In this article, I examine the intertextuality of reminiscence writings of Karelian evacuees in Finland. The main topics of these writings are the two journeys of evacuation from the ceded Karelia to Finland, which writers experienced as children during and after the Second World War, and journeys back to the region of their childhood, which became possible after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the case of negotiations surrounding spatiotemporal distance and the creation of bridges between the past and the present, I argue that intertextuality plays a crucial but somewhat underanalyzed role in reminiscing.

On the basis of the September 1944 Moscow Armistice agreement between Finland, the Soviet Union and the UK, the Finnish government was obliged to intern German and Hungarian citizens in Finland. Applying the concepts of "tellability" and "frame", I examine how individuals (most of them children of German fathers and Finnish mothers) who were interned as minors and young people in Finland in 1944-1946 describe silence and the rupture of silence. In order to understand the interaction and dynamics between individuals' remembering and public memory, I analyze oral history interviews of ex-internees in relation to public discussion. I argue that bringing together viewpoints of narrative analysis, oral history research and memory studies facilitates understanding of the link between the individual, private and public dimensions of memory construction. Furthermore, I suggest that the analytical concepts of tellability and frame are highly useful in understanding why some experiences and events of the past are narrated and remembered while others are forgotten or silenced.

By adopting the idea of points of memory, this article engages with oral history interviews of former child and youth internees of Finland, most of them children of German fathers and Finnish mothers. The article analyzes how points of memory emerge and performatively operate in reminiscing by focusing on personal accounts that revolve around material objects. In particular, points of memory will be analyzed in what follows by applying the concept of poetics, understood here as a juxtaposition of textual units that gives rise to emergent meanings. What is more, these personal accounts will be examined in relation to collective and public internment memory. Accordingly, the article aims at illustrating these accounts as (1) instances of (moral) rhetoric through which interviewees perform various social and political acts (e.g. claim accountability or retrospective justice) and (2) means in the production and transmission of memory.

By addressing recent discussions on reception within the field of memory studies, this article aims to analyze the reasons for the alleged absence of public memory relating to the history of Ingria and the experiences of Ingrian Finns in Finland by focusing on Inkerin romaani (2002), a posthumous novel by Toivo Pekkanen. Through analysis of three scales of reception, the article explores the dynamics of memory and affordances of memorability. It argues that understanding memory dynamics requires looking at the reception of memory as well as its blockages. Moreover, this article suggests that these aspects of memory dynamics can be fruitfully analyzed and theorized through the notion of affordances of memorability.

Tämän teemanumeron aihe on vernakulaarin käsite. Numeron neljässä artikkelissa vernakulaaria lähestytään käsitehistoriallisesta ja tapaustutkimusten näkökulmasta. Artikkeleissa tarkastellaan ensinnäkin sitä, minkälaisia merkityksiä vernakulaarin käsitteellä on ollut eri aikoina. Toiseksi niissä eritellään, minkälainen asema vernakulaarin käsitteellä sekä sille annetuilla merkityksillä on ollut eri tieteenaloilla ja niiden tutkimuskohteiden määrittelyssä. Kolmanneksi teemanumeron artikkeleissa analysoidaan useita tapaustutkimuksia vernakulaarin käsitteen ja sen tarjoamien näkökulmien kautta samalla käsitettä pohtien. Teemanumeron tavoitteena on tuoda monipuolisesti esiin, miten vernakulaarin käsitettä on tutkimuksessa käytetty, ja mikä sen anti on perinteen- ja kulttuurien tutkimukselle.  Tässä johdannossa esittelemme teemanumeron koostavien artikkeleiden lisäksi vernakulaarin käsitteen taustoja. Käymme läpi myös vernakulaarin käyttöä erityisesti folkloristiikan näkökulmasta, käsitteeseen kytkeytyviä ongelmia ja sen analyyttistä potentiaalia.