Mountain Finns as settlers: Hanna Virranpää, ‘”This, Our Mountainous BC”: Constructing My Own Place and Our Places in the Letters of a Finnish Canadian Writer, 1915-1938’, Journal of Finnish Studies, 29, 2, 2026, pp. 194-235 | settler colonial studies blog

Mountain Finns as settlers: Hanna Virranpää, ‘”This, Our Mountainous BC”: Constructing My Own Place and Our Places in the Letters of a Finnish Canadian Writer, 1915-1938’, Journal of Finnish Studies, 29, 2, 2026, pp. 194-235

16Nov26

Abstract: This article examines how one Finnish Canadian writer linguistically constructed his own place and the place of his Finnish community, expressing attachment to place and reflecting the formation of a place-based identity. The research data consists of thirty-two letters written by one man in Finnish that were sent from British Columbia, Canada, to Finland between 1915 and 1938. The data is analyzed by combining linguistic methods (historical socio-onomastics) with humanistic geography and settler colonial studies. The research shows that the writer discusses his home and land as his own, using the words oma (own) and minun (my) in conjunction with place references. When the writer discusses “our” places, he talks about meidän kylä (our village) and meidän koulu (our school), but he also refers to a geographically broad area: “Tämä meidän vuoristoinen B.C.” (This, our mountainous BC). The writer explicitly verbalizes his attachment to the place in which he is living, as well as to all of British Columbia, by using positive adjectives. In addition, the letters show that British Columbia and BC are place names that the writer is attached to and that have positive associations for him. When talking about the places that are his own or belong to the Finnish community, he produces settler narratives. Therefore, the analysis sheds light on how the writer’s letters fit into Canadian and North American Finnish settler colonial narratives.

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