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Sebastian Fink and Saana Svärd (eds.), Studia Orientalia Electronica Special Issue: Mesopotamian Identities in the Last Centuries of Cuneiform Writing. The written sources from the ancient Near East are for the most part authored from the perspective of the dominant group and yield a very limited view on people’s identities from an emic point of view that would correspond to their own self-identification. Self-defined minority groups in Mesopotamia have not left behind written evidence about themselves and their identity strategies. A notable exception to this rule is the book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible. This book documents an intense and enduring attempt at reconstructing the identity of a dislocated group of people. The book of Ezekiel is produced by a group that constructed a diaspora identity from the early sixth century onwards, whether in Babylonia or in Jerusalem; in any case, it is written in an environment where the adaptation of a wide array of Mesopotamian linguistic, iconographic, literary, and theo- logical motifs was possible. Wherever and whenever the book of Ezekiel was produced, it presents itself as a document of an explicit identity strategy of a minority group, unique among written sources from any part of Mesopotamia. It can be read as an example of the survival strategy of a group that distinguishes itself from others by way of self-reidentification. The book does not reflect a stable and universally shared identity of the Judeans. On the contrary, it creates and constructs an inner-Judean antagonism between Ezekiel’s in-group and the delegitimized out-group. The book of Ezekiel, therefore, does not convey much about the integration of the Judean minority into Babylonian society but all the more about conflicts among Judeans themselves.

This paper presents the results of new research on underwater archaeological evidence for the maritime transport of sculptures in the ancient Mediterranean. Through the creation of a Mediterranean-wide database and with a focus on information from surviving archaeological deposits, this study explores ancient Greek and Roman sculptures from under water as a dataset of transported artefacts that had a specific function within the maritime context of their discovery. This documentation, analysis and interpretation of underwater deposits with sculptures provide previously unexplored data regarding the geographical extent, date, reasons and circumstances of maritime movement of sculptural artefacts during Antiquity.

This contribution aims to use social history and social theory to investigate political power and compliance with authority in ancient Western Asia, through the case study of Neo-Assyrian imperial building projects. Our first aim is to discuss the realities of construction work in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, focusing on the building process both through literary sources and archaeological data. Our second goal is to understand the role played by these building sites in the strengthening of local and supra-local political orders, in the consolidation of social group boundaries, and in the construction of political subjectivities of the ancient social actors involved. Our reflection sheds light on the new interpretative possibilities – and challenges – that integrating social theories, archaeological work, and language technology may create.

There are histories describing in detail the development of early childhood education (ECE) around the world, yet not enough is known about this in the Middle East and the information on the origins of ECE in Iran is scarce and fragmentary. This article is the first of its kind to present an overview of the main developments rendering possible the establishment of the first kindergartens in Iran. In our account, we connect this genealogy of early childhood education in Iran to various trajectories: 1) the work of intellectual reformers; 2) the Iranian feminist movement; 3) the Constitutional Revolution in Iran (1906–1911); 4) religious reformist beliefs in Shia; 5) the missionaries’ schools; 6) the Armenians’ schools and 7) the age of girls’ marriage. As we demonstrate, early childhood education in Iran emerged before the industrial revolution. It was mainly provided for intellectual and influential families, focused on physical education accompanied by music, while religious education was marginal. Our genealogical explorations indicate that compared to kindergartens in Britain and Europe, Iranian early childhood education has been an instrument for intellectual societal reform. It was the fruits of a transplanted tree nourished by various local cultural-socio-political trends and religious beliefs. The paper concludes with an assessment of the importance of local and international influences on the emergence of early childhood education and the need to explore this history with an intersectional approach. publishedVersion

The Fragmenta membranea manuscript fragment collection at the National Library of Finland has proved challenging to date using only traditional paleography. Therefore, radiocarbon dates can contribute to the understanding of these fragments by offering a parallel natural scientific timeline for the parchment the manuscripts are written on. In this study, we apply our previously developed method for radiocarbon dating medieval manuscripts made of parchment. In total 35 datings were made from 14 separate assemblages of manuscripts, being the first systematic wide-scale application of radiocarbon dating to a collection of medieval manuscripts in order to improve their chronological proxy. Additionally, due to the fragmentary and sometimes poor condition of the manuscript fragments of Fragmenta membranea analyzed in this study, we used Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to evaluate the quality of the collagen and the presence of contaminants in the fragments affecting the radiocarbon dates. We report out radiocarbon dating results and FTIR screenings for each sample and for each manuscript assemblage, and discuss the applicability of our method in further studies of applying radiocarbon dating on objects of cultural historical interest and value. The results indicate an essential role of high-quality samples and multiple measurements to interpret the radiocarbon dating results.

In this article, the authors address the presence and societal impact of Romani people in the public spaces of the circus. The focus is on the French circus family Bouglione, originally Sinti from Italy, and their Wild West show performed in France and abroad from 1925 to 1934. As well as forming arenas for cultural transfer, circuses and similar exhibitions made entryways to exotic otherness. The remarkably successful exhibition brought the family both status and wealth, enabling the Bougliones to operate the Cirque d’Hiver (Winter Circus) in Paris, which continues to enjoy renown for having one of the most prestigious circus venues in the world. The authors’ contribution examines how the Romani family carefully followed social phenomena and used their Wild West show not only to respond to a general interest in exotic exhibits but also to satisfy a contemporary desire for an anti-bourgeois lifestyle. Although the Wild West Show represented a financial undertaking for the Bougliones, it also strengthened the family's societal security.

A kunhalmok, másnéven kurgánok, olyan régmúltban emelt síremlékek, amelyek a közép-kelet-európai síkságok, így például az Alföld jellegzetes objektumai. Nem csupán régészeti és kulturális örökségvédelmi szempontból kiemelkedően fontosak ezek a képződmények, hanem természetvédelmi értékük is legalább ennyire kimagasló, hisz sok esetben értékes növény- és állatvilágnak adnak otthont. A kunhalmok időkapszulák, amelyek nem csak az alattuk található sírban elhelyezett emberi maradványok tekintetében rejtenek felbecsülhetetlen információt, hanem környezettörténeti szempontból is egyedülállóak. A Hajdúnánás melletti Zagolya-dűlőben feltárt kurgán esetében a kulturális újrahasznosítás (cultural recycling) jelensége kézzel foghatóan megmutatkozott. Az eredeti Jamnaja temetkezési dombot a későbbi korok kultúrái újra és újra használatba vették, így a Baden kultúrához tartozó megtelepedési objektumok mellett, jóval későbbi, népvándorlás kori beásások, illetve Árpád-kori objektumok is megjelentek a magaslaton. Jelen dolgozatunkban a halom feltárásakor végzett szisztematikus rétegtani, illetve ehhez kapcsolódó régészeti talajtani vizsgálatok eredményeit foglaljuk össze. A halomtest átvágásával láthatóvá vált rétegek helyszíni talajvizsgálati (talajmorfológiai) leírása mellett, a nagyfelbontású mintavétellel nyert talajfizikai és -kémiai adatokat is közre adjuk. A helyszíni felmérés és a laboratóriumi vizsgálatok adatait kiegészítik az egyes jelenségek makro-archaeobotanikai és fitolitvizsgálati eredményei. A többrétű adatsorok együttes értelmezésével nemcsak a kurgán részletes talaj- és üledéktani leírását kívántuk megadni, hanem rámutatunk arra is, hogy a természettudományi módszerek együttes alkalmazásával milyen interpretációs előnyök bontakoznak ki.

This article focuses on the construction site of Svirstroi and the activities of its Finnish immigrant population and their supervisors. Due to illegal border-crossing, the immigrants had to serve their time in Svirstroi and became subordinates of the OGPU through forced labour. The organisation of work and political education of the illegal immigrants was delegated between the OGPU, the Communist Party of Finland, and the Bolsheviks who were all responsible for the immigrants and their fates. Based on archival sources and letters of the immigrants, this article analyses how perceptions of labour, propaganda work, and freedom changed from the perspective of the immigrants and their supervisors. Moreover, this study highlights the role of the Communist Party of Finland as a mediator between the immigrants and the OGPU. The history of Finnish immigrants and communists sheds light on the role of cultural-political work and minority experiences within the Gulag system. This article focuses on the construction site of Svirstroi and the activities of its Finnish immigrant population and their supervisors. Due to illegal border-crossing, the immigrants had to serve their time in Svirstroi and became subordinates of the OGPU through forced labour. The organisation of work and political education of the illegal immigrants was delegated between the OGPU, the Communist Party of Finland, and the Bolsheviks who were all responsible for the immigrants and their fates. Based on archival sources and letters of the immigrants, this article analyses how perceptions of labour, propaganda work, and freedom changed from the perspective of the immigrants and their supervisors. Moreover, this study highlights the role of the Communist Party of Finland as a mediator between the immigrants and the OGPU. The history of Finnish immigrants and communists sheds light on the role of cultural-political work and minority experiences within the Gulag system.

This article examines the intertwined circulation of multiple kinds of Nordic models. We seek to understand how modelization of the region occurred at multiple levels and in disparate fields, in other words how different aspects of Nordic policies and politics came to be understood as worthy of interest and at times of emulation. In doing so, we aim to contribute to the critical scholarship on the Nordic model concept, exploring how it has been changed and contested over time, the contexts in which it circulates and why it has generated interest. Methodologically, we use digital tools to analyse scholarly literature in different disciplines published between 1965 and 2019. In focusing on intellectual constructions of the Nordic model, we locate academia as a crucial field for the development of the Nordic model concept, but one that is in communication with and integrates typologies developed in other fields. Following a brief discussion of the model concept, we assess intensifications and critical junctures in the modelization of the Nordics through wordclouds. Second, we demonstrate the variety of such modelizations through case studies. Third, we conclude by pointing to the rhetorical and heuristic effects of such modelizations.

This chapter provides much-needed novel perspectives on the mass-produced suburbs of the 1960s and 1970s in Finland. By analyzing how first-generation suburbanites perceived and enacted their new environment, the chapter points out the multidimensionality of these seemingly monotonous environments. With their up-to-date apartments and environments built from scratch, the suburbs were key places where modernizing welfare Finland was lived. The discussion demonstrates that their thus far largely unrecognized experiential and aesthetic qualities emerged in the reciprocity of no-nonsense architecture, developed and undeveloped natural settings, and inhabitants. It shows the importance of undefined land beyond the reach of planning for the wellbeing of suburbanites. Finally, the chapter shows that in addition to designers, by their actions inhabitants shaped and made meaningful suburban environments.

In our contribution, we explore the Czech-speaking discourse related to Georg Brandes in the Bohemian Lands in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, which means before and shortly after Czechs gained their independence from Austria-Hungary in 1918. Our research of archival sources, especially periodicals and private letters, enables us to confidently claim that the impact of Brandes’s criticism on the Czech arts was rather insignificant. At the same time, the sources give a clear picture that the Czech-speaking intelligentsia were interested in using Brandes’s symbolic capital to promote their struggle for Czech cultural autonomy. Thus, it was not Brandes’s works that can be considered influential in the Czech context but his persona. This strategy of using Brandes’s symbolic capital mirrors his own efforts to be viewed as an international intermediary. Finally, we explore the East-West dynamics in Brandes’s relationship with Czechs and vice versa, and here, we identify a considerable asymmetry

This paper discusses the evolution of documentary culture in early medieval Tuscia by quantitatively examining the Latin spelling of charter scribes in relation to the following factors: time, the distinction between the formulaic and non-formulaic parts of the document, the scribe’s domicile, the scribe’s professional status, and the document type. The paper asks what the spelling of charters tells us about administrative and socio-cultural changes in charter production and in scribal education. The research data is 997 charters from the Late Latin Charter Treebank, and the approach that of philological corpus linguistics.

The chapter analyzes how the ethical guidelines and prescriptions guiding cohort studies have changed from the mid-1960s to the present and asks how a cohort research community has adjusted to these changes. Birth cohort studies, due to their extensive use of human subjects and their usually extended length, are particularly well suited for investigating the issue. The case through which the issue is tackled is the Northern Finland Birth Cohorts 1966 and 1986 (NFBC). Launched in 1965, the NFBC initially comprised 12,231 children and their mothers. The second birth cohort was started in 1985. It consisted of 9,479 children and their mothers. The main finding of the chapter is that the NFBC scientists share a similar understanding of research ethics, an understanding that acknowledges past circumstances in epidemiological knowledge-production but also constantly seeks to adjust to changes in research ethics. Their understanding of ethical research is thus temporally multi-layered. The history of research ethics in birth cohort studies offers a way to examine how epidemiological knowledge-production has been governed and affected by temporality.

Psychopathy was one of the most common diagnoses in Finnish forensic psychiatric examinations between the 1910s and 1960s. Abnormal categories of emotions such as sensitivity, indifference and the tendency to shift among different emotions or lability, were among the principal symptoms of psychopathy. This paper describes and analyses the ways in which Finnish forensic psychiatrists between the 1900s and 1930s perceived and portrayed the emotions of individuals they considered to be psychopaths, and how abnormal categories of emotions persisted until the end of the 1960s. Psychopathic categories of emotions were defined along a spectrum ranging between the extremes of sensitivity and of coldness and included volatility, which entailed rapid mood swings. Displaying either or both extremes of emotion defined psychopathy. The unifying category of abnormal emotions disappeared when the diagnosis of psychopathy ceased to exist in 1969, when it was replaced by the diagnostic category of personality disorders.

This article recounts how Neo-Scholastic international lawyers navigated the complex political landscape of the 1920s and 30s, combining universalism, nationalism and religious belief. Participating in the contemporary re-engagement of Catholics with modern politics, they re-imagined the international legal order in Catholic terms. They argued that a universal morality, overruling the extremes of state sovereignty, was the only solid basis for just and stable global legal relations. While the contribution of Catholics to the establishment of the post-war world order and the rise of human rights is widely acknowledged, the interwar genealogy of these developments is not. Reading these thinkers' universalist legal tenets in conjunction with their political trajectories provides a relevant frame to understand the moral charge characterizing international law in the early years of the Cold War.

This article is a study of the ASOR society, based on a database compiled from the 2017 annual meeting at Boston, one of the largest meetings in its history. Such a study has not been performed before. We study the research of ASOR as represented in the meeting by the roles of the scholar-members (poster presenters, lecture presenters, and session chairs), their research subjects (geographic areas, periods, and topics), and their affiliations (gender and institutions). The analysis leads to several questions – and conclusions – about Archaeology in the Ancient Near East (ANE). Despite important progress by ASOR (e.g., in addressing gender), ANE archaeology is still a privilege of the ‘west’. Rarely a ‘local’ scholar spices up the discussions. Modern politics and ideologies determine what areas are studied and what topics of research are ‘in’. Political neutrality is proclaimed, but not achieved, in the spaces of the meeting. The aim of the article is to foster discussion about these systematic issues, which do not have easy solutions. By presenting quantified data, they can no longer be dismissed as unsubstantiated, personal impressions.

Los textos de los currículos nacionales son ejemplos de las dificultades inherentes a la representación y construcción de las nociones de ciudadanía en una sociedad democrática. Mientras que los soberanos predemocráticos recibían consejos maquiavélicos del tipo «espejos para príncipes», el currículum escolar moderno encarna una «lógica especular» del discurso político, proporcionando al pueblo una imagen de sí mismo como «unidad en la diferencia». Esta imagen se implementa y refuerza en el sistema educativo.Utilizando la teoría política postfundacionalista, analizamos cómo se fabrican las representaciones de la ciudadanía en los discursos de los planes de estudio nacionales en una época de dislocación percibida, cuando la continuidad del orden político se ve amenazada. Como ejemplo de caso, utilizamos los discursos curriculares finlandeses –los currículos nacionales, así como los textos académicos para la planificación, la implementación y la evaluación de los currículos– desde la década de 1950 hasta la de 1970. Estos discursos construyen una tesis cultural de una nación en la que los antiguos símbolos de unidad nacional –basados en nociones románticas de país, lengua y fe– se están evaporando rápidamente. Se considera que los profundos cambios políticos, tecnológicos e industriales exigen una adaptación y una capacidad de cooperación más generales que antes, lo que equivale a una nueva orientación temporal o «choque de futuro», cuyo objetivo es responder a las exigencias futuras desconocidas en lugar de limitarse a asegurar un sentido de continuidad histórica.

by invitation The paper exemplifies how the modern semantic field of ‘alterity’ can be turned into a fruitful research approach for Ancient Near Eastern Studies and where ‘deviance’ would be situated in such an approach. I ask how modern terms and concepts that intentionally or unconsciously enter our modern interpretation of ancient sources can be instrumentalised for countering historiographical ‘othering’. The key idea is to turn the modern terms and underlying concepts and connotations into a research tool that facilitates a systematic search for additional direct or circumstantial evidence on the chosen topic, in this case that of ‘a stranger in the house’. The paper has the format of a double note. The first part highlights some general methodological questions and sketches out the research tool via sets of characteristic key questions. The second part provides an application example for illustrating how the different questions change the scope of interpretation of ancient sources. The sample case study is a characteristically underdetermined private legal document from 7th c. Assur concerning a group of Egyptian merchants who are attacked in the house of their host.

The first part of this essay addresses what a microhistory of petitions has to offer to subaltern studies. The second part illustrates this with a late nineteenth-century case-study revolving around a Kabyle man formerly belonging to the intermediate sphere between French-colonial and local Algerian society. Concretely, the focus lies on Ahmed ben Ali ben Aouadi and the political knowledge to which his 1888-petition to the French Chamber of Deputies and its chairman testified. This written interaction must be seen as an attempt to challenge the institutional framing of his family’s subaltern identity and to reclaim their property, confiscated by the French state. The third section of this essay reveals an interactive exchange between this colonial subject’s subaltern resistance and the institutional counter-resistance of the French colonizer’s legislative and executive authorities, which extended far beyond Aouadi’s second petition in 1892, and thus challenges our notions of political agency and success.

The origins of horseback riding remain elusive. Scientific studies show that horses were kept for their milk similar to 3500 to 3000 BCE, widely accepted as indicating domestication. However, this does not confirm them to be ridden. Equipment used by early riders is rarely preserved, and the reliability of equine dental and mandibular pathol-ogies remains contested. However, horsemanship has two interacting components: the horse as mount and the human as rider. Alterations associated with riding in human skeletons therefore possibly provide the best source of information. Here, we report five Yamnaya individuals well-dated to 3021 to 2501 calibrated BCE from kurgans in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, displaying changes in bone morphology and distinct pathologies associated with horseback riding. These are the oldest humans identified as riders so far.

This article focuses on a significant kinship character, babushka, the grandmother, in Russian lesbian-headed families. Based on an original empirical multi-method study, the research analyses the building of relationships with grandmothers in lesbian families in contemporary Russia. As the core element of Russian kinship – marriage – is missing from this kinship scene, blood relations between the biological mother, the maternal grandmother, and the child seem to become a central, although a highly complex element, in building supportive relationships in lesbian-headed families. Grandmothers from the non-biological mother’s side remain less visible in everyday negotiations and decision-making than biological grandmothers. The argument here states that blood relatedness becomes meaningful in situations where the grandmother’s role in lesbian-headed families is recognised and challenged in the officially anti-lesbian state context. Extended support mutually provided by grandmothers and their lesbian daughters creates an intelligible model of female-maintained family in current Russia, even when the legal landscape (i.e., the enforcement of the ‘anti-gay’ legislation in 2013) is not in the favour of such families. Consequently, babushkas become a “shield” between the state and the lesbian families as they provide a socially and culturally legit “traditional family” surface, required for survival in the state which promotes women’s reproduction as a core value in the society., feminists@law, Vol 11 No 2 (2022)

Funding Information: Research conducted in the frames of the project “Perception of European bison and primeval forest in the 18th-19th century: shared cultural and natural heritage of Poland and Lithuania” (UMO-2017/27/L/HS3/031870) financed by National Science Centre, Poland (https://www. ncn.gov.pl/en) and grant S-LL-18-6 financed by the Research Council of Lithuania (https://www.lmt.lt/ en). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Authors wish to thank the group of European bison specialists that agreed to evaluate the anatomical accuracy of historical depictions of European bison (prof. dr hab. Małgorzata Krasińska and dr hab. Rafał Kowalczyk from Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences in Białowieża, dr Katarzyna Daleszczyk and dr Zbigniew Krasiński from the Białowieża National Park, and doctor of veterinary medicine Jarosław Tomana from Pszczyna). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Samojlik et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Visual media are one of the fastest and most effective tools informing the public about conservation goals and convincing societies to support conservation actions. Similar mechanisms functioned in the past, only within a much longer time scale and different communication channels. We analyse the evolution of European bison’s depictions between 1500 and 1900 in the context of building public awareness of the species and its conservation needs. Experts evaluated the anatomical accuracy of thirty eight images of the species from the period analysed, and their conservation appeal was assessed by using an online survey of the general public. Existing knowledge and previous publications allowed authors to describe the development of the scientific knowledge about European bison in 1500–1900. By juxtaposing this with anatomical accuracy of depictions, a conclusion was reached that the accuracy of depictions was not directly linked to the state of knowledge about the species. In the survey, the public reception of the accuracy of historical pictures of European bison, as well as their potential to be used in conservation campaigns, was connected with subjective appeal of depicted animals. This lesson can be translated to modern conservation campaigns using mass media and global communication channels: popularization of knowledge on species of concern should be accompanied by appealing depictions of these species to strengthen public reception.

This article introduces the Finnish Army in World War II Database (FA2W) currently under construction that is being built to study the effects of World War II on Finnish society. The database is a stratified sample of 4,253 representative of the men who served in the Finnish Army in World War II. The data have been gathered from the military service record collection of the Finnish Army, which holds files on practically all draft-age Finnish men of the birth cohort 1903–1926 and around 70% of the birth cohorts 1897–1902. The amount of data is extensive, containing over 60 different variables. The main part of the database consists of men's military careers, comprising longitudinal data on their positions in society and in the army (e.g., civilian/conscript/frontline service), military unit, military branch, task, rank, and service class. Other information includes socio-economic information from the draft and wartime and war experiences, such as wounds, illnesses, medical treatments, death, and honors. In the future the database will be expanded with men’s postwar life trajectories to study the long-term effects of the war. publishedVersion

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The Volga-Oka interfluve in northwestern Russia has an intriguing history of population influx and language shift during the Common Era. Today, most inhabitants of the region speak Russian, but until medieval times, northwestern Russia was inhabited by Uralic-speaking peoples.

In this chapter I provide an analytic overview of the academic and public discussions on postwar Western affluence among the blue-collar working class. Using popular sociological interpretations, widespread media narratives, and influential political rhetoric as empirical evidence, I highlight how impactful public narratives of the working class are constructed, deconstructed, or reconstructed during the period of the so-called affluent society (1950s to early 1970s) and the age of deindustrialization (from the mid-1970s onwards). Focusing on the Western experience, the study draws parallels between different nations, from North America and France to the Nordic countries. I argue that even though societal and cultural realities change drastically throughout the West, portrayals and interpretations of the working class are constructed with analogous structural narrative materials.

In the late Middle Ages, the settlement pattern in coastal Uusimaa, southern Finland, was based on Swedish-speaking small villages. It has been thought that most of these villages were founded by Swedish colonists who arrived in the region from the late 12th century onwards. However, based on place name evidence, there were also Finnish inhabitants in the area during this time, although their role in establishing the villages has not been discussed to an equal extent. As the number of excavated village sites has increased, it has now become possible to discuss the development of the villages in the region from new perspectives, as is done in this paper. Based on archaeological material and place name evidence, both Finnish and Swedish-speaking people were involved in founding the historical villages in Uusimaa. In central Uusimaa, this seems to have first happened during the period of Swedish colonization, but there are notable differences between different parts of the region. In western Uusimaa, the historical villages may have been settled already during the Iron Age. Although many of the historical villages were settled by the late 13th century, based on archaeological evidence the pattern of more regulated village landscapes with several farms located on a shared plot was first established during the 15th century.

This chapter asks how experiences of society, societal structures, and ideas of society are related; how they produce actions (like politics); and how these factors explain the change of society. A particular focus is on the explanatory power of experience. The case studied here is the rapid societal change in Finland after World War II. This was the period when a version of the Nordic Model was built in Finland. The modernization of society and the birth of the redistributive state was a success story but not without problems. A crucial element in making the change legitimate among citizens was the fulfilled expectations people had in a relatively poor society in the 1950s. Wide commitment to the idea of social equality was the major political driving force behind the reforms from the years of reconstruction until the challenges of globalization and information revolution.

The introductory chapter presents the history of experiences as a new, conceptually explicit approach to the welfare state. The concept experiencing society crystallizes our approach to how a particular relationship between individual and society is lived. The chapter introduces the lived welfare state both as a methodological concept and as the empirical focus of the book. Haapala, Harjula and Kokko summarize how the new theoretical and methodological insights with a long-term perspective and case studies from three continents enrich the analysis of the welfare state. By recognizing the aim to protect citizens against extreme experiences as the basic experiential idea of a democratic welfare state, the chapter points out the everyday complexities for the legitimacy and resilience of a welfare state.

This open access book presents a new approach to the history of welfare state. By applying the concepts of experiencing society and the lived welfare state, the collection introduces theoretical, methodological and empirical insights for bridging the everyday life and institutional structures. The chapters analyze how the welfare state as a particular individual-society relationship has become an integral part of living in the modern society. With a long-term perspective, the chapters explore the experience of society which enabled the building and the resilience of a welfare state. As the welfare state is not a universal model of social development but historically unique in different contexts, the book broadens the focus from the Nordic countries to Southern Europe, colonial Asia and post-colonial South America. This collection is essential reading for scholars and students in the social sciences and history, as well as for policymakers and practitioners who face the contemporary and future challenges of the welfare states. publishedVersion

How should we analyse experiences as societal phenomena? This chapter develops a historical-theoretical approach by building on the social theory of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann with Reinhart Koselleck’s temporal structures of experiencing. We first theorize how experiences are socially constructed and how experiences themselves construct the historically changing social reality. Second, we introduce analytic tools for approaching experiences in socio-historical research. The chapter conceptualizes the temporal and spatial structures of experience as layers of experience and scenes of experience, and indicates how they can be traced by exploring the sediments—shared meanings of experience—that are stored in different sign systems in a given historical context.

As a local official implementing social legislation, the social worker of the Finnish social office represented society and the (emerging) welfare state. I approach encounters between social workers and their clients as a scene of experience, which as a socio-spatial setting frames the situated interaction. By combining social workers’ interviews with official material, I indicate two contested generational layers of experience in lived social work from 1940 to 2000. The two generations of social workers built their work on different interpretations of the individual–society relationship, which resulted in divergent expectations toward the clients. The generational approach nuances the macro interpretations of welfare state development by indicating how the experienced legacy of previous policies survived in welfare state institutions, framing the agency of clients.

Studies that employ probability distributions of radiocarbon dates to study past population size often use exponential increase in radiocarbon dates with time as a standard of comparison for detecting population fluctuations. We show that in the case of early postglacial interior Scandinavia, however, the summed probability distribution of radiocarbon dates has best fit with a S-shaped logistic growth curve. Despite the logistic growth model having solid grounding in ecological theory, we further argue that what our data indicate is not logistic growth in the population ecological sense but “false logistic” growth that mainly follows from climatic and environmental forcing. In the initial postglacial phase, 9500–7500 BCE, human settlement was located almost exclusively along the Scandinavian Atlantic coast and the use of the mountainous interior remained low. Thereafter the formation of separate inland adaptations resulted in population growth in tandem with increasing climatic warming and environmental productivity. Some millennia later, when environmental productivity started to decrease after the Holocene Thermal Maximum, hunter-gatherer population size in interior Scandinavia reached a plateau that lasted at least 2000 years. Lowering productivity prevented any population growth that would be detectable in the available archaeological record.

From early 2020, epidemiological research has been in the public eye like never before, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemiology has been instrumental in recognizing and framing the pandemic, assessing its scale, and shaping the global response. Much to their surprise, epidemiologists have also been drawn into the highly politicized disputes around the pandemic response. But both pandemics and epidemiologists have been around for centuries or, depending on definitions, even for millenia. Apart from shortly outlining the contents of the book, the introductory chapter charts the boundaries of epidemiology with reference to adjacent fields of inquiry, reviews the widely varied views on its emergence as a disipline, and discusses the historiography of epidemiology—which, much like its subject, is extensive but somewhat nebulous.

Reading skills were part of Christian education in early modern Finland. According to the church law (1686), it was a task of parents to teach their children to read. If they were unable to do it, for example because they were illiterate themselves, they could receive help from their parish. It was important for a Christian to acquaint him/herself with the basics of Christianity by reading the Catechism. The ability to read was not sufficient. People were also supposed to understand the text they read. If they did not understand it, they were not motivated to read. Among the understanding strategies memorising was used most frequently. It was based on repetitive reading, which was a common reading strategy in early modern Finland – not least because the amount of books in vernacular was still small. The same texts were read again and again. The strategy is also called intensive reading. Better readers even used observation strategies. They estimated their knowledge and understanding during the reading process. According to Deci and Ryan (Motivation, Personality and Development within Embedded Social Contexts: An Overview of Self-Determination Theory, 2012), there are three fundamental psychological needs, which bring not only well-being but also motivation to people. They are competence, autonomy and relationship. In early modern Finland these needs were satisfied in various ways. In general, those who were more familiar with religious speech and reading, as a result of their family background or because of their friends, learnt quickly, made better progress and proved their competence and autonomy in reading. Others, who had less support from their family or community, had poorer religious vocabulary, more difficulties to understand what they read and less motivation to read. They were afraid of the examinations in the Catechism and of the social pressure in such circumstances. They also felt inadequacy in reading.

This article examines religious and patriotic languages in digitized letters written by ordinary Finnish people in the Second World War. We combine qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse how religious and patriotic languages were used throughout the war years. Our findings show that the frequency of religious and patriotic vocabulary fluctuated widely during the war. Religious words were most notably connected to the intensity of the warfare, peaking during the periods of heated combat and dropping in the period of stationary warfare. Patriotic words were likewise common during the early periods of combat, but their use waned in the later war years. The analysis of words occurring in close proximity to the religious and patriotic words suggests that this was due to the different functions of the two languages. Religious parlance was essentially a vehicle of private emotional coping, while patriotic style gave a collective meaning to the sacrifices of the war. Religion and patriotism diverged during the war because the collective meaning of the war vanished but the need for emotional comfort persisted until its end. publishedVersion

This article examines the emergence of the nineteenth-century Ålandic peasant yacht within the larger political, economic and social context of the central and northern Baltic Sea region. Through an analysis of the region's fluctuating and changing trading environment following the Finnish War of 1808–1809, it is demonstrated that the increasing uncertainty, as well as decreasing profitability, of previously stable trading relations provided the necessary impetus to change the traditional vessel design. Avenues for both foreign and domestic innovations are examined. In addition to exogenous influences, wherein the role of the Ålandic peasant sailors’ involvement in the Swedish navy is accentuated, the effects of the increasing smuggling activities of the archipelago's inhabitants and the competitive sailing environment that emerged during trading journeys are considered as factors that possibly affected shipbuilding. The results highlight the complex networks and processes through which innovations are generated, transmitted and adopted.

Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021. When a merchant ship was wrecked in the Gulf of Finland in the eighteenth century it was salvaged (mainly its running rigging), together with its cargo. In eighteenth-century Sweden, salvage was the monopoly of the Northern Diving and Salvage Company (1729–1802). In Helsinki, several salvage auctions were held each year. Salvage documents are useful sources not only for investigating the demand for ship parts, but also for identifying ships and explaining past marine accidents. The detailed technical knowledge provided by auction protocols offers insight into ships and their equipment in the early modern Baltic. Many ships were on their way to St Petersburg (established in 1703), the home port of European naval stores, but many of them were wrecked on the rocky coasts of Helsinki. This gave rise to a strange kind of shipping based on random imports and the use of recycled cordage, sails and anchors from the shores blessed by unfortunate ships.

This chapter discusses the character and legacies of settler colonialism through the looting of Indigenous artefacts by Gustaf Nordenskiöld in Mesa Verde in 1891. Nordenskiöld tied in with settler colonialism in several ways, albeit his experiences and narratives showcase disconnects as much as connections. Nordenskiöld’s excavation and knowledge production was one of the many practices of settler colonialism, showcasing a form of Indigenous elimination. When writing about his exploits, the Indigenous past, and settler colonial present of the US Southwest, Nordenskiöld advanced conceptual displacement, the substitution of Indigenous pasts and knowledge with linear and modern settler histories. His excavations and writings propagated a disconnect of dead civilizations, vanishing Indigenous presents, and empty lands, ripe for settler colonialism to “discover” and make sense of. His writings, actions, and the fate of his collection also created a lasting connection for Finland with US settler colonialism.

This paper seeks to review the state of the art concerning how documentary formulae were reproduced in early medieval private charters written in Latin. I shall estimate which kind of theoretical considerations and empirical evidence there are to support one or the other of the two main hypotheses, i.e., that i) charter scribes copied the formulae from models or ii) they had memorized the formulae and reproduced them from memory each time they wrote a new charter. I shall propose that the memorization hypothesis is more robust, but I shall also recognize intermediate positions.