Deconstructing Oral Histories of Family Strategies through Record Linkage: Comparing Interview, Tax, Welfare, and Parish Sources from Early Twentieth-century Finland

Abstract

This article demonstrates empirically how triangulation with other sources can alter the interpretation of oral histories of family strategies. While the interests of oral historians have shifted to postpositivist approaches, basic facts about material context and family events still tend to be drawn from the same narratives. Oral histories of two worker households in early twentieth-century Helsinki are linked with detailed Finnish tax, parish, and poor relief records. The findings point to a number of significant omissions, turn seemingly innocuous factual statements into meaningful strategic representations, and suggest systematic biases in describing livelihoods and sources of income.