21258_01_esipuhe


Preface

MAUNU HÄYRYNEN AND PETRI J. RAIVO

The recent years have seen a growing internation-
al interest in the study of Karelia. This interest has
not limited itself to the fields traditionally associ-
ated with the area, such as regional history or eth-
nology, but has extended into new areas such as
cultural studies, human geography, art and archi-
tectural history.

This special issue of Fennia is a result of a long-
lasting contact, co-operation and mutual influ-
ence of a group of Finnish, Russian and Scandi-
navian researchers. As its subject area, the pub-
lishing project has undergone a long process of
metamorphosis, not without sudden change or
delicate shifting of meanings. The initial motiva-
tion for the project and its cohesive force has been
an understanding of Karelia as a multicultural
landscape, an object of constant reinterpretation,
recontextualisation and re-presentation by the dif-
ferent actors historically linked to it.

The issue seeks to map out different angles to
the study of Karelia, placing them into a compar-
ative framework. It has a further, conscious aim
to promote a cultural dialogue on Karelia across
the border and to place its nationalist representa-
tions under scholarly analysis, both not always
self-evident starting points in the popular dis-
course. The co-operation that has produced the
issue at hand is now continuing in the form of the
Transboundary Landscapes joint research project
(2004–2006), coordinated by Landscape Studies
at the University of Turku and funded by the “Rus-
sia in Flux” research programme of the Academy
of Finland. The project also deals with the study
of the Russian-Estonian borderland.

In her article Netta Böök, a doctoral student in
architectural history at the Helsinki University of
Technology, looks at the different readings of Rus-
sian Karelian architecture – a source of inspira-
tion for the Finnish fin-de-siècle National Roman-
ticism – and their touristic utilization. Maunu
Häyrynen, Professor of landscape studies at the
University of Turku, focuses on the particular role
of Karelia as a “liminal zone” in Finnish national
landscape imagery, arguing that there have been
other important contexts besides artistic Karelian-
ism that dominates the art historical image of the
area.

Häyrynen’s scope reaches to the reactions to
the loss of Karelia in the aftermath of the Second
World War, while Gregory Isachenko, Docent of
cultural geography at the University of St. Peters-
burg, carries on with the study of the post-war
Soviet imagery of the same area. His argument
builds on the dramatic changes in the physical
landscape on the one hand and on the ideologi-
cally dictated total break with the past on the oth-
er. Only during the recent years does he discern
a reconciliation between the present-day and his-
torical images of the Vyborg (Viipuri) Karelia.

John Lind, Professor of history at the University
of Southern Denmark in Odense, dwells on the
effect of landscape to the early stages of identity
formation in Karelia. According to him, this could
be pointed out in the establishment of borders and
primary routes of movement as well as in settle-
ment patterns and colonization of the area, cul-
minating in the religious, political and military
confrontation between the rival western and east-
ern powers.

Alexandr Pashkov, Docent of history at the Uni-
versity of Petrozavodsk, has studied the origin and
development of the Russian image of the Vyborg
province before the Finnish independence, notic-
ing an early phase of academic interest, an ensu-
ing period of military and statistical survey and a
last stage of touristic promotion to the growing
Russian middle class. The article tells a rather dif-
ferent story of the area from those of Böök and
Häyrynen, concentrating on economic resources
and administrative matters.

Docent Petri Raivo, Principal lecturer at the
North Karelia Polytechnic, discusses Karelia as a
Finnish lieu de mémoire, revealing the politics of
memory manifested in the disputes over war me-
morials between Finland and Soviet Union/Rus-
sia. In accordance with Isachenko, he too ob-
serves a rapprochement between the Finnish and
Russian interpretations of recent history – at least
in the acknowledgement of the existence of dif-
ferent versions.