Materialities on the Move: Identity and Material Culture Among the Forest Finns in Seventeenth-Century Sweden and America

Abstract

This chapter takes its departure in the persistent mythology surrounding the so-called forest Finns who migrated from Finland to Sweden and further on to America in the seventeenth century. The forest Finns have traditionally been regarded as a clear-cut and bounded ethnical group, represented by a specific suit of material culture and practices. However, by comparing archaeological remains and written sources from both Sweden and America, it can be argued that the Finnish-speaking migrants fairly quickly transformed their traditions from the homeland and melded their material culture together with practices of various origins. It is suggested that while certain practices may have been used to inscribe the new environment with a sense of familiarity, perhaps as part of a strategy to retain the link to a perceived cultural background, this was likewise an amalgamation where old practices blended with new ones. The forests Finns were thus living within a field of tension between difference and hybridity—a testament to the diversity of early modern Sweden and America.