The Nälkä! exhibition was launched in September 2017, at Ireland’s Great Famine Museum in Co. Roscommon, to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Finland’s own disastrous 1860s famine. Curated by Dr. Andrew G. Newby as a part of his Academy of Finland Project examining comparisons between the Irish and Finnish famines, the Nälkä! exhibition spent two years at three locations in Ireland, and was seen by over 75,000 people. In the autumn of 2019, the exhibition moved to the Culture Centre Valve, in Oulu, where it was a part of the Oulu Irish Festival, and now it is making its final appearance in Tampere.
The exhibition outlines the causes and consequences of Finland’s Great Hunger Years, and considers the ways in which the crisis has been remembered. With the main panels of the Nälkä! exhibition now being put on display here in Tampere, Finnish audiences will be able to see how this important but often-neglected part of their history has been presented overseas.
Dr. Andrew G. Newby is Kone Foundation Senior Research Fellow at Tampere University’s Institute for Advanced Social Research. He is the author and editor of many books and articles on northern European history and society, including Famines in European Economic History (co-editor, 2015); The Enormous Failure of Nature: Famine in Nineteenth Century Europe (editor, 2017); Éire na Rúise: An Fhionlainn agus Éire ar thóir na saoirse [The Ireland of Russia: Finland and Ireland in search of freedom] (author, 2016); ‘Overcoming Amnesia? Memorialising Finland’s “Great Hunger Years“‘ (author, 2018). In addition, he has created and maintains the website Finland’s Great Hunger Years Memorials [ ] and his monograph Finland’s Great Famine 1856-1868 is due to be published by Palgrave in 2020.