| Summary: | Abstract The dissertation studies the 1980s young adult fiction of Anna-Liisa Haakana (b. 1937), a writer from Northern Finland. It asks, how do the novels Ykä yksinäinen (1980), Ykköstyttö (1981), Kukka kumminkin (1983), Kehnompi Kettunen (1986) and Ruman tytön rakkaus (1989) describe the ways in which young people in remote Northern areas experience and use their surroundings. What kind of meanings of space and place can be found in these narratives of development? How do the young persons of remote areas cope in building their identity? How do the spaces and places of Haakana’s girls and boys that strengthen or weaken their conditions of growth and their experience of belonging? Haakana’s novels are typical problem-oriented young adult fiction of the 1980s in their topics. However, the books emphasise the connection between identity, growth, and the environment in a special way. The peripheric milieu restricts young people’s leisure opportunities and social relations, making the connection between the milieu and the teenager unique, in comparison to the young adult fiction in general. Haakana raises questions on the inward warmth and intolerance of small village communities, as well as on the inequality of the northern region to the rest of Finland, like many other Northern writers have done. Simultaneously, the relationship between Haakana’s works and the problem of the periphery is tensed: she emphasises the many sides of the local experience of living in the North. What is special, is that for the young Northern characters, nature often serves as an affirmative space for their identity and growth. My study links Haakana’s young adult novels to the history of juvenile literature in Finland and highlights the negative and positive aspects of the periphery from the young characters point of view. No doctoral research has been done on Anna-Liisa Haakana’s works before. Finnish young adult fiction of the 1970s and 1980s, which has been remained somewhat marginal in the study of juvenile literature, has been ...
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