Adventurers, Flâneurs, and Agitators: Travel Stories as Means for Marking and Transgressing Boundaries in 19th and Early 20th Century Finland

The article focuses on border crossings in travel stories, which were published in hand-written newspapers in 19thand early 20th-century Finland. These papers were a popular tradition in student organizations and popular movements. Border crossings appear in travel stories in three different representations. Firstly, border crossings are repeated motifs in travel stories, both as challenging events and as small gestures and encounters. Travel stories demarcate boundaries, but they also provide a means for transgressing them. Secondly, hand-written newspapers as a literary practice highlight borders between oral and written communication. They were produced as one single manuscript copy, and published by being read out aloud in social events. Thirdly, the authors of hand-written newspapers were placed on the border of different positions in society such as class, gender and age. My analysis is based on the methodological discussion of small stories and personal experience narratives; travel stories can be defined as “local event narratives”. I have outlined four basic models for travel stories which emerge from hand-written newspapers: the great mission story, the grand tour story, the flâneur story and the retreat story. The analysis of travel stories is presented through four different case studies with a time range from the 1850s to the 1920s: these materials have been produced in two provincial student fraternities (osakunta), in the temperance society “Star” in Helsinki in the 1890s, and in the Social Democratic Youth Club in the small industrial town of Karkkila in the 1910s and the 1920s. Many parallel features can be observed in travel stories, even though the social background and ideology of the authors are quite different. Time and space are important aspects in travel stories, and they often demarcate boundaries of class and gender.


Introduction
Travel stories are one of the main genres of "grand narratives", ranging from Gilgamesh and Odyssey to contemporary road movies. Research on travel writing has become an established academic field during recent decades. Tim Youngs and Charles Forsdick summarize the essence of travel stories as a mixed literary genre, oscillating between autobiography and science: "The scientific writing gives to travel writing its objective quality of observation and reportage. The autobiographical draws also on the construction of the protagonist […], which helps introduce elements of the fictional" (Youngs & Forsdick 2012: 1).
Eric J. Leed (1991: 7) outlines the basic difference between ancient and modern conceptions of travel: "The ancients valued travel as an explication of human fate and necessity; for moderns, it is an expression of freedom and an escape from necessity and purpose". The distribution of romantic ideas in the early 19 th century changed the experiences and meaning of travel: getting to the destination was no more the most important rationale for travelling, but travelling rather served as a means for creating a "counter-reality" to a rational bourgeois life. Nature and scenery gained symbolic value and became means by which to reach other forms of reality (Varpio 1997: 26-27). Romantic imagination turned material journeys to mental journeys into the self. A good example of a romantic journey is Samuel Coleridge's well-known poem "Kubla Khan" (1816), situated in the imaginary palace of Xanadu (Fulford & Lee 2012: 407-408).
Border-crossings are recurrent motifs both in ancient and modern travel stories, and the borders can be geographical, social, cultural or mental. For example, a shaman may travel in other mental states, an explorer may map unknown territories, and a flâneur may observe the different sceneries and subcultures in modern cities. Border-crossings between worlds, territories and cultures are liminal phases which contain elements of danger. Referring to Yuri Lotman, Hein Viljoen outlines a boundary as having a basic semiotic meaning which separates "us" from "them", and the safe, cultured world from an unsafe and chaotic world (Viljoen 2013: xiii): "Boundaries divide and differentiate both conceptually and in social life, but are also sites where communication and exchange can take place" (Viljoen 2013: xiv).
Literary historian Yrjö Varpio (1997: 209-260) has analysed boundaries and border crossings in 19 th -century Finnish travel stories published in books and periodicals. Boundaries were established between nature and culture, "us" and "the others", center and periphery, freedom and captivity. Border crossings can be observed in the inter-textual links and citations, and symbolic expressions and small semiotic signs which demarcate class and ethnic boundaries (Varpio 1997: 238-240).
Published travel writing is often based on diaries and notebooks which have been edited by the writer or other editors (Bourguet 2012). Travel stories were popular material in 19 th -century private letters and diaries, written by both educated and self-educated people (Varpio 1997: 15;Ollila 2000: 58-61;Hassam 2012;Nordlund 2013). Unpublished archival materials also present access to the experiences of writers who could not get their stories published in print. 1 This article focuses on travel stories in hand-written newspapers, which were a popular tradition in Finnish student organizations and popular movements during the 19 th century and the first decades of the 20 th century. They were in most cases produced as a single manuscript copy and published by being read aloud at meetings and social evenings. The editing process was often collective and several people participated in the creation of individual texts. Therefore, hand-written newspapers provide excellent material for studying narrative interaction in historical contexts (Salmi-Niklander 2013).
Border crossings appear in hand-written newspapers in three different representations. Firstly, border crossings are repeated motifs in travel stories, both as challenging events and as small gestures and encounters. Travel stories demarcate boundaries, but they also provide a means for transgressing them. Such border crossings will be interpreted as metaphoric and symbolic expressions, observing interpersonal encounters. According to my observations, travel stories build up a narrative "red thread" -a thematic continuity from the 19 th -century student organizations to the communities of working-class young people in early 20 th -century Finland. The tension between individuality and collectivity is one of the underlying themes in texts written by young adults in both the 19 th and the early 20 th centuries.
Secondly, hand-written newspapers as a literary practice highlight borders between oral and written communication. They provide an excellent example of an oral-literary tradition, which can be interpreted as including those expressive genres which involve both oral and written communication. 2 Oral performance was an essential part of their publication and sometimes the writers would highlight their words for a listening audience, rather than leave it to the papers' readers: these were texts aimed to be listened to in a social event, not to be read silently.
Thirdly, the authors of hand-written newspapers were placed on the border of different positions in society such as class, gender and age. Young people writing these papers were going through a liminal phase between childhood and adulthood, and many of them went through changes in class position through either education or professional training. Popular movements provided possibilities for young women to enter the public sphere. For university students, the phase between childhood and adulthood was extended, but by the end of the 19 th century youth was also being recognized as a separate age among the rural population and the working classes. The establishment of agrarian youth societies and socialist youth clubs was one reaction to this development (Kemppainen, Salmi-Niklander & Tuomaala 2011 The narrative interaction behind texts in hand-written newspapers can be reached through contextual close reading and other available sources such as minutes, memoirs, printed almanacs and other publications. While interpreting the gaps and silences in these texts, it is important to keep in mind the audience to which they were performed. In 19 th -century student societies the audience was allmale, but in popular movements women had started to participate in meetings and other activities. Even though many young women did not openly reveal their opinions and experiences, they co-created the texts as part of the audiences.

Travel Stories as Local Event Narratives
Writers of hand-written newspapers utilized a great variety of genres and motifs adopted from literary culture (essays, poems, short stories) and oral tradition (proverbs, folk songs, folk legends). My special interest lies in local event narratives, which along with parodic news and advertisements are genres typical of hand-written newspapers. They depict recent events in local communities, such as meetings, trips, social evenings and informal gatherings. Fictionalization and localization may be outlined as two main narrative strategies in hand-written newspapers. Local events and personal experiences are fictionalized using various literary methods, for example narration, metaphors, literary citations, irony and parody. Localization on the other hand, includes different means of rewriting and reinterpreting printed texts in a local context, where ideas, motifs and whole stories from printed sources could be fitted to local communities (Salmi-Niklander 2004: 175-178;2007, 192-193).
Travel stories are a hybrid narrative genre moving between big and small stories, personal experience and local event narratives. Local event narratives are in many ways different from personal experience narratives as depicted by Sandra Dolby Stahl (1989: 12-13): their plots are usually simple and undramatic, and instead of individual experiences they focus on collective action. The travels depicted in these stories are both long and short, and may include adventures across the country or abroad, or visits to neighbouring parishes or villages. Although many travel stories in hand-written newspapers depict "small" events, 3 they have intertextual, and sometimes ironic or parodic links to the models of "big travel stories".
In local event narratives, I have observed various complex narrative positions which writers utilize in order to fictionalize their own experiences (Salmi-Niklander 2004: 172-175;2006: 206). The first person plural ("we") is much more common in local event narratives than the first person singular ("I"). In this sense, travel stories in hand-written newspapers are different from those in printed literature, which often have an individual protagonist. Even in stories told in the first person, the narrator takes the position of a commentator or an observer, and seldom refers to his or her individual experiences (Salmi-Niklander 2004: 164-165). The development of observational skills has been one of the educational uses of travel, and observation was one of the key methods used on scientific journeys (Leed 1991: 60-61).

Four Models of Travel Stories
I have outlined four basic models for travel stories which emerge from handwritten newspapers: the great mission story, the grand tour story, the flâneur story and the retreat story. The first three models are familiar from literature and mythology, and have been previously studied, e.g. by Joseph Campbell (the great mission story; 1956) and Walter Benjamin (the flâneur story; 1999).
Many researchers of travel writing have developed their own typologies for travel stories and their protagonists. Arne Melberg (2005: 27-29) outlines three positions of the modern travel-writer: a witness, a tourist, and a flâneur. A witness "sees what nobody else has seen"; a tourist "sees what everybody else has seen"; and a flâneur (or flâneuse) does not have any definite goals but remains open to all new impressions. MacLulich (1979) has delineated three different forms in Canadian exploration narratives, where the journey can be depicted as progress towards a definite goal (a quest), as a struggle against unbearable hardships (an ordeal), or as a more loose and disgressive exploration of unknown territories (an odyssey) (MacLulich 1979: 74-76). Some of the travel stories in hand-written newspapers fit into these models, but "small" travel stories narrated by young people in agrarian or working-class communities especially tend to follow different styles of emplotment. In the great mission-story, the narrator is working with a serious purpose and facing trials and hardships on his way. On his missionary journey, he meets both enemies and allies who help him to perform his great purpose. The grand tour has been a part of young gentlemen's education since the seventeenth century, and proceeds through adventures and observations which provide new knowledge and life experience for the narrator (Leed 1991: 184-192;Buzard 2002: 38-47). The main character in the flâneur story is a modern traveller, depicted by Walter Benjamin as a wandering observer of modern city life, who absorbs scenic impressions and creates temporary relationships with passers-by (Benjamin 1999: 416-453). The retreat story may be placed in locations such as sanatoria or remote boarding houses (for example Thomas Mann's 1924 work: Der Zauberberg), and provides the possibility for a refreshing withdrawal and distancing from the hectic routines of everyday life. The people on retreat create new companionships. Anne Ollila (2000: 86-88) provides some examples of retreat stories in her monograph, based on the archives of the Hällström family in late 19 th -century Finland, and many family members spent time in sanatoria and reflected upon their experiences in correspondence. Physical experiences, emotions and personal encounters are expressed differently in travel stories. In the great mission story, they are related to the trials and hardships which the main character faces on their way to some great purpose. In the grand tour story, emotions, experiences and encounters are a part of the learning process. In the flâneur story, they are related with momentary impressions and relationships, and in the retreat story, they are a means for emotional refreshment and renewal. In hand-written newspapers, all of these basic narrative models are combined and parodied.

"Entering the Field" Narrative
The oldest example of travel stories in this corpus of hand-written newspapers is Berndt August Paldani's five-part report on his folklore collecting journeys in Kaukomieli -the hand-written newspaper of the Western Finnish Student Fraternity, in 1852. Hand-written newspapers were revitalized by Finnish students in the early 1850s, when student activities were strongly controlled by Czar Nicholas the First and his officialdom, following the revolutionary year of 1848 (Klinge 1967: 135-137).
Kaukomieli was one of the earliest hand-written student papers, with 28 issues from November 1851 until the end of the year in 1852, when the provincial student fraternities were prohibited. The paper included contributions both in Finnish and Swedish. Kaukomieli is a name for the Kalevala hero Lemminkäinen, and folklore collecting activities were quite strongly emphasized in the paper. Some poems by peasant writers were also published in the paper (Kuismin 2012: 11-12).
Paldani (1823-1860) was a student of theology and made two folklore collecting journeys to Ylöjärvi, Virrat, Ruovesi, Ikaalinen, Parkano and Kuru, the first during the Christmas vacation of 1851-1852 and the second in April 1852. The Western Finnish Fraternity had raised 76 rubles to support his journey, so he was obliged to provide a report in Kaukomieli. Paldani's travel stories were later published in print in an anthology edited by A.R. Niemi in 1904. Therefore, his stories belong to the canon of published travel stories concerning folklore collecting journeys (Varpio 1997: 58-64), even though this occurred more than fifty years after he wrote the original stories. The existing travel stories by Elias Lönnrot and Antero Warelius probably inspired his writing.
The first part of Paldani's travel story in which makes his journey to his collecting field is most interesting in its narrative complexity. The story begins as a flâneur story: Paldani depicts his travel with a couple of other male students, first by horse cart and then by sleigh from Helsinki towards Tampere, progressing from one inn to another. The narrator merges in the group of travelling students and does not identify his own emotions and experiences separately from the others. In this respect, the story resembles the published diary of Zacharias Topelius from 1840 (Varpio 1997: 15). The travellers joke on the tedious details of winter travel and observe the beauties of winter nature and of a strange light in the night sky. The narrator depicts this collective visual impression and its various interpretations: Luhalahti (in part 2), he attends a New Year's dance with other young people from the village. They are very curious about him and he is forced to sing himself before his audience is willing to perform folk songs and riddles for him. Yrjö Varpio has observed the romantic imagery surrounding nature's symbolic and mythic meanings in Elias Lönnrot's travel stories: nature provides him with a pure experience, and some of his natural observations remind him of ancient myths (Varpio 1991: 215-216). Analogous romantic imagery also comes out in Paldani's travel stories, but the story of the sleigh ride over thin ice reminds him of the dangers of nature. Berndt Paldani's great idols Elias Lönnrot and Antero Warelius were from a quite modest artisan and peasant background, however Paldani himself was an officer's son, which therefore made his role as a folklore collector more tension-filled. During his travels he faces suspicion and ridicule from the country people, and has to struggle to convince them of the sincerity of his purpose. Paldani depicts in detail many encounters with rural people. Apparently, he is relieved to spend a night at the house of a local priest in Karvia (part 3), depicting the priest as "a friendly and talkative man" with whom he "spent his evening in an amusing manner" 6 . However, he only mentions common people by their whole proper names: Kalle Sävijärvi (a crofter who after some hesitation performs many folk-songs for Paldani), and a self-educated writer, Joose Westerbacka who becomes Paldani's key informant. Westerbacka is an excellent storyteller, but also literate and later he sends proverbs to Paldani in writing. Paldani faces suspicion from the local people who take him as "a government spy" looking for information on superstitions and witchcraft. Westerbacka reveals these rumours to Paldani, but also supports and defends him.
During Paldani's second folklore collecting journey in April 1852, his experiences are much more positive: people are friendly and willing to share their songs and stories with him, and "even the girls have rosy cheeks". Paldani reflects on the reasons for this in the fourth part of his travel stories: "But why has my collecting more success now than in winter? Is it that I am more used to do my work, and the common people no longer take this as a strange matter? On the contraryin winter I said almost everywhere: I will come again, keep your stories in mind [...]". 7 (Transl. K. Salmi-Niklander).
Paldani's story is quite a typical example of a Great Mission story, during which the traveller faces hardships, learns to act in new ways and grows as a person. Personal growth is achieved through finding new allies. The narration varies between vivid stories of encounters and situations, and more "academic" depictions of local dialects and manners, provided with occasional footnotes. These narrative changes reflect the tension-filled relationship between Paldani and "the people" whose traditions he was collecting, and his fellow students to whom he performed his stories.
The comment on "girls with rosy cheeks" in the last part of Paldani's travel story insinuates the possibility of romantic encounters with young country wom-en. All the women in Paldani's travel stories are anonymous, be they country girls at local dances, old gossiping women, or farmers' wives providing shelter and meals for the traveller.

A Romance on Uuras Island
The hand-written newspaper Savo-Karjalainen was produced by the Savo-Karelian fraternity since 1864. Its heyday however was in the mid-1880s, when new liberal ideas on evolution and women's liberation were debated in the fraternity, and the founders of Finnish realistic literature (Juhani Aho and Matti Kurikka) wrote their first stories and poems (Ruutu 1939: 324-329). There was high competition for editorial posts on the paper, and some individual articles raised fierce debates.
The travel story A day on Uuras Island was published in Savo-Karjalainen 16 October 1886 [the author has given his initials -e--é-]. The story takes place on the island of Uuras in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, with a lively international harbour and a large Russian garrison. This story is obviously related to Grand Tour stories, and young students who had just passed matriculation exams and got their white student caps had a tradition of making a tour around the country to see different cities and provinces. Some Grand Tour stories like this were published in Savo-Karjalainen, and they also appear in the established literature of the late 19 th century. One well-known example is the short novel Helsinkiin ("To Helsinki", 1889) by Juhani Aho, in which two young men travel by boat and train to study in Helsinki. The novel has been linked to decadence-literature, since the other main character is a young student who makes his first experiments with alcohol and prostitutes, following the model of older students (Lappalainen 2000: 170-177). Some travel stories written by students were also published in small booklets (Varpio 1997: 113). Domestic Grand Tour stories preceded the youth travel-movement, which originated from the German Vandervöge movement and was propagated in Finland by August Ramsay in the 1890s (Varpio 1997: 190-195).
The first person narrator is a young student who makes his journey towards the city of Viipuri, by way of the island of Uuras. By accident (or with ill intent) the boatman the narrator has hired does not take him to the harbour, but instead to the Russian garrison. Here he meets very hostile and aggressive Russian soldiers, but has a very pleasant saviour in the form of the daughter of a Russian official, who speaks quite fluent Finnish and leads him safely to the harbour. The narrator depicts his mixed emotions after his adventure: although he should have no reason for sorrow, he still misses his pretty saviour: I remained sitting on the wharf in low spirits. I don't understand what reason I had for sorrow any more, since I had got where I wanted -to the harbour; but I would have hoped myself a thousand times in such a similar trouble, if I could have been Culture Unbound, Volume 6, 2014 [1153] saved from it in a similar manner. But, I could not spend a long time thinking on this, since after a short wait we heard the whistle of the ship and I had to continue my journey. Soon, the beach behind me was tangled in thick smoke, which came out from the chimney of the ship when it slid over the smooth sea (Transl. K. Salmi-Niklander). 8 The story is very coherent and appears to be a personal experience narrative. However, I have strong suspicions that this story is fictional, although the writer probably has some first-hand experience of the island. The narrator is depicted in quite an ironic manner, for example in another section, he tries to use his knowledge of Old Greek with Russian soldiers. 9 The story also has parallel motifs with ancient travel stories: for example, the young woman who saves the narrator from a dangerous situation but is then parted from him has some resemblance with the women in Homer's Odyssey. However, the narrator does not have any great mission or task to achieve, beyond making observations and having adventures. 19 th -century published travel stories provide plentiful examples of colourful depictions of other nationalities, emphasizing their inferiority and strange habits. A Day on Uuras Island followed the stereotypical models of depicting Russians, that are often seen in Finnish travel stories (Varpio 1991: 227-233). The Russian soldiers' behaviour is depicted as aggressive and frightening: Some other soldiers glanced at me looking very cruel, and shook their dirty fists in front of me, so that I started thinking that this might concern a lese-majesty. The others seemed merely to be amused by my trouble, they made faces and laughed holding their bellies. 10 However, the romantic encounter with the young Russian woman suggests fictional possibilities for transgressing such ethnic boundaries.

By Train, by Foot and by Bike
During the last decades of the 19 th century, hand-written newspapers were adopted by both temperance and agrarian youth movements (Numminen 1961: 459-471;Karpio 1938: 449-450). Late 19 th -century travel stories reflect technological and social changes. The introduction of trains and bicycles changed the technology of travelling, and along with it, the sense of space and time. My third case study is a temperance society known as The Star in Helsinki, and the weekly hand-written newspapers which were edited by the members of its speakers' club, Kehitys ("Progress"). 11 A volume of approximately 500 pages was written during the years 1891-1893, and it has been preserved in the manuscript department of the National Library. The society belonged to a nation-wide organization, Friends of Temperance, which was established in 1883. The membership of The Star varied between 100 and 200 members during the 1890s, the beginning of which saw an increased number of members drawn from the artisan and working classes. At the same time, the amount of students and civil servants diminished. About one third of the members of the society were women, both unmarried and married and from different social backgrounds. 12 Some travel stories were published in Kehitys, which followed the Grand Tour model in a more proletarian context of young artisans. For example, in October 1894 a writer under the pseudonym "Eemu" depicted a boat trip from Helsinki to Stockholm with his friend. In November 1894, another travel story was published, depicting a narrators experience of boat travel back to his home region of Karelia, after working for ten years in Helsinki and other cities in Finland.
There are also several stories centring on the summer retreats of young artisans and working class people, which follow the Retreat Story model. One of these is a two-part story, written by a young woman under the pseudonym "Enne". She was one of the few female writers in Kehitys, and published a few reports and poems in 1893. Based on small idiosyncrasies in her texts it appears that "Enne" had probably only undergone elementary schooling, and she may have been one of the four seamstresses or three female servants who belonged to the society in 1890 (Salmi-Niklander 2005:84-85).
The picnic report is a simple story: a group of young men and women makes a short trip by train and continues on foot for 13 kilometres to the seaside. The narrator proceeds in the collective first person plural, merging first into the group of four young women, who get up early on Sunday morning to be in time for their departure. They are worried since the rest of the group (young men) are late: The whole trip started to look suspicious [for us], one thing and another was said about people who break their word. Only five minutes were left before the departure of the train, when at last four more people arrived -this was still not everyone but we could not wait any longer, we rushed to the train which soon blew the signal for departure. 13 (Transl. K. Salmi-Niklander) The concerns about the exact time and being late were related to new experiences of railway travel (Ollila 2000: 53-55). "Enne" received a critical response from the male members of the group for her apparently innocent picnic report. The reasons for this (which was published in the next issue of Kehitys), were some quite mild critical remarks she had offered about the young men's behaviour during the picnic: she remarked on their almost missing the train and not carrying the coats and lunch bags of the girls right from the beginning. A close reading of the picnic report suggests a collective jealousy as being a possible reason for this aggressive response: after the young men courteously carried the luggage of the young women during the hike, the girls then neither see nor hear of them again, other than their host, a young Mikael Nyberg, who is courteously referred to as "Our Director".
The picnic provides a possibility for collective intimacy between Mikael Nyberg and the picnickers: he shows them scenes from his childhood and also the cottage where he lives during the summer. Members of the Nyberg family invite the group to drink coffee and eat strawberries on their porch, which was a unique moment of intimacy for young working-class people. This was a well-known intellectual family, since Mikael Nyberg's mother was daughter of the famous writer Zacharias Topelius, and the villa was next to his home, Koivuniemi manor. However, the family members are only referred to by their first names, which outlines the intimate spirit of the visit.
"Enne" never refers to herself as an individual actor, nor to her own emotions or experiences. However her emotions are reflected in the romantic tone of the depiction of the scenery, in which the narrator refers to herself and her friends using the collective third person: The inlet was tranquil, the ancient birches offered cool in the shadow of their thickgrowing branches, the aspen leaves quivered, and the birds sang songs of praise of their Creator, everything, everything was full of serene peace, which created new emotions in the heart of a traveller from Helsinki. 14 Romantic and modern ideas and images are mixed in Enne's travel story. The beginning of the journey is recounted using the tensions related to railway travel, but her depiction of the scenes at Koivuniemi manor relates more to romantic travel stories, in which scenes are presented as symbols of mental states.
Two months later in September 1893, two stories were published in Kehitys, which depicted a summer retreat which happened in the previous July: a group of six young men take the train to Kerava and continue by horse cart to a farmhouse, where they spend their summer vacation fishing, enjoying nature, and making friends with local "men of temperance". The narration proceeds in the first person plural, with the members of the group referred to as "persons".
It felt so sweet to travel on a beautiful summer evening surrounded by the singing birds, and in the good smell of all the fruits of the earth. When we got to our destination we could enjoy the hospitality of the people of the house. Later in the evening we were accommodated in two buildings close to each other, where we got comfortable dwellings. On the first morning we woke up early to the lovely singing of the birds and the gentle smile of the morning sun. After eating our breakfast we went to see the village scenery and in the afternoon we went fishing. 15 (Transl. K. Salmi-Niklander) I have determined by way of the indirect references to the other "men of temperance", that the travellers were actually all men, but this fact is never openly stated. The writer behind the initials J.S. was probably Jaakko Saha, a construction worker and later an engine driver. His wife had joined the society before him, and it is quite probable that there were other wives and fiancées of the travellers among the listeners of this story. Compared to Enne's story, the conventional nature observations give this story a feminine tone. It was important to convince the female spouses that their husbands had actually spent their holidays properly. As such, the collective narrator demarcates the boundary between the men of temperance, and "drunkards" who can be observed in the countryside. This especially comes out in the scene when travellers visit a local reformatory and some boys who they had known in Helsinki: "It was nice to see the well-organized institute and those tidy boys, who earlier were great scoundrels". 16 The other story coming from this same summer retreat rather follows the Grand Tour model. One of the travellers (probably a young pressman Karl Skogster) is a passionate cyclist and takes his bicycle (which is ironically referred to as his "horse") to the retreat. He gets the mail and newspapers to his friends using his "horse", and in the middle of their vacation he starts his own individual journey. Unlike the narrator of the retreat story, this narrator uses the narrative "I" the whole the time. He depicts in great detail his day's journey, which is quite an achievement considering the road condition of the time: On 22 July started my proper journey. I left from Tuusula at 6 in the morning and rode without resting about 35 km. Then I made a stop at a small tenant farm in Nurmijärvi. After having some breakfast I continued to Wihti, making a few stops at some houses to drink milk or water -whatever was available, until about noon. After riding 80 km made a stop at the Pakasela inn to have dinner and to dry my clothes since it rained several times. After having a rest for an hour I continued almost without a stop through Pusula and Somerniemi to the Söderkulla manor in Somero, where my brother was staying. There I rested for 3 days after riding 120 km in one single day. [...] Travelling in general felt very joyful although I was alone without a companion, but the new scenery attracted me so much that having a companion did not even come to my mind [...]. 17 (Transl. K. Salmi-Niklander) The individuality of the narrator's experiences and emotions makes this story a counter-narrative to the retreat story, in which all the emotions and experiences are strictly collective. The bicycle revolutionized travel in a different manner than trains: it provided a means for long, solitary and independent journeys, and also the possibility to experience new scenery. The joy of solitary travel is often reflected in the detailed depictions of bike travels.

Working-class Dandies on an Agitation Tour
My last case study takes us to the 1920s, to the small industrial community of Högfors in Southern Finland. Young people in the community edited a handwritten newspaper Valistaja from 1914 to 1925. The paper was confiscated by the police in 1926 and later found in the attic of the local police station in the 1980s. The writers of Valistaja were young unmarried men and women in their late teens and early twenties, and formed the first fully literate generation in their families and community. The young men worked in the ironworks and the young women were either servants or worked on the farm owned by the ironworks (Salmi-Niklander 2004). Valistaja is an example of the heyday of hand-written newspapers during the first decades of the 20 th century. Their great popularity during this period is largely due to the strict censorship of the times, the birth of the labor movement and the political uprising which occurred during the periods of Russification (Ehrnrooth 1992).
Young women had an active role in the youth club, and in editing Valistaja. However, during the last three years when Valistaja was published (1922)(1923)(1924)(1925), the factory boys "took over" the paper with their travel stories, but only fragments of these stories have been preserved. In the travel stories, the writers depict the journey itself in great detail, including the relationship between travellers, their quarrels and discussions, and eating and drinking. The travel stories construct a complex narrative network. The same characters appear in several stories and the same events are depicted in many stories by different writers.
Two stories depict the same journey, an agitation tour to Oinasjärvi. Comprising loose sheets, it has only been possible to estimate a very approximate date of these stories, and based on their content it is likely they were both written during the years 1922-1923. One story however ends quite abruptly, since the writer runs out of paper. The stories are written in a spontaneous style, and were probably composed very soon after the tour had taken place.
The topic is an trip to Oinasjärvi, a village in the parish of Somero, around 40 km to the west of Karkkila. This is not a long journey in the context of today's modern roads and vehicles, but at the time, with horse-drawn carriages on small and meandering roads it took a whole day. In the story, the young men were going to perform at a social evening in the local worker's hall, which was an important activity for the young people in Karkkila. They divided into two groups, one of which has some difficulties in getting a horse and a carriage. Finally, they manage to get a local farmer to drive them to their destination with his horse and carriage, albeit with some skulduggery: they lie to him about the destination and then rely on his ignorance of the local geography.
The two stories provide good examples of the complex narrative positions in hand-written newspapers: in the first story, the narrator proceeds in the first person from the beginning to the end of the story, depicting his own observations and emotions. The narrator of the other story belongs to the less fortunate group of the travellers: his story proceeds in the first person plural, until he depicts the dialogue between himself and the farmer who has been fooled into driving them to their destination. When they get there, the young man and the farmer finally fall into conversation, and the narrator reveals that he has also served as a farmhand: We arrived at the house -everyone's mind seemed bright, coffee was on everybody's lips. The men took their horses to the stables, except for the Bearded Lout [Partamoukka, the farmer]. The chap smoked and swore, so I soothed him and asked if he had been here before, and sure enough he knew all the places. I said I had been a farmhand in Hattula -what is the bigger house there, Passari? The man listed [the houses] -it was Passari. Yeah it was Passari I agreed. 18 (Transl. K. Salmi-Niklander) The two stories are good examples of collective "streams of consciousness" with expressions in the local dialect, jokes and incorrect orthography, which was typical of young men's travel stories. The stories bring up the tensions between factory workers and local farmers, and a class border is indicated between them: the young men act in quite an arrogant manner towards the farmer, even though they actually are dependent on him. Young factory boys are called by their first names, but the farmer is called the Bearded Lout ("Partamoukka"). The young women who form the audience of this story are also indirectly present: at the social evening and dance at the Oinasjärvi society hall, the narrator insinuates that the young men had (or at least tried to have) sexual relationships with the village girls. The girls are referred as a collective subject "Maanvahva" ("Heavy Earth"). However, sexuality was a delicate topic in the community of the young working-class men and women of Högfors, and young women opposed the rough behaviour of the boys, which they experienced as harassment. In villages, the factory boys were treated as dandies with amusing talk and fashionable outfits, whereas in Högfors they were controlled by their bosses, their fathers and the area officials.

Boundaries, Breaks and Continuities
Hand-written newspapers provided possibilities for presenting texts that could not have been published in print. Berndt August Paldani's travel stories were written in a period when Russian officials strictly controlled and censored student activities, especially those with a nationalistic agenda. However, his stories were printed five decades later, after their value for folkloristic research had been recognized. In the 1880s students had more freedom, but the critique of Russian soldiers in Savo Karjalainen would still have been quite a sensitive theme to discuss in print. Hand-written newspapers in temperance societies and socialist organizations provided the first possibilities for publishing for writers from lower classes. The travel stories from Kehitys and Valistaja presented in this article, would hardly have passed the editorial evaluation of the printed papers of the time, because of their simple topics and use of nonstandard language.
Related with the great historical trends of travel writing, travel stories in handwritten newspapers have complex autobiographical elements. Paldani's travel stories have a first-person-singular protagonist and quite strong scientific elements when detailed information on place-names and local traditions is provided. A day on Uuras Island also has a first-person-singular protagonist, but the fictionality of the story is underlined by parodic elements in his narration. Applying MacLulich's terminology, Paldani's travel stories follow the quest-model, leading towards a definite goal, whereas A day on Uuras Island follows the odyssey-model (MacLulich 1979).
The travel stories written by the members of the temperance society "Star" and by the young men in Högfors have first-person-plural protagonists, which makes them quite different from the stories written by university students. Small semiotic signs in encounters between classes (Varpio 1997: 238-240) are depicted "from below" in these stories. "Enne" depicts an intimate meeting with an upper-class family, which was a unique experience for a young working-class woman. The male writers construct borders within the lower classes: for young workers and artisans in late 19 th -century Helsinki, this boundary lay between decent men of temperance and drunkards; for the young factory boys in Högfors, the boundary lay between socialist factory workers and simple rural people in neighbouring villages.
Paldani's folklore collecting travel stories and those of the Högfors factory boys have some parallel features, even though the social background and ideology of the travellers are quite different. One of these parallel features is the wavering masculine subject, a group of young men wandering from one place to another. Another common feature is the dependency and dialogue between the traveller and the coachman. Both Paldani and the factory boys are on a great mission, be it collecting folklore or agitating socialist ideology, however in their travel stories this great mission is rather presented as a spontaneous drifting from one place to another. Common to both sets of stories though, is the treatment of women as anonymous, mostly collective subjects. Rita Felski (1995: 16-17) and Janet Wolff (1990: 35-50) have observed the masculinity of the figure of "the flâneur" -an idle observer of urban life. Young women in 19 th and early 20 th century Finland adopted, parodied and ironized travel stories as a masculine genre in their own writing (Salmi-Niklander 2007: 204-205). Hidden or neutralized gender was a new narrative convention in the conversational communities of young men and women, which started to be established in late 19 th century: in many local event narratives and also in some travel stories, it is quite difficult to determine the gender of the narrator.
Time and space are important aspects in travel stories and in local event narratives in general, and they often demarcate boundaries of class and gender. Anne Ollila (2000) has observed the experience of time in the personal writings of young middle class women in late 19 th century Finland. One of the key experiences brought by the new technical development, especially the trains, was the importance of exact time (Ollila 2000: 53-55). Berndt Paldani and the bicyclist of Kehitys carefully document the times, spaces and place names of their travels. In contrast, travel stories often include sequences where "the time vanishes" in the collective experience of the beauty of nature, or in breath-taking experiences such as a sleigh ride over weak ice. Anne Ollila's research material also includes letters written by a young woman in a sanatorium, which reflect a parallel experience of "vanishing time" (Ollila 2000: 87-92).
Digital information has revolutionized media culture in early twenty-first century, but many apparently new phenomena have old roots. Travelogues are a very popular genre in blogs, and many parallel narrative practices can be observed between travel blogs and hand-written newspapers. Another common feature is the possibility for immediate feedback, either in oral performance situations or with written comments or signals. Travel is today associated with the transition period between childhood and adulthood, and global Grand Tours are still an important part of upper and middle class education. Studying the history of young people's alternative forms of publishing provides insight for the new media with old and new border crossings.
Kirsti Salmi-Niklander is Academy Research Fellow (2011Fellow ( -2016 at the Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies at University of Helsinki. Her research interests include oral-literary traditions, working-class heritage, oral history and book history. Writing of this article has been funded by her fellowship from Academy of Finland entitled "Between voice and paper. Authorial and narrative strategies in oral-literary traditions". E-mail: salmin-ik@mappi.helsinki.fi