The research focuses on oral history of the family and the analysis of the past of the family in the form of written narratives. The responses written for the Folklore Archive of the Finnish Literature Society's Great Narrative of the Family national collection (1997) look at the past from different perspectives.

The focus in the narratives is on time, place and human fate. The research has continued the analysis which became widespread in folkloristics in the 1990s', which is concerned with the problematics of the genesis of reminiscence materials. The agrarian culture of the earlier part of the twentieth century is emphasised in the research.

The research analyses how the dialogue between oral history and the past appears in the collection's texts in terms of structure, narrative patterns and linguistic devices, and what the writer's intentions were.  The meanings of the responses were analysed by adopting the classification of textual levels formulated by M.A.K. Halliday: Meanings are transmitted on the ideational, interpersonal and textual levels.

The textual analysis of twelve responses shows that the texts drawn up by the writers were generated individually, not merely to reflect the exceptations of the imagined recipient or the themes of the archive collection competition. 

Writing for the archive is one means of attempting to influence social discussion or to leave to future generations a testimony in the form of a biography. The private and public meet in the writings sent to the Folklore Archive; hence the writers' positions vary. The texts demonstrate an internal discussion and reminiscence, or a conscious correction of historical writing perceived as one-sided, for the enlightenment of readers. I discern in the texts three different views of agrarian culture; the idealistic, the marginal and the diversifying.