Seite - 44 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 4/2018

44 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Tuulikki Kurki | Border Crossing Trauma living abroad to return to Finland (Ministry of Interior 2009; Ministry of Interior 2010).5 Among these migrants was the writer Arvi Perttu who moved from Russia to Finland in 2001. Finnish literature has a long history of describing the historical events, mobility, and life-sto- ries connected with the Finnish-Russian border. These themes have been popular in biograph- ical writing, memoirs, war literature, history writing, as well as in fiction applying a microhis- tory viewpoint.6 In addition, the borderland theme has been a popular feature of the so-called regional literature that focuses on former and current ways of life and on cultural traditions in the borderland villages. The Finnish–Russian borderlands have served as a stage for many Arvi Perttu’s novels that approach these themes from historical and contemporary perspectives. Arvi Perttu was born in the town of Petrozavodsk, in Soviet Karelia in the North-West So- viet Union. He started to write in Finnish in the 1980s and established his writing career as a representative of minority language literature in Russia until the 2000s. While in Russia, Perttu published his first novel Symposium of Petrozavodsk (2001). In Finland, he has published four novels: Expedition of Papanin (Papaninin retkikunta 2006), Skumbria (Skumbria 2011), Pain (2014), and Year of the Queen (Kuningattaren vuosi 2015). Today, Perttu is one of the few ac- tively publishing writers who write in Finnish and originate from Russian Karelia (Kurki 2018, 319–20). His position as a writer provides him with authentic perspectives on the borderlands, its people, and its past and present. Although born in the Soviet Union, Perttu has a Karelian ethnonational background, his mother tongue is Finnish, and he received his education in Russian. In his work as a writer, he sees himself walking a tightrope between at least two, maybe even three cultures, and several languages (Perttu 1998). In his novels, his perceptive viewpoint on the borderlands, its people, history and present situation, simultaneously employs several different and sometimes conflicting viewpoints and cultural codes. Thus, his works provide unique ‘multidimensional’ (Hicks 1991) insights into life in the borderlands, and deviate from the mainstream literature. Hyper-natural and Surreal Representations of Trauma Pain and the Symposium of Petrozavodsk look at two significant events in the history of Rus- sia: the civil war that lead into the establishment of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and the dis- integration of the Soviet Union at the turn of the 1990s. These events are part of the collective and cultural memory in Russia, and also in its neighbouring countries. In his novels, Perttu studies these events from the viewpoints of Finnish and Karelian individuals and migrants who are mobile in the Finnish–Russian borderlands. His works provide us with subversive and sup- plementary narrative voices that can contribute to the collective and cultural memory of these traumatic events. 5 Despite changes in the returning migration program, the right of returning migration has remained among the Ingrian Finns and those who served Finnish army abroad in 1939–1945. 6 For example, recent fiction on this theme are: Rosa Liksom’s Hytti n. 6 [Cabin No. 6] (2011), Antti Tuuri’s Ikitie (Forever road) (2011), Zinaida Lindén’s Nuorallatansija [Tightrope dancer] (2009), Sirpa Kähkönen’s Vihan ja rakkauden liekit (Flames of anger and love) (2010) and Graniittimies [Granite man] (2014).