Abstract The horse is one of the most important animals both culturally and historically in Finland. During the last 100 years the use of horses has changed as their roles in agricultural and forestry work and warfare have changed to companion in sport, therapy and recreation. In the 1960s the number of horses collapsed with the mechanization and urbanization. And yet their numbers are now rising with their popularity in recreation and sports. This study seeks to explain how the changing roles of the horse are displayed in the concepts of it, its handling and human-horse relationship in Finland. The time span of the research dates from the 1920s to 2000s but some background knowledge of horses from archaeology, history and ethnology are also used. This PhD study falls under the fields of cultural anthropology and human-animal studies. The main research material consists of interviews conducted by the researcher and written horse stories of Finnish people from the archives of the Finnish Literature Society. The theoretical-methodological framework in this study employs cognitive anthropology and narrative research. Those narratives which included personal experiences were analyzed with the interviews in order to find cultural models of human-horse relationship and to find the most common concepts and meanings given to horses. Furthermore, in the research the meaning of childhood experiences, different concepts of horses by different generations and genders, and the differences due to varying horse keeping traditions, such as trotting and riding, were identified. The analysis according to cultural model theory produced five cultural models based on the different concepts of horses and the ways they were handled such as servant, machine, hero, performer and therapist. Of these the servant and machine models were associated with the working horse, and in the servant model the human-horse relationship was described by trust, matching temperaments, and human leadership. Machine model included a mechanical idea of horses and was based on mistrust, disregard and domination towards the animal. The warhorse was seen as a hero that was anthropomorphized and respected more than other horses in the narratives. Of contemporary horses the sport horses were seen as performers and the human-horse relationship was based on practicality, reading the horse and human ambition. A leisure horse was considered a therapist with which the relationship was based on understanding, nurture and adventurous experience. The horse appears as a friend and an object of affection in all other models except the machine model. / Tiivistelmä Hevonen on yksi merkittävimpiä eläimiä Suomessa niin kulttuurisesti kuin historiallisesti. Sen rooli on kuitenkin muuttunut paljon viimeisen sadan vuoden aikana; kun 1960-luvulla hevosten määrä romahti maatalouden murroksen ja kaupungistumisen myötä, nykyään hevosten määrä nousee sen suosion kasvaessa harraste- ja urheilueläimenä. Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin, miten muutos näkyy suomalaisten hevoseen, hevosen käsittelyyn sekä ihmisen ja hevosen suhteeseen liittämissä käsityksissä. Ajallisesti tutkimus keskittyi 1920–2000-lukujen väliseen ajanjaksoon, mutta sitä taustoitettiin arkeologisella, historiallisella ja kansatieteellisellä tiedolla hevosesta. Kulttuuriantropologian sekä yhteiskuntatieteellisen ja humanistisen eläintutkimuksen erityisaloihin kuuluvan tutkimuksen pääaineisto koostui tekijän tekemistä haastatteluista sekä Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Hevostarinakeruu-kilpakeruuaineistosta. Tutkimuksen teoreettis-metodologinen viitekehys koostui kognitiivisen antropologian ja narratiivitutkimuksen näkökulmista. Tutkimusaineistoon valituista kokemuskertomuksista etsittiin kulttuurisia malleja hevosesta eli niissä yleisemmin esiintyviä käsityksiä ja merkityksiä. Tutkimuksessa kävivät lisäksi ilmi lapsuuden hevoskokemusten merkityksellisyys, eri sukupolvien ja sukupuolten erilaiset hevoskäsitykset ja eri hevosenkäsittelyperinteistä juontuvat erot esimerkiksi ravi- ja ratsastuskulttuureissa. Kulttuurimalliteorian mukaisen analyysin tuloksena löytyi viisi kulttuurista mallia hevosesta ja hevosen käsittelystä; palvelija-, kone-, sankari-, suorittaja- ja terapeuttimallit. Näistä palvelija- ja konemallit liittyivät työhevoseen. Palvelijamallin mukaan ihmisen ja hevosen suhdetta kuvasivat luottamus, luonteiden yhteen sopiminen ja ihmisen johtajuus. Konemalli perustui epäluuloon ja välinpitämättömyyteen hevosta kohtaan sekä hevosen alistamiseen. Sankarina näyttäytyi sotahevonen, jota inhimillistettiin ja kunnioitettiin kertomuksissa enemmän kuin muita hevosia. Nykyhevosista urheiluhevoset näyttäytyvät suorittajina ja suhteessa siihen korostuivat käytännöllisyys, hevosen lukeminen ja ihmisen kunnianhimo. Harrastehevonen oli monelle kertojalle terapeutti, jonka kanssa suhde perustui ymmärtämiseen, hoivaamiseen ja elämyksellisyyteen. Ystävänä ja kiintymyksen kohteena hevonen näyttäytyi kaikissa paitsi konemallissa.

This study has two aims and addresses two areas of investigation. The first aim is to examine, in four novels and their textual worlds, what role is played by collective self-images and essentialist identities in maintaining power structures in regard to gender, class, norms for mental functions, and ethnicity. Whether, and if so, how, the novel’s deconstruction of language and images can function as resistance to hegemonic oppression? What does the encounter between the privileged collective and the marginalized look like in the novel, and what happens in this encounter? The project’s second aim is to probe what criticism of, and what strategies for resistance to, various power structures reading can provide. To what extent is it possible to speak of responsibility for, and in, the reading of fictional works? What role is played by the (un)expected and the conditionality in the poetical novel’s ethical demands on the reader? What might reading as an ethical practice mean and entail? The dual aim situates this dissertation in an interdisciplinary field between ethics, literary studies and aesthetics. In this study despair is the fundament on which the ethical reader stands to approach literature. Rather than discovering meanings, finding examples, or experiencing empathy, it is being engaged in the conditions determined by suffering and injustice that constitutes ethical reading. The novels Drömfakulteten (The Dream Faculty) by Sara Stridsberg, Hevonen häst (Hevonen Horse) by Annika Korpi, Montecore by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and Personliga pronomen (Personal Pronouns) by Daniel Sjölin comprise the material for the study. They are analysed in terms of deconstructive hermeneutics. Theories brought to bear are primarily Gayatri Spivak’s post-colonial and Emmanuel Levinas’ phenomenological thinking about ethics, together with ideas from, among others, Derek Attridge, Judith Butler, and Sara Ahmed. The readings of the novels are done via four points of entry: identity, the body, the human, and the post-political, as part of the project’s work process, with each reading leading to new questions and critical interventions. The analysis points to a responsibility in relation to identity, a practice where oneself is shifted and transformed. This responsibility also encompasses accountability for the normative orders that need to be changed. Literary projects per se cannot achieve this, but they can be read as a stab at resistance, material for the reader to elaborate upon. This responsibility is an ethical practice that is not completed, that has uncertainty inscribed in its very essence, and that is reinvigorated with each new reading.