Charles Baudelaire wrote that a true traveller departs only in order to depart, but he himself was forced to leave France after an accusation of blasphemy.
     Today, too, there are millions of people in the world who have been forced to abandon their homes because of military, political or religious persecution. At the same time millions of people pay to travel and, as tourists, break free of their everyday lives. The duality of this migration sometimes seems incomprehensible both factually and ethically.
     Scholars and artists have always been found among both these groups. A Kurdish writer who now lives in Sweden has not chosen his fate, because at home in Turkey he has been accused, by law, of writing in his own native language. A writer who sets up home in Provence has been able to choose his own fate. The difference between a world citizen and a refugee is that the refugee is always conscious of a place to which he cannot return.

Without those who, in Baudelaire’s words, depart ‘with hearts light as a balloon’, and in their minds ‘always onward’, our geographical and mental and cultural world map would be full of white spaces. This spring, the anniversaries of the scholars Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884, the compiler of the national epic, the Kalevala), J.G. Granö (1882–1956) and M.A. Castrén (1813–1852) have been celebrated.
     An exhibition of J.G. Granö’s photographs has been held, and a book of them published. He was a geographer who, while still a child, lived in Siberia, because his father was padre to the Finnish colony there. Later, he led a number of expeditions to the Altai and Mongolia; these resulted in scholarly works. M.A. Castrén, a linguist, also travelled in Siberia, where, in the idealistic spirit of the time, he sought the original home of the Finns and studied languages related to Finnish. On his travels he collected local objects, tools, costume and ritual objects, of which an exhibition has been on show in Helsinki.
     Humanist scholars are often considered wan scribblers, far from the reckless heroes who set out to conquer the world. As late as the 19th century, however, humanist expeditions were very arduous. Funding was scant, and equipment too. Journeys were long, and modes of transport primitive. In Siberia, journeys were taken on foot and by boat in summer, in winter also using teams of reindeer or dogs. M.A. Castrén contracted tuberculosis on his punishing journeys, and died of the disease at the early age of 39.

Throughout history, writers and artists have travelled abroad and often spent long periods in foreign countries. In times when travelling was difficult, they were also pioneers in conveying their contact with different cultures. But the need for departure or absence is also inbuilt in contemporary artists. When a writer is asked the reason for this, answers are indefinite and various. In other people’s view, it may seem a matter of indifference where a writer writes, as the tools are the same irrespective of place. Pen and paper or computer. One's own head, one’s own language. Years ago, I spent a cold and foggy January at a writers’ residence in Slovakia. Linguistically, I lived in a vacuum, and had to explain by drawing when I needed an ironing board or stamps. Extraordinarily, that charmless environment still inspired me to write.
     A friend of mine developed an obsession with walking across all the countries of Europe, as if at the slimmest part of their ‘waist’. He has walked across Ireland, England, Finland, Norway and Sweden, Spain and Portugal. Even he has never analysed why he did it.
     An environment that is completely different in terms of culture and mentality can open new channels, as the poet Eira Stenberg’s letter from Benin and her African-inspired poems demonstrate. Information can never replace the experience of the senses, and so the writer, the artist, also travels voluntarily in the cold and the rain, the dry and the scorching sun.

The development of the novel as a genre is largely associated with the description of journeys, from the early picaresque novels to the classics of the 18th and 19th centuries. Changing landscapes, cities, villages and inns gave writers the opportunity to examine different ways of life and human types without the limitations of class society, in the same way as our ‘heroes’ found themselves in diverse and fascinating adventures.
     Being in motion can also appear as a departure from bourgeois conventionality, as in on-the-road novels and the sometimes romanticising tradition of film. The motion of the characters in the work of Asko Sahlberg expresses their detached nature and their social outsiderdom, which is not based on choice but necessity.

     Kristina Carlson
     Editor-in-chief
 
 
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