Whose memory, whose symbols? – Artifacts and monuments  of bordering and de-bordering processes in the cross-border region of Tornio Valley (between Finland and Sweden)[1]

Helena Ruotsala[2]

Borders are not permanent, entire or total, but mobile. The Tornio River Valley was divided after the Finnish War of 1809 and, until then people spoke the same language and shared the same culture and religion. Today, the Tornio River Valley area is a frontier district where the political—or national—boundaries do not coincide with the cultural and linguistic boundaries. The multi-ethnic (Finns, Swedes and Sámi) border zone of the Tornio River Valley is a vital area for the hybridisation of cultures as well as for the study of power relations and everyday activities.

In this case both places and identities have been produced by borders; these are challenged by the transnational movement over borders. They make it also possible to follow how identities have been and are constructed, and how gradually a different narrative started to be told on both sides of it, one of ‘us’ and of ‘them’.  People living on both sides of the border have used different border strategies and have pursued different cross-border activities at different times. Past is in many ways present in their life. The everyday life of the people living in this area is transnational and multi-local, but it is also multivocal and has a lot of nuances. In my ongoing research I am more interested in the everyday transnationalism which is experienced by the local inhabitants. The joint cultural history of this area can explain – at least partly – the current integration over the border, and the plan or utopia of a borderless twin-city.

Soon after the border was drawn both states (Sweden and the Russian Empire, to which Finland belonged 1809-1917) started to build their own national symbols and institutions on the border. In this paper I will focus on some of these symbols and monuments. How these were and are used today  to create collective identity and collective memories? How these symbols and monuments can be interpreted from the bordering and de-bordering processes? Which stories these sites and monuments are telling in the contemporary situation of de-bordering process and how the local inhabitants interpretate these sites, monuments and narratives about them? Whose symbols and monuments they are today?  Today constant identity negotiations and interpretations are taking places in the cross-border area.

This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork (interviews, participant observations) and archive material. The theoretical framework of my presentation is based on the border concept of Doreen Massey.

[1] I’m collaborating with the project Feeniks at the University of Lapland. See more e.g. professor Päivi Granö’s research: http://www.ulapland.fi/InEnglish/Research/Research_Projects/_Spearhead_projects/Feeniks/Research_group_and_research_interests.iw3#PaiviGrano.

[2] PhD Helena Ruotsala is professor in European Ethnology at the University of Turku, Finland. http://www.hum.utu.fi/oppiaineet/kansatiede/en/personnel/helena.html. Her earlier studies have been focusing on e.g. environmental ethnology, gendered spaces and places and minorities. Her current research projects are dealing with transnational everyday life in a cross-border region between Finland and Sweden, localities and cultural processes and relationship between reindeer herding and local history. She has done fieldwork in Russia, Austria and Sweden. She spent summer seminar 2012 as DAAD-Professor at the Institute of Finnougristik, University of Hamburg.