The peasant poor and images of poverty: Finnish proverbs as discursive representations of cultural knowledge

Abstract

This article examines the core idea of poverty proverbs as hints of cultural knowledge in old Finnish rural countryside. Until World War II, most of the Finns lived in a high-risk society with only few institutions to guarantee their safety and well-being. The continuous threat of absolute poverty was evident for the majority of the Finns. The basis of this research is 204 proverbs that contain the words poor, poverty, pity or unfortunate. The proverbs analyzed and classified here were collected in the Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society between the years 1885 and 1950. The ideational level of the proverbs in the context of social history is crucial in revealing the schematic structure that people use to communicate about rural poverty.