Idyllic Living in Rural Surroundings : Perceptions of Finnish Rural Residents of Their Home Environment

Living in Finnish rural areas is different. Within the urbanized culture that perceives city living as a norm, residing in rural Finland is an exception to the rule. The rural-urban dichotomy represents the two environments as opposites rather than perceiving them as alternative dwelling opportunities.1 Although this polarization has been challenged over decades in research on rurality2 by emphasizing the cultural intertwining and continuities of these two environments as social spaces, the way of understanding them as opposites has persisted among commonly shared perceptions. Both urban and rural areas exist in spatial reality, but the distinctions are created at the level of cultural conceptualizations. According to these ideas, based on stereotypes and assumptions attached to rural and urban, urban represents the modern way of living while rural areas are perceived to be bound either to modern agriculture or its past and to an agrarian lifestyle. It is noteworthy that these cultural perceptions of rurality are based on urban standpoints.3 From this it follows that rural areas are understood as ‘the other’ in relation to the norm; whereas cities are understood in their own terms rural areas represent a site of conceptual struggles, which need to be explained and rendered comprehensible.