“Threatening Livelihoods”: Nordic Enemy Images of Peddlers from the Russian Empire

Abstract

This chapter explores Nordic press portrayals of four mobile groups from the multi-ethnic Russian Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: “Rucksack Russians,” Eastern Jews, Tatars and Novgorodian saw grinders. Building on articles and short paragraphs in Swedish and Finnish periodicals, the article illustrates the ways in which these mobile groups were depicted as a threat, and the economic, moral, and political motives behind such expressions. The chapter discloses an aspect of reality that mobile Russians seeking a livelihood in the Nordics faced, as well as the mechanisms through which enemy images were created. The complaints mainly represented voices beyond the traders and their customers. They primarily emanated from local merchants, who viewed the peddlers as unfair competitors, authorities who sought to maintain order and offer security, and political actors.