Ethnologist researches history of the Finnish bed
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By Marko Leppänen
We spend a third of our lives in bed. Ethnologist Leena Sammallahti, 65, wanted to place the bed into the spotlight that it deserves.
She wrote a book along with her researcher friend Marja-Liisa Lehto on the history of the Finnish bed. "Ever since I was a child I have not slept very well, so the bed occupies my mind in this respect", Sammallahti says with a laugh.
Her recently-published book, Suomalainen sänky ("The Finnish Bed") presents a sequence of development from solid platforms for sleeping, to ornate canopy beds, and to models that can also serve as sofas.
What is unique in Finland is that bunk beds were used in homes, and not just in temporary shelters.
Standing out in their magnificence are the beds of the Tornio River Valley. "They have elegance and richness, which I have always loved", the researcher sighs.
The seeds of the book project were sown in the late 1960s.
At that time, Professor Niilo Valonen, a legend in ethnology, paid students to make an inventory of pictures of interiors of farm homes. Sammallahti was one of the young assistants.
"Once when I took pictures of furniture, a salesman selling new furniture appeared. He thought that I was a competitor. He could hardly believe that anyone would be interested in old furniture. At that time it was used as firewood."
With the bed book, Sammallahti feels that she has completed one area of a major project that her mentor was not able to finish. Valonen’s intention had been to study the villages, yards, buildings, and interiors of farm living in Finland.
Sammallahti lives in Pori in an old row house built for factory workers. In Helsinki she has her "travel suite", the sauna building in the back of a traditional 1950s house in Herttoniemi.
The furnishings of the two homes give an indication of the profession of the person who lives there. "Actually, only the computer is new", she laughs. "Already as a schoolgirl, I went to auctions, looking for old objects."
The researcher’s favourite bed was inherited from her grandmother. It is a model that opens from the side, and the wood is carved, showing pictures of doughnuts and biscuits. However, usually she sleeps in a pine bed from the 1920s, as it is pleasantly wide.
A bed is where people are born, die, and make love. In medieval times, taking a bride into bed was actually written into legislation: a marriage was considered valid only after it could be proved that a couple had spent a night under the same sheets.
Sammallahti’s golden memories of bed also surge with intimacy. "I remember how my grandmother’s sister, a midwife, took me, a child crying for lack of sleep, next to her under sheepskin blankets. And how my fiancé and I shared a Heteka metal frame bed in the hot attic of a summer cottage."
Sammallahti has been retired for a couple of years. Now she uses jazz dance to keep up with her own pace. She also continues to do research. "After being relieved of the obligations of my job, I have dived into the sublime deep waters of a researcher."
The aquatic metaphor is no coincidence. The researcher is the descendant of a maritime family with origins in the outer islands in the Gulf of Finland, which Finland lost in the war.
"Already as a child I was allowed to sail in a boat incredibly freely. During holidays, I was allowed to join my father in a steamship to the harbours of Europe."
Sammallahti got her doctorate at the University of Helsinki in the early 1980s. After that, she worked at jobs, including that of the head of the Finnish Maritime Museum, and the museum of the Satakunta region.
"I have seen how the museum sector grew along with Finnish prosperity. Now it is sad that it is necessary to reduce funding", she notes.
"Museums are the only organisations that store old objects. And with them, we tell about values and meanings - spiritual matters."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.1.2007
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 9.1.2007 - THIS WEEK |
 Ethnologist researches history of the Finnish bed
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