Paradigm and Field
Paradigm and Field

Summary/Abstract: We can still remember Vöyri’s fieldwork seminar, held in 1965 by NEFA, the newly formed student association of the Nordic states, pointing out that fieldwork in the form that it is mentioned among Finnish students is almost unknown in the other Nordic countries. A number of the Finnish participants in the seminar took part in the homestead researches organized by the Association in the 1960s, or were researchers on grants doing work in the archives. In the other Nordic countries fieldwork meant primarily thematic interviews conducted on the basis of questionnaires by individual researchers in various localities, or photographic documentation work done in groups. The questionnaire method, which in Finland was used together with other methods, predominated in the other Nordic countries. The holistic nature of Finnish fieldwork was closer to the “fieldwork” of anthropology, that is, to participant observation. It appeared to be effective and after Vyöri’s seminar the idea was put into practice as a new “tradition” in the other Nordic countries. When the young Swedish ethnologist, Åke Daun applied the fieldwork method of social anthropology he had learned in Norway in his work Upp till kamp i Båtskärsnäs [Up to the Battle of Batskärsnäs] published in 1969, he was hailed as a pioneer. For the Finns, however, this method was not new.

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