Before I arrived here in January, I had only been to Finland once before—last summer, for the International Oral History Association [IOHA] conference in Jyväskylä, a lovely town on a large lake. The conclusion to that conference was a memorable evening boat ride to a small island where a raucous band met us as we disembarked and led us in to a beautiful, rustic hall where we had dinner and danced the night away. I carried home with me wonderstruck memories of that unexpected evening, and fond thoughts of the many warm and engaging women I’d met--riding on the ferry, standing in the buffet line, sitting at the table, and boogying on the dance floor.
Last week I was delighted to meet three of them again when I visited the University of Oulu (where snow still covered the ground) to talk about the practice of oral history in different cultural contexts. Sitting down to dinner with Kaisa Vehkalahti, Seija Jalagin, Tiina Kinnunen, and my gracious host Heini Hakosalo, I felt like I was with old friends—I was immediately struck by how generous and friendly they all were, and how easily our conversation flowed. I had one of the best meals I’ve had in Finland (at the restaurant Hella), and felt instantly reconnected to these smart, energetic, impressive scholars. Given what I remembered from the summer before, I wasn’t surprised to hear that Seija was headed off to a night of salsa dancing after dinner! I was tempted to join her, but I opted for more sleep.
The next day I met with them and a larger group of scholars including faculty and Ph.D. students, where I shared about the Southern Oral History Program’s Stories to Save Lives: Health, Illness and Medical Care project. After lunch, some of us gathered for more conversation about the practice of oral history. Oulu has a significant program on the history of science and ideas, and I was thoroughly impressed by the breadth of the research being done—studies on the changing lives of rural youth in northern Finland; on how historical consciousness shapes how indigenous and non-indigenous girls make life choices; on the history of Finnish aid to developing countries; on Finnish approaches to tuberculosis in Somalia in the 1980s; on longitudinal birth cohort studies as a form of scientific knowledge production; on loneliness.
Just a few days earlier, I’d enjoyed another delicious meal and invigorating conversation with other women researchers: Anne Heimo, Kirsi Hänninen, Katy Borland, and Tuula Jurvonen and I had gone out to lunch after our morning seminar on oral history, archives, and activism. I was deeply impressed by Tuula’s remarkable story of how she almost single-handedly managed to “queer the archives” of Finland. Until she went to talk to them, the important collections at the Workers Archive did not use any keywords that would reveal the sexuality of the subjects. This meant it was impossible to do a search, for instance, for “gay” or “lesbian” and retrieve any information. Likewise at the Workers Museum in Tampere. She showed us an image of a matchbox from a lesbian bar in Helsinki which didn’t include any of those keywords in its description. Tuula recalled how she marched in to the archive director’s office and set a pile of books about queer history published in other countries on his desk. She pointed out that “this is the kind of research that is being done in other countries. And you are making it impossible to do this here.” After two hours of explication, he asked her “have you ever considered a career in advertising?” She had convinced him of the need, and the archives now is an important resource for queer history research in Finland. It was remarkable to think about the major impact Tuula had on the whole field of history in this country. As she pointed out, “queering the archive” changes how you answer the questions “What is Finland?” and “Who are we?”
During the seminar, Tuula had also opened up an important conversation about a major social sciences archive in Finland. This archive is often the first one that researchers consider for depositing their materials, including oral history. But the archives insists on anonymizing the interviews—so they will remove any information about people’s work, education, family, place of residence, etc. An individual will end up being referred to as, for instance, “a middle-aged woman from Southwest Finland.” Some of this emphasis on privacy is the result of the European Union’s Data Privacy act, which Finnish archivists interpret very strictly. But, as we discussed in both Turku and Oulu, researchers don’t always realize what will happen to their interviews if they archive them there. Moreover, for most oral historians, the notion of anonymizing the interviews (except in extreme cases where the person’s identity needs to be protected) goes counter to the whole point of the method. We talked at length about the implications for research and how oral historians might interact with the archivists there.
Will Finnish archivists feel more pressure to share people’s individual stories over time? Or will U.S. oral historians, just recently released from IRB, end up finding ourselves facing similar policies to protect people’s privacy in the future? I’m not sure. But the fundamentally different approach to the notion of privacy here is fascinating vis a vis oral history research. It makes it much harder to share the wealth of oral history widely—podcasts, performances, artistic interactions with the audio are not generally part of the oral history culture here, and there is very little community engaged work. I have found myself needing to explain, or even defend, our practices and our belief that the good far outweighs any potential harm.
Are academic conferences worthwhile endeavors? I know that the connections I made almost a year ago at the IOHA laid the groundwork for these ongoing discussions. I have benefitted immensely from these rich and provocative conversations, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the intellectual generosity of my new friends and colleagues in Finland.
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