated. (Cf Low 2016, 145–152.) No contribution, however, entirely refutes the possibility of articulated individual or collective emotions. The approaches to emotions in the chapters cut across their disciplinary backgrounds. One discussion is taking place around placeor landscape-based emotions as social practices, another more specifically around affectivity and yet another around the semiotics of emotions. Several of these discussions seem to merge together in the contributions dealing with the relation between landscape and nationalism. one may compare two alternative approaches to emotions as social practices in leisure space. The specific emotion studied in both contributions is

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sociability in a natural setting. While Laakkonen and Linna study the workingclass leisure island in Helsinki as a collective heterotopia outside the urban everyday landscape of work, pollution and political struggle, Bigell is describing collective but individually performed identities, Norwegian outdoor life presented as a kind of civic duty. Although in both chapters nature acts as a backdrop for leisure activities, Laakkonen and Linna are describing close and , nature, describing outdoor life in its middle as a ritualistic roleplay. As Laakkonen and Linna point out, leisure space had formerly been the privilege of other social groups and was a new achievement to the leftist workers of the post-war era. There is a strong nostalgic tone over the oral history material on the island, associated with the summer season and the memories of youth of the informants. A very different emotional map is drawn by Bigell, emphasising the need for regeneration in the countryside as a kind of collectively felt but individually realised national duty. Parallel notions are not unknown . ent stages of urbanisation, in which vernacular spatial practices gradually turn While Bigell does not dwell too much on the concrete spatialities, Tarmo Pikner and Hannes Palang describe at length the alternative spaces created by urban farming practices in the texture of the city of Narva, Estonia. Here no single heterotopic counterspace is formed, in the manner of the leisure island discussed above, but rather a network of alternative micro-spaces embedded in a landscape shaped and controlled by planning discourse. There are marked similarities, though, as both cases represent placemaking by subcul : , culture. Another unifying feature between the groups is care as an emotional altogether missing in the aloofness of friluftsliv as described by Bigell. Each of the above commented contributions frames emotions in a different way. For Bigell, emotions appear more clearly as social constructions, whereas Laakkonen and Linna bring in their sensory, embodied and material aspects, . , , , tion with the environment understood as material flows. Thus understood, emotions / affects may be seen as tactics for dealing with specific affinities to places. Emotions are present in the embodied practices of cultivating and mobility and , .

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While Pikner and Palang focus on emotionally and affectively driven spatial practices, the chapters by Christine Boyer and Silja Laine shift the attention to reflections upon affectivity itself. Boyer describes the process of atmospheric impacts of buildings becoming first pre-intellectually grasped and then turned into text by the architects. Laine follows a similar process of an uneducated peasant woman observing multi-sensually the weather and then creating a vocabulary of her own to express its subtle changes in writing. These parallel processes witness about embodied experiences of the material world, but they also betray trained senses and judgement directing the observations and their interpretations. While Boyer does not in her chapter get into the concrete process and craft of architectural design, Laine presents laconic accounts of hardships in everyday life by her source Eva Christina. Unlike the writings of the architects, these notes leave outside her personal feelings, reflecting as it were the austere emotional climate of an entire island community. viewpoint as signifying systems. Hiedanpää and Lovén apply the trichotomy of sign by Charles Peirce, understanding the iconic landscape as an encoding of feelings that may camouflage the indexical landscape consisting of traces from ‘real’ life. On top of them the authors place the symbolic landscape, based on a collective agreement. However, the authors base their approach on abduction, associated by Peirce with Firstness and thus with impressions or feelings . build on the cultural semiotics of Yuri Lotman, paying particular attention to systemic changes of code. They see a possibility of forking development paths for landscape in historical turning points, one being an incorporation of former meanings by reinterpretation and re-evaluation, the other an inability to Stalker. the modi of classical landscape painting rather than with coevolution or societal change, although the latter can be found looming in the background. The modi are seen as expressions of emotional states in landscape representation. , she sees to be repeated by the contemporary Nordic painter she studies. They however disturb the Pastoral harmony by an atropic overlaying of dystopian elements, undermining the conventional spectator position and leaving room for affectivity here as well. Used in this way the modi become instruments of social and environmental criticism. Several of the contributions in the volume discuss emotions and affects connected with nationalism. Bigell has shown the bodily enjoyment of nature

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. mapped out the mixed feelings of Estonians about the ex-Soviet military sites as both uncomfortable reminders of past domination and more or less integrated parts of the everyday environment. Hiedanpää and Lovén have followed a longer and more gradual process of semiosis, leading from the depths of prehistory to the present-day significance of Koli as an institutionally framed . ied an absurd attempt at nationalising the environment by transplanting an Antarctic species into Norway. These examples reveal nationalist politics of emotions and their power in the inclusion or exclusion of places and discursive elements. Apart from the Nordic and Baltic nationalisms and processes of nation-building, the volume deals with specifically Nordic and Baltic landscapes and experiences of such, like the pronounced seasonality or a strong although ambiguous relationship with Northern nature. The volume set out to map out the emotional turn in the study of landscape and environment. As a result it demonstrated that emotions and affects play a key part in the politics of place, landscape and the environment. They are not entirely driven by affective fluctuations, taking place regardless of subjective thinking or sociocultural context. Neither are they purely discursive or semiotic phenomena, based on linguistic categorising of material entities and processes. Changes in the material world – in weather, built environment, human-ecological landscape systems – create new affective atmospheres but are also caught in discursive webs of meaning and power. , , new materialism and nonrepresentational theories may be picked up from the . . their explicit social and mental dimensions to embodiment and interaction with the material world. On the other hand, the sociocultural framing of affect must be observed to understand its politics and history – for instance in the production of spatial identities in different scales. The constructed emotional registers, finally, have a certain power to sustain and direct embodied social practices and the affectivities linked to them. The volume demonstrates a shift of emphasis to allow for the study of everyday life, the material landscape and its human and nonhuman agencies in parallel with place meanings and representations of landscape or its moral categories, not as an alternative to them. To end on a more concrete note, how could this volume and the approaches presented in it help in grasping the emotions linked to the still ongoing tial practices and the emotional settings they occur within: the safety of the

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distant worker’s summer cabin or the interpassivity of the city dwellers marching in an orderly line under the shade of an urban forest. Another route would be to observe subtler affective changes in the relations between bodies and the material world, as in the eerie atmosphere of public spaces stripped of the crowds of users or the neurotic outbursts of frustration in street parties or antivaccine demonstrations. A third option is offered by the studying of the articulation processes of emotions, trying to frame them and make sense of them in terms of familiar narratives, tropes and symbolic geographies: imagined national pasts, pastoral utopias and threatening Others both behind and inside the borders. The final outcome of the volume is, perhaps, that no translation of affects into emotions is complete but will leave gaps, discrepancies and aporia as windows for affectivity as an evolving and often unpredictable force. Bibliography Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Low, Setha. 2016. Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place. London: .

Index , ,

, , , , , Aegviidu see , , , , , 143–147, 151 Alaska see United States , , , , , , , , , Ateneum see Helsinki, Finland

Baltic

,

,



, , , , Barcelona, Spain 114 , , Bayamo see Cuba , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

, ,

, , 138, 144, 146, 148–151

, , , ,

,

,

,

,





,

,

, California see United States , Camp Pendleton see United States , , , , , , , . . , , , , , , , , , , , 133–137, 139–140, 142, 144, 150–151 ,

,

,

,





, , , , Dales see United Kingdom , , , , , , , , , , , Düsseldorf School, Germany 143

nde

,

, , ,

,

,

,

, , , , , Estko see Estonia , , , , , , , 73–76, 89, 93, 95, 246

80–82, 84, 89–92, 94–97

Kuusalu

, , 80

,



,

Lake Peipsi 66 , , , , , , 70, 246 dacha , , , 58–59, 61, 64, 68–70 , , , , , Pakri peninsula 75 Paldiski (former Soviet military , , Pähknemännik (forest) 81, 88 Pärispea (former Soviet military , , , Saaremaa (island) 96 , , , , , , ,

, ,

,

,

,

,

see United Kingdom Farnsworth House, United States see Mies , , , , , , , , , , 156–162, 164–165, 167, 169, 192–194, 198, 201, 205–206, 209, 212, 245 Communist Party of ( , Association for Nature

,

,



,

Estko (company) 81, 90



75

,



, , , , 204–205, 246



198–212, 248 ,









, , , ,



,

,

,



People’s Archives 26 People’s Democratic League, , 41 Pohjainen 157

,



Finnmark see Norway

,

, ,

nde ,

, ,



, , ,

,

,

,

,

,

,

, ,

,

,



, ,

, ,

,

,

, ,

,

,

,

. see Norway , , , , . Gordonvale see Australia , ,

see

,



,

, Hara Bay see Estonia , , Helgeland see Norway , , , Helsinki see Finland , , , , Hiiumaa see Estonia , , , , , , , , , , see Estonia ,

,

,

,

,

,

, ,

,

, , ,

, ,

Kaberneeme see Estonia Kadykchan see Kangru see Estonia , , Kårøy see Norway , Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art see , Kiili see Estonia Kingisepp see Estonia Kinnekulle see Estonia , , , , , , Koli see Finland Kong Karls Land see Norway , , , , 135–136, 137–138 , Kreenholm see Estonia Kristiansand see Norway Kudruküla see Estonia , Kulgu see Estonia , , Kuusalu see Estonia , Laeva see Estonia Lahemaa see Estonia

nde ,

Lake District see United Kingdom Lake Peipsi see Estonia Lake Pielinen see Finland see Sweden Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard ,



, , ,





,

, , see

186 London see , , Los Angeles see , , , , , , ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

, Moscow see , ,

,

,

,



, ,

, Mähuotsa see Estonia , , , , , see , , . Medelplana see Sweden , , , , , , 151 , , . . . , ,

,

, , , , , , Narva see Estonia , , , , , , , Nordkapp see Norway Nordland see Norway North Karelia see Finland , , , , , , 223–224, 230, 233–235, 237–239, 248

Kårøy 181 Kong Karls Land (King Charles

,

14, 175, 180–183, 186 Nasjonalsamlingen (political party) 178 , Nordland see , , , , , Piggtinden 224 175, 176, 180–182, 186–187 , Sandefjord 185 Shipping and Trade Mission, 181 Society for the Conservation of , , 187–188 Stamsund 186 , Trekking Association, 224, 238 , Nursi see Estonia

,

,

nde ,

, Olgina see Estonia , , Oslo see Norway ,

,

, ,

Queensland see , ,

, , , , ,

, , , see Estonia



, , , ,

see also 65–66, 75, 95, 186, 205 , . ,

Pähknemännik see Estonia Pakri peninsula see Estonia Paldiski see Estonia , , , , Pärispea see Estonia , , , , . , , , , , , , , see Cuba Piggtinden see Norway , Pohjainen see Finland , , , ,

, , ,

,

,

,

,

,



,

,

Saaremaa see Estonia Saimaa-Pielinen Lake System see Finland San Diego see United States , Sandefjord see Norway , , , , , , , , , , Sierra Maestra see Cuba , , , , see Norway , , , , , 115–116, 128 , , , South Georgia see United Kingdom , , , , , Soviet Union (see also , , , , 56–57, 65–67, 75 St. Petersburg see Stamsund see Norway , , , , , , Suomenlinna see Helsinki, Finland Suurpea see Estonia Svalbard see Norway Svinøya see Norway , , , , , , , , 129

,

,

129 Tallinn see Estonia , .

nde , , ,

, ,

,



, ,

,

, ,



, , ,

, ,

,

, 138–143, 151 , , Tønsberg see Norway

,

,

, , . .







,

Kemper Museum of Contemporary

University of Bayamo see Cuba University of Bergen see Bergen Uusikaupunki see Finland

,

,

Camp Pendleton (marine base



,

see Norway see Estonia , , , see Helsinki, Finland see Estonia see Helsinki, Finland see Sweden , , , see Norway , see Estonia , , ,

.

,

, ,

,

,

,

,

,

,



,

,

,

Yellowstone see , , ,

,



,

, ,

,

, ,