Nordic Connectors: The Gallen-Kallela Family and Colonial Lives in East Africa and New Mexico

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article tracks the movements of Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela and his family across transimperial terrain in the early twentieth century in British East Africa and New Mexico in the United States. It shows that Nordic peoples, even from countries without colonies of their own, acted as mobile transmitters of knowledge in the world of empires, as respectable bourgeois connectors absorbing local white cultural habits and living a typical colonial life of the time, while also being at times critical of their surroundings. The Gallen-Kallela family accessed different cultural spaces, and they were welcomed into colonial communities. They observed, experienced, partook in, and wrote on inter-imperial themes of racial difference, hunting, and collecting of artefacts. They, somewhat paradoxically, embraced and took advantage of colonial networks and white privilege, while also seeking to escape them and find something authentic, unspoiled by empires. The Gallen-Kallelas encountered different kinds of colonial social settings and they were entrenched in these cultures and played a role in producing and maintaining them. As Finns they were free agents, but still colonial agents, who answered to nobody.