Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.

Kaipaus Karjalaan. Matkoja kotiseudulle
[Longing for Karelia. Journeys to the homeland]
Toim. [Ed. by] Liisa Lehto
Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010. 231 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-222-167-4
€34,  hardback

The interest among Finns in making journeys to the areas of Karelia that were lost to the Soviet Union  after the wars of 1939–1944 has showed no signs of lessening. On the contrary: the increasing preoccupation of  researchers and ordinary citizens with the roots of the Karelians and with their modern way of life makes it possible to speak of a kind of Karelian renaissance. The opening of the borders after the fall of the Soviet Union triggered an enormous enthusiasm for tourism. This book contains fifty accounts of such journeys, drawn from the material of the Finnish Literature Society’s Folklore Archives collected in 1992 and 2007. The personal travel stories are by writers of different ages – the oldest was born in 1906, the youngest in the 1980s  – and they focus on attitudes to loss of homeland that range from deep feelings of anger and failure to emotions of joy and of ‘reconciliation with oneself and with the whole of one’s life.’ Acts of purification in the water of the home village well or of swimming in Lake Ladoga are described in terms of a sacred ritual.