Пожидаева, О. В. The image of Russia and the Kola North in some Scandinavian and Finnish writers / О. В. Пожидаева // Диалог через границы: границеведение в перспективе идей М. М. Бахтина / М-во образования и науки Рос. Федерации, Мурм. гос. гуманитар. ун-т, Ун-т Нурланда (Норвегия). - Мурманск, 2013.

О. V. Pozhidaeva THE IMAGE OF RUSSIA AND THE KOLA PENINSULA IN THE WORKS OF MODERN SCANDINAVIAN AND FINNISH WRITERS 1 The writer, according to Bakhtin, is involved and participates in the life of his own works. He must feel the “other minds”, have “artistic kindness.” The involvement of the author in “life events" is his responsibility. Dialogue is an open mind and behavior of a person in reality. “To be means to communicate" (M.M. Bakhtin). Dialogical relations lead to newmeanings that “there will always be changing and updating". Dialogue is not necessarily dispute or controversy. Dialogue is primarily a field of spiritual enrichment of people and a way to unite them. Consent is one of the most important forms of dialogical relations. In a dialogue with the author the reader, according to Bakhtin, overcomes the “strangeness of others.” Inclusion in the fiction of images of different peoples, cultural epochs leads to mutual enrichment of both the author and the reader. Understanding the work of art is not a scientific form of knowledge, according to Bakhtin. In the humanitarian sphere the main aspect is not the accuracy of knowledge, but the depth of penetration”. The subject of this study is the image of Russia in the works of modern Scandinavian and Finnish writers. Image is any meaningful phenomenon of reality in a literary text. Russia is its people, their home, art, religious culture, values. Russia is a geographical area, the country, its politics, economics, and history. The dialogue of Russian and Scandinavian cultures is depicted in the works of D.M. Sharypkin, T.A. Chesnokova, V.RNeustroev, M.l.Steblin-Kamensky, AJ. Gurevich, M. Lustrov, A.V. Nazarenko, E.A. Melnikova, EG. Karhu, T. Vihavainen and others devoted their research to relations between the Russian and Finnish culture. The image of Russia in the Scandinavian literature appearfed back in sagas. Then Russ was called Gardariki (a country of many cities). Royal sagas “Rotten Skin”, “Beautiful Skin”, “The Saga of Saint Olave,” “Saga of Eymunde”, “Circle of the Earth” of Snorri Sturlusson tell us about the events of the XI century, the time of the reign of Yaroslav the Wise. The image of Russia in the sagas is the image of a stranger, of another land. In the sagas negative Rusichi (the Russians) are described in a negative way: they are often weak-willed, passive and stingy as opposed to Scandinavians. A similar trend can be found in the essays of the famous Finnish writer of the XIX century E. Lonnrot. Lonnrot visited the Kola Peninsula in the winter and spring of 1842 to study the Sami. The writer criticizes the senseless, in his view, movement of people from villages between Kandalaksha and Onega to the Murmansk coast of the Arctic Ocean. Each spring, the locals went there to fish, instead of farming - a lucrative source of peasant income. Lonnrot also notes that hunting and fishing, the constant 1 The study was sponsored by RHF and the Government of the Murmansk region in the framework of research («Literature of the Kola Peninsula as part of the cultural space of Russia (for the 100th anniversary of Murmansk)»), the project Ne 13-14-51002