In 1914, Ilma Lindgren, a merchant and activist with a few of her friends were picking berries. They filled up a good steady bucket of lingonberries that was confiscated by the landowner. Lindgren brought up this injustice to the supreme court of Finland and won her case. Six years of justice struggle created the right for everyone to roam free in nature and to harvest berries or mushrooms wherever.[1]
Nature is thought in Finland to be an equality matter, the nation identity is deeply linked with nature and the “outside”. One would think that we all enjoy it equally and we can all benefit from it. The nordic motto “jokamiehenoikeus”, in English “everyman's right”, famously known all around northern Europe that people proudly showcase on any occasion, is one of the examples of this wish for equality that is fiercely rooted in people's minds. Far from me the idea of challenging this concept as it highlights some values that we should all get inspired from. But it is also important to question our own approach to landscape and more precisely the perception of who's looking at nature. Is it really everyman's right? Is it accessible for everyman? And furthermore, as it is clearly stated, is it for every man[2]? Can it be for every human? Including women and other genders? There has been ongoing discussion led by the Finnish Local Heritage Federation (kotiseutuliitto) about whether this saying should be changed to be more inclusive. Indeed, a word can shape an understanding.[3]
Their proposal to rename the word in “Jokaisenoikeus”, “everyone's right” has not been approved officially and its use is fluctuant. The official website of the national park of Finland, Luontoon.fi, is still not using it.
The importance of this term also showcases that the landscape in Finland has been made by and for men taking the example from all the European countries as their histories are intertwined. Nature is also the projection of class identities but also gendered identities.[4] As a matter of facts such example are visible in France, taking the example of the nature vision through metropolitan gaze and the bourgeois class and especially mens in the city of Paris in the 19th century, Nicholas Green, lecturer in Art and Cultural History stated that “If men were placed at the center of urban existence, so too nature - an urban construct - seemed addressed to man as his resting-place, his meditative reflection upon his own person”[5]
Throughout the history of Finland, deciders were mens. On the list of the 47 prime ministers of Finland since 1917, only 3 were women, the first one being elected only 20 years ago.[6]
If we follow that, it is made by and for Mens, it also showcases a landscape for wealthy people or normative middle class. Normative being the one that answers to a certain type of class, color of skin or gender.
In my personal research and discussion with Finland-based artists, not everybody would feel right to roam free in the forest. Baran Caginli, a friend and artist living in Finland since 2017 express the feeling of being a tourist. A feeling that a lot of immigrant (including me) would relate easily when talking about the national narrative and the idea of Nature openness. Nature can be accessible easily in big cities indeed, but it is not the one that is drawn in the national narrative in Finland. I noticed that accessing lakes and long trails through a “natural” forest would imply having a car for instance demonstrating an unequal access with wealth. Rare are the ones accessible by train or bus. The right to roam free is a much more complex feeling that doesn't fall back so easily on everyone. The cultural background but also the social class and the social environment does not create the same conditions in the living of people to bring a use of nature as a well-being and enjoyable leisure place as it is marketed in the website of the national parks of Finland.[7]
Landscape accessibility is not for “everyone” because it is not neutral, it is not neutral because the concept of nature is subjective and has been created by and for a certain use associated with a national narrative and a certain identity. It is, here, the question of who dominates over nature on the societal prism.
Who has the control and who has the power? To back-up this argument, I have been using the work of sociologists who have been working on the question of access in capital, in wealth (and by extension in equality). It is in my regards essential to understand how we use our surroundings and how we consider others, humans or non-humans. simply, how we behave with one another.
Emile Durkheim, who was considered as the father of modern sociology established already at the end of the 19th century the concept of social facts which “is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.”[8]
With this thinking, we can consider how society is mastering, as a whole, common actions that lead individuals in a combination of orientation values. In that way individuals are not entirely masters of their own choices; they would be oriented to certain types of choices.
Depending on where you´re born and the environment you grow up in, opportunities and choices won't come in the same way as your affiliation to nature. The relations that human beings create by interacting between each other form patterns that create a certain way of thinking, those ways can be infinite, multiples and constantly changing in time.
From that knowledge, seemingly people are oriented in a certain way and are driven by external motivations which are themselves influenced by others in a “social loop”. The way we approach our territory is rather unconscious but clearly the mark of influences and on that point, post-colonial studies and decolonial studies have been proving us that for decades now that the organization of our societies were dominated by white, cisgender and hetero male. Defining one way of society, one way of perception, one way of perspective, one way of using the landscape.
The way History was, and sometimes still is, taught to us how the vision of splendor of a country is still present. Where there is still the need to look like an influential country with power and strength. This definition of splendor is often assimilated to culture empowerment and cultural power.
The power is often associated with economic power as a result of accumulated profitable resources and exploited land and labor. The landscape in Finland doesn't escape this exploitation approach and shows the power dynamics of the way Nature in Finland is mastered and controlled.
Pierre Bourdieu raises in his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste[9], the question of cultural capital and social capital. Adding layers to the sparse domination of economic power advanced by Karl Marx. Social capital refers to social connections and relations (e.g., made through relatives, professions, or clubs). Cultural capital refers to knowledge, education and academic credentials, cultural possessions such as art, and ways of speaking or manners, shown through body languages.[10] The expanded network of social connections and embodied knowledge towards an accepted situation brings privilege to the owner of these networks.
Domination appears in every layer of the society and dominant people are transmitting it to their next generation. A wealthy family could easily accumulate cultural capital in a concrete way such as cultural access to museums, cinemas and at the same time by condensing a common knowledge and understanding of a subject. With social capital, the accumulation of social networks (Knowing the right person to access natural places, forest, lands for example), in that way, one can be at the right place, with the right people. In that manner, families transmit as said previously knowledge, mannerism, meta-languages or habits. Most of these capitals are acquired through the beginning of life. They are habitus which are “predispositions and values acquired from an early age, often unconsciously”.[11] It gives to their kids which allow them to navigate naturally in an environment that others would not find easy. They would have the keys of understanding. In that same idea, land and/or forest can be transmitted and inherited, giving opportunity to young generations to have a direct and deep sensing of a forest for instance where other people who wouldn't have that privilege would not develop such a perception.
The idea of transmitting the joy of nature is seen by default in Finland. It answers to an homogenic, yet not debated, feeling of common acceptance towards forest behavior. One assumes that everyone can understand the forest or a lake the same way as it was imagined hundred years ago in the national storytelling.
All of these examples can evoke how neutrality/objectivity is a myth drawn by a dominant group of people and that can be found everywhere on every layer of a city, a country or for our case: a landscape. The dominant and the one who owns the power will affect our environment in a total opposition of inclusivity if it's looking for maintaining power. Made by one category of people despite the needs of others. Denying, neglecting, and not caring. Neutrality finds in its core the same incoherence as objectivity. Same pattern and same myth pulled by dominant as a way of denying its own privileges in front of the need of the dominated. In that manner, even though we need to tend to an access for everyone in nature.
It is important to acknowledge that not everyone has the same keys to understanding nature and how to access it.
Clément Beraud
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[1] Lotta Petronella, “Materia Medica of Islands” from Helsinki Biennale, 2023, https://helsinkibiennaali.fi/en/artist/lotta-petronella-with-sami-tallberg-lau-nau/
[2] In Finnish “miehen” translates to men.
[3] Turun Sanomat, “Kotiseutuliitto: ’Jokamiehenoikeus-termi korvattava jokaisenoikeudella’”, Ts.fi, 8th of October 2018, https://tinyurl.com/3knbfb4f
[4] Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in Nineteenth Century France, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. 147.
[5] Green, The Spectacle of Nature, 147.
[6] “List of prime ministers of Finland”, Wikipedia, last modified October 25, 2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_Finland
[7] “National parks of Finland”, Luontoon.fi, accessed September 28, 2023, https://www.luontoon.fi/
[8] Émile Durkheim, Les règles de la méthode sociologique, (Paris, Presses universitaires de France), 2007.
[9] Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris : Les éditions de minuit, 1979).
[10] Bourdieu, La Distinction
[11] Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique (Paris: Les éditions de minuit, 1980).