Kokemuksia Kolin kansallispuistosta ja -maisemista

menneisyyden kertomukset nykypäivän luontokokemusten muokkaajina

Authors

• Kirsi Laurén

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30666/elore.79219

Abstract

The article examines personal experience narratives written by authors who took part in a public writing competition about the natural parks of eastern Finland (2013). The artists in the era of national romanticism represented Koli as a symbol of wilderness and Kalevalian landscape which was interlaced as part of the narrative of Finnishness. The starting point for this article is to discuss the relations of past dominant narratives of Koli to today’s nature experiences. The study shows that the writers are strongly influenced by the imagery of national landscape and tourist advertising which are sustaining the picture of Koli as it was created in the period of the golden age of Finnish art. In the narratives of Koli, the writers are constructing their identity and relationship to nature in a way where the symbolic meanings of national landscape are intertwined as part of their personal experience. On top of the hills of Koli, the experiences of the landscapes are colored with the romantic images of the cultural past. Below the hills, however, the nature experiences are more mundane, whereas they could be emotionally experimental and memorable as well, but these experiences are not tinged with national connotations as on the top of the hills.