Reflections of Home in Nineteenth-Century American Travel Writing of Finland

Abstract

Abstract In the nineteenth century, Americans generally knew very little about Finland, which functioned primarily as a transitory halt for a small number of American travelers crossing from Sweden to Russia proper. As Finland never became a fashionable destination, the number of visitors remained small and the amount of time spent there brief. This essay examines American travel guides and magazine articles about travel in Finland, then a Grand Duchy of Russia, to argue that the portrayal of this marginal nation confirmed the values, beliefs, and ideologies of their American authors. Hence, although these nineteenth-century American travel texts focus on Finland and its people, the texts tend to reveal the American idealization of such concepts as whiteness and masculinity, intelligence, religiousness, and cleanliness. In this way, the images that nineteenth-century American travel writers construct of Finland are charged with a reflection constructed of the writers’ own nation.