| Title | Chapter 8. Wolves and the Finnish Wilderness: Changing Forests and the Proper Place for Wolves in Twentieth-Century Finland |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Heta Lähdesmäki (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.3197/63824846758018.ch08 |
| Landing page | https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.7193881.12 |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/ |
| Copyright | The White Horse Press |
| Publisher | The White Horse Press |
| Published on | 2023-10-01 |
| Short abstract | These days, if wolves roam close to human settlements, people often argue that there is something problematic and unnatural in it. This is the case especially in western Finland where wolf packs are being observed after a long period of absence. Not everyone living in western Finland has welcomed wolves as neighbours. |
| Long abstract | These days, if wolves roam close to human settlements, people often argue that there is something problematic and unnatural in it. This is the case especially in western Finland where wolf packs are being observed after a long period of absence. Not everyone living in western Finland has welcomed wolves as neighbours. Local people can argue that wolves should not live in western Finland because there are no wilderness areas there. Wolves have been connected to the wilderness in many countries and regions in the world. In some areas, the notion that the wolf belongs to the wilderness is old: For instance, historian Aleksander Pluskowski has argued that there was a persistent conceptual link between wolves and the wilderness in Britain and Scandinavia during the Middle Ages. In this chapter, I look into this notion and trace its history in the Finnish context by studying newspaper reports, magazine articles and contemporary literature. I argue that the idea that wolves belong to the wilderness is a relatively new and controversial notion connected to various social and environmental changes. Interestingly, at the same time as the idea that the wolf is a wilderness species strengthened, the Finnish environment underwent changes that meant that the areas that could be called wilderness became fewer. |
| Page range | pp. 154–170 |
| Print length | 17 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
| Media | 3 illustrations |
| Landing Page | Full text URL | Platform | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.7193881.12 | Landing page | https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/jj.7193881.12.pdf | Full text URL | JSTOR |
Heta Lähdesmäki is a historian specialising in human-animal studies, human-wildlife conflicts and conservation. She completed a Ph.D. in cultural history in 2020 at the University of Turku, studying human-wolf relations in twentieth century Finland. After that, she studied the relationship between humans and nature in Seili island in a multidisciplinary research project, Seili - Elämän saari, funded by the Kone Foundation and led by the Biodiversity unit at the University of Turku. She is part of the Academy of Finland funded HumBio-project, investigating the human relationship with disappeared, endangered, introduced and non-native, as well as invasive, marine animals and plants in Finland. Currently, Lähdesmäki is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science. She is part of the Helsinki Urban Rat Project and studies the history of bird feeding and rat conflicts in Helsinki city.