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Program: Session X

Session X

Thu. 1 October

13:45–15:00
Bryggan (Göran, 2nd floor)

Chair: Robert Louhimies

Olivia Franck (Åbo Akademi University)

The Sea, the Woman and the Life in Turku Archipelago – Belonging/Unbelonging Behind the Liminal and Gender-coded Space of Ferries

My study aims to examine how contemporary Turku archipelago women develop and are challenged by spatial contexts, gendered experiences and belonging in peripheral maritime cultural landscapes. A key focus is on ferries as a liminal gender-coded infrastructure that creates an emotional geography of both belonging and non-belonging, and it is an essential approach to how the contemporary archipelago woman navigates herself. The study is located within the fields of feminist geography, cultural studies, archipelago research (social and cultural identity) and blue humanities (the ferry and its watery crossing). Photovoice methodology will be used, which combines dialogue with visual storytelling through participant-taken photographs and written narratives. The use of images to articulate experiences and feelings provides insight into the individual participant’s way of looking at different themes. My study contributes with locally rooted knowledge about gendered spatiality in the Turku archipelago with relevance to the archipelago’s development, vitality and social sustainability. In addition, the collected photos and narratives have a cultural and historical value, and the research contributes to a better insight into living conditions, archipelago-specific gender-coded infrastructures and experiences of maritime cultural landscapes and ferries. The ferries are both a threshold to the archipelago’s sense of belonging and its distance, while for the archipelago women they are also an everyday experience that connects them with the sea they have chosen to live by.

Fredrik Leijonhufvud (University of Gothenburg)

Boatbuilding Traditions around the Åland Sea as a Historically Interconnected Maritime Knowledge System

This paper examines boatbuilding traditions around the Åland Sea as a historically interconnected maritime knowledge system rather than separate national traditions. Clinker-built boats in the Stockholm archipelago, Roslagen, Åland, and the Archipelago Sea show typological and technical similarities that point to long-standing exchange of knowledge, materials, and craft practices across the sea.

By comparing boat types, construction techniques, and terminology, the paper demonstrates how the region exhibits marked technical and formal coherence. Examples of boatbuilders and craftsmen who moved between these areas during the nineteenth century illustrate how this exchange also had social and professional dimensions. The sea thus emerges not as a boundary, but as a connective infrastructure – a maritime corridor enabling circulation of knowledge and practice.

The paper presents results from previous studies of older clinker boat traditions in the Stockholm archipelago and preliminary findings from planned studies of the wider Åland Sea region, and discusses how traditions may be understood within the framework of blue humanities. By approaching boatbuilding as intangible cultural heritage – recognised through the inscription of Nordic clinker boat traditions on UNESCO’s Representative List – the paper highlights how knowledge systems are shaped in relation to ecological conditions, mobility, and historical power structures.

Finally, the paper reflects on how a knowledge-geographical approach may contribute to future research on transnational
maritime heritage, and how such perspectives may be relevant in a contemporary context in which the sea is being reconfigured as a space for cooperation, resource use, and cultural identity.

Krystyna Pirogowicz (Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz)

Nathan Söderblom’s Mare Lutheranum. The Baltic Sea as a Religious Concept

By coining the concept of mare lutheranum, the outstanding Lutheran Archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom (1866–1941), added a new meaning to the widely used symbol of the sea, employing it in both a religious and geopolitical context—as a symbol of a shared, unifying space for countries situated along different coasts of the Baltic Sea. According to Söderblom, the Baltic Sea could function as a basin around which countries with strong Protestant centres converged. This idea was closely intertwined with the Archbishop’s significant involvement in the complex situation of Protestants in the newly re-established state of Poland and in other countries around the Baltic, leading to an intensification of mutual religious contacts and establishing Söderblom as a recognised religious and geopolitical leader in the region.

The aim of this presentation is to discuss lesser-known aspects of Söderblom’s ecumenical and political involvement on the eastern side of the Baltic Sea, particularly in Poland, and thereby to further explore the concept of mare lutheranum. This approach seeks to shed new light on inter-Baltic cooperation, especially in its religious and ideological dimensions. Based on Swedish, German, and Polish sources, as well as a broad range of archival materials, this study analyses Söderblom’s engagement with Polish Protestantism in the 1920s in order to argue that the concept of mare lutheranum was mutually beneficial: for the Polish Protestant Church, as it helped to overcome political isolation in the post-war period, and for Söderblom, as it constituted an important complement to his ecumenical vision.