Calendar, Chronicle and Songs of Sorrows: Generic Sources of Life Writing in Nineteenth-Century Finland

Abstract

This chapter discusses the literacy of common people, those with little or no formal education, earning their livelihood by physical labour. Contrary to conventional notions, a wealth of material was produced by self-taught common people – life stories, letters, diaries, poems, hymns, handwritten newspapers and ethnographic narratives. The approach from below challenges traditional dichotomies such as oral/written, print/manuscript, centre/periphery. The chapter presents autobiographical texts penned by Finnish common people. What kinds of models did the writers have at their disposal? What motivated them to write about their lives? The chapter will demonstrate that the earliest Finnish life stories drew generic traits from family inscriptions, devotional books and oral poetry, while some of the later ones took their form from the first-person novel.