Финската гражданска война от 1918 г.: разказването на историята и създаването на място
The 1918 Finnish Civil War: Narrating History, Creating Place

Summary/Abstract: Sammatti (a small rural town of approximately 1000 inhabitants in Southern Finland) is well-known for being the home place of Elias Lonnrot, the compiler of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. Though the town actively portrays itself as a region of culture, delicacies, and nature, its inhabitants view it from another perspective and see their local history as including also other important periods and events, of which the 1918 Finnish Civil War and its harsh consequences are among the most significant. After the bloody 1918 Civil War the nation was in mourning and war memorials were built, but the official commemoration applied only to dead Whites, whereas the families of the Reds were prevented from mourning and honoring the memory of their dead in public for decades. In my article I examine the dissonant heritage of the 1918 Civil War by analyzing how official and unofficial memorials and other places related to the war exist in the landscape of Sammatti, how they were re-wakened in narratives and how these places of conflict may in time become places of sharing. Places evoke narratives and, conversely, narratives evoke them. In fact, without a narrative attached to a place, it stops its existence. In addition to the official sites of memory there are also numerous amounts of unofficial sites of memory (execution places, hiding places, etc.). They could be found only as traces deserving expertise knowledge to be recognized as such or exist only in the memories of the narrators. These places do not only act as reminders, but may also be used as evidence when narrating about the past. In addition, community's shared residential area does not have the same significance for all its inhabitants. Instead, it depends on the personal socio-spatial history, as well as on the person's age, gender and position in the community. Though history is usually structured chronologically, when people tell it they rarely analyze their past chronologically and the understanding of narratives rarely requires exact timing. Thus, instead of temporal references narrators commonly use spatial ones.

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