Respectable and Masculine Livelihoods: Roma Stories of Horse Trading

Abstract

Until the mid-twentieth century, the Finnish Roma supported themselves by small-scale itinerant trade, such as peddling and market trade. This chapter traces Roma’s strategies of survival in the first half of the twentieth century by analyzing interviews with Finnish Roma. The analysis demonstrates how horse trading carried out by men was experienced as the most important, profitable, and respectable form of livelihood. Women’s versatile work tasks also required trust and aid from the majority population, yet both women and men emphasized the worth of the masculine form of livelihood. The chapter investigates in detail how gender operated in narratives of horse trading and how the construction of a masculine self was taking place in certain spatial realms, like the marketplace.