Suomalaisnuorten Viipuri-käsityksiä ryhmäkeskusteluissa

Young people in Finland’s perceptions of Vyborg in focus group discussions Vyborg can be understood as ‘lost’ Finnish place, to which certain meanings and memories are attached. This article fills a gap in knowledge by focusing on young people in Finland today, born over 50 years after Vyborg ceased to be a Finnish place, and exploring their perceptions of Vyborg. The results from mixed methods focus groups with 325 16-19 year olds across Finland, conducted by the author in 2017, show several main trends in how young people relate to the memory of Finnish Vyborg. Young people repeated and accepted a certain narrative about the city, acknowledged but rejected the emotional attachment to Vyborg sometimes expressed by other groups in Finland, and justified in various ways ideas about who Vyborg ‘belongs to.’ Overall, results highlighted a generation gap with participants separating themselves from the meanings and memories attached to Vyborg by older people. The concepts of nostalgia and postmemory are used to understand and contextualise these results.