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Finnish Lapland is a historical borderland of Finnish and Sámi cultures. Such a region offers various social-political identifications for people to choose: people may see it possible to identify as Finnish, Laplanders, Lappish or Sámi, for instance. However, the choices have social and political limits, and some identifications are more contested than others. The book examines the processes of identifications in the middle parts of Lapland, just south of the region defined as Sámi homeland in Finland. While the study reveals differences and nuances in people's thinking, it also shows that there is a recognizable sense of shared cultural specifity around the region. Lapland is conceptualized as an extraordinary place with unusual nature and history, characterized by particular livelihoods (such as reindeer herding) and lively cultural interaction. The book concludes that while Lapland is extraordinary as a historical dwelling region of indigenous Sámi, it may be politically significant to recognize it as a unique borderland of cultures with features of its own.

Tradition and literature are not held back by borders. Transnationality is, for example, geographic, symbolic, or linguistic movement and action. Different kinds of cultural transitions and migrant traditions are connected with transnationality. Studying the multilingualism of literary texts or diverse cultural identities, transnationality is a prolific angle. In the 102nd Yearbook of the Kalevala Society Foundation, the topics cover for example migration and return migration, material things crossing borders, and places of music culture. At a more theoretical level we are asking how studying transnationality enriches the disciplines with roots in the national sciences.

Engl. Zsfassung u.d.T.: The Penttilä sawmill community and worker identity : a study of memory