On Vacation : Finnish Migrants at Home as Tourists

• Main Author: Snellman, Hanna
• Other Authors: Szarvas, Zsuzsa, Fejos, Zoltán, Cseri, Miklós, Collegium for Advanced Studies, Tutkijakollegium, Forskarkollegiet
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Finland; Sweden; migration; Göteborg; Salla; oral history; Finn; Lapland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10224/4557

Also published in The road taken : narratives from Lapland My ongoing research is concerned with the experiences of persons who migrated to Gothenburg from Salla and other municipalities in the province of Lapland in the 1960s-70s. I am examining the environment in which they grew up in Finnish Lapland, and the way this background was reflected in their lifestyle in their new homeland. I am further looking into their key experiences of being a Gothenburg Finn.7 One of these experiences is the topic for this paper: vacations in Finland. The focus is on the thoughts and experiences at individual level, and in my analyses I will be trying to piece together their worldview." The study is based almost exclusively on interview material. I have at my disposal 62 interviews, half of which I made myself. The interviewees had migrated to Sweden at different times. The one who had spent the longest uninterrupted period in Sweden had gone there in 1955 and the most recent in 1979. The majority of the interviewees had migrated to Sweden between 1962 and 1974, and 1967-1970 were peak years. Although I did not know the year of migration when I fixed the interview, the data well represents the peak years in the statistics. The same applies to the age of the interviewees on migration: the youngest woman had migrated to Sweden without her parents when she was 14, and the oldest at the age of 37. The ages of the men on migration varied between 16 and 39. Most of the interviewees had been under the age of 25 when they migrated to Sweden. In addition to the interviewees, I have used material in the press, oral history collected by The Archives of The Finnish Minority in Sweden in Stockholm, and the diary of and letters received in Sweden by a young girl who migrated from Salla to Gothenburg. My research is part of a project financed by the Academy of Finland entitled "Gothenburg - the largest village in the parish of Salla" of which I am in charge. Also working on the project are Marja Agren, a postgraduate student of ethnology at ...