Flexible, portable and communal domesticity : everyday domestic practices of Finnish sailors and logging workers, c. 1880s to 1930s

Abstract

Home and domestic comfort are typically associated with dwellings. This chapter expands definitions and ideas about domesticity, homeliness, and home by examining the experiences of mobile groups of working men: Finnish sailors and logging workers. Based on written oral histories, this research demonstrates the domestic strategies they employed—flexible, temporal, portable and communal—to uphold certain domestic routines, enjoy comforts, maintain a link to home, as well as creating a sense of homeliness in hostile environments.