Finnish Landscape Research Articles

Affective capitalism and the (new) entrepreneurial mood: Slush as a field configuring event

This article examines start-up entrepreneurialism and provides insights into the configurations of affective capitalism. The empirical case explored in this article is the Slush Conference, which promotes start-up entrepreneurialism. The data were gathered by ethnographic methods, including on-site observations, and complemented by diverse materials such as social media content and newspaper coverage of the event. Drawing upon our detailed analysis, we concluded that Slush comprises overlapping elements that constitute a novel kind of entrepreneurial enterprise: an emphasis on affective atmospheres, the articulation of an alleged affective morality and a view of affects as directly productive. These three aspects together further shed light on the nuanced operations of mood, which we consider an important manifestation of collective affects. In particular, mood plays a significant role in the shifting terrains of Nordic welfare states, where tensions between public expertise and private innovations can be identified. Furthermore, we argue that Slush is a field-configuring event that has a crucial impact on the evolution of start-up entrepreneurialism by constituting the Finnish landscape of affective capitalism.

Trade-offs between greenhouse gas mitigation and economic objectives with drained peatlands in Finnish landscapes

In Finland, the widespread drainage of boreal peatlands has led to increased forest productivity. The cost is a dramatic increase in soil greenhouse gas emissions. Empirical research of drained peatlands has found a correlation between greenhouse gas emissions and the ground water table. This suggests an opportunity to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through forest management. We explore this opportunity at the landscape level through a simulation and optimization framework. We explore how forest management actions can impact the ground water table and the related greenhouse gas emissions. There are various economic and societal constraints for a set of forested peatland landscapes in Finland. First, we link forest simulations with hydrological and statistical models to predict CO2, CH4, and N2O emissions from the drained peatlands. We then present the range of landscape level solutions that prioritize between minimizing the net ecosystem greenhouse gas emissions, the economic timber value, and the even flow of timber income over time. Our results highlight the impact that integrating peatland soil greenhouse gas emissions will have on the planning process. This promotes the use of management options that benefit both biomass growth and reduced peatland soil greenhouse gas emissions.

Modern living in a forest – landscape architecture of Finnish forest suburbs in the 1940s–1960s

ABSTRACT The article examines Finnish forest suburbs in the 1940s–1960s. We highlight the role of landscape architecture – a dimension that has received limited attention. Suburban landscapes have largely remained as an invisible background of modern architecture without design history of their own. Our article focuses on forest landscapes and discusses how they were conceptualized and implemented by urban and landscape planners. With the case studies of Tapiola and Vuosaari, we demonstrate that forests were not neutral and ‘natural’, but culturally constructed and carefully designed. We look at the construction of nature in landscape architecture and show how suburban forests were amenitized by recreation facilities and embedded with moral and restorative aspirations. In both cases, nature was the starting point; however, the design approaches evince clear differences. In Tapiola, the aim was the aestheticization of the forest – enhancing nature with design interventions – whereas in Vuosaari, the focus was on the natural state. Forests were regarded as a specifically Finnish landscape, which rooted rural migrants to their new home. The national dimension was also manifested by using native biotopes and tree species. Finnishness was consciously constructed, and modern living in the forest became the national and international icon of urban planning.

The ghosts in the archive: World War Two photography and landscapes crafted by the Nazis in Finland

ABSTRACT The Finnish wartime landscape was altered by Nazi troops who were stationed there during World War Two. This paper examines wartime sceneries through Finnish Army Information Company’s photographs from the period of the war known in Finland as the Continuation War (1941–1944). The images reveal a completely different side to the Nazi co-belligerence to what is traditionally acknowledged in Finland. I discuss the ways the Nazi troops altered the Finnish landscape, adding `German-ness´ to their surroundings and more specifically, how Nazi ideology manifested in the northern Finnish landscapes. The Finns have been completely oblivious to the symbolic messages the Nazis crafted in their surroundings. Photographs as haunting representation addresses in this paper both the difficult memory of German presence that frames these pictures and the specific potency of these photographic encounters. Haunting as a theory deals with the evocative ways an image can convey information about the past.

The Finnish Think Tank Landscape – A Mixture of Consensualism and Adversity?

As a common feature of Nordic countries, the Finnish landscape of thinks tanks has been populated by large corporatist interest organisations and government‐funded research organisations. In addition to this, since 2005, party‐affiliated think tanks form a notable part of the picture. Recently, several small think tanks that are oriented towards specific themes, such as international relations, the environment and feminism, have been founded. This article examines Finnish developments in the field of think tanks with two objectives. First, it gives a general overview of the Finnish think tank landscape. Second, by using interview data and public mission statements of the most prominent think tanks, it explores how these organisations see their role in Finnish society. What is their relationship with media and the political machinery, and how does this relate to their position and activities as either consensual or adversarial actors? It is concluded that redeeming the place of think tanks in the Finnish polity is a continuing challenge, and resorting to adversarial tactics is not a favourable way to do so. This approach has mostly been attempted by neoliberal think tanks that, in the past, have also profited from corporatist structures to enhance their objectives.

(Co)Existing in the Finnish Landscape

(Co)Existing in the Finnish Landscape

Landscape as Experienced Place and Worth Conserving in the Drawings of Finnish and Swedish Students

Children explore their environment through experiences and each experience is meaningful in developing their environmental consciousness and identity. On the basis of the drawn landscape experiences, the present qualitative study set out to find out what landscapes the participating students deemed worth conserving. The data consisted of the drawings of 11- to 16-year-old Finnish (n = 311) and Swedish (n = 246) students. Deductive and inductive content analyses were used to analyse the data. The results showed that all three landscape types; nature, built, and social were presented in the drawings. Nature and built landscapes were the most frequent types, with the proportion of nature landscapes increasing and that of built landscapes decreasing with age. There were gender and cultural preferences: boys drew built landscapes more often than girls; and Finnish students drew summer cottages, a cultural phenomenon typical of Finnish landscapes, which was not found in Swedish drawings. Similarities in Finnish and Swedish data were identified e.g., in forest and water and “cultural landscapes”. Some of the students displayed a more distant, observing role, whereas others adopted an active one in relation to all three landscape types. The results are discussed in connection to the landscape theories and earlier findings of the drawn environments.

One, two or more? – an examination of the apparition of language and discourse in a Finnish landscape of primary education

ABSTRACT This article sets out to analyze how landscape functions in an educational context. It examines how landscape functions as an irreducible totality and as a nexus of discourse. The article focuses on the materialization of de jure and de facto discourses pertaining to languages in a primary level school in Southwest Finland. It also examines the role of different landscape participants in relation to the materialized discourses. Therefore the purpose of this study is to render visible, not the visible (Klee 1920, 28), focusing not on appearances but on the apparition of materialized discourses (Schein 1997). In order to achieve that, the article provides a concise examination of the relevant core concepts, discourse, discourse materialized and landscape. The results indicate the materialization de jure and de facto discourses on monolingualism and bilingualism, pertaining to Finnish and English. Teachers and staff are largely responsible for the materialization of these discourses.

Socially optimal drainage system and agricultural biodiversity: A case study for Finnish landscape

This paper examines the socially optimal drainage choice (surface/subsurface) for agricultural crop cultivation in a landscape with different land qualities (fertilities) when private profits and nutrient runoff damages are taken into account. We also study the measurable social costs to increase biodiversity by surface drainage when the locations of the surface-drained areas in a landscape affect the provided biodiversity. We develop a general theoretical model and apply it to empirical data from Finnish agriculture. We find that for low land qualities the measurable social returns are higher to surface drainage than to subsurface drainage, and that the profitability of subsurface drainage increases along with land quality. The measurable social costs to increase biodiversity by surface drainage under low land qualities are negative. For higher land qualities, these costs depend on the land quality and on the biodiversity impacts. Biodiversity conservation plans for agricultural landscapes should focus on supporting surface drainage systems in areas where the measurable social costs to increase biodiversity are negative or lowest.

Applying a framework for landscape planning under climate change for the conservation of biodiversity in the Finnish boreal forest.

Conservation strategies are often established without consideration of the impact of climate change. However, this impact is expected to threaten species and ecosystem persistence and to have dramatic effects towards the end of the 21st century. Landscape suitability for species under climate change is determined by several interacting factors including dispersal and human land use. Designing effective conservation strategies at regional scales to improve landscape suitability requires measuring the vulnerabilities of specific regions to climate change and determining their conservation capacities. Although methods for defining vulnerability categories are available, methods for doing this in a systematic, cost-effective way have not been identified. Here, we use an ecosystem model to define the potential resilience of the Finnish forest landscape by relating its current conservation capacity to its vulnerability to climate change. In applying this framework, we take into account the responses to climate change of a broad range of red-listed species with different niche requirements. This framework allowed us to identify four categories in which representation in the landscape varies among three IPCC emission scenarios (B1, low; A1B, intermediate; A2, high emissions): (i) susceptible (B1 = 24.7%, A1B = 26.4%, A2 = 26.2%), the most intact forest landscapes vulnerable to climate change, requiring management for heterogeneity and resilience; (ii) resilient (B1 = 2.2%, A1B = 0.5%, A2 = 0.6%), intact areas with low vulnerability that represent potential climate refugia and require conservation capacity maintenance; (iii) resistant (B1 = 6.7%, A1B = 0.8%, A2 = 1.1%), landscapes with low current conservation capacity and low vulnerability that are suitable for restoration projects; (iv) sensitive (B1 = 66.4%, A1B = 72.3%, A2 = 72.0%), low conservation capacity landscapes that are vulnerable and for which alternative conservation measures are required depending on the intensity of climate change. Our results indicate that the Finnish landscape is likely to be dominated by a very high proportion of sensitive and susceptible forest patches, thereby increasing uncertainty for landscape managers in the choice of conservation strategies.

The familiar and the foreign: Finnish landscapes in contemporary Irish poetry

This essay focuses on contemporary Irish poets’ engagement with Finnish landscapes, more specifically on poems drawing on Finnish art, culture and history. It examines how Irish poets negotiate between the “familiar and the foreign”, as Edna Longley has phrased it, in adapting Finnish material to address cultural and personal crises in new contexts. Three poems by Michael Hartnett, Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin are discussed as instances of de- and re-contextualising recognisably Finnish motifs and art works, often in order to rise above the social and political pressures of specific cultural frameworks.

Frontier Landscape – Lapland in the Tradition of Finnish Landscape Painting

Finnish artists depicted Lapland as a frontier. The position of the Lappish landscape as a part of the Finnish landscape painting tradition is explored through a framework based on art and cultural history as well as humanistic and cultural geography. Paintings from three historical periods are analyzed: the early and later period of Finland as an autonomous Russian Grand Duchy (1809–1917), the first decades after the independence of Finland (1917–1939) and the Second World War (1939–1945). Lapland is today the borderline of leisure and work and the frontier of Finnish and Sámi cultures. Earlier Lappish landscapes were places of Sámi nomadism and Finnish farming, which can be seen in the Lappish landscape paintings from the 1890s to 1920s. Finnish art tradition, however, was not ready to accept Lapland, the northern frontier, as a part of Finland. During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s the meaning of the northern borderline grew and Lapponism, the golden years of Lappish landscape and tourism, began. During the Lapponism period there were few paintings depicting Sámi culture, because the Sámi were thought to be primitive or Mongolian, and were not accepted as part of Finnish culture.

Finnish landscape studies – a mixture of traditions and recent trends in the analysis of nature-human interactions

Finnish landscape studies have long methodological traditions stretching back to the early 20th century. These are reflected in present-day landscape research, which is practised within various university disciplines and research institutions, representing both the sciences and the humanities and also applied fields. We have categorised Finnish landscape studies under four main themes: (1) theoretical and methodological, (2) ecological, (3) social and cultural, and (4) applied. The focus of Finnish landscape research has been on both physical landscape characteristics and their spatial and temporal interactions, and also on the diverse social context of landscapes. Finnish landscapes have been mapped and delineated on several occasions, the latest landscape map being based on a publication by the National Land Survey and the Geographical Society of Finland dating from 1994. This classification recognizes landscape areas defined hierarchically on three spatial levels using the proportions and spatial configurations of ground, water, vegetation and man-made forms. The future of Finnish landscape studies is tied to whether knowledge about nature-human interactions on the visible surface of the earth will be able to overcome the fragmentation brought about by specialization. What is needed is a common world of concepts, a new way of thinking. This will call for transdisciplinary concepts, intertraditional points of view, in which quantitative and explicatory methods are complemented by qualitative approaches and methods which emphasize understanding, meanings and symbols.

Effects of Land Use Changes on the Landscape Composition: A Comparison Between Finnish and Russian Karelia

During the last 50 years the practising and intensity of agriculture and forestry have differed considerably between Finnish and Russian Karelia. We studied the effects of different land use practices on the landscape composition in the two countries using the road transect sampling along four study routes (99-121 km) between 1997 and 1999. Effective environmental management in Finland has resulted in more distinct agricultural land types, more even distribution of the different age classes of forests, and the higher abundance of coniferous forests. Fields (mean percentage of the landscape: Finland 28%, Russia 13%), clearcuts and sapling stands (15%, 6%), and young forests (23%, 9%) were more typical elements of the Finnish landscape, whereas settlements (9%, 13%), semi-natural grasslands (3%, 7%), and mature forests (20%, 49%) were more characteristic of the Russian landscape. Landscape-level differences between the two countries may have various effects on the diversity of fauna and flora inhabiting Finnish and Russian Karelia.

Managing Boreal Forest Landscapes for Flying Squirrels

Flying squirrel (Pteromys volans) populations have declined severely during the past few decades, and the species has beconme afocal species in forest management and the conservation debate in Finland. We compared land.scape structure around known flying squirrel home ranges with randomly chosen forest sites to determine which landscape patterns characterize the areas occupied by the species in northern Finland. We sought to identify the key characteristics of the landscape that support the remaining flying squirrel popu- lations. We analyzed landscape structure within circular areas with 1- and 3-knm radii around 63 forest sites occupied by flying sqtuirrels, and arotund 96 random sites. We applied stepwise analysis of the landscape structure where landscapes were built ul) step-by-step by adding patch types in order of their suitability for the flying squirret The land-use and forest-resource data for the analysis were derived from multisource na- tional forest inventory and imported to a geographical information systenm. Landscape patch types were di- vided into three suitability categories. breeding habitat (mixed spruce-deci.duous forests); dispersal habitat (pine atd young forests); and unsuitable habitat (young sapling stands, open habitats, water). Flying squir- rel landscapes contained more suitable breeding habitat patches and were better connected by dispersal hab- itats than random1 landscapes. Our results suggest that for the persistence of the flying squirrel, forest manag- ers should 1) maintain a deciduous mixtutre, particularly in spruce-dominatedforests; 2) maintain physical connectivity between optimal breeding habitats; and 3) impose coarse-grained structures on northeastern Finnish landscapes at cturrent levels of habitat availability.

Some features of nature and conservation in Finland

The general features of the tasks and problems involved in nature conservation in Finland are considered. The main elements of the Finnish landscape are forests, peatlands, and lakes. Simultaneously, the forests are also the foundation of the economy of the country. Despite their large extent (71 per cent of the total land area), the forests have been forced into the sphere of economic activity over the whole country. To meet the greatly increased demand for raw wood for industrial use, artificial drainage of peatlands for forestry purposes has been widely increased (about 300,000 ha are currently being drained annually). The continuous expansion of the industries, too, has become a factor threatening the virgin state of the lakes, about 10 per cent of which have already become polluted. The Finnish Nature Protection Act was enacted already in 1923, and the network of nature reserves may be considered quite representative.