ABSTRACT
Ethnographic fieldwork is ideally described as carefully planned and designed. The ethnographers have good pre-knowledge of what is going to take place and about the content of their study. The right persons have been contacted beforehand and they have given their informed consent of participation. The ethnographers enter the roles of the researchers and take part in the events with a clear aim of research and a set of methodological and theoretical tools. This is, however, not always the case. In a narrative writing style, Finland-Swedish folklorist Sofie Strandén-Backa elaborates on how her own practice of washing the carpets became an unintended ethnographic encounter with a Finnish Romany woman. The ethnographic moment she unfolds has a dreamlike quality with events that were out of the control of the researcher. In this chapter, Strandén-Backa thus calls herself “the involuntary ethnographer” due to several factors that make this case of ethnography difficult and uncomfortable. Yet, she feels that it is a case of ethnography seeking its ethnographer. The overreaching aim of this chapter is to show the importance of an ethnographic process that is not linear and strict, nor foreseeable and controllable. New understandings are drawn from surprises, ruptures and ethnographic crises.
