”Finland är de prefabricerade trähusens land”

Digitalisering av arkiv bidrar med ny information om trähusexportens historia

Abstract

In recent decades, the digitization of archival material has radically changed the access to data, and new methodological approaches are needed to manage the large amounts of information. Simultaneously, digitization enables research that had previously been difficult to carry out in an analogue archive. The article examines how a re-evaluation of a known architectural historical phenomenon through structured searches in digital archives can contribute to rewriting the history of the phenomenon. The main questions relate to how the methodology of the systematic literature review can be adapted to the search for material in digitized archives, how can the results be linked to previous research and what is the result of the case study on export of Finnish wooden houses? The result is a much broader description of the Finnish wooden house industry and the history of its export. Through a combination of literature review and systematic search in digitized archives, both in Finland and internationally, the starting point of the prefabrication industry, the number of producers, information on exports and participation in international exhibitions, as well as the volume of exports can be completely reassessed and provide a new foundation for future research.