The Bicycle and Bodily Identities of Rural Finnish Youth from the 1920 to 1940s

Authors

• Saara Tuomaala, PhD, Researcher University of Helsinki

Keywords:

agrarian, modernization, youth, technology, commodity, body, everyday life, age, class, gender, work, leisure

Abstract

How did Finns born at the beginning of the twentieth century describe the bicycles and cycling of their youth when they were interviewed in the 1990s? ln this paper, I explore the history of agrarian youth and its bodily identities in Finland of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s by examining the reminiscences and images of the bicycle in the life narration of elderly Finnish inteerviewees in Northwestern Finland, of whom 12 were women and 35 men. Olli (b. 1928), a male narrator in one such oral history interview, crystallized the importance of the bicycle in his adolescence: "Whoever had a bicycle, you could say that things with him were fine."