Gendered practices in Finnish cycling, 1890–1939.

Gendered Practices in Finnish Cycling, 1890–1939Tiina Männistö-Funk

Bicycle was one of the most important consumer technologies in Finland duringthe interwar period, but that period of bicycle’s history is largely unstudied. Thisarticle about Finnish rural cycling practices considers the mutual process of shapingbetween gender and the bicycle. The analysis is based on a large quantity of writ-ten memory sources that permit studying everyday bicycle use from the viewpointof users. The bicycle’s spread to the countryside from the late-nineteenth century onmarked a new process in its development and use, separate from the preceding bi-cycle boom among prosperous city-dwellers. Looking at the cycling practices ofelderly farmers’ wives and young hired women, for example, shows us that thebicycle became a radical innovation in rural life. Its uses and success were closelyconnected to the changes happening in the culture of the countryside. Consideringthe performative construction of gender helps one to understand the many uses andmeanings of the bicycle in the countryside. A concrete example of this are the bicyclerituals connected to the sexuality of rural youth.

INTRODUCTION

Bicycle was a most romantic vehicle for the young. I am recalling mem-ories of my own youth. When the cows had been milked, we rode to anevening party ..., 30 kilometres was the distance .... When we rode back,there might be a group of twenty girls and boys .... Light, warm summernight made us jolly, we did not feel tired. The cuckoo sang in the birchesat the lakeside and the happy group of youngsters pedalled brisklytowards home. It was almost five o’clock in the morning when we arrivedthere. After changing clothes and drinking coffee it was time to milk thecows.1

This article examines gendered practices of bicycle use in the Finnishcountryside from the late-nineteenth century to the Second World War.2

Through studying everyday practices, I will seek to answer two questions:what kind of a role did gender play in cycling, and how was gender producedthrough the use of the bicycle. Source material consists of a large trove offolklore material held by the Finnish National Museum. As a part of itsannual folklore collection activities in 1971, the museum printed a question-naire about early cycling. Altogether 656 Finns sent in written accounts oftheir personal bicycle memories. The collection holds nearly 3,500 pages and

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Gendered Practices in Finnish Cycling, 1800–1939

is available in the Archives for Oral Tradition of the National Board ofAntiquities.3 The example quoted above was written by a female respondentborn in 1899. She is a typical respondent in this collection: a resident of thecountryside, a farmer, female (405 of the respondents were women.) andborn at the turn of century. Her account well demonstrates the nature of thesource material. It was produced several decades after the time and the occur-rences it relates, and furthermore it was produced in answer to the museum’squestionnaire, which undoubtedly steered the process of remembering forrespondents. The written accounts are a mixture of nostalgia, personal mem-ories and common knowledge; however, the sheer number of these accountsmakes it possible to trace practices because they are repeatedly mentioned bydifferent respondents (in the example above, cycling to dances), as well asreferences to gender (in this case, the way the milking of cows set the timeframe for young women’s cycling).

Written memory sources offer a possibility to study everyday bicycle usefrom the viewpoint of users. Respondents to the museum questionnaire wereneither queried about the role of gender in cycling, nor do they give gendera central role in their written memories. When the respondents write aboutgender they chose to do so without being asked, thus dealing with the mean-ing of gender from their own perspective. The Swiss researcher May B.Broda has written about the suitability of oral history for researching gender.She says it can be used to find out about gender as a social structure andabout everyday constructions of gender, but often it is no use asking aboutthese themes directly. As a fruitful approach she suggests studying how gen-der is ‘done’ in social processes.4 This applies well also to written memories.Finnish researchers of memory material have seen them on one hand asreflectors of the larger cultural narratives about an ideal woman and man and,on the other hand, as tools for creating the narrator’s own gender identity,5but written memories can also offer information about the citational prac-tices through which gender identities were produced in the past.

In this article gender is seen, in the light of Judith Butler’s writings, to beperformative. Gender identity and the gendered subject do not exist prior tothe performance but are produced and reproduced in the performance.Individual performances draw from citational practices, which hold domin-ant understandings of gender. Because of the citational nature of gender,changes become possible through ‘wrong’ citing of practices.6 This meansthat gender, as we know it, is not only demonstrated, but actually producedby us all, when we repeatedly make our own citations of the range of possiblepractices that let us appear as men or women. A wrong citation forms a con-tinuum with earlier performances of gender, but for example in an exagger-ated manner, and can expand the possibilities of acting as a man or a woman.From a slightly different theoretical point of view, practices can also be seen

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as keys to understanding, how artefacts are linked to the life of people, groupsand whole societies and how they come to signify.7 Performance, the specificdoings and sayings of individuals in specific situations, is crucial to the wayin which practices around new innovations work.8 Looking at the actual useof artefacts lately has become increasingly important, for example, in thehistory of consumption and in the studies of material culture.9 This approachcan also bring new insights into the history of the gender/technologyrelationship.

Historians face difficulties in trying to understand everyday practices, asthere are often not many traces left to be studied. Written memories offer anexceptionally good opportunity to study historical practices, but the abun-dance and diversity of their subjects is also challenging. My method is toconcentrate especially on hidden practices that often are only visible in small,repeated remarks, which at first glance appear odd and trivial. These can beseen as related to the new microhistory’s concept of exceptional typical, func-tioning like a clue that leads researcher to a new point of view or subject.10

Accordingly, a past incident that looks exceptional, unrepresentative and notvery important can reveal something typical, socially and culturally import-ant when studied carefully. Following such clues fits together well with thenature of consumer practices, as described by Michel de Certeau and PierreBourdieu. De Certeau writes about consumers’ actions as poaching, half-hidden tricks,11 and Bourdieu emphasises the subconscious and self-evidentbasis of practices.12 In my research, looking for small details mentionedalmost parenthetically by respondents and not framed as part of the bignarratives created at the time of the writing also functions as a way of solv-ing the problem of the time gap between the written memories and theremembered time.

BICYCLES AND PRACTICES BEYOND THE BOOM

Between 1890 and 1940, the bicycle was a technology that changed indi-vidual lives tremendously. It also changed life in the Finnish countryside asa whole, so much that it is justifiable to consider it as one of the most import-ant consumer technologies in Finland in the interwar period. The bicycle hasreceived a lot of attention in the history of technology, but most often thisattention has been directed to urban cycling in the 19th century, to thetechnological development of the bicycle, to production and marketing, tocycling as competitive sport or to cycling clubs.13 In American lifestyle, thebicycle largely lost its importance after the middle-class cycling boom of thelate-nineteenth century to wide-spread motorization in the early-twentiethcentury. However, in Europe the bicycle was a very important technologyuntil well after the Second World War, and the early 20th century was the

3Tiina Männistö-Funk



time when it spread outside the wealthy urban middle-classes to become acommon means of transport rather than a fashionable sporting device.14 Thisperiod of the bicycle’s greatest importance is largely unstudied, perhapsbecause an innovation that has become common does not raise as muchinterest as an innovation that is still new and controversial. Yet, it is exactlythe process by which a technology gets integrated into the flow of every-daylife that should be of great interest for historians of technology.

Research on gender and cycling also exists, and the subject is touched onas well in many bicycle histories. Gender comes up mainly in connectionwith the bicycle boom of the 1890s, when women’s cycling first becamewidely possible and popular.15 As the German historian Dörte Bleckmannhas pointed out in her book about early female cyclists, many studies pre-suppose a connection between women’s bicycle riding and women’s emanci-pation and rather uncritically adopt the opinion presented in the sources thatcycling played an important part in women’s liberation. Cycling coincidedwith political, social and economic developments that changed women’ssocietal position, and through its public nature it gave visibility to theseprocesses.16 However, cycling women were, even in the wealthy middle-classcircles, a small minority, and the freedoms connected to cycling, such as mov-ing around independently and wearing trousers, could be practised onlywhen they were in sync with a bourgeois public morality.17

In their well-known example of the social construction of technology,Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker identified ‘macho machine’ as one of thecentral meanings given to the high-wheel bicycle of the 1880s.18 Never-theless, even in the beginning of the safety bicycle era, during the bicycleboom of the 1890s, performing different forms of respectable masculinityfunctioned as one of the driving forces of bicycle use. The Canadian geo-graphers and bicycle historians Phillip Gordon Mackintosh and GlenNorcliffe differentiate between two kinds of cycling masculinity in the late-nineteenth century: domestic gentlemanly cycling in clubs and anti-domesticspeeding and scorching.19

In Finnish publicity as well, ideal cycling appeared as the perfect masteryof both the machine and the (male) body, but the risky, adventurous sides ofcycling also were glorified.20 But female cycling also became well establishedduring the 1890s. According to the bicycle magazine Hjulsporten, the num-ber of female cyclists in Helsinki could have been around 400 to 500 in thebeginning of the year 1897, when the total number of bicycles in the city onlyexceeded 4,000 by the end of the year.21

While nineteenth century Finland experienced on a smaller scale the samedevelopments in cycling as the main industrial countries,22 Finland remainedpredominantly an agrarian, slowly industrialising society into the twentiethcentury.23 In the late 1890s, the cycling fashion of the upper classes began

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fading and bicycle use spread to the countryside. At the same time, Finnishproduction of bicycles started, and in 1904 and 1906 the first two manu-facturers began to produce frames, which lowered the price of bicycles inFinland. Similarly, bicycle stores opened in cities, and countryside co-operative stores and representatives of city-based retailers started building acountrywide distribution network for bicycles. By the beginning of the1920s, there were approximately 200,000 bicycles in Finland, yet many vil-lages in the countryside had but one or two bicycle owners. However, priceshad fallen enough to make the purchase of a bicycle possible for a large pro-portion of working people. In the 1920s, the sale of bicycles grew evenly andpeaked in 1928 – just before the economic depression. In the 1930s, bicyclebecame still more common, and bicycle touring became popular among bothcity dwellers and rural inhabitants.24 In 1938, some 135,000 bicycles weresold, their prices equalling 25–37 times the wage of a farm worker, whichlimited rural ownership. Nevertheless, the shared use of bicycles was verycommon in the countryside, so the number of bicycle users was remarkablylarger than that of bicycle owners. The bicycle, then, became the mainalternative for walking or horse driven carriages in the countryside.

THE BICYCLE’S SECOND GENDER: OLD WOMEN SEEDEVILS

Older women, ‘grans’, are mentioned surprisingly often in the FinnishNational Museum’s written bicycle memories; however, not as cyclists but asan opposition to the bicycle. This role is highlighted in essentially the samestory told in many variations by over fifty respondents from around the coun-try. The story’s basic line is as follows: an old woman is walking on the streetwhen she sees a cyclist approaching. The woman is frightened and thinksthat she has seen the devil.25 Respondents do not claim the story to be theirown memory, but mention it to be a true story from their home village andoften name the place and people of the story. In these sources, memories ofone’s own get combined with stories and folklore. The respondents date theirstory usually to the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth centuries. Newspapersources reveal that the story indeed had been told then.26 The popularity ofthe story is at least partially based on its humour value. Respondents oftentold it as a joke, complete with a punch line such as the old woman saying: ‘Isaw, how the devil was taking a man away. The poor man was kicking, butthe devil was taking him nonetheless.’27 When published in newspapers, thisstory seems to be a way for the educated class to stress their progressive iden-tity in contrast to supposedly superstitious and backward common people.The same story told by the residents of countryside draws the divisionbetween the progressive and the backward within the agricultural society, and




not only between young and old, but between men and women. In thesestories the old woman is the ultimate representative of the slow andmodernity-opposing way of life, whereas the young man on his bicyclerepresents the new age of quicker tempo and progress.

The story about the devil on wheels leads us to the reverse side of the seem-ingly smooth process of the bicycle’s spread to the countryside. Often in thehistories of the bicycle, the twentieth century appears as a logical continuationof the nineteenth century’s developments: after the fashionable bicycle frenzyhas subsided, the bicycle goes on to win users interested in its recreational andpractical values and, thus inevitably and rather uninterestingly, becomes moreand more common.28 This view neglects the fact that the bicycle spread tototally new use environments and user groups, which had to negotiate aboutthe meaning and uses of the bicycle on the basis of their own values and prac-tices. The story about the devil on wheels is folklore,29 but it refers to actualpractices of opposition. In the Finnish countryside of the late-nineteenth andearly-twentieth centuries, new technologies were often opposed on religiousterms. Beside bicycles, for example, cameras, aeroplanes and trains could benamed forerunners of the apocalypse, the workings of the antichrist or simplydevils. General suspicion against new innovations went hand in hand withcuriosity and interest. Such a combination of feelings had been experiencedalso in the cities when bicycle was first introduced, but in the countryside thesuspicion was linked to the peasant identity. Among peasants and other farm-ing people, the most important values of life were based on the hard physicallabour on which their survival depended. The values promoted by educatedclasses were seen to threaten this cornerstone of life; schooling and reading aswell as machines and other novelties were thought to produce useless gentle-men, who could and would not do physical work.30 The peasant ethos of fru-gality, hard work, respectability and self-sufficiency governed Finnish ways ofconsumption to the 1950s.31 From this point of view, the old woman callingthe bicycle a devil can appear as representative of the peasant values with herreactions based on a well-founded worldview. In the first decades of the twen-tieth century, owning a bicycle and a hat might be enough to mark a personas being, or trying to be, something else than an ordinary peasant.32 Alongsideof other innovations, the bicycle was often seen as a short-sighted waste ofmoney and valuable working time,33 and these views were often voiced by oldwomen. In the countryside, technologies of transportation belonged to theworld of men, and only such light-weight technologies as skis and kicksledges remained largely gender neutral. In the stories about the devil onwheels, the old woman who ‘did not know that there were any kinds ofmachines or vehicles in the whole wide world’ appears as the symbolicalopposite to all things technological.34 Thus, gendered opposition manifesteditself in different citational practices performed by older women: negative

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utterances, bodily acts of outrage (for example spitting, screaming, showingone’s buttocks, hitting around) and actively ignoring the bicycle.

The first bicycle owners of the countryside mentioned in the writtenmemories are almost always men. In the late 1910s and the beginning of the1920s, the bicycle started to have users among men and women as well as allthe main age groups in the countryside, with the exception of older women.35

Whereas younger women adopted bicycle readily, women born before the1890s were still unwilling or unable to cycle in the 1930s.36 Many respond-ents born as late as the 1910s and 1920s mention that their mother neverlearnt to ride a bicycle although all other members of the family werecycling.37 Some female respondents, who were born in the late-nineteenthcentury, wrote that they had never even walked with a bicycle.38 This gener-ation gap shows that even though female cycling had been part of nineteenthcentury cycling in the cities, this gendering of the technology did not auto-matically get transferred when the bicycle spread to the countryside. Theearly female cyclists of the countryside, daughters of rural gentry, can be seenas followers of the upper- and middle-class women cyclists in the cities, butreactions of peasant women show that the spread of bicycling to countrysideand the rural gendering of the bicycle was quite separate from that of earlierurban cycling. This makes perfect sense in the light of Norcliffe’s andMackintosh’s observations about class and gender being intimately bound inthe late Victorian cycling.39 In the countryside, the bicycle was still whatMika Pantzar calls a radical innovation40 in the first decades of the twentiethcentury; it initially had no clear function and needed to be rooted to every-day rural life through development of new practices.

In the written memories, older women as opponents of the bicycle com-bined suspicion towards the new technology with active or passive resistance.Respondents remembered small conflicts on countryside roads where, forexample, older women afraid that cyclists might drive over them walked tothe church very early in the morning in order to avoid meeting any bicycles.41

A male respondent born in 1908 tells about another kind of approach:I remember how one elderly woman broke a long twig from a roadsidetree when departing for the church on foot. When she heard men onbicycles approaching, she started to whisk the twig from side to side,chasing the cyclists away from around her like flies, so that they wouldnot drive over her from behind.42

In America, cars triggered similar kinds of reactions when they were firstsighted on country roads. Rural inhabitants called the car the devil’s vehicleand tried to sabotage passing cars.43

In the early stages of the bicycle’s spread to the Finnish countryside, thelink of masculinity and technology appears to be important. Respondents




describe how men of a village gathered to look at bicycles and were ofteneager to learn the driving skill if the bicycle owner would let them use hisvehicle.44 In the earlier feminist theories of technology, masculinity has beenseen as an essential characteristic of technological devices as bearers andreproducers of a hierarchical gender system.45 However, when gender isunderstood as performative, technological power appears as something thatis not pre-emptively gendered but is produced and reproduced in historicallychanging situations.46 We can see elderly women acting as active participantsin the technological process and performing respectable characteristics oftheir class and gender in their opposition to the bicycle. There is room forchange in the technology-gender relation, as both technology and gender areunderstood as dynamic constructions, which are actively produced in prac-tices.47 Accordingly, it is substantial to ask why certain technologies are, incertain situations, interpreted as feminine, masculine or gender neutral.48

GENDERED MOBILITY AND THE CHANGING COUNTRY-SIDE: MAIDS ON WHEELS

At first glance, the diffusion of the bicycle in Finland seems to be a typicalcase of the trickle-down effect: many respondents describe it by simply stat-ing that at first only the rich had bicycles, then slowly the poorer people. Thegender question is often commented on in a similar way: first only men hadbicycles, then little by little also women. However, a closer examinationshows a much more complicated picture, which we can start to consider byrecognizing that women who worked as hired help on other farms wereamong the earliest rural bicycle owners. When respondents talk about femaleowners of bicycle, it is remarkable that the women who often got bicyclesrather early were hired women and other women working outside home,such as milkers, midwives, teachers, postmistresses, dressmakers and shopassistants.49 This link of bicycle ownership and working outside the homeappears to have been crucial, especially for young women in farm families.Indeed, just threatening to leave home and work as hired help in the summerfor cash income when their work contribution was most needed at home wasenough for some young women to make their parents buy them a bicycle.50

By the 1920s, wealthy farmers adopted the habit of giving their children abicycle when they reached the confirmation age of about sixteen years andstarted to be considered adults.51 Getting a bicycle this way, however, wasoften not as easy for daughters as for sons; parents often considered the bi-cycle more important for boys.52 It was a sizeable purchase and a challengingacquisition because it required cash and the rural Finnish economy was thenonly partially based on monetary exchange. Many respondents rememberhow, for example, a cow or the crop from a field had to be sold in order to

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get enough cash for the purchase of a bicycle.53 Although farmers could earnmoney by selling timber and milk products, side jobs formed an importantpart of monetary income, even as such jobs were not crucial for overall liveli-hood.54 Young rural women in general started participating in the monetaryeconomy later than young men, which affected their possibilities of buying abicycle.55 Side jobs available for young men, such as forest work, also wereoften better paid than jobs available for young women. However, therespondents revealed that the wish to purchase a bicycle encouraged youngwomen to try and earn money, even if it was only possible by picking andselling berries or – more exotically – lichen and cones.56 The causal relation-ship between the monetary economy and the spread of bicycle worked bi-directionally, especially for the younger generation where the possibility ofbuying a bicycle became the major reason for seeking a paid job. A femalerespondent born in 1909 commented: ‘A bicycle was the first aim when onewas able to earn some money of one’s own.’57

Women working outside home were the most mobile of all rural women,and wives living on smaller farms tended to be more mobile than those onbig farms. Some women from small farms who worked as hired help forwages rode bicycles before daughters and wives on better-off farms. In theFinnish agrarian culture, the gendered division of labour was one of the mostcrucial factors shaping the structure of the society.58 Most of the chores thatrequired mobility were men’s work, such as fishing, hunting, forest work andtown visits. However, women, particularly younger women, from familieswhich did not own land often needed to be mobile because of their work.Moreover, they also participated more in traditional male work. The gen-dered division of labour in the countryside was strict on the normative level,but in practice it could be bent. This flexibility worked only in one direction:men would only rarely do women’s work, but women would more easily domen’s work. Therefore, part of the male world and its mobility was familiarto women. Men’s work was higher in the hierarchy and seen as more valuablethan women’s work.59 These cultural characteristics are visible in the bicycleuse of men and women and do not seem to change remarkably during priorto 1940. Changes that happened in the agricultural work were more subtle.For example, animal husbandry became increasingly important, whichrequired more hired female help on big farms and gave women possibilitiesto work as milkers. On the other hand, farming became more of a familybusiness, with members of one family taking care of all the work on the farm.Quite possibly, the flexibility of women’s work and roles made these smallmodernising steps possible.60 Especially on small farms, women gave increas-ingly more time to the agricultural work after the mid-1920s.61 Using a bi-cycle can be seen as part of women’s flexibility, which gradually increased asthe twentieth century proceeded.




In the decades preceding the Second World War, social mobility increasedin Finland, but the models of the old class society still had strong impact. Inthe countryside, a division was made on one hand between peasants and edu-cated ‘gentry’, and on the other hand between the land-owning farmers andother, mainly poorer peasants, who did not own land.62 This class divisionhelps us to understand the paradox of hired women cycling and well-offfarmhouse wives refusing to cycle. One respondent born in 1923 remem-bered her grandmother’s disdain against the bicycle: ‘She said that it lookedfilthy when women where driving a bicycle. In my childhood it was commonthat elderly wives of farmers thought that their dignity did not allow them toride a bicycle.’63 Many respondents also tell about elderly farmers’ wives dis-approving of other women’s bicycle riding.64 This generation gap seems tohave been rooted in the class differences of the countryside; women of thebigger houses were not supposed to participate, for example, in field work, asdid women on smaller farms. In this way, the class-bound female dignitymight connect to unwillingness to work and move outside the home circle.Contrarily, according to the written memories, younger women were eager touse this new technology. This shows a shift in the understanding of women’smobility and the gendering of public spaces. A significant change in women’spossibilities to explore different places independently occurred between thegenerations born in the nineteenth century and those born in the twentiethcentury. This can be seen in the emergence of a new public schooling systemand a new youth culture formed around different associations and organisa-tions, all of which encouraged an increase in the mobility of both gendersand all classes, especially among the young.

When respondents are remembering their own cycling, work and choresare often mentioned, but most attention is given to free time cycling, mak-ing long bicycle trips in the surroundings and travelling to different kinds ofactivities. From the 1920s on, compulsory education made children moveevery day from their home to school and back, often covering long distances,as the Finnish village structure was loose and many small farmers lived farfrom settlements. The bicycle was not a vehicle given to small school chil-dren, but the way to school made children mobile regardless of gender. Asone of elementary schooling’s central aims was to teach children to love theircountry, it encouraged pupils to investigate the nature, special features oftheir village and the surrounding regions.65 Later, as teenagers and youngadults, it was natural for these children to make bicycle trips around theirregion and look at the sights of nature, historical places and remarkablebuildings. Although most pupils started working immediately after finish-ing compulsory schooling,66 increasing numbers also continued their school-ing in one way or another – often in a town – and this made countrysidesociety much more mobile as a whole. Both female and male respondents

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remembered bicycle trips of even several hundred kilometres. In her articleabout female cycling in the late-nineteenth century USA, Christine Dandohas argued that women were encouraged to experience landscapes in newways and to gain new knowledge about geography through cycling.67 In ruralFinland of the 1920s and 1930s, elementary schooling and cycling interactedin a similar enlargement of geographical knowledge and possibilities.

In a Finnish guidebook about bicycle touring, independent touring wasseen as an excellent way of increasing the physical and mental abilities of theyoung. This applied for men and women alike:

Cycling is one of the sports where the capacity of men and women is theleast different. This might be caused by the fact that woman’s powercentre is in her pelvis, whereas man’s centre is in his shoulders. Thereforea woman is by nature a better cyclist than a man, of course consideringeach gender’s general capacity for exertion.68

Also the compulsory schooling emphasised the need to raise both gendersinto able-bodied, brisk citizens. Nonetheless, girls had their own standardsand were not supposed to be as competitive as boys.69 In cycling, youngwomen could gain respect in showing endurance on long tours,70 but malerespondents more often mention different kinds of playful competitions aspart of their cycling practices.71

As an addition to the different places of work and the village centre withits shops and church, in the early-twentieth century, besides elementaryschools, other new important places were built around the countryside:workers’ union houses, farmers’ associations and educational, religious andnationalistic organisations. These were places where both men and womenwent to learn in study circles, listen to presentations, participate in meetingsand practice such hobbies as playing in a brass band, singing in a choir or act-ing in a play. In summertime, national and regional gatherings and festivitieswere organised, and especially young people, men and women alike, oftentravelled hundreds of kilometres by bicycle to participate these. As NickyGregson and Gillian Rose argue in their article about the relationship ofperformance and geography, Butler’s discussion of performance is useful inseeing how performances bring spaces into being.72 This is equally true of thecycling practices and new rural places. The repetition of cycling practicesconnected to education and good hobbies created a new rural geography. Thebicycle was very often a prerequisite for an active organisational life,73 andorganisational activities gave many women reasons to move outside thesphere of home. One female respondent tells about the bicycle trips she madeas a young woman in the late 1920s and early 1930s as an advisor of a youthassociation and temperance society: the round trip she made twice a yearcovered 600 to 700 kilometres.74




The culture of the Finnish countryside started to experience rapid changesin the 1920s and 1930s.75 Many elements of the change - the wider networkof contacts, better education, new work possibilities and broadening selectionof free time activities - had a connection both to the spread of the bicycle andthe gradual changes in the rural gender system. Men and women used bi-cycles largely in similar ways, but in many situations gendered practices setlimits and opened up possibilities.

SEX AND THE VILLAGE: BICYCLE AS A SEXUAL VEHICLE

Small examples from the written memories tell about the role of trouser legholders, which draws our attention to the importance the bicycle and its gen-dered use in the meetings of young people in the countryside of the 1920sand 1930s. Cycling men who wanted to keep their trousers from touchingthe bicycle chains could buy special trouser leg holders made out of metal, orthey could use ordinary clothespins for the same purpose. A female respond-ent born in 1896 tells how in her youth such equipment was used also forother than practical purposes: ‘Both of these [holders and pins] were left onwhen coming to the dance in order to show that the boy had a bicycle withwhich he came to dance. And even if there was no bicycle, pins were anywayon the trouser legs.’76 Bicycle was thus seen as a vehicle that improved men’schances with women. A male respondent who bought himself a bicycle in1914 when he was nineteen and working as hired hand on a farm also writestellingly:

The reason to purchase a bicycle at least for me and surely for otheryoungsters too [was] that it was needed for fun, and back then there wasno guard in the front of the chain but from the store one could buy suchthings that kept the trouser leg from getting ripped and stained by thechain, so also such young men that didn’t own a bicycle used these. Oftenone heard people saying that such a person didn’t lack much; only thebicycle, and these holders were used therefore that when the dwellings ofgirls were visited the girls would think that he had a bicycle. And there-fore it was especially for young men a necessity to get a bicycle, forwomen it was different as boys liked taking them to ride on the crossbar(in front, next to the handlebars between the arms) and also thereforeboys needed a bicycle as it was shameful if one could not give girls a rideon the crossbar.77

In the countryside, specific places for summertime dances were built fromthe late-nineteenth century on. The different organisations and associationsthat were growing in number and importance throughout the early decadesof the twentieth century actively organized dances at these locations.

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Organisational dances and other events changed the youth culture of thecountryside. Earlier, young people had been meeting each other throughwork and at dances held in farm houses and barns after hay making or inconnection to such festivities as weddings. In the interwar period, the dancesof associations gathered young people not only from one village but fromeven larger areas.78 A large part of the folklore collection respondents wrotethat getting to dances was the overwhelmingly most important reason forwanting or purchasing a bicycle. There were very practical grounds for thisas the distances were long, even inside the villages, and time was sparse dur-ing the busy seasons of farm work. The bicycle made it possible to visitseveral dances during one evening or night and to be back in time for nextday’s work. Female respondents mention, how the bicycle enabled them tomake the most of their free time between the evening and morning milk-ing.79 The bicycle was used by both genders to visit the gatherings and dancesof young people, and often the young women and men of one village trav-elled together to visit these happenings in other villages.80 Both women andmen experienced the sense of freedom and the broadening of possibilitiesthrough cycling; however, respondents often commented that, in connectionto dances, the bicycle was more important for men. A female respondentborn in 1902 remembered:

Girls were not so much going to the dances by bicycle. Bicycle was morea vehicle for boys on these dance trips. Boys had the habit of offering girlsa ride on their bicycle, but not when going to the dance. When the dancewas over, boys asked girls, if they would come on the bicycle. And usuallythe girl would come, if the driver was of her liking.81

There is an abundance of memories about boys taking girls home fromdances on the crossbars of their bicycles. Some respondents explained thehabit simply by saying that girls did not have bicycles of their own,82 but it isobvious from the statements of many others that the practice signified theexpression of one’s romantic and sexual interests. Even girls who actuallyowned a bicycle might leave it home if they lived only some kilometresaway from the dance place.83 After the dance boys could then offer a girl oftheir choice a ride on the crossbar. According to the respondents, owning abicycle remarkably heightened a man’s chances of escorting a young womanhome after the dance, and this may have been seen as the most importantadvantage of owning a bicycle.84 Escorting a girl home from a dance signi-fied an essential demonstration of manliness. One male respondent born in1916 tells about his friend’s experience in the form of a heroic odyssey: On arainy autumn evening he had cycled 32 kilometres to the dance and, whenthe dance was ending at midnight, asked permission to escort a girl homeonly to find out that she lived another 32 kilometres away behind a hilly




woodland. When arriving home in the morning the exhausted cyclist had toimmediately start his work in the drying barn. On the top of that, the triphad been ‘almost for nothing’.85 Reports such as this give the impression thata girl accepting a ride might be expected to give at least some kind of sexualattention to the bicycle owner.

The cycling practices connected to the rural youth culture were well estab-lished and loaded with important gendered meanings. We can understandsuch practices through Butler’s theory of performative gender. Gender comesin existence in ritualised production, in which sexual identity is constitutedthrough repetition of norms.86 Accordingly, the cycling practices involved inthe rural dances are not just reflections of some pre-existing gender roles, butone of the actual places where sexual identification happens. The connectionbetween bicycle and proper manhood is made in numerous bicycle mem-ories, such as repeated statements that owning a bicycle was important whenbecoming a man – ‘when one was an adult man, one of course had to enjoythe rights of an adult man’87 and ‘one otherwise would not have had anychances to get to know women’88 and ‘it was an unworthy man who had toreturn from the dance without a girl on the crossbar.’89 As scholars studyingtechnology’s gender history have argued, the symbolical use of gender is cen-tral in the development and success of different technologies.90 NicholasOddy has observed that, whereas the difference between male and femalebicycle models was first based on practical reasons (long full skirts), thedropped-frame bicycle soon became as feminine as the skirt it was intendedto accommodate, and male riding of female models became comparable tocross-dressing.91 Respondents tell about the ridicule that men riding femalemodels had to endure.92 Successful performance of masculinity required aman’s bicycle, especially for young men and especially in connection todances and courting. In a joke told by one respondent, bicycles, courting andmale sexual virility form a seamless unity: A boy is taking a girl home fromthe dance on his bicycle; the girl thinks she is sitting on the crossbar, untilshe realises that she actually is being carried by the erect penis of the cyclist.93

It has been estimated that, during the 1920s and 1930s, the earlier villagepractice of endogamy was disappearing in the Finnish countryside, a changewhich allowed young people more freedom to choose a spouse from outsidetheir home village.94 In this development, the role of the bicycle can be seenas important. According to many respondents, the bicycle was an absolutenecessity when a young man was visiting a young woman at her home dur-ing courtship. When the man came from another village, the men of youngwoman’s village might make practical jokes such as hauling his bicycle up aflagpole or sabotaging it slightly. An unfamiliar bicycle in the yard was a clearsign that a young man interested in the daughter of the house was visiting.95

In rural society where the spaces of work and living were not clearly divided

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and where the structure of living quarters often allowed very little privacy,96

the bicycle also became a tool creating space for young people’s sexuality.This space was ruled especially by men, and the symbolic value the bicyclehad in performing masculinity had an important connection to sexuality. JanLöfström, who has studied gender differences in Finnish agrarian culture,argues that performing proper male sexuality especially meant emphasisingthe difference between boys and men.97 For instance, hired men had beenperforming adult masculinity by heavy drinking,98 but new consumptionpossibilities now offered other ways to use their wages and strengthen theiradult status, purchasing a bicycle being one of these. A male respondent bornin 1892 tells about the most memorable trips he made by bicycle to annualmarkets and other happenings: ‘There, at the church, one could meet youngpeople from other villages and townships. There were men selling spirits.Watches and other stuff were traded. We were looking for a wife candidatefrom among the women.’99

Even though women in many ways were equal users with men of bicycles,the ritualised cycling practices of the dances constructed an active masculin-ity and more passive feminity. In the countryside sexual relationships in thebeginning of the 20th century, the role of woman was not necessarily passive.However, the discourse of modernity promoted by the new education andpopular associations emphasised the importance of high female morals.100

Saara Tuomaala, who has written about the use of the bicycle as a part oftransitions in rural youth, has found hints in her interviews about the con-stant sexual dangers that overshadowed young women’s cycling.101 Thenature of my sources might leave such subjects at least partially out of sight,and they do not show in the written memories. The cycling practices dis-cussed here appear as an established and largely approved part of performingproper adult masculinity or feminity and finding one’s way into a hetero-sexual relationship. The establishment and approval is visible, for example, inthe way confirmation marked the beginning of adulthood as well as themoment one was allowed to attend dances and hope to get a bicycle ofone’s own.

CONCLUSION

The gendered cycling practices of the Finnish countryside were vastly moremanifold than it is possible to describe in one article. Here I have discussedthe typical and exceptional typical practices through which one can see themain developments of bicycle’s gendering. The long-term spread and use ofa technology is as important a subject for gender analysis as its earliest his-tory. Gender analysis shows us that the spread to the countryside started anentirely new process in the bicycle’s development. The practices and values of




the earlier bicycle culture in cities did not simply get transferred to a newenvironment, but rural inhabitants created their own cycling practicesthrough which they negotiated the symbolic value of the bicycle on the basisof their own culture and social hierarchy. In popular bicycle stories and inactual practices of use, elderly women make visible the social divisions thathad to be negotiated in the use of the new technology: one between gentryand peasants and one between wealthy, independent farmers and other lesswell-off groups in the countryside.

The system of performative gender is open for change through the ‘wrong’performances of gender. In a way, the adoption of bicycle by hired womencan be seen as a slightly ‘wrong’ citation that caused change. The gendereddivision of work was one of the most important structuring factors in theagrarian society, but inside it the flexibility of woman’s work role was allow-ing for variations. Cycling can be seen as one of these variations, as thewomen working outside home turned the necessity of mobility and earningcash into the possibility of using the new technology. The changes in therural culture incorporate both changes in the gender system and the spreadof bicycle, and different changes interact in a way that cannot be explainedsimply by economic needs and rational choices. In the case of rural youth’ssexuality, forms of the bicycle’s practical, symbolic and performative usage aredeeply intertwined and interacting.

NOTES

1 MV:K18/667. In this article, I am referring to the folklore collection replies with abbreviations,in which MV refers to the Finnish National Board of Antiquities (Museovirasto), K18 refersto the number of the collection and the last entry identifies the individual number of therespondent.

2 Parts of this article, mainly in the section ‘Sex and the village’, bear similarities to the articleT. Männistö-Funk, ‘The prime, decline and recalling of rural cycling: Bicycle in the 1920s’ and1930s’ Finland remembered in 1971–1972,’ forthcoming in Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal ofMobility Studies (2012).

3 The Finnish National Museum and the history society Seurasaarisäätiö began in the 1950s toorganise annual collections of folklore and written memories. Surveys like these were consideredan important way of collecting information about the traditional Finnish way of life, and theyhad been started by the Finnish Literature Society in the late-nineteenth century. Questionswere prepared by experts and researchers, printed on leaflets and distributed widely. Prizes, suchas silver cutlery, writing machines and books were given for the best or most extensive replies.

4 M. B. Broda, ‘Erfahrung, Erinnerungsinterview und Gender. Zur Methode Oral History’,M. Bos, B. Vincenz and T. Wirz (eds.), Erfahrung: Alles nur Diskurs? Zur Verwendung desErfahrungsbegriffes in der Geschlechtergeschichte (Zürich 2004), 159–171.

5 J. Pöysä, ‘Kilpakirjoitukset muistitietotutkimuksessa’ in O. Fingerroos, et al., eds.,Muistitietotutkimus. Metodologisia kysymyksiä (Helsinki 2006), 221–244; S. Tuomaala,‘Sukupuolen kokemuksista muistitietohistoriaan’, in Muistitietotutkimus. Metodologisia kysymyk-siä, eds. O. Fingerroos, et al. (Helsinki, 2006), 271–291.

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6 J. Butler, Gender trouble (London 1990); J. Butler, Bodies that matter. On the discursive limits of ‘sex’(London 1993).

7 T. Schatzki, Social Practices (Cambridge 1996); T. Schatzki, ‘Introduction. Practice theory’, inThe Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, eds. T. Schatzki, K. Knorr Cetina and E. von Savigny(London and New York 2001), 10–23.

8 E. Shove and M. Pantzar, ‘Recruitment and reproduction: the careers and carriers of digitalphotography and floorball’, Human Affairs no. 2 (2007): 154–167.

9 For example: J. Brewer and F. Trentmann, ‘Introduction. Space, time and value in consumingcultures’, in Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives. Historical Trajectories, TransnationalExchanges, eds. J. Brewer and F. Trentmann (Oxford, New York 2006), 1–17; D. Miller, ‘Whysome things matter’ in Material Cultures. Why Some Things Matter, ed. D. Miller (London 1998),3–21.

10 C. Ginzburg, Johtolankoja. Kirjoituksia mikrohistoriasta ja historiallisesta metodista (Tampere1996), 37–76; M. Peltonen, Mikrohistoriasta (Tampere 1999), 63, 114.

11 M. de Certeau, Kunst des Handelns (Berlin 1988); Original: L’invention du quotidien (Paris 1980),for example 23, 28, 80.

12 P. Bourdieu, Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (New York and London 1986);Original: La Distinction, Critique sociale du judgment (Paris 1979), for example 468.

13 For example: W. E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs. Toward a Theory of SociotechnicalChange (Cambridge and London [1995] 3rd printing 1999); G. Norcliffe, The Ride to Modernity.The Bicycle in Canada, 1869–1900 (Toronto Buffalo, London, 2001); R. Rabenstein, Radsportund Gesellschaft. Ihre sozialgeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge in der Zeit von 1867 bis 1914 (Münchenund Zürich 1991); R. A. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle. Its Early Life and Times in America(New York 1972).

14 A. Ebert, ‘Cycling towards the Nation: The Use of the Bicycle in Germany and the Netherlands,1880–1940’, European Review of History no. 3 (2004): 347–364; D. V. Herlihy, Bicycle. TheHistory (New Haven and London 2004), 310–334: In the USA, there were some two to threemillion bicycles in 1935, when recreational cycling had given a new boost to the bicycle indus-try, but at the same time there were some 15 million bicycles in Germany, seven million inBritain as well as in France, four million in Italy and three million in the Netherlands, wherealmost every second citizen owned a bicycle. In many regions bicycle was the most popularmeans of transport. Whereas in the USA there were seventeen cars to one bicycle, in Europethere were seven bicycles to one car.

15 For example: B. Edwards, ‘The Cycling New Woman. The Representations of the Cycling NewWoman in the English Popular Press, 1895–1897’, Cycle History 8 (1998): 67–74; B. Griffin,‘Cycling and Gender in Victorian Ireland’, Eire-Ireland 41:1 (2006): 213–241; G. Maierhof undK. Schröder, Sie radeln wie ein Mann, Madame. Wie die Frauen das Rad eroberten (Dortmund1992); R. D. Petty, ‘Women and the Wheel. The Bicycle’s Impact on Women,’ Cycle History 7(1997): 112–133.

16 D. Bleckmann, Wehe wenn sie losgelassen. Über die Anfänge des Frauenradfahrens in Deutschland(Gera-Leipzig 1999), 136–150.

17 P. G. Mackintosh and G. Norcliffe, ‘Flâneurie on Bicycles: Acquiescence to Women in Publicin the 1890s’, The Canadian Geographer 50 (2006): 17–37.

18 T. J. Pinch and W. E. Bijker, ‘The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or how theSociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology might benefit each other’, in The SocialConstruction of Technological Systems. New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, eds.W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes and T. Pinch (London [1987] 2001), 17–50.




19 P. G. Mackintosh and G. Norcliffe, ‘Women and Men and the Bicycle: Gender and theGeography of Cycling in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Cycling in Society, Transport andSociety Series, eds. D. Horton, P. Rosen and P. Cox (Aldershot 2007), 153–177. See also:P. G. Mackintosh, ‘A Bourgeois Geography of Domestic Cycling: The Responsible Use ofPublic Space in Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake, 1890–1900’, Journal of Historical Sociology2:1/2 (2007): 128–157.

20 Hjulsporten (1895–1897); Suomen Urheilulehti (1898–1902).21 Hjulsporten no 3 (21.1.1897); no 44 (11.11. 1897).22 H. Kuva, Kaksipyöräisten vuosisata. Polkupyörä- ja mopediteollisuuden ja –kaupan vaiheet Suomessa

( Jyväskylä 1988), 19–44; M. Kylliäinen, ”Pikakulkuri saapuu Suomeen”, Velomania! Pyörällähalki aikojen (Tampere 2007), 41–93.

23 In 1910 the country had almost three million inhabitants, 74 percent of whom earned their liv-ing from agriculture and the forest economy, and the domination of agrarian occupation andrural habitation lasted to the post-Second World War period.

24 Kuva, op. cit. (21), 49–88, 115–116; T. Mauranen, Hopeasiipi. Sata vuotta Helkamaa (Helsinki2005), 50–82. There are no statistics for the entire country, but for example in Tampere, anindustrial city, six percent of inhabitants had a bicycle in 1913 and twelve percent of these bicycleowners were women; in 1928, 16 percent owned a bicycle and 16 percent of them were women;in 1938, 30 percent owned a bicycle and 34 percent of them were women. In the end of the1920s, almost 60 percent of bicycles sold in Tampere were bought by working classes. The num-ber of passenger cars remained relatively low, but in cities, buses as means of transportation werequickly becoming more important than bicycle. T. Mauranen, ‘Ajatte tuulenkeveydellä!’, inVelomania! Pyörällä halki aikojen. (Tampere 2007), 94–171.

25 In a few cases, the one who gets frightened is a group of women, a child or an old man.26 One Finnish newspaper published a version of it in 1888, and three other newspapers published

another version in 1890. Hämäläinen (14.7.1888); Aamulehti (7.11.1890); Savo (8.11.1890);Wiipurin Sanomat (5.11.1890).

27 MV:K18/83.28 Glen Norcliffe, for example, writes in the conclusion of The Ride to Modernity, how bicycle had

lost its importance as a marker of modernity by the year 1900: ‘In effect, the bicycle had becomea standardized, rather boring, mass-produced item, which no longer bestowed much kudos onits owner.’ Norcliffe, op. cit. (12), 255.

29 Interestingly, it seems to be international folklore: the bicycle historian Brian Griffin has comeacross a similar account from rural Ireland of the 1880s. B. Griffin, Cycling in Victorian Ireland(Dublin 2006), 25.

30 K. Mikkola, ’Modernisaation vastavirrassa. Uutuuksien vastustuksen syitä ja keinoja modern-isoituvassa Suomessa’, in Modernisaatio ja kansan kokemus Suomessa 1860–1960, eds. H. Helsti,L. Stark and S. Tuomaala (Helsinki 2006), 169–212.

31 V. Heinonen, Talonpoikainen etiikka ja kulutuksen henki (Helsinki 1998), 377–381.32 For example: MV:K18/76, MV:K18/389.33 For example: MV:K18/270, MV:K18/386.34 MV:K18/115.35 This seems to mean approximately those older than forty years. See for example: MV:K18/529.36 For example: MV:K18/598, MV:K18/878, MV:K18/881, MV:K18/853.37 For example: MV:K18/430, MV:K18/484, MV:K18/813.38 For example: MV:K18/90, MV:K18/288, MV:K18/698.39 Mackintosh and Norcliffe, op. cit. (18).40 M. Pantzar, Kuinka teknologia kesytetään (Helsinki 1996), 12, 50–53.

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41 MV:K18/256.42 MV:K18/386.43 R. Kline and T. Pinch, ‘Users as agents of technological change. The social construction of the

automobile in the rural United States,’ Technology and Culture 37;4 (1996): 778–780.44 For example: MV:K18/82, MV:K18/656, MV:K18/843.45 J. Wajcman, Feminism Confronts Technology (Cambridge 1991). See also: K. Grint and R. Gill

(eds.), The Gender-Technology Relation. Contemporary Theory and Research (London 1995).46 N. E. Lerman, A. P. Mohun and R. Oldenziel, ‘The Shoulders We Stand On/ The View from

Here: Historiography and Directions for Research’, in Gender & Technology. A Reader, eds.N. E. Lerman, R. Oldenziel and A. P. Mohun (Baltimore and London 2003), 425–449; S.Ormrod, ‘Feminist Sociology and Methodology: Leaky Black Boxes in Gender/TechnologyRelations’, in The Gender-Technology Relation. Contemporary Theory and Research, eds. K. Grintand R. Gill (London 1995), 31–47.

47 J. Wajcman, TechnoFeminism (Cambridge 2004), 29–31, 40–55. See also: E. Sundin andB. Berner, eds., Från symaskin till Cyborg. Genus, teknik och social förändring (Stockholm 1996),11–13.

48 B. L. Marshall, ‘Critical Theory, Feminist Theory, and Technology Studies’, in Modernity andTechnology, eds. T. J. Misa, P. Brey and A. Feenberg (Cambridge and London 2003), 105–135,118.

49 For example: MV:K18/592, MV:K18/611, MV:K18/748, MV:K18/806.50 For example: MV:K18/238, MV:K18/541, MV:K18/748.51 For example: MV:K18/37, MV:K18/67, MV:K18/644, MV:K18/818. See also: S. Tuomaala,

‘Polkupyörällä pääsee. Suomalaisen maalaisnuoruuden siirtymiä ja symboleita 1920–1940-luvuilla’, in Nuoruuden vuosisata. Suomalaisen nuorison historia, eds. S. Aapola and M. Kaarninen(Helsinki 2003), 355–371.

52 For example: MV:K18/142, MV:K18/270.53 For example: MV:K18/283, MV:K18/299, MV:K18/596.54 M. Peltonen, Talolliset ja torpparit. Vuosisadan vaihteen maatalouskysymys Suomessa (Helsinki

1992), 200–208.55 Tuomaala, op. cit. (52), 361.56 Esim. MV:K18/539, MV:K18/600.57 MV:K18/576.58 P. Markkola, ‘Moninainen maalaisnuoriso’, in Nuoruuden vuosisata. Suomalaisen nuorison historia,

eds. S. Aapola and M. Kaarninen (Helsinki 2003), 129–159.59 A. Östman, Mjölk och jord. Om kvinnlighet, manlighet och arbete i ett österbottniskt jord-

brukssamhälle (Åbo 2000); A. Östman, ‘Mekanisoinnin ensimmäinen aalto’, in Suomenmaatalouden historia II. Kasvun ja kriisien aika 1870–luvulta 1950–luvulle, ed. M. Peltonen(Helsinki 2004), 61; M. Peltonen, Talolliset ja torpparit. Vuosisadan vaihteen maatalouskysymysSuomessa (Helsinki 1992), 212–219.

60 Östman, (2000 and 2004), op. cit. (61).61 K. Niskanen, ‘Varför är kön betydelsefullt? Mäns och kvinnors arbete på mellankrigtidens

familjejordbruk’, inFöreställningar om kön. Ett genusperspektiv på jordbrukets modernisering, ed.K. Niskanen (Stockholm 1998), 44–63.

62 M. Peltonen, Matala katse. Kirjoituksia mentaliteettien historiasta (Helsinki 1992), 133.63 MV:K18/71.64 For example: MV:K18/24, MV:K18/748.65 S. Tuomaala, ‘Kinoksia ja kivikkokankaita. Koulutie suomalaisen modernisaation kokemuksena




ja metaforana’, in Modernisaatio ja kansan kokemus Suomessa 1860–1960, eds. Hilkka Helsti,Laura Stark and Saara Tuomaala (Helsinki 2006), 241–276.

66 M. Rahikainen, ‘Nuorena työhön. Lasten ja nuorten työnteko 1900–1970’, in Nuoruudenvuosisata. Suomalaisen nuorison historia, eds. S. Aapola and M. Kaarninen (Helsinki 2003),160–185.

67 C. Dando, ‘Riding the Wheel: Selling American Women Mobility and Geographic Knowledge‘,ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 6:2 (2007): 174–210.

68 Polkupyöräretkeily. Suomen opintoretkeilykerhojen liitto ry:n julkaisuja n:o 3 (Helsinki 1936): 8.69 S. Tuomaala, Työtätekevistä käsistä puhtaiksi ja kirjoittaviksi. Suomalaisen oppivelvollisuuskoulun ja

maalaislasten kohtaaminen 1921–1939 (Helsinki 2004), 246–247.70 For example: MV:K18/533.71 For example: MV:K18/518.72 N. Gregson and G. Rose, ‘Taking Butler elsewhere: performativities, spatialities and subject-

ivities’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18:4 (2000): 433–452.73 For example: MV:K18/871.74 MV:K18/178.75 I. Talve, Suomen kansankulttuuri. Historiallisia päälinjoja (Helsinki 1979), 303–310.76 MV:K18/177.77 MV:K18/487.78 Most typically associations were organising so-called evening parties (‘iltamat’), which had dif-

ferent kinds of programme consisting of music, speeches, poems, plays, etc. and ended withdances. In the following, I also am calling these happenings ‘dances’. Respondents are often talk-ing generally about ‘dances’ or ‘dances and evening parties’. Talve, op. cit. (77), 309; E. Waris,’Tytöt, pojat ja yhteisö. Perhe ja nuoriso 1800–luvun talonpoikaisessa Suomessa’, in Nuoruudenvuosisata. Suomalaisen nuorison historia, eds. S. Aapola and M. Kaarninen (Helsinki 2003),108–127.

79 For example MV:K18/246.80 For example MV:K18/667.81 MV:K18/921.82 For example MV:K18/660.83 For example MV:K18/676.84 For example MV:K18/243, MV:K18/873.85 MV:K18/429.86 Butler, Bodies that matter, op. cit. (5), 95.87 MV:K18/588.88 MV:K18/21.89 MV:K18/879.90 Lerman et al., op. cit. (47), 432–434.91 N. Oddy, ‘Bicycles’, in The gendered object, ed. P. Kirkham (Manchester and New York 1996),

60–69.92 For example MV:K18/383, MV:K18/605.93 MV:K18/298.94 See: K. Pitkänen, ’Avioitumiskäyttäytymisen muutokset teollistuvassa Suomessa’, När samhället

förändras – Kun yhteiskunta muuttuu (Helsinki 1981).95 For example: MV:K18/238; MV:K18/472; MV:K18/726.96 K. Pohjola-Vilkuna, Eros kylässä. Maaseudun luvaton seksuaalisuus vuosisadan vaihteessa (Helsinki

1995), 82–89.97 J. Löfström, Sukupuoliero agraarikulttuurissa. ’Se nyt vaan on semmonen’ (Helsinki 1999), 148.

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98 Apo, Satu: Viinan voima. Näkökulmia suomalaisten kansanomaiseen alkoholiajatteluun ja –kult-tuuriin. (Helsinki 2001),173, 373.

99 MV:K18/837.100 Pohjola-Vilkuna, op. cit. (101).101 Tuomaala, op. cit. (52), 362–364.



Gendered practices in Finnish cycling, 1890–1939.

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