Settling Down and Setting Up: Itinerant Peddlers from Russian Karelia as Shopkeepers in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Finland

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter analyzes mobile traders from Russian Karelia who abandoned their itinerant livelihood and settled down in Finland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Many of these former peddlers opened up stores in the Finnish countryside, making use of their skills as traders and previously formed networks to keep their stores well supplied. The analysis revolves around the relationship between local residents and strangers settling down. By combining ethnographical sources with newspaper writings and advertisements the chapter offers new insights into the transition from itinerant peddling to storekeeping as well as the experiences of migrant entrepreneurs in Finland at the turn of the twentieth century.