Celebrating nationhood: Negotiating nationhood and history in Finland's centenary celebrations
Abstract
National celebrations are one of the ways by which nations attempt to maintain connectedness with the past and strengthen national identities. Centenary celebrations, in particular, make identity questions visible and bring them to the centre of public debate and, thus, provide an opportunity to examine question such as ‘where do we come from’ and ‘where are we going’. In this research, we examine conceptions of nationhood and history in the year of the Finnish centenary 2017. As the Finnish centenary programme was simultaneously organised ‘from above’ as an elite-driven and ‘from below’ as citizen-driven collective endeavour, it provided unique material for exploring the construction, meanings and negotiations of social representations of nationhood and history. Our analysis brings forth the power struggle of meanings, the ways in which hegemonic narratives are challenged and contested and the ways in which affects and emotions are entangled with the meaning-making in commemoration and nation-building practices, for example, by employing narrative empathy in commemorations. Different projects of the centenary programme make different subject positions available for the participants, such as a position of hardworking Finn or brave Finn in hegemonic narratives and, respectively, a position of emancipated women or fragile and traumatised soldiers in alternative narratives.
1 INTRODUCTION
National celebrations are one way in which nations attempt to maintain connectedness with the past and strengthen national identities. A nation's jubilees carry strong symbolic power as they provide occasions for identity-building by inviting citizens to remember, perform and redefine their national identities and histories and to reflect on their nation's future (Lentz, 2013a; Turner, 2006). National centenary celebrations bring identity questions to the centre of public debate in a form of mnemonic practices (Olick & Robbins, 1998), providing an opportunity to examine questions such as ‘where do we come from’ and ‘where are we going’ (Elgenius, 2011a, 2011b; Lentz, 2013a, 2013b; Skey, 2006). This paper focuses on Finland, which celebrated its independence centenary in 2017.
Research on collective celebrations can be traced back to Durkheim's (1912/2001) work, Elementary Forms of Religious Life, in which he showed the importance of rituals in communicating a group's meaning systems and in enhancing and sustaining their uniformity and solidarity. According to Durkheim, these ‘collective representations’ were shared by a society and were stable across generations (Durkheim, 2001, p. 333). Durkheim's analysis has been criticised for its capacity to explain rites of modern societies marked by diversity and change. Nora (1989) noted how official and unofficial, social and individual practices intertwine in commemorations. Thus, in the present study, instead of using Durkheim's idea of coercive and uniform collective representations, we adopt Moscovici's ( 1984) theory and concept of ‘social’ representation, as it better characterises modern societies in which individuals are not just subject to shared meanings through a socialisation process but also actively create and use representations (Moscovici, 1988).
Social representations theory is aligned with more recent research on national celebrations positing the idea that rituals and celebrations express complex meanings related to nationhood and can for this reason be challenged, contested and replaced (Elgenius, 2011a; Fox, 2014; Lentz, 2013b). Moscovici (1988) identified three types of shared representations: (a) hegemonic, which are consensually shared and which come closest to Durkheim's collective representations. Hegemonic representations convey a stable, dominant and consensual version of knowledge and are often imposed by a powerful group. The two other kinds of representations are shared by subgroups in a society: (b) emancipated representations, which coexist alongside hegemonic representations and provide complementary knowledge to consensual representations, and (c) polemic representations, which are defined by their opposition to the hegemonic narratives and are often generated by marginalised groups. Hegemonic representations resist change, but continuous debate can give space to alternative representations and gradually alter consensual conceptions within society (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016b). Social representations theory highlights a dialogical relationship between different groups, characterised by tension, debate and dialogue (Marková, 2003).
Previous research on nationalism and nationhood can be roughly divided into two research lines focusing on elite-driven perspectives on nationhood (Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983) and everyday nationhood in which ordinary citizens are regarded as agents (Billig, 1995; Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008; Hutchinson, 2005; Skey, 2006). Several researchers suggest that national identity is defined by both top-down and bottom-up perspectives, by both institutional practices and everyday social representations (Andreouli & Howarth, 2013; Nora, 1989).
Much of the work on everyday nationhood rests on Michael Billig's (1995) seminal work on banal nationalism. For Billig, national identity is not a passing attachment but is a constant presence in individuals' lives brought about through the constant ‘flagging’ of the nation and mundane practices in everyday life. Skey (2006) further extended the idea of banal nationalism by showing the significance of mass public events for a wider understanding of national identity. As Skey describes it, the celebratory aspects of a public event make the banal aspects of nationhood visible, concrete and meaningful by associating the ritual activities and symbols with moments of great pleasure. In previous research, collective celebrations are connected to identity performances, sense of solidarity and strengthening of collective identity (Durkheim, 2001; McPherson & McCrone, 2009). However, scholars have also shown that national rituals may also be divisive (Fox, 2014) and maintain divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (e.g., Elgenius, 2011a; Hutchinson, 2005; McPherson & McCrone, 2009). Scholars have recently addressed the importance of studying affects in commemorative rituals and nation-building. For example, McCreanor and colleagues' (2018) study of Anzac Day commemorations in New Zealand shows how the feeling dimension is constructed and mobilised to the imperatives of national cohesion.
Assmann (1992) and Assmann and Czaplicka (1995) conceptualised different modes of social memory as communicative and cultural. Communicative memory refers to conceptions or the past emerging in everyday interaction, while cultural memory refers to an officially defined and commemorated past. Even though communicative memory is part of everyday life, its practices are often politicised, and the past is constructed to serve present purposes. In cultural memory, the past is used to understand the present. The present study focuses on Finnish national celebrations from the perspective of social representations theory. The study aims to provide a social psychological perspective to analyse the dynamics and interconnection between cultural and communicative memory and between ‘top-down’ elite-driven and ‘bottom-up’ lay conceptions of nationhood and history.
2 CONSTRUCTING CONTENTS AND MEANINGS OF NATIONHOOD IN PUBLIC COMMEMORATION
The theoretical framework of the present study leans on the work on social representations of history (Liu & Hilton, 2005). Social representations refer to the construction of shared knowledge through social interaction and debate in the public sphere, corresponding to ‘a system of values, ideas and practices’ (Moscovici, 1973, p. xiii) and serve as symbolic tools enabling group members to make sense of their social world (Andreouli & Howarth, 2013). The dialogical relationship between self, other and object (e.g., nationhood) forms the unit of analysis in social representations theory (Marková, 2003).
National celebrations provide a forum for communication and commemoration of different versions of nationhood and history (Connerton, 1989; Turner, 2006). Research on commemoration traces back to Maurice Halbwachs' work on the social origins of collective memory (Olick & Robbins, 1998). The group's present condition and its future prospects define how the common past is presented. Selective remembering and forgetting are characteristics of this kind of remembering. Collective remembering is an active process created by a selection of narratives that serve the present interests of the group (Wertsch, 2002). Different memories are cherished in different times and contexts, and collective remembering is intertwined with memory politics that reflects struggle, sociopolitical agenda and intergroup relations in a society (Liu & Hilton, 2005).
Conceptually, collective memory has been located at the crossroads of social identity and social representations (Hilton & Liu, 2017). In line with László (2008), we argue that concepts of collective memory and social representations are compatible approaches. Social representations related to the past can be approached as narratives that constitute collective memories and strengthen collective identities (Liu & László, 2007; Wertsch, 2002). Hakoköngäs and Sakki (2016a, 2016b) have presented a model of commemoration that describes the formation of social representations of history. In this model, communication, social representations of history and collective memory constitute a continuous circle in which (a) social communication addressing the past leads to (b) the formation of social representations of history and, through repetition and sharing, (c) to the preservation of representations in collective memory. This circle is dynamic as collective memory guides ongoing social communication.
Social representations are formed, transformed and maintained through three processes: anchoring, objectification and naturalisation. Through anchoring, nationhood and history are given meaning in a culture-specific and value-laden way. Finnish history, for instance, has acquired its meaning in relation to the Finnish wars against the Soviet Union during WW2 (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a). Objectification is a process whereby something abstract is transformed into something almost physical and concrete, which may take the form of a symbol, a metaphor, a figure, a person or a group. In the case of national celebrations, it may be that the celebratory aspects of the event, such as music (e.g., Sibelius), food (e.g., Karelian pies) or even particular places (e.g., Senate Square), render nationhood tangible (cf. Skey, 2006). Naturalisation means that a new phenomenon becomes ordinary and acquires a place in social reality. The naturalised object, e.g., the colour associated with nationhood and national identity (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016b), becomes an instrument that can be used to categorise other concepts and objects. Shared knowledge of the past, collective memory, is often deep-rooted and difficult to challenge as it has become banal (Billig, 1995) and naturalised (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016b). Despite this, social representations of nationhood and history are continuously undergoing transformation.
In line with some scholars (Andreouli & Chryssochoou, 2015; Hilton & Liu, 2017; Kislioglu & Cohrs, 2018; Liu & Hilton, 2005), the present study approaches nationhood and history as a social representation that allows us to understand both the content of identities and the dynamic processes related to negotiations over identity constructions and performances in national celebrations. We understand nationhood as a shared conception addressing the membership of a certain group and being constituted by values, ideas and practices (cf. Moscovici, 1973, p. xiii). Previous research suggests that constructions of nationhood are not neutral endeavours but strategically constructed conceptions that are guided by the interests of the groups that produce them (Andreouli & Chryssochoou, 2015; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001) and are tied to intergroup relations (Reicher, Cassidy, Hopkins, & Levine, 2006).
In this study, we examine conceptions of nationhood and history in the year of the Finnish centenary. We focus on the contents and meanings of nationhood and history that are in constant transformation and debate and increasingly challenged by the influences of globalisation, immigration and other social movements (Andreouli & Chryssochoou, 2015; Kislioglu & Cohrs, 2018; Skey, 2006). Thus, we are interested in the changes and continuities of national identity as it appears in the centenary celebration. We focus on the dynamic process of national identity construction by examining the construction, meanings and negotiations of social representations of nationhood and history.
3 CONTEXT: JUBILEE IN FINLAND IN 2017
The celebration of Finnish independence from Russia takes place on 6 December. The mnemonic practices related to Finnish Independence Day are serious in nature, unlike in many other countries where national celebrations take the form of a carnival (e.g., McCrone and McPehrson, 2009). It is marked by elite participation but also contains many popular mass-participatory events. The institutional side of celebrations includes speeches, tributes at war memorials, church services, marches and president's awards for individual achievement. From the ordinary citizens' perspective, celebrations include placing blue and white candles in windows and watching the Independence Day Reception at the Presidential Palace on TV (Kolbe, 2001).
The centenary of Finland's independence was celebrated during 2017. The national celebrations consisted of an official centenary programme including festivities all over the country. The common theme chosen for the programme was ‘Together’, which explicitly welcomed everybody to take part in the celebrations and declared the strengthening of the sense of togetherness in Finnish society as the main goal of the celebrations (Finland100 report 2018). According to the results of a study by Statistics Finland (Statistics Finland, 2015–2018), most Finns thought the centenary programme was a success.
The Finland100 organisation, reporting to the Prime Minister's office, was responsible for the jubilee year programme. However, the programme itself was built by the ‘people’ as the leading idea of the programme was that everybody could suggest a project. In practice, the celebrative events were created through cooperation between various actors: public and private sector bodies and individual citizens. Thus, it provides a top-down and bottom-up perspective for national celebrations and nation-building.
4 MATERIAL
The research material is based on the official programme consisting of 5,000 projects. There were events for every single day throughout the country (Finland100 report 2018). According to Statistics Finland, 44% of Finns participated in these events. Thus, the programme reached its audience and was found meaningful by the Finnish people.
The material was collected in January 2017 when the centenary programme consisted of 745 projects. We assume that these 745 projects are representative of the entire programme. The centenary programme was openly available in digital form in the web pages of the Finland100 organisation.
Finland100 defined six basic conditions for projects: (1) Projects must relate specifically to the anniversary celebration. (2) Projects should symbolise the theme Together—projects cannot be exclusive or discriminatory. (3) Projects must be linked to one of the three priority areas: Finland's past 100 years, Finland's present in 2017 or the future of Finland. (4) Projects were implemented in 2017. (5) Commercial goals were not accepted as the main content of projects. (6) Projects must also be in good taste and comply with the law.
Although anybody could suggest a project, some limitations need to be considered. Not everybody participated in the programme, and even its theme, ‘Together’, may have excluded projects considered exclusionary or discriminatory by Finland100.
Each project had its own page where it was described in words and images. Some project presentations included a link to additional material which was excluded from the analysis. Figure 1 illustrates the material.
The material could include both textual and visual elements and, therefore, the analytic procedures aimed to interpret the whole project utilising the heading, main text and images.
5 ANALYTIC PROCEDURE
The narrative analysis consisted of two parts: a data-driven thematic analysis of all material and a narrative-discursive analysis of selected projects. The former procedure aimed to provide a broad description of thematic elements across a large number of cases; the latter explored in more detail what emotion-laden meanings and group identities were made available for participants in hegemonic and alternative narratives.1
Thematic analysis has been described by Braun and Clarke (2006) as ‘a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) from within data’ (p. 79). The main reason for employing this approach was because of its flexibility and its good fit in the theoretical and epistemological framework of this study. The thematic analysis proceeded in six stages: (1) familiarisation with the material, (2) creating codes, (3) identifying themes, (4) checking themes, (5) naming and determining themes in relation to each other and (6) reporting and interpreting (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
In the first stage, familiarisation with the research material was achieved by reading the material and writing up preliminary observations, ideas and interesting features. We soon realised that most of the 745 projects could be labelled with several codes, making comparison between themes difficult. Thus, we decided that each project would be given just one code that best captured the content and aim of the project. During the familiarisation phase, it also became clear that in order to select the dominant code, we should look at all elements of the projects together: title, main text and illustration. The second phase, code creation, included systematic coding of the material by identifying semantic and latent codes. Codes were mainly identified on their explicit, semantic level, while implicit, more hidden meanings played a more central role in the second part of our analysis. In the third stage, we identified themes by classifying the initial codes under broader themes. For example, the code ‘visual art’ was merged with other codes such as ‘music’ and ‘dance’ under ‘art’. The fourth stage involved further refining and defining the themes. It was important to ascertain that no project would be better classed under another theme and that no themes had been overlooked during the previous steps. This meant going through all those projects labelled as ‘other themes’. These projects did not relate to any particular content of nationhood but were all related more generally to remembering Finnish history or Finnishness. Thus, after rechecking ‘other themes’, they were divided into two subthemes: ‘historical trajectory’ and ‘memorising’, which together formed one of the largest themes: ‘collective remembering’. The fifth stage of the thematic analysis involved further defining themes in relation to one another and naming them and corroborating their descriptions. In the sixth stage, the results of the analysis were written down and interpreted in reference to previous studies on narratives of Finnish history. We present the sixth and final stage below as the first section of the analysis.
Unlike the thematic analysis that was carried out for the entire material, the second part of the analysis was based on narrative-discursive reading of a selected set of material.
During the thematic analysis, it became clear that themes consisted of more hegemonic and more alternative perspectives on history. In order to explore the way in which constructions of nationhood and history were potentially negotiated and challenged, we focused on the theme of war from the perspective of dialogical negotiation of meanings and subject positions. Even though war was not the largest theme in the celebration programme, in the light of previous studies (e.g., Liu et al., 2005; Torsti, 2012), it constitutes the core content of social representations of history. Moreover, according to Finnish academic historians, war as a narrative of Finnishness is stronger than others providing a linear storyline, strong emotions and clear actors (e.g., Tepora, 2011).
A narrative-discursive reading of the projects that were coded under war (n = 40) was carried out. This approach was based on well-established work on discursive psychology and the affective-discursive approach (Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell, 2013) and on previous social psychological work on narrative categories in historical narratives (László, 2013). The first step was to categorise each project in terms of whether they represented hegemonic or alternative narration. Previous research addressing Finnish war narratives was used to identify the characteristics of hegemonic narration, such as the ideas of solidarity and unity, honesty and perseverance (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012; Tepora, 2011). Projects presenting features such as difference and disagreement were identified as alternative narratives. In total, within the theme of war, there were 33 projects representing hegemonic narratives and seven alternative narratives. For extracts presented in Section 6, we selected projects with sufficiently similar contents to allow comparison and demonstration of dynamics between hegemonic and alternative narration. Extracts were directly taken from the Finland100 web pages. We have translated these texts from Finnish into English but not made any other modifications.
The narrative-discursive analysis followed a bottom-up logic and was inspired by previous work on narrative categories in history representations including the cues that describe an actor, the actor's agency and relations with others, the actor's intentionality, ingroups, outgroups, emotions and evaluations (László, 2013). We paid particular attention to the ways in which group categories, as well as affects and emotions, were constructed as part of the meaning-making process related to commemoration in hegemonic and alterative narratives.
The analysis in the following sections comprises two parts. The first part responds to the objectives concerning contents and constructions of nationhood and history. The second part concentrates on controversial constructions and meanings of nationhood in the context of the theme war.
6 ANALYSIS
6.1 Representations of nationhood and history in the centenary programme
Eight main themes were identified. Each theme consists of one to seven subthemes. Projects were also classed as to whether they were organised by private or communal actors or by the state. In previous studies addressing official representations of national history, politics and war constituted the core of Finnish history (e.g., Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a, 2016b), while topics such as internationality and welfare had a less prominent position. In the present analysis, culture, welfare, environment, internationalism and multiculturalism precede war and politics. Unlike previous studies on these topics (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a; Torsti, 2012, p. 100), internationalism and multiculturalism appear as central themes. The environment and nature have a consistent position in the representations of Finnishness whether official (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a) or lay-conceptions (Torsti, 2012) or national celebrations. However, a word of caution is in order when comparing the sizes of different themes as many projects may have contained several themes and not just the most dominant according to which it was coded.
Table 1 presents the main themes, subthemes and main organisers of the centenary programme projects.
| Themes and subthemes | N | Private | Communal | State | An example of a project |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Culture | 255 | 183 | 58 | 14 | |
| Arts | 195 | The Land of Kalevala | |||
| Sport | 33 | Paavo Nurmi Games and Festival | |||
| Food and drink culture | 15 | Rye is a skill | |||
| Sauna | 6 | Building a celebrative Suomi Finland 100 sauna in Åland | |||
| Celebration traditions | 6 | Harvest festival in Maikkula | |||
| Collective remembering | 140 | 92 | 40 | 8 | |
| Historical trajectory | 102 | XVIII Finnish History Days | |||
| Memorisation | 38 | The Castle Ball in Hirvensalmi | |||
| Welfare society | 119 | 96 | 15 | 7 | |
| Welfare and health | 54 | Open seminar: Child welfare in Finland | |||
| Science and technology | 31 | Service Day 2017 | |||
| Education | 15 | Top-level research in eastern Finland from the 1970s to the present—Promoting education in independent Finland | |||
| Living and work | 11 | Entrepreneurial Finland | |||
| Values | 8 | 100 acts of equality | |||
| Environment | 78 | 58 | 17 | 3 | |
| Nature | 47 | Nature Days 2017 | |||
| Cultural environments | 35 | 100 Objects, 100 Pictures—A Century in the Collections of the Regional Museum of Lapland | |||
| Internationalism | 53 | 27 | 7 | 19 | |
| International relations | 45 | Transit/Välitila—Ms. Finland's 100th party | |||
| Migration | 8 | American Days 2017—100 Years of Migration | |||
| Multiculturalism | 40 | 29 | 8 | 3 | |
| Diversity | 22 | Finland 100—In rainbow colours | |||
| Minorities | 18 | Exhibition on Roma life—Home and back | |||
| War | 40 | 22 | 16 | 2 | |
| Civil war | 8 | Red rosettes | |||
| The Winter, the Continuation and the Lapland war | 8 | Paimio people at war | |||
| The Jaeger movement | 4 | The Jaeger's Bride play | |||
| War veterans and heroes | 7 | 10th Anniversary of Askainen Knight's Park | |||
| Evacuees | 3 | Finland of Evacuees | |||
| War traumas | 5 | The Wages of War documentary | |||
| Other war-related projects | 5 | Finland 100 of the Finnish Defence Forces | |||
| Politics | 20 | 11 | 3 | 6 | |
| Political figures | 10 |
Documentary of Väinö Tanner |
|||
| Democracy | 5 | Digi-natives and democracy | |||
| Political ideologies | 5 | From the Power Act to the Present from the perspective of Finnish labour |
Culture (N = 255) was the largest theme. In the programme, Finnish national history was strongly performed through Finnish art. The culture theme consisted of subthemes related to sports, food and drink, sauna and celebrative traditions. Such cultural products as Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala (9) and Väinö Linna's ‘Unknown Soldier’ (3) and ‘Under the North Star’ (2) were frequently the focus of festivities. Alongside ‘Kalevala’, the composer Jean Sibelius was a significant national symbol in eight (8) projects. Another cultural figure who inspired more than one project was Touko Laaksonen, best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland and his influence on gay culture (3). The dominance of the culture theme indicates that national celebrations most often involve cultural events but also indicates the importance of cultural works, some of them reflecting mythical Finnishness (Kalevala), war (‘unknown soldier’), nature (main inspiration of Sibelius' compositions) or ideals of equality (rights of sexual minorities expressed by projects related to Tom of Finland). The culture-related projects were most often organised by private actors.
The collective remembering theme (N = 140) included projects that were focused on memorising and performing Finnish history. The subtheme historical trajectory described projects focussed on the progressive path of Finnish history. The temporal continuity of Finnish history was central in these. The latter subtheme, memorising, emphasised the symbolic and performative nature of collective remembering. These projects were focused on ‘doing’ nationhood. Some of these projects aimed to produce symbols of Finland, such as gifts, memorial stones, commemorative coins, medals, maps and stamps, while the main focus of other projects was in doing things together: enacting Finnishness, which could be almost anything from baking Christmas gingerbread houses, doing Finland 100 crossword puzzles, participating in memory walks or knitting together. Projects related to collective remembering were also often entangled with other themes such as nature, war and culture. The projects of this theme were most often organised by private, local actors.
Welfare society (N = 119) contained projects describing wellbeing and health (e.g., wellbeing of the elderly and youth), the values of the welfare society (e.g., equality and freedom), Finnish education, livelihood and working life, and science and technology. This theme was strongly anchored to values such as equality, communality and inclusion—it was mainly aligned to unnamed, ‘ordinary’ children, young people and the elderly. Thus, this theme expresses equality between different actors of society and strongly, sometimes explicitly, (e.g., ‘100 acts of equality’) echoed the ideals of the Nordic welfare state. Welfare-related projects were most often organised by private actors, such as welfare organisations, universities and companies.
The theme environment (N = 78) contained projects related to nature (e.g., forests and lakes) and cultural environment including rural and urban landscapes, industry and buildings. The environment is an interesting theme as it is not usually considered as a matter of history representations (e.g., Torsti, 2012), but in the centenary programme, it was clearly connected with historical identity. Nature seemed to be a ‘secondary’ theme in many other themes, such as in projects related to sport and memorising.
Internationalism (N = 53) contained projects in which nationhood was based on international relations, such as projects describing Finland as part of the Baltic States or focusing on European and Nordic citizenship, and migration, such as projects describing Finnish migrants in Sweden, the United States and Canada. Many of these events took place abroad, and many of the projects were organised by the Finnish state (36%), which we interpreted as indicating the need for the state to build its self-image and identity of Finland as an actor in international contexts. This theme has not emerged among the top themes in previous studies (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a, 2016b; Torsti, 2012) and could thus be regarded as something that is considered central in the memory politics of contemporary Finland and made possible by the large-scale festivities of the jubilee.
Multiculturalism (N = 40) consisted of projects that anchored nationhood in Finland's multicultural history: in cultural diversity that could be related, for example, to folk culture or religious movements (e.g., revivalist movements), and in minorities focusing, in particular, on projects related to Sámi, Roma, Finnish Swedes, sexual and gender minorities. Multiculturalism seems to be an emerging theme in Finnish history conceptions (cf. Torsti, 2012, p. 100) reflecting the change of time, increasing multiculturalism in Finnish society and the recent ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015. However, the focus of the theme is old minorities, religious movements and diversity, which serve as an anchoring point to understand the diversity and multiculturalism in present-day Finland not as something that is new and threatening but as something that has long roots in the history and identity of Finnishness (cf. Moscovici, 1984).
The theme war (N = 40) contained projects covering the entire 100-year history of independent Finland. The war theme consisted of subthemes related to the Civil war (1918), the Winter War, the Continuation War and the Lapland war (1939–1945), the Jaeger movement (e.g., military training of the German army and recruiting), war veterans and heroes (e.g., Knights of the Mannerheim Cross), evacuees, war traumas and other war-related issues. The actors of the war theme were not just political leaders and soldiers but often women and members of Lotta Svärd (women's voluntary defence corps), indicating the increasing role of women in war-related memorising (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012) and the ideals of equality of contemporary society. In a similar way, many subthemes related to special groups, such as war veterans and evacuees, reflect the emergence of neo-patriotic memory boom and the elevated status of the heroes of the war as icons of the nation. For example, in the neo-patriotic discourse, veterans are praised and their sacrifices are raised as a moral exemplar for later generations to honour and to follow (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012). Although war was a relatively small theme, it is worth noting that it was entangled with other themes, such as collective remembering projects and in culture-related events. War-related projects were most often organised by private and communal actors.
The theme politics (N = 20) was the smallest theme in the material. Political figures and leaders were the main actors of this theme. The nationhood was constructed around political figures (e.g., Gustaf Mannerheim, Urho Kekkonen and Miina Sillanpää) and anchored in democracy and political ideologies, such as nationalism (e.g., Fennomany and Declaration of Independence) and the labour movement. The parliamentary building in Helsinki appeared in many projects (5) as a symbol of democracy. In previous studies addressing official and lay representations of national history, politics and war have been core elements of Finnish history conceptions (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a, 2016b; Torsti, 2012). Memorising through political leaders and icons is part of official, institutionalised memory politics, which might explain the relatively small proportion of politics-related projects in the centenary celebration programme—grassroots-level actors were the main organisers in projects of all the themes described above. However, politics was the second most common theme for state-led projects, supporting the idea of politics as being part of official memory politics.
Many differences between the representations of history and nationhood found in the centenary programme and previous studies on Finnish history conceptions may be related to the nature of material. As Table 1 shows, private actors are the main organisers of events in all themes, implying that our focus reflects a bottom-up approach to the study of nationhood. The perspectives of ordinary people, especially women, children and elderly people were present across the projects of the programme. However, it must be noted that differentiating between private and communal actors was not straightforward. We have coded the project under the ‘communal’ actor only when it was clearly stated in the project description that the community (city or municipality) was the main organiser of the project. Although the main organiser was usually a working group or team, there may have been a communal actor (e.g., art societies, schools and parishes) as a backup force. The projects related to war and collective remembering were the themes that were most often organised by communal actors. This could mean that war was something that touched local communities. On the other hand, the theme collective remembering contained several events that take place in local communities, such as memory walks or Independence Day celebrations.
As said, the state was the main organiser in approximately 5% of the projects in most themes. However, there were two exceptions in which the role of state as organiser was highlighted: in themes that were related to internationalism (36%) and politics (30%). This, we thought, suggested the need for the state to build its self-image and identity as an actor in relation to other nation-states and international communities, such as Nordic countries and the European Union. The state's prominent role in politics was also in line with expectations, as the content of the theme was about the Finnish state and the actors were often politicians.
The first phase of analysis provided a broad perspective of the content and construction of Finnishness and history in the centenary programme. However, each theme comprised different perspectives and stories some of which echoed the traditional, hegemonic representations of Finnishness found in previous studies (Ahonen, 1998; Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a Torsti, 2012), while others could be described as emancipated or polemic.
6.2 Negotiating Finnishness—Hegemonic and alternative narratives of war
In this section, we will analyse the theme of war more closely in order to elucidate how the meanings and affects related to different representations of nationhood and history are constructed in a dialogic relationship to one another.
The narratives related to war are not fixed and stable but have evolved throughout time. The Finnish historians Kinnunen and Jokisipilä (2012) argue that there have been, through the whole postwar period, notable dissenting voices in consigning the meanings of war. The Finnish neo-patriotic master narrative of war is a combination of seemingly contradictory elements. The nationalist interpretation started to dominate the public discourse of Finnishness from the 1990s onwards, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this neo-patriotic discourse, wartime is idealised and romanticised. The Winter War and the Continuation War are held up as embodiments of the best qualities of Finnishness: the will to sacrifice oneself for the common good, national solidarity, determination and honour (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012). In the master narrative, Finland is represented as both victim and victor, and despite the suffering and sorrow, the war is seen as something inherently positive. At the same time, since the early 1990s, as a result of the lively memory boom, the public memory has gained in extent and depth from alternative narratives provided by the experiences of individuals and memory organisations (e.g., war children and evacuees).
The presence of hegemonic and alternative narratives of war was distinctive in the centenary programme. As we will discuss below, hegemonic and alternative narratives coexist side by side and penetrate each other. Different modes of commemorating construct and mobilise varied emotion-laden meanings and subject positions for social categories (McCreanor et al., 2018; Wetherell, 2013). Extracts demonstrating hegemonic ways of representing the war follow the narration identified in previous research (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012; Tepora, 2011), while the extracts of alternative narratives demonstrate how the hegemonic narration is complemented or questioned by emancipated and polemic representations.
In the following extracts, we present two projects that communicate a particular narrative of Finnishness in the context of war. The projects are both dramas, and their contents are contextually and temporally related to the Finnish wars during WW2. Women appear as the main actors of these narratives.
| Extract 1. Hegemonic narrative | Extract 2. Alternative (emancipated) narrative | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Destinies of women during the Winter War | 1 | Full cotton design |
| 2 | in Tampere | 2 | Theatre Havukka presents Leo Okko's play Full |
| 3 | The Eliisa Theatre Festival presents the | 3 | Cotton Design. The performance brings to the |
| 4 | destinies of women during the Winter War in | 4 | stage Lotta heroes who do not fit into a |
| 5 | Tampere. It consists of dramatized | 5 | traditional image of pure and brave Lottas. |
| 6 | contemporary stories, letters from the home | 6 | At the training camp, young girls are educated |
| 7 | front and of music of the era. The play is also | 7 | with traditional values of service for their |
| 8 | shown in assisted living facilities, retirement | 8 | fatherland. Runni and Reetta give their lives for |
| 9 | homes and at various events. | 9 | their fatherland, but their ideas of the demands |
| 10 | When the Soviet Union invaded Finland on | 10 | that have been put on their sacrifice are unique. |
| 11 | November 30, 1939, the country's recent | 11 | Their sacrifice does not fit into the traditional |
| 12 | independence was defended against an | 12 | heroic death. |
| 13 | overwhelming enemy in harsh winter and | 13 | The play is presented at Sotkamo's workers' |
| 14 | inhumane conditions. On the home front, | 14 | house is directed by Kimmo Penttilä from |
| 15 | women took over many of the men'st roles and | 15 | Kajaani. Summer 2017 |
| 16 | they had to take on new roles in both their | ||
| 17 | personal and social lives. | ||
| 18 | The performance is a tribute not only to the | ||
| 19 | men who defended our independence, but also | ||
| 20 | to all Finnish women who, for their part, bear a | ||
| 21 | heavy responsibility for the survival of our | ||
| 22 | country and its reconstruction. | ||
| 23 | The premiere is on the anniversary of the end | ||
| 24 | of the Winter War 13.3.2017 |
Extract 1 is as an illustration of a hegemonic story of women's roles in wartime Finland. The project called ‘Destinies of women during the Winter War in Tampere’ tells about the roles and responsibilities of women on the wartime home front. The narrative takes place in Tampere and begins with the Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939. Women, the main actors of the story, are described as respectable and persistent survivors on the home front (Line 20-22). The other actors of the story are the Soviet Union, the overwhelming enemy, and Finnish men, in the role of defenders (Line 19).
Through narration, the role of women appears as subjugated by wartime battles. Women's roles are determined from above and, as the project describes, ‘women took over’ and ‘they had to take’, they are left without agency and voice (Lines 15–16). Men are also described in a passive way as defenders of the nation, while the Soviet Union appears as the outgroup that dominates the war and has agency (Line 10). The Winter War is characterised by severe and inhumane conditions (Lines 13–14). The narration repeats the best qualities of Finnishness: the will to sacrifice oneself for the common good, national solidarity, determination and honour (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012). Central in this narration is representing Finland's enemy in the East and the Finns as victims of the conflict, serving the romanticised narrative of a unified and pure nation, being left at the mercy of an aggressor (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012). In Finland, WW2 marks the birth of the modern nation-state, the unifying sacrifice (Tepora, 2011). Thus, the subject position (Wetherell, 2013) of brave and virtuous war heroes is constructed for those women and men who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the nation. Such a position could be expected to initiate feelings of pride and respect for those men and women who served their country in the war (Lines 18-22) as well as the simultaneous position of all Finns as victims and victors of the war (cf. Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012).
Extract 2 illustrates an alternative version of women's roles in wartime Finland. The project called ‘Full cotton design’ (orig: Täyspuuvillakuosi) tells about two women so called Lottas (members of the women's military organisation Lotta Svärd), who participate in wartime educational camps. These two women are described as different compared to traditional Lottas who are characterised by purity and braveness (Line 5). Instead, the characters are not willing to sacrifice themselves for their fatherland. The project can be interpreted to present an emancipated representation as it is arguing against a patriotic representation connecting war to heroism, the will to sacrifice and national solidarity. During the war, Finnish women were expected to symbolise the collective honour and purity of the nation, and any women breaking the norm of sexual purity were branded with moral contempt (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012).
Through the alternative narration, these women are given agency as they think and act for themselves and not according to the outside pressures and values propagated in the camp. The other, more implicit actor is the Finnish state. The Finnish state is positioned in the role of a villain, someone who educates young girls to serve its own purposes (Lines 6–8). Through narration, the subject position of subjugated women is challenged by a subject position of free and emancipated women. The narrative challenges the hegemonic position of patriotism and patriarchy by valuing these women's free will. The narrative could be interpreted as an expression of individualism and emancipation of women's roles that echoes contemporary interests of gender equality.
Our following examples of complementary hegemonic and alternative versions of nationhood are both related to the Finnish wars during WW2. More specifically, they both deal with the consequences of the war, Extract 3 from the perspectives of men who served at the front and evacuees who started a new life after the war, while Extract 4 approaches the topic from the perspective of those who returned from the wars traumatised.
| Extract 3. Hegemonic narrative | Extract 4. Alternative (polemic) narrative | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bridge to New Life | 1 | The Wages of War documentary film |
| 2 | The Bridge to New Life memorials bring | 2 | In the documentary ‘The wages of war’ director |
| 3 | together the stories of the people from the | 3 | Timo Korhonen brings out a silenced national |
| 4 | Somero Pitkäjärvi area from 1910 to today. | 4 | trauma the transmission of which can only be |
| 5 | Evacuees arriving in Somero's Pitkäjärvi | 5 | hindered by dealing with it. The background |
| 6 | Hämeenoja from the Kaukola, Muola and | 6 | behind the film is Ville Kivimäki's Tieto-Finlandia |
| 7 | Uusikirkko areas between 1947 to 1949 shed | 7 | winning book Broken Minds. |
| 8 | light on the events in their home rural | 8 | |
| 9 | communes before the wars and during the | 9 | In the Continuation War, 191 soldiers received the |
| 10 | wars, as well as their new lives in Somero. | 10 | Mannerheim Cross of Liberty decoration. At the |
| 11 | Evacuees and battlefront soldiers who moved | 11 | same time, 15,700 men underwent psychiatric |
| 12 | to Somero constituted approximately 30 | 12 | treatment. The psyches of significantly more |
| 13 | families and nearly 160 people. The fields | 13 | people were shaken, but they were able to return to |
| 14 | were cleared for planting, houses and cattle | 14 | the frontline. After the war, the military |
| 15 | sheds were built on the farms that were | 15 | psychiatric hospitals were closed, and traumatized |
| 16 | bought. The hard work yielded results and the | 16 | men were left alone and were their families' |
| 17 | need for bread and feed grain was translated | 17 | responsibility. The nation buried the trauma |
| 18 | into self-sufficiency throughout Finland | 18 | behind a wall of silence. |
| 19 | during a period of ten years. | 19 | The film also tells about families after the war; |
| 20 | The current students of the Pitkäjärvi School | 20 | fathers' emotional coldness, nightmares, violence, |
| 21 | bring the book from the past to the future, | 21 | as well as the strong desire of the offspring to |
| 22 | reflecting in their own writings what their | 22 | break the continuation of the trauma. |
| 23 | school, Pitkäjärvi village, Somero and | 23 | In today's Finland it is good to remember that |
| 24 | Finland will look like in the year 2030. The | 24 | many refugees have the same kind of traumatic |
| 25 | book contains a lot of image material and is | 25 | experiences. |
| 26 | also published as an electronic version. | ||
| 27 | Main organizer Pertti Hallenberg |
Extract 3 illustrates a hegemonic narrative of postwar Finland. The project is a book called ‘Bridge to a new life’ (Silta Uuteen Elämään) describing the life of evacuees and frontline soldiers during the years following the wars. The story is located in Somero (small town located in Western Finland), where evacuees and soldiers arrived between 1947 and 1949. The actors of the story are the evacuees and soldiers who are positioned in the role of survivors (Lines 13–19). They are characterised by agency as they are actors who through their hard work built themselves a whole new life in a new village. The story symbolises a heroic war narrative in which difficulties are transformed into victories, and the story has a positive conclusion. Again, the narration transmits a feeling of respect towards the rebuilders. The story echoes with neo-patriotic narrative in which one's own personal suffering is silenced and instead interwoven with sacrifice for the nation. The project description thus represents the narrative of reconstruction that started to dominate in postwar Finland, central to which was the struggle for survival, with the normative requirement of sacrifice for the common good of the nation and maintenance of an image of Finns as united.
Extract 4 deals with the consequences of war from an opposite, anti-heroic perspective and illustrates a polemic alternative narrative. This project description echoes the recent memory boom in which voices of new groups, representing ordinary people and civilians, have made themselves heard, including groups of Finnish Karelian evacuees, war orphans and traumatised soldiers (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012; Tepora, 2011). The project ‘The Wages of War’ (Sodan murtamat) is a documentary that deals with men who were traumatised by war and left to deal with their problems alone. The story is set in the Continuation War and the years following it. The main actors of the story are traumatised veterans and their family members. The experiences of these men and their families are characterised by ‘emotional remoteness, nightmares and violence’ passed on to next generations. These soldiers are not described as brave heroes as in hegemonic narrative but are positioned as violent and traumatised victims (Lines 15-16 and 20). The implicit actor, outgroup, of the story is the Finnish state, who has abandoned these men by closing the hospitals where psychiatric help could be received and by leaving these men and their families to deal with their problems alone. The Finnish nation and people are placed in a subject position of a bystander who silences the sensitive topic and makes it taboo. The project holds a strong message that these traumas can be beaten only by talking and deconstructing the hero-myth and calls to empathise with the victims and their families. Narrative empathy, i.e., perspective-taking induced by viewing narratives of another's situation (Liu & László, 2007), is used to convey the moral that a nation can learn from its past and act differently in the present. This message is strengthened by making an analogy between Finnish traumatised men and the refugees of present-day Finland who may suffer from similar traumas (Lines 23–25). This may indicate that alternative war memories are becoming part of Finnish cultural memory. The narration addressing the past answers to present questions and thus the past is used to make sense of contemporary challenges (Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995).
The above extracts demonstrate the narrative characteristics of hegemonic, emancipated and polemic versions of Finnishness in war-related projects. The main actors of the hegemonic stories appear as war heroes. Heroism can occur in the subject position of a patriot, fighter or survivor. Central to the heroism is encountering great challenges but surviving them. In the hegemonic stories, heroes face the nation's external enemy. The hegemonic stories include positive evaluations of actors. References to patriotism, hard work and persistence symbolise the strength of the hero. These meanings are entangled with affects and feelings invoking respect and solidarity towards the actors and nationhood. In line with previous literature (e.g., Wertsch, 2002, pp. 30–57), we infer that the hegemonic stories are constructed and disseminated to maintain and strengthen positive national identity and group solidarity, which are the most important tasks of collective memory (e.g., Liu & László, 2007).
The actors of the alternative narratives appear as anti-heroes who do not represent a traditional noble hero character, but a more humane character. Anti-heroism can occur, for example, through a rebellious character or a victim of war. Often, as in Extracts 2 and 4 above, an anti-hero encounters an enemy in the story that is part of the anti-hero's own ingroup or even the whole nation. Negative and contradictory descriptions of the anti-heroes portray them as human figures that can fight for good but do so irrespective of the means, or alternatively, fail in his/her goals, for example, in the face of war horrors. In these alternative narratives of the war, as in Extract 4, the hero becomes a tragic character whose fatal weakness symbolises the darker and silent side of Finnish history. The meanings of the emancipated and polemic representations seem to mingle with contemporary interests and values, such as equality and humanism, and are constructed to evoke sympathy towards the actors of the narratives. Therefore, in line with previous literature (Goldberg, Porat, & Schwarz, 2006), we infer that the task of alternative narratives is to create narrative empathy (Liu & László, 2007) in order to respond to the present needs of the group and to create mutual compassion and social cohesion rather than strengthening positive national identity through national pride. Alternative narratives were intertwined with today's important societal issues, such as acknowledging the importance of refugees' war trauma (see Extract 4), the increasing polarisation of people, women's position (see Extract 2) or the declining wellbeing of families and domestic violence (Extract 4). The hegemonic and alternative narratives together with the wide range of diverse subject positions they make available build a field of emancipated and polemic representations (Moscovici, 1988) of nationhood and history. While polemic representations may evoke opposition as they radically challenge the hegemonic narrative, emancipated representations are able to reach a great variety of individuals, social groups and contexts because everyone can recognise and take something from it. In the present context, both alternative narratives create more opportunities for narrative empathy, solidarity and possibilities to negotiate and change hegemonic representations (Liu & László, 2007; Kislioglu & Cohrs, 2018).
7 DISCUSSION
The Finnish centenary programme provided unique material for exploring the construction of social representations of nationhood and history. The material provided the perspectives of citizens, organisations, companies and other social actors. Although the projects could be proposed by anyone, responsibility for the programme was with the Prime Minister's Office. In other words, the ‘sites of memories’ (Nora, 1989) were organised simultaneously ‘from above’ and ‘from below’, allowing us to capture the elite-driven and citizen-driven perspectives on nationhood. Thus, the Finnish national jubilee seemed to provide a particularly powerful occasion of nation-recreation, a ‘hot’ nationalism, which was initiated by elites but which took on a mass character (Hutchinson, 2005). The empirical study demonstrated the intermediary sphere between communicative and cultural memory (Heinrich & Weyland, 2016) in which the past is narrated to serve present needs, while the present is constructed by employing certain historical narratives.
Our study has explored the role of national celebrations in national identity and nation building as well as investigating alternative representations of nationhood and history in the context of the centenary celebration of Finnish independence. The national centenary celebrations can be regarded as a forum of debates about the norms and values of Finnishness today. Many of the themes within the commemoration are common to most nationalisms. The importance of war and politics emerge in many international studies on historical narratives as core items of national identity (Liu et al., 2005) and are often expressed through military parades and official ceremonies in national celebrations (Elgenius, 2011a). Our findings seem to echo those of other Nordic countries. Similarly to our findings, Swedes also connect nationalism to welfare-state values, multiculturalism and international cosmopolitanism (Schall, 2014). Love of nature and rurality also characterise both Swedish (Schall, 2014) and Norwegian national identities (Elgenius, 2011b).
Our research indicates that a social psychological perspective has the potential to enrich the understanding of nation-building and national identity as part of celebrative rituals. The dialogic approach of social representations directs attention to the dynamics of the stability and change of social knowledge construction. Thus, our analysis brings forth the power struggle of meanings and the way in which affects and emotions are entangled with meaning-making in commemorative and nation-building practices (McCreanor et al., 2018), for example, by employing narrative empathy (Liu & László, 2007) in commemorations. Our findings echo Hutchinson's (2005) view on nationalism as ‘zones of conflicts’ in the sense that cultural homogeneity does not seem to characterise contemporary Finnish national identity, but different versions of the past are told and multiple subject positions made available for the participants, such as a position of hardworking Finn or brave Finn in hegemonic narratives, and respectively, a position of emancipated women or fragile and traumatised soldiers in alternative narratives.
Our analysis speaks for the dialogical approach (Marková, 2003) in the analysis of social representations of nationhood and history. Hegemonic, emancipated and polemic representations not only coexist side by side but penetrate each other. Without hegemonic narratives, alternative stories would not have anything to anchor to, no common base to build upon. At the same time, hegemonic narratives get more content and perspectives from alternative versions. Most importantly, these narratives serve different functions for nation-building, for example, by bringing forth the weaker side of people, the alternative narratives allow us to identify not just with heroes but with ordinary people. As Hakoköngäs and Sakki (2016b) suggest, over time, these more marginal versions of the past can reach a hegemonic position as part of a national narrative if they are repeated in different arenas of communication (Heinrich & Weyland, 2016). Also, present-day hegemonic representations, despite their deep-rooted and banal nature, are susceptible to gradual change, transformation and alternative stories. In terms of the circular model of collective memory (Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a), it seems that within hegemonic narratives of Finnish culture, wars and politics, some change is taking place in the form of alternative representations. For example, in the centenary programme, new actors such as sexual minorities, women and ordinary citizens were brought alongside more traditional politicians and soldiers (cf. Hakoköngäs & Sakki, 2016a; Torsti, 2012).
In general, our analysis sheds light on how communicative and cultural memory (Assmann, 1992) interact and shape each other in the intermediary sphere connecting the official and grassroot levels of memory (Heinrich & Weyland, 2016). Based on our two-step analysis, nationhood and history are built on both hegemonic and alternative narratives. Our analysis revealed that emancipated and polemic representations were intertwined with themes that are the subject of social debate today, such as women's equality or women's position, and the wellbeing of families or refugees who have experienced the horrors of war. Following Reicher and Hopkins' (2001, p. 20) idea that ‘any version of the national past and of national identity serves contemporary interests’, we argue that our analysis shows something essential about the needs of contemporary Finnish society.
Communicative memory holds the idea of updating the past to correspond to present-day needs. Unlike in Sweden and Norway where national celebrations reach towards multiculturalism (Elgenius, 2011b; Schall, 2014), we infer that it is the value of equality, which alongside more traditional values, works as one possible themata (Marková, 2003) of contemporary Finnish society that generates present-day remembering. This was particularly striking in the way ordinary people, such as children, elderly, women and sexual minorities, were presented as actors of Finnishness and also in the way projects related to multiculturalism were highlighted in the centenary programme (cf. Ahonen, 1998; Torsti, 2012). Following drastic societal changes, new perspectives and characteristics can be brought into social communication and to the processes of social representations. New interpretations of history and topical societal issues challenge the existing narratives and strive to construct new interpretations of them (Andreouli & Chryssochoou, 2015; Skey, 2006). Intriguingly, our analyses showed that internationalism seems to be an integral part of the state's memory politics. This could signify a willingness to take part in Nordic, European and global memory cultures; alternatively, it can be regarded as a performance of nationalism, as a way to boost the nation's sovereignty and recognition in the front a global community (cf. Hutchinson, 2005). In order to survive, these new themes of the centenary celebrations—internationalism and multiculturalism—which are dependent on communicative memory, must also serve the long-standing cultural memory of society. Thus, they must fit in the existing continuum of dominant identities and narratives or succeed in creating new interpretations of them (cf. Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995).
On the other hand, some themes were missing completely from the programme, such as memories of the prison camps during the Civil War in 1918 and the Continuation War 1941–1944 or Finland's alliance with Nazi Germany during WW2. These stories do not serve the positive identity nor solidarity of the group. They create empathy for the victims of these stories, but not enough to displace the negative image of one's nation. Although these sensitive topics have been increasingly discussed by academics in the years following the memory boom, there is a long way to go before they become integrated as part of public memory culture and in official memory politics (Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012). For the state's memory politics, it may be purposeful to deny painful and traumatic experiences. In this regard, the public memory may be in sharp conflict with personal experiences, for example, on wartime heroism, as we have discussed above (Extract 4). However, the bottom-up perspective of the centenary celebrations, the key idea that everybody was welcome to participate in the programme, and thus, in the constructions of Finnishness, allowed ordinary people's experiences and the voice of different groups and individuals to be heard. This makes the national memory community more democratic and diverse. An alternative interpretation is that the democratisation of memorising can potentially reinforce the illusory notion of a shared Finnishness based on the myth of a unified and pure nation (cf. Kinnunen & Jokisipilä, 2012). Nevertheless, all this indicates that postnationalist approaches, based on values of equality and openness of Finnish society, are gradually gaining more space alongside the neo-patriotic definitions of Finnishness.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was funded by the Academy of Finland (Grant 295923). The authors would like to thank Sari Kotamaa for assisting in the data collection and preliminary analyses.
