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

Abstract

The 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.

Treats in a Wine Cellar

On November 12, 1927, the Ostrobothnian newspaper Wasabladet printed an obituary recounting the life of a locally well-known shopkeeper, Kiril Lipkin. Lipkin was born in 1855 in Vuokkiniemi in East Karelia and started out as an itinerant peddler, making his first trip to Finland when he was only twelve years old. In the 1880s, he settled down in the village of Vörå (Finnish: Vöyri) on the west coast of Finland. Soon he became a successful shopkeeper, but he was also active in numerous other types of businesses. He married a local woman, converted to the Lutheran faith and became a Finnish citizen. At the time of his death, he was described as “a good son of the place that became his second home, generally well liked for his good and cheerful nature.”¹

In many ways, Kiril Lipkin was typical of the itinerant peddlers from Russian Karelia who settled down in Finland at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. He had begun his career as an ambulatory trader at a young age, making numerous trips throughout the years between his home in Russian Karelia and his Finnish customers. And he was not the only one. According to the Finnish historian Pekka Nevalainen, some 300 to 400 men from the region of Vuokkiniemi annually earned a living as itinerant peddlers in Finland at the end of the nineteenth century. Including traders from other areas of Russian Karelia, an estimated 1400–1500 peddlers sold their goods yearly in Finland during the latter part of the nineteenth century, a number that grew to almost 2000 during the first decade of the twentieth century.² However, in other ways Kiril Lipkin was extraordinary. Far from all the itinerant peddlers of Russian Karelian origin who peddled their wares in Finland abandoned their itinerant way of life and settled down. And of those who did, not all became successful businessmen. At the time of his death, Lipkin not only owned several rural shops, he also had shares in ventures that were important for the running of daily life in the Finnish countryside: a bakery, a dairy, and a sawmill.³ Furthermore, he had been involved in a project to modernize his new home region and connect it to the outside world. This venture brought the first telephone line to the people of Vörå. With his earnings, Lipkin had provided himself and his family with a large house, in the basement of which he had a wine cellar where his best customers were entertained after successful business deals. According to one anecdote, Kiril Lipkin, who spoke Swedish with an accent, would ask his customers in a broken tongue if they would prefer a small or a big glass while serving them drinks.⁴ All in all, being a respected member of the community and entertaining guests in his own wine cellar was a huge advancement from the days when he had traversed the countryside on foot, carrying his supply of goods in a large pack on his back.

As exemplified by the case of Kiril Lipkin, some of the itinerant peddlers in time abandoned their itinerant way of life and settled down in the Finnish countryside, and a percentage of these chose to earn their living through shopkeeping. In this chapter, I examine the reception of the itinerant peddlers from Russian Karelia, with a focus on those who settled down in the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland. The aim is to demonstrate how these men made the transfer from peddling, considered to be the lowest level of retail trade, to being shop-based traders, and to examine how they managed, both socially and financially.

Peddlers Settling Down

Finland had transformed from an integral part of the Swedish realm into an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire in 1809. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, numerous traders from the Arkhangelsk Governorate and the Olonets Governorate in Russia proper roamed the Finnish countryside. Based on the way that they transported their goods, the Finnish locals commonly referred to these peddlers as “Rucksack Russians” (Swedish: laukku-ryss, arkangelit; Finnish: laukku-ryssä). The peddlers differed from their local customers in Finland through their Orthodox faith and some cultural attributes, such as language and the way that they dressed (see Fig. 13.1).⁵ Due to a separate citizenship right that had developed in the Grand Duchy, the Russian Karelian peddlers were considered “foreigners” in Finland, and their trade was officially illegal.⁶

Fig. 13.1

Two “Rucksack Russians” in a Finnish atelier, 1917. (Photo by Erik Hägglund. The Society of Swedish Literature in Finlan)

However, the peddlers’ main customers, the people living in the Finnish countryside, were usually unbothered by this fact. With the improvement in the standard of living in Finland in the end of the nineteenth century, they could spend a larger part of their income on consumer items and occasional luxuries. The itinerant peddlers with their large backpacks or bundles with necessities and novelties were therefore awaited guests in many homes. A visit from an itinerant peddler was also appreciated for the amusement that the tradesman provided. The haggling over prices often turned into a spectacle, and in the evenings the peddlers would entertain their hosts with news and exciting stories from other places that they had visited.⁷ Like other mobile groups in Finland at the time, such as the Roma,⁸ the peddlers from Russian Karelia were dependent on the locals for accommodations and food during their journeys. Over time, they established closer connections with specific families and always returned to these houses. In some cases where the peddlers returned frequently to the same village, a friendship formed between the locals and the peddlers. This was important, as the need for a safe place to stay the night was a necessity for the traders so far away from home.⁹

In contrast to peddling, keeping a shop has been described as a form of small-scale commercial activity that holds the promise of a steady livelihood. Shopkeeping is potentially a means of upward social mobility. By definition, it involves ownership of a shop and is consequently a much more advanced form of entrepreneurship than street peddling. Keeping a shop does require some initial investment and a relatively stable enterprise, as well as an extended network of credit and customers. In addition, previous studies have highlighted that keeping a shop is one of the few legitimate sources of advancement for those who have fewer options, for example, due to a lack of education, discrimination against minorities, or language difficulties.¹⁰

During the decades following the famine years of the late 1860s, Finnish society began developing swiftly. A lower mortality rate gave rise to rapid population growth, affecting the rural inhabitants, who more often than before had to resort to working for money instead of working in their own fields. This caused some to leave the countryside, to look for work in the nearest town, while others emigrated. However, despite this movement, Finland was still an agrarian society at the beginning of the twentieth century.¹¹

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Finland also experienced a dramatic rise in consumption. The popularity and success of itinerant trade in this process can partly be explained by the fact that it offered rural consumers a practical way to make necessary purchases.¹² One alternative was to visit the nearest town or a country fair, but such journeys were rarely made, due to long distances. While town trips did bring some variety to everyday life, they were generally considered tiring, time-consuming, and economically unrewarding.¹³

Another alternative was to visit a rural shop. The shop network was relatively weakly developed in comparison to most Western European countries.¹⁴ Furthermore, it seems that many peddlers could still offer a more diverse range of goods for sale than the local shops, and they often brought the latest novelties to their customers.¹⁵ This put the peddlers who turned to shopkeeping in an interesting position that is worthy of scrutiny. On the one hand, they were skilled traders, with contacts to suppliers of novelties and consumer durables. On the other, they lacked an education and the knowledge that was necessary for the more stable livelihood offered by keeping a shop. Despite these challenges, however, some men were willing to take the risk.

During the past decade, historians have stressed the need for examining emotion. A focus on emotions in history will lead to a better understanding of the past as well as insight into how and why emotions have changed over time.¹⁶ The itinerant peddlers evoked various and sometimes contradictory emotions among the people who were affected by their trade.¹⁷ In general, their customers saw a visit from itinerant peddlers as something positive; the visit offered a welcome break from daily routines. Negative views were expressed by the authorities who had an interest in restraining illicit trade and depicting the itinerant peddlers as unjust competitors of honest Finnish merchants. An interest in the success or failure of the peddlers who turned into shopkeepers is part of a line of historical research that has examined the establishment of shops in the Finnish countryside. The most comprehensive study on rural trade has been done by Aulis J. Alanen, whose overview reveals that up until the late 1850s, shops were only allowed in towns. In 1859, however, an act permitted the opening of country shops if the distance to the nearest town was further than 50 km. In addition, the potential shopkeeper had to meet several requirements: in order to set up a shop, one had to be a Finnish citizen with a good reputation, know how to read and write, and be skilled at bookkeeping. The supplies of the first shops were also limited by law.¹⁸

Despite these restrictions, there were already more than 400 country shops three years later, most of them in eastern Finland. According to Alanen, many of these were kept by former peddlers—in other words, men who were accustomed to trade. Furthermore, some of these applicants may have already had some experience of actual shopkeeping, as they had kept some form of illegal shops in farm storehouses prior to 1859. In 1889, the Act of Freedom of Trade had liberated things even more and many new country shops were set up. In his work, Alanen underlines that the opening of a shop was not a simple matter and that many who became involved in retail trade in this way failed. Yet, when the shopkeeper succeeded, the shop could be an important center in the village.¹⁹ The shops not only provided the customers with better access to consumer goods, but they were also generally seen as the cultural outpost of towns in the countryside. The country shops represented places of retail and consumption, as well as places of gathering and recreation for the village residents.²⁰

In general, the retail trade and the interaction between traders and buyers have grown more complex over time.²¹ This chapter focuses on the years 1870–1910. This is roughly the time period covered by the sources, but the decades around 1900 are also interesting when considering the development of consumption in Finnish history. In addition to growth in the number of opportunities for consumption and trade, there was an increase in the amount of goods on the market, as well as their variety. Among the new consumer items, for example, were oil lamps, bicycles and other objects that changed people’s everyday lives and made new activities possible. The increase in consumption was not least visible in the number of writings in the contemporary newspapers, where critical voices were raised against the superfluous and unnecessary consumption in society, especially among the lower classes.²²

Accounts About Rural Consumption

By examining the reception of the traders and the commercial exchanges between them and their customers, I wish to broaden our understanding of the social significance of the peddlers. In this chapter, I will explore the following three questions: (1) how are the peddlers-turned-shopkeepers described in the examined sources, (2) what role did their shops seem to play for the local community, and (3) what was the relationship between the shopkeepers and the surrounding community like?

The analysis is based on a large array of sources, stretching from newspaper writings to court records and bankruptcy documents. The main sources for understanding the reception of the peddlers by the local communities are two ethnographic questionnaires sent out by the Department of Cultural History at Åbo Akademi University in the 1950s and 1960s. The first questionnaire focuses on the country shops in Finland in general, while the other examines the itinerant traders from Russian Karelia and their trade in Finland more specifically.

Ethnographic questionnaires became an important method for gathering data within ethnology in the mid-twentieth century. The ethnographic archives of Åbo Akademi University were founded in 1952 with the aim of acquiring knowledge about the Swedish-speaking culture in Finland. The questionnaire on Russian itinerant peddlers was sent out in 1957, and again in 1968 in a slightly modified version. The collection contains 178 responses from the Swedish-speaking regions of Finland. The other questionnaire, some of which took the form of interviews, was called “Shopkeeping in the countryside.” Conducted in 1953, it received about 200 responses. At times it is difficult to identify specific questions and responses that relate specifically to the topic discussed in this chapter. The respondents have often written a coherent account without distinguishing between the various questions. In the responses to the questionnaire about the itinerant peddlers, the focus is mostly on the peddling itself; however, in some cases, the respondent mentions that the peddler also opened a shop and describes how it fared. It has been a significant discovery that some of the peddlers mentioned by name in the answers to the questionnaire about itinerant peddling reappear as shopkeepers later on.

In this chapter, I try to see the itinerant peddlers as part of a community, focusing on their ambitions and social networks and the practices that surrounded their trade both as peddlers and as shopkeepers. Previous studies have underlined how stories about itinerant traders, despite often being anecdotal, offer insights into the development of consumer society and the people who shaped it. An examination of the ethnographic sources studied in this chapter can illuminate elements of the relationships between retailers and consumers that are invisible in other sources. However, there are a few source-critical aspects to consider. The answers to the questionnaires were written down a long time after the actual events and may have been colored by nostalgia (see also Huldén in this volume Chap. 6). It is also evident that in some cases the accounts were not personally experienced but represent a compilation of interviews made with one or several other persons. This may further affect the reliability of the answers.²³

Setting Up Shop

Those who are not good enough to do anything else might as well become keepers of a country shop. That was the situation in Finland during the 1880s, at least in the mind of a grumpy contemporary commentator writing for the newspaper Åbo Tidning. According to the commentator, numerous country stores had been set up since the liberation of trade; however, many of the shopkeepers seemed to lack the necessary skills and qualifications.²⁴

Previous studies have shown that those who set up a shop in the countryside after the liberation of trade were a diverse group. Some were local farmers who kept a small supply of goods in their homes or a storehouse in the courtyard. Others were educated, including those who had moved to the area with the strict intent to set up a shop.²⁵ After the Act of Freedom of Trade in 1879, those desirous of shopkeeping still had to apply to the governor for permission. Yet, in order to make such an application, one needed permission from the local county sheriff and the city council, saying that they wanted the shop in the first place. By denying this permission, the local council could thus hinder unwanted peddlers from setting up a business. This is something that they often did, for local merchants were often part of the council and saw potentially competing shops as a threat to their own business. Therefore, some peddlers resorted to applying for the permit in the name of a local resident whom they had befriended. Another option was that the peddler became the keeper of a branch shop, while a native Finnish resident had applied for the permit for the main shop.²⁶

As itinerant traders, peddlers from Russian Karelia visited most parts of Finland, and they also settled down all over the country.²⁷ Some spread into the Swedish-speaking areas on the Finnish west coast, venturing as far as the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea (see Fig. 13.2).²⁸ One of these was Nikolai Rugojeff (1876–1914), whose family originated in Kostamus in Russian Karelia. Rugojeff started out as an itinerant peddler in the Åland Islands, selling mostly textiles of various sorts. After venturing into shopkeeping, he kept stores in numerous places, including Eckerö, Jomala, Hammarland and Saltvik.²⁹ The reason for these several attempts was probably the fierce competition among the shopkeepers in the Åland Islands at the time, as there were more traders than could support themselves.³⁰ One respondent reminisced that Nikolai Rugojeff had a quite substantial and varied supply in his shop: mostly fabrics, ready-made suits, a few types of underwear, pins, thread and the like. However, Rugojeff seems to have been a man of many trades. Besides shopkeeping, he also worked as a butcher, and despite owning a building stocked with merchandise, it seems that he still locked up his shop from time to time and went back to itinerant trade.³¹

Fig. 13.2

Göran Lipkin, a former “Rucksack Russian”, established himself professionally as a storekeeper in Vörå, Finland. Here he is posing in his store in the early 1900s. (Photo by Erik Hägglund. The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland)

Many of the Russian Karelian peddlers traveled with friends or relatives. When they settled down, they did so together. When Kiril Lipkin settled down in Vörå, he had help from his brother and nephew, who saw to the franchise shops.³² Nikolai Rugojeff also had a brother, who peddled in the Åland Islands and traded horses when possible.³³ There are also other examples of former peddlers who tried to open up a shop, but still from time to time went back to peddling or gained a livelihood in other ways.³⁴ In addition to all the practical skills needed by a shopkeeper, it was necessary to know if it would be profitable to open up a shop in a specific area.³⁵ As the itinerant peddlers in many cases had a long history of peddling in a specific area before they settled down, they knew their customers quite well. However, that was not enough to be a successful shopkeeper.

Kellery Graham has noted that shopkeepers in Britain changed their way of doing business during the nineteenth century. The shops became larger and brighter, and the prices of items were set instead of being based on haggling. Furthermore, the goods were placed on shelves, out in the open, so that customers could examine them by themselves.³⁶ A similar development was also experienced in the rural shops in Finland, albeit there were variations among the various establishments. According to Aulis Alanen, it was rare for a new shopkeeper to begin by building a specific house for the shop. However, as time went by and business was successful, buildings grew bigger and were purposely built for the needs of the shopkeeper, with room for storage and so on.³⁷ In the answers to the ethnographic questionnaire about country shops, one respondent describes Nikolai Rugojeff’s shop in the following way:

It was a quite small room and then there was a sales counter, and the walls were filled with hooks, where they had all kinds of goods, and the space where the customers could be was about 2 × 2 meters, no more than that, I think. […] He kept his supply in a storehouse. But he had a large supply. They had glass on one part of the counter, and the rest was without glass, and then they lined up their supply on the counter so that the customers could see what was sold; but the part that was covered by glass, there the goods were kept under the glass and then the customer had to point at the desired item.³⁸

Pekka Nevalainen has argued that the Russian Karelian peddlers who became shopkeepers often did so because they were “big players,” men with the necessary resources and networks. Furthermore, many of them married local women, which further integrated them into the local community.³⁹

From the sources that I have studied, it seems that many of these peddlers-turned-shopkeepers started out on a quite small scale and with modest means. One respondent mentions that the itinerant peddlers usually turned first from ambulatory trade to selling goods in the market square; thereafter, if they were successful, they moved on to opening a shop.⁴⁰ In the case of Nikolai Rugojeff, like many other peddlers settling down, he lacked an education in shopkeeping and no form of bookkeeping seems to have existed in his store. However, the room described above, with glass covering the sales desk, suggests that he was successful, as such displays were not found in every country store at that time. From some of the other respondents’ descriptions of shops, it is clear that the peddlers-turned-shopkeepers could start out on a quite small scale. A respondent from the village of Jungsund in the region of Ostrobothnia remembers that the first shop there, opened in the 1860s, was much more modest than the one kept by Nikolai Rugojeff. The shopkeeper, a former peddler named Filippus, rented a room in one of the local farmhouses. He had a quite modest supply of goods: fabrics and various sorts of pieces of clothing, boots, gloves, Russian tobacco, coffee and sugar for those who could afford it. The shop operated for some years but closed after the shopkeeper died in the 1870s.⁴¹

Daily Necessities and Consumer Durables

The increase in consumer items on the market and the changes in people’s consumption habits at the end of the nineteenth century gave rise to a widespread debate . In the contemporary newspapers, many critics complained that especially the poor people in the countryside spent what little money they had on unnecessary items.⁴² The itinerant peddlers from Russian Karelia were often accused of spreading luxuries in the countryside. Now, the country shopkeepers as well were blamed for the same practice.⁴³

The range of consumer items for sale in country shops was naturally of great interest to the customers. However, the supply of goods was not always that rich and varied. Especially in recently opened shops, the supply could be limited until the business got up and running properly.⁴⁴ Itinerant peddlers from Russian Karelia primarily sold consumer durables, such as ready-made clothes and textiles, rather than daily necessities like food. However, a considerable part of their supply can also be described as necessities, a concept that was changing and becoming wider in late nineteenth-century Finland.⁴⁵ For example, cotton, a fabric that previously had been considered a luxury, came to be used by people from all ranks of society in the furnishing of homes and as part of modern attire by the end of the nineteenth century.⁴⁶

Itinerant peddlers in the best of times carried a surprisingly wide assortment of goods; in addition to textiles, these included small and light items such as ribbons, needles, buttons, medicines, prints and eyeglasses. Sometimes they also carried foodstuffs and later also factory-made clothes. The range in the quality of these items was as wide as the assortment. Much of it was of poor quality, but there were also new and modern items, as many of the traders were well connected.⁴⁷ The ambulatory traders brought their supplies of goods with them from major towns in Russia, such as Petrozavodsk, St. Petersburg or Nizhny Novgorod, while others had their own storages in Finland.⁴⁸ When the peddlers settled down, they naturally could continue to sell all the goods that they had previously carried, but they were no longer limited by the need to transport the goods on their backs. That said, the transport of merchandise was at times an issue even for country stores. Since much of the transport at the time was done via sailing ships, the shopkeepers had to build up a good stock of goods during the part of the year when sailing was possible.⁴⁹

Some shopkeepers did quite well and had a wide and varied supply of goods. For instance, the shop of former peddler Ivan Schitinsky near Lovisa in Uusimaa seems to have been well stocked. Schitinsky mostly got his supply of goods from St. Petersburg, where he traveled by his own ship, by exchanging firewood for consumer items such as flour, grain, coffee, sugar, sweets, fabric, rope, boots, petroleum, porcelain, lamps, gunpowder, arsenic and so on. The shop had a good location, next to the main road, and displayed a sign that said Olutkauppa (“Beer store”). The shop was of medium size with two rooms and a hallway. While he was away, the shop was tended to by his wife and her mother. His wife was a Russian woman, but she had studied in a Swedish-speaking school in Finland and could therefore accommodate customers in their language (KIVA 4 M196).

The previously mentioned shopkeeper Nikolai Rugojeff made several attempts at keeping a shop in various places in the Åland Islands, but he unfortunately died during an appendectomy in Turku in August 1914 at the age of 38.⁵⁰ His sudden death left his businesses unsorted, and his wife and three underaged children had to file for bankruptcy. The documents reveal interesting details about his network and possessions, including the goods that were sold at his shop, at the time of his death. Among the goods are listed numerous foodstuffs but also soap, iron and nails. The list also mentions rags, skins and wool, items that commonly featured in barter with the Russian Karelian peddlers.⁵¹

As itinerant traders, the peddlers from Russian Karelia preferred to get paid in cash, but in some cases, barter was also an option. One special item that they bartered was human hair; poor women in the countryside would exchange a piece of their hair for a new headscarf. The peddlers, in turn, sold the hair to wigmakers or other parties who turned the hair into jewelry, false braids and so on.⁵² In country shops, some shopkeepers offered their customers credit, but cash was preferred, and haggling was common. Kiril Lipkin seems not to have been the only one to treat his customers with small gifts. Especially during Christmas time, the shopkeepers added something extra to the purchases.⁵³

In the Center of the Village

Street peddling is at best a temporary solution, allowing people from marginalized groups to earn a living.⁵⁴ For the peddler who managed to abandon their itinerant trade and establish a store, the choice of location was important. Villages and otherwise densely populated areas were often preferred.⁵⁵ In general, late nineteenth-century country stores placed in the middle of the village had an important role as gathering places for the people living in the surrounding areas.⁵⁶ In the shops established by the former peddlers, opening hours seem to have been quite late or not even defined; if there was a customer around, the shop was open.⁵⁷ Consequently, people passing by would know that they could meet others in the shop, even if they did not need to make any purchases. If the store was big enough, it soon became a place to gather in the evening to discuss and hear the latest news.⁵⁸

The supply of the first country stores in Finland was regulated by law. Beer—but nothing stronger—was allowed.⁵⁹ The fact that Ivan Schitinsky sold beer in his store does not seem to have been appreciated by everyone, but the store was popular and especially on Sunday evenings people from several villages would gather there to socialize. This would sometimes result in fights in the store, fueled by the consumption of alcoholic beverages.⁶⁰ In other stores as well, people would gather to drink or socialize.⁶¹ Kiril Lipkin even had revival meetings and sewing meetings arranged in his store.⁶² One respondent underlined that the storekeeper was a central figure in the village, the only one in contact with the outer world, who could tell them about what was happening there.⁶³ The shopkeeper could also introduce novelties to his customers. As previously mentioned, Kiril Lipkin was involved in introducing the first phone line in his village, while the shopkeeper in Granboda in the Åland Islands was the first one to own a bicycle.⁶⁴

Previous studies have underlined the link between shopkeeping and specific sets of knowledge. Those who wanted to be successful in shopkeeping needed to have certain skills, such as being aware of how to keep costs down, control stocks and display the goods in a proper way.⁶⁵ Furthermore, communication is a self-evident element in the relationship between sellers and consumers, and it played a key role in the interaction between local customers and itinerant peddlers. Several of the respondents mentioned that for the former itinerant peddlers, the Swedish language posed a challenge.⁶⁶ Indeed, the question of language was sometimes an obstacle in the Swedish-speaking regions of Finland already when the shopkeepers were still peddlers. The traders from Russian Karelia spoke Karelian or Russian as their mother tongue. Karelian was a dialect of the Finnish language, and the variety spoken in the border regions between Russia proper and the Grand Duchy of Finland was so close to standard Finnish that it did not constitute a communicative barrier in the Finnish-speaking regions.⁶⁷ By contrast, since Swedish is a Germanic language unrelated to Finnish, it posed a different kind of challenge. The ethnologist Nils Storå has maintained that the language of the itinerant peddlers from Russian Karelia was “completely incomprehensible” to customers in Swedish-speaking regions, and Nevalainen offers the linguistic challenge as an explanation for why the Swedish-speaking regions were the last in the Grand Duchy where they established their trade.⁶⁸ Nevertheless, language was not an insurmountable barrier. While the traders may have experienced initial language barriers in Swedish-speaking regions, most rather quickly learned the necessary words to communicate.⁶⁹

One way to help communication with the customers was to employ a clerk or maid as a helper in the shop. It seems that some peddlers brought their whole families from Russian Karelia to Finland to work for them, while others hired local youngsters. When engaging local help, an important qualification was that they could count. To work in a shop seems to have been a desired job, albeit not one that was well paid. As the shop was open from early in the morning until late in the evening, many of the clerks slept above the store and could therefore always be of service. However, in addition to the pay and the place being a hub of activity, it seems that the people employed in the store were considered by their peers to have a little better social standing.⁷⁰ One reason for choosing a familiar helper may have been the need to trust the people minding the store. There was cash on hand and novelties for sale, and sometimes the temptation to take some might grow too strong. In a case from Jomala in the Åland Islands, a woman hired as a maid in the store of two former peddlers stole a number of goods, ranging from various textiles to buttons, candy and other foodstuffs.⁷¹ However, the local county sheriff soon found out about the theft and she and her helper were given a fine.⁷²

Peddlers and Fairytale Princes

One of the questions posed in the introduction to this chapter had to do with the way in which the former peddlers were received in the local communities, not as storekeepers but as potential sons-in-law and husbands. Due to the many tasks involved in shopkeeping, it was easier to keep a shop if someone was there to help, such as a wife.⁷³ In the answers to the questionnaires that I have examined, the peddlers—and especially the young ones—are often described as good-looking, fairy-tale princes. One of the respondents from the Åland Islands noted that around the year 1870, four itinerant peddlers came to the village and rented a small cottage where they kept their supply and slept when trading in the villages nearby:

Their names were Pavel, Konstantin and Probus—these were all already older men. But Probus also had his son Elias with him, who was supposed to learn how the trade was done. The four traders became very popular. They were happy and lively—playing instruments and singing, and all four of them knew how to speak Swedish quite well […] During the summer Elias made good friends with the younger people in the village. He even got to spend the evenings at the place where they gathered in the evenings, even if outsiders usually were beaten if they came there. Elias was like a fairy-tale prince. His clothes were different, he danced with soft, high, shiny boots, he sang and was happy. Everybody liked him. When autumn came and the traders were about to leave, he stayed as a son-in-law in one of the houses in the village.⁷⁴

It is evident that romantic relationships did from time to time develop between the itinerant peddlers and the local women, and that this was a reason for the former to stay in the Finnish countryside, often supporting their family by keeping a country store or engaging in some other type of business.⁷⁵ There are also a few mentions of a peddler marrying a local woman and taking her with him back to Russian Karelia.⁷⁶ As was stated earlier, the itinerant peddlers evoked various feelings in the local communities. On the one hand, these relationships were sometimes frowned upon, as the peddlers occasionally provoked suspicion and anger. They were suspected, for example, of being especially friendly toward women and girls, as they thought that it was easier to lure these into buying low-quality goods.⁷⁷

On the topic of marriage, one respondent mentions that weddings between a peddler and a local woman were not considered proper, and that the parties involved were ridiculed. In the contemporary newspapers, often representing the views of the government, local merchants and priests, the relationships were more often described in a negative manner.⁷⁸ In the case of the fairy-tale prince Elias, after a while he was forced by the local priest to convert and change his last name to a more Swedish-sounding one.⁷⁹ Similar accounts are also given by other respondents.⁸⁰ The former peddler Lipkin, mentioned in the introduction, also converted, perhaps as a form of adaption to the local community. However, a number of respondents described the peddlers as wealthy men or acknowledged that they at least had more money than the poor country dwellers did, and therefore these kinds of marriages were seen as something positive.⁸¹

One respondent from Lapinjärvi in Uusimaa remembered that one of the itinerant peddlers who frequented the area later settled down there. The name of the peddler was Ivan Semenoff (1830–1891), and he was born in Repola in Olonets. He married a local woman and changed his name to a Swedish one, Malmberg. He and his wife built their own place close to her childhood home and opened the first store in the area. After the death of his first wife, Malmberg married another local woman and built a new stylish home with a room for his shop and separate storage buildings for his merchandise. The commodities were brought from St. Petersburg and transported by boat and horse to the shop. According to the respondent’s description, the store was spacious and had a large staircase leading directly from the road. The shopkeeper himself or his wife or her sister stood behind the counter, and the sister also worked as a cook and housemaid. There was also a farmhand who took care of the house and the horses and at times helped with the transport of goods. Without many skills—he seems, for example, to have lacked knowledge of bookkeeping—the former peddler Malmberg had managed to become a successful businessman and gain a large fortune through shopkeeping.⁸²

Peddlers Settling Down

In this chapter I have discussed the reception of Russian Karelian peddlers who abandoned their itinerant way of life and settled down in the Finnish countryside at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. My point of departure was that the transition from peddler to a shopkeeper in late nineteenth-century Finland posed several challenges but also possibilities. I was interested in finding out what the accounts about peddlers and shopkeepers would reveal about the setting up of a country shop, as well as the reception of the former peddlers by the local community. I have analyzed several responses to two ethnographic questionnaires dealing with peddling and shopkeeping as well as other sources.

For marginalized groups such as Russian Karelian peddlers, self-employment was often a necessity. However, in the sources examined, the peddlers-turned-shopkeepers are often mentioned by name, suggesting that they made something more than a fleeting impression. At least in the memories of the respondents to the questionnaires, they enjoyed similar or even better social standing than the locals. The outlay and appearance of the shops kept by former peddlers seem to have varied, but if the building or room stocked with goods was large enough, it soon became the center of the village. Then the shops had several purposes; they were not only places of consumption, but also places where people would go to hear the latest news or spend the evening in company.

Some of the former peddlers brought their wives with them to their new home, while others married local women. Based on the examined accounts, the responses of the local community to these marriages seem to have been twofold. On the one hand, they were seen as something positive, for the shopkeepers were considered to be wealthy men who could provide for their families. On the other hand, some former peddlers were still seen as outsiders and their marriages were questioned.

The stories about peddlers and shopkeepers examined in this chapter are also stories about consumption. Some of the peddlers who settled down could not offer their customers a larger variety of goods than they had done as peddlers, while others managed to build up a large and varied supply of merchandise. Taken together, these stories give us broader insight into the Finnish retail history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.