ABSTRACT
11 September 2020 marked the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Riihimäki–St. Petersburg railway. This anniversary was celebrated and commemorated with several exhibitions throughout Finland. However, while the railway is lauded for providing a boost to the Finnish economy and state-building, parts of the track are surrounded by mass burial sites. During early phases of its construction, the railway was utilised as a relief work to combat hunger and poverty during the famine that afflicted Finland in the late 1860s. Due to the high mortality rates and harsh working conditions, the railway also became known as the ‘Skeleton Track’. This chapter analyses the memorialisation, heritagisation, and musealisation of the ‘Skeleton Track’ in three memorial sites and three museum exhibitions. It shows that while many of these memorials and exhibitions adhere to the dominant narrative of the railway as a part of Finland's modernisation process, the peripheral locations of the burial sites themselves resist full immersion into such an understanding of the railway's history.
