In Search of Waves: A Life Course Analysis of the Mobile Lifestyle of Finnish Surfer-travellers

Abstract

Surfing is often a mobile lifestyle, centred around the search for waves. This article analyses Finnish surfer-travellers through a life course perspective. The data consists of 20 thematic life story interviews, conducted in 2016–2017. Surfer-travellers are representative of highly mobile cosmopolitan youth. This analysis focuses on how they have engaged with surf-travelling, what networks and capital they have utilized in doing so, and how their active agency and choices have influenced their lifestyles. Through their individual agency, surfer-travellers organize their lives to prioritize their travels. For surfer-travellers, mobility is a goal in itself, and this leads to a life ‘lived differently’. The results are connected to wider discussions on lifestyle mobilities, youth mobilities, mobile transitions, and changing conceptions of adulthood.

Introduction

Surfing is a lifestyle that often involves travel and mobility. Many—although not all—surfers from the global west (or ‘north’) have the resources and capacities to be highly mobile. They have long been setting an example of a lifestyle centred around the ideal of hunting the ‘perfect wave’ and the ‘endless summer’ (Ormrod, 2005), and this ideal has become widespread and commodified (e.g., Ford & Brown, 2006, pp. 47–58). Today, surfing has reached corners of the globe that some decades ago were practically outside the radar of surf culture. One of them is Finland, a country without world-class waves, where youth and young adults have taken to surfing and combined it with a mobile, travelling lifestyle.

In this article, I analyse interviews of Finnish surfer-travellers through a life course perspective (Elder & Giele, 2009). The goal of the article is to explore the processes through which the interviewees have engaged themselves with surf-travelling, and how their agency has influenced their mobile lifestyle. The data is composed of 20 thematic life story interviews of travelling surfers, conducted in 2016–2017. Finnish surfer-travellers are representative of highly mobile cosmopolitan youth (see also Piispa, 2019). In the context of mobility, they represent young ‘cultural elites’ or even ‘trendsetters’, as characterized by Du Bois-Reymond (1998, p. 64). Their travelling lifestyle fits under the definition of ‘lifestyle mobilities’, as it breaks down the conventional divides between work and leisure and ‘home’ and ‘away’, and the mobility they practice functions as a tool for identity construction (Cohen et al., 2015; Rickly, 2016).

Mobility is often seen as a resource or a form of capital for today’s youth, as a ‘generation on the move’ (Robertson et al., 2018) makes use, and are expected to do so, of mobility in their transitions to adulthood. These transitions, however, are often complex and nonlinear, and the very conception of adulthood is constantly on the move itself. The life course perspective takes into account not only these transitions, but also the networks and forms of capital that are acquired and necessary for practicing a mobile lifestyle, the historical and cultural background that the life course is based on (Vogt, 2018), and the cumulative nature of that life course. While it could be argued that some of the interviewees are not exactly young anymore (age range is 24–41), they are leading a lifestyle that could be described as ‘prolonged youth’, or as challenging the ‘normal’ conceptions of adulthood, as will be demonstrated in the analysis. Furthermore, the interviews encompass their life course to date, going back to how the youth and overall lives of the interviewees have been lived during the past decades, and how finding surf-travel in their earlier life has influenced them over subsequent years. By analysing childhood influences, youth and development, the life course perspective can function as an important tool for understanding how (early) adulthood is changing (e.g., Mary, 2012; Robertson et al., 2018).

This analysis bridges the two interdisciplinary fields of youth studies and mobility studies. The findings of this article deepen our understanding of how lifestyle (sport) mobility develops and is established through a life course. For surfer-travellers, mobility is not just a means of transition or a rite of passage to adulthood; it is a purpose in itself, and an integral part of how to live life ‘differently’. Additionally, the article contributes to research on surf travel and explores the processes of engagement with surf culture of people who have been raised in a country without world class surf. This highlights the cross-cultural and cosmopolitan nature of surf culture, and emphasizes how the surfer-traveller lifestyle requires socialization not only into surf culture or travelling, but into both.

At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a widespread and serious effect on global mobilities. There is a fair chance that in the future the mobile lifestyles and travel in search of waves will not be what they used to be. Analyses of mobile lifestyles of the pre-covid era will provide valuable knowledge for understanding how youth and young adults orient their (mobile) lives in the years to come. These issues will be returned to in the conclusions.

Surf Travel and Lifestyle Mobilities

Not all surfers travel, but many do. Research on surf tourism and surfer mobility has been largely confined to the established markets of the USA, Europe, and Australia. Meanwhile, more ‘peripheral’ surf cultures, such as surf culture and surfing in Finland, remain less studied.

While research on surf tourism has proliferated during recent years, surf travel itself is an older phenomenon. Especially since the 1960s, as the phenomenon of ‘soul surfing’ and the romanticized ideal of hunt for the perfect wave gained in popularity, surf travel became commodified and was sold to large audiences via surf media (Ingersoll, 2016, pp. 12–15; Ormrod, 2005). Furthermore, the increase in surfers and subsequent crowding of popular spots stimulated international surf travel (Ford & Brown, 2006, p. 32). Some surfers have moved to pleasant locations with consistent surf, contributing to the development of transnational surf communities (Usher, 2017). Until the COVID-19 pandemic, surf travel had become easier than ever, and was practiced by large masses from multiple corners of the world. As a downside, the increase in surf travel has had various dubious effects on the environment and local communities (e.g., Ingersoll, 2016; Ponting et al., 2005; Usher, 2017).

Towner (2016, p. 63) explains that ‘Surfing becomes tourism as soon as surfers travel away from their local surf break, with riding waves as the primary purpose for travel’. The archetypal travelling surfer is a young adult travelling without a family, on a longer journey, spending relatively little money on a daily basis (e.g., Ford & Brown, 2006, p. 49; Porter & Usher, 2018). But they usually are by no means poor, and surf travel is typically practiced by people from affluent societies. It has also been observed that spending per surf trip increases with age (Porter & Usher, 2018; Towner, 2016). Barbieri and Sotomayor’s (2013) research found that travelling is common among surfers: according to their data, over 90% of the respondents had taken a surf trip in the past, and nearly one-third of the respondents made multiple surf trips annually. A large proportion of their respondents were aged 18–30 years. Travelling surfers are often in their 20s or 30s (see e.g., Hritz & Franzidis, 2018; Porter & Usher, 2018), and they often prefer to travel with friends (Hritz & Franzidis, 2018). While the majority of surf tourists are still male, female participation has been increasing lately (see also Fendt & Wilson, 2012).

Increased mobility and improvements in transport and communications have dislocated surfer identity from the surfers’ own ‘shores’ (Anderson, 2013). Thus, the surfer identity has become trans-local, routed, and rootless. While surf culture ‘transcends national boundaries’ (Ford & Brown, 2006, p. 50), it takes on a ‘local colouring’ (Langseth, 2012, p. 19) wherever it is received and adopted.

Cohen et al. (2015) use the term ‘lifestyle mobilities’ in order to develop a better understanding of the intersections between travel, leisure, and migration. They emphasize that these ‘ongoing semi-permanent moves of various duration’ reshape the divide between work and leisure and the dichotomies of ‘home’ and ‘away’, and result in complexities in identity, place, and belonging. Lifestyle mobilities are voluntary, and a fluid process with multiple moorings—there may or may not be a return to an ‘origin’. Mobility takes place throughout the life course; it is an integral part of it. For some people, mobility ‘is their everyday, and as such the choice of a mobile lifestyle extends to a way of life’ (Cohen et al., 2015, p. 157).

In the spirit of lifestyle mobilities, surf travel shares similarities with other travel-oriented lifestyle sports, such as snowboarding and rock climbing. Wheaton (2004) defines lifestyle sports as individualistic, youthful, non-aggressive, resistant to regulation and institutionalization, risk and hedonism oriented, and critical of or ambiguous about competition. Lifestyle sports are more about ‘doing it’ than the pursuit of competitive success. Thorpe (2012) notes that the typical travelling snowboarders come from relatively affluent backgrounds. In Thorpe’s terms, they are ‘lifestyle sport migrants’: ‘nomadic, traveling nationally and internationally to experience new terrain, meet new people, or “live the dream” of the endless winter’ (Thorpe, 2012, p. 325). This is like a mirror image of the travelling surfers’ search for the ‘endless summer’. Similarly, many rock climbers maintain ‘minimalist, hypermobile lifestyles intended to prioritize rock climbing and the travel that accompanies it’ (Rickly, 2016, p. 4). Rickly (2016) argues that leisure practices are often vital to travel decisions in lifestyle mobilities. In other words, to understand lifestyle (sport) mobilities, we need to analyse mobility and leisure hand-in-hand.

Mobility is typically regarded as a resource for young people. Mobility, and the agency connected to it, as well as various cosmopolitan practices have become a significant part of the transition to adulthood (Frändberg, 2014; Thomson & Taylor, 2005). Personal family history, encounters with foreign people, the first travels abroad as an initiation, and individual traits are all important cornerstones of mobility capital (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002). Throughout the life course, mobile competences accumulate and function as capital in later life.

Surfers value individual freedom of movement and often have a strongly cosmopolitan outlook—they could even be regarded as a ‘core group’ or the ‘vanguards’ of young, mobile cosmopolitans (see Amit & Barber, 2015; Ford & Brown, 2006, p. 50). Youth cultures are often portrayed as ‘the cutting edge of an increasingly liquid modernity, where mobility and communication are crucial resources’ (Thomson & Taylor, 2005, p. 330). By studying particular fields of youth culture, we can develop a better understanding of how young people practice mobility and develop a cosmopolitan orientation, and what implications this has for their particular life courses, and the surrounding culture and its ideals of mobility, youth, and (transitions to) adulthood.

Surfer-travellers in Finland

Although Finland has a lengthy sea shoreline, the sea is too small to allow for a proper ground swell. Most of the waves are generated by occasional and seasonal winds. Many interviewees in this research argued that it is difficult to learn how to surf in Finland, as the waves are deemed ‘choppy’, irregular, and hard for beginners. Thus, among Finnish surfers, surfing and travelling are strongly interconnected.

The number of ‘potential surfers’ in Finland was estimated at 10,000 in the national sports survey of 2010 (Kansallinen liikuntatutkimus, 2010). As of January 2021, the Facebook group Surf Suomi (= Surf Finland) had around 4,900 members, and surfing culture is regularly represented in Finnish popular culture. The advertising of non-surfing products often aims to sell a certain ideal of life or ‘authenticity’ (Anderson, 2016). One could argue that surfing as a phenomenon is larger than the number of its practitioners suggests, as the surfing lifestyle entails ideals of individual freedom and paradisiacal imagery (Ormrod, 2005). The surfing lifestyle may even be defined as a ‘romantic dream’ for modern day individuals (Ford & Brown, 2006, p. 74).

I define the subject of this research as surfer-travellers. This entails the idea that they are not merely surf-oriented tourists or rootless nomadic surfers, but that they both surf and travel, and that these two aspects are inseparably intertwined. The interviewees often differentiated themselves from tourists, as when they described that surfers do different things (mainly surf) and usually are on longer journeys than tourists. Some of them related themselves to backpackers (e.g., Sørensen, 2003), but many emphasized that surf-travelling has a specific purpose (surfing). While the distinction and divide between tourism and travelling/backpacking can be debated, it can also be argued that the mobility of surfer-travellers is neither tourism nor migrancy: rather, it is somewhere in between, as in ‘lifestyle mobilities’ (Cohen et al., 2015, p. 159; Rickly, 2016), as will be further explored in the analysis.

Life Course Perspective as a Research Method

Life course research is a multidisciplinary approach (e.g., Elder & Giele, 2009). In this study, life course perspective provides the foundation of the analysis (see also Salasuo et al., 2016; Vogt, 2018). The interviews of the study were interpreted and analysed through the life course perspective. This framework consists of five principles.

The first principle emphasizes the cumulative nature of human life. Everything that has taken and is taking place has an impact on the present and the future. Choices and turning points in life lead to certain futures, while other opportunities become excluded over the course of time. The second principle emphasizes the importance of social networks. Important networks typically consist of family, relatives, friends, and peers. Through these social networks, individuals gain social and cultural capital that enable them to shape their lives. The transmission of intergenerational resources, however, is a dynamic process: children take up, turn down, and make their own of what they are offered by their parents (Bertaux & Thompson, 1997). As Plug et al. (2003) argue, life courses are neither merely individualized nor a socialization process, but rather ‘reflexively created’.

The third principle of the life course perspective highlights that each individual is born into and grows up in a certain historical time and place. Here, place can be understood as rather fluid when considering mobilities and transnational phenomena. The fourth principle highlights agency, the notion that people intentionally plan their lives and make choices. People utilize their social and cultural capital and competences to shape their individual aspirations and interests. Agency is interconnected with social issues, such as age, class, ethnicity, and gender. Thus, inequalities limit agency: the freedom to be highly mobile—or to ‘choose freely’—is a privilege (Cohen et al., 2015, p. 157). The fifth principle emphasizes the importance of transitions. A life course consists of phases in life and transitions between them. Vogt (2018) emphasizes that the life course perspective can provide for a more nuanced understanding of transitions and the complexities behind them. Furthermore, Vogt argues that transitions are influenced by history and personal biographies, and thus life course perspective is a tool to avoid over-emphasizing agency and choice. Transitions can be connected to epiphanies (Denzin, 1989). The life course perspective can grasp the complexities of the youth mobilities of ‘a generation on the move’ (Robertson et al., 2018).

Research Setting and Data

In this article, I focus on (a) the processes and phases of the life courses through which the interviewees have engaged themselves with surf-travelling, and the networks and types of capital they have utilized in doing so, and (b) how their active agency and life choices have influenced their (surfer-traveller) lifestyles. Furthermore, the analysis sheds light on how the surfer-travellers lead a lifestyle that they regard as different from a normative life course. It is necessary to emphasize that the focus cannot be merely on socialization to mobility. It also has to involve engagement with surfing, as the aspect of surfing brings with it certain (sub)cultural values and surf-related practices.

I gathered 20 interviews, during 2016 and 2017, with an approach that can be described as thematic life story interview (see Atkinson, 2002; Salasuo et al., 2016, pp. 18–20). This has similarities with the ‘life-history approach’ used by Wheaton (2017; see also Langseth, 2012; Waitt & Frazer, 2012). My intention was not to study just the surfing lifestyle, but also the mobility of the people involved in that lifestyle. I reached the interviewees through three key informants. All interviewees had practiced surfing actively, and they all travelled regularly in search of surf. They had begun surfing between 1999 and 2014, and typically had around 10 years of experience—coinciding with the period when surfing has become more popular in Finland. Many of them have been living seasonally or regularly outside Finland.

Of the interviewed surfers, 11 were male and nine female. While surf culture has been predominantly male, in Finland many women also partake in the surfing culture and are able to practice the mobile surf-travel lifestyle, and it was not difficult to reach female interviewees. Thus, the research at hand is not just an analysis of male surfer lifestyles, which is often the dominant narrative in surfing (Fendt & Wilson, 2012). On average, the interviewees were aged 33, ranging from 24 to 41 at the time of the interviews. This is a commonplace age for surfing (e.g., Barbieri & Sotomayor, 2013), although, as is the case with the interviewees, surfing is often started at an earlier age.

Following the method of life story interview (Atkinson, 2002), I began the interviews by asking the interviewees to tell in their own words, and as broadly as they wished, their travelling surfer’s life story. Later on, I proceeded to ask more detailed and thematic questions, such as on family background, life history, practices of mobility and travel, attitudes and values towards the free movement of people, and ways to make a living. The average length of the interviews was 119 min.

During the process of data collection and the initial analysis it became clear that the process of becoming a surfer-traveller would provide an important point of departure for the research. The interviewees shared remarkable similarities both in their ‘routes’ to the surf-travel lifestyle and in the development of their agency and the values behind their choices, and also described these in similar terms. The Atlas.ti analysis tool was utilized to make categorizations and classifications of the data. The initial analysis can be described as content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Later in the process, the life course perspective was implemented as a guiding framework of analysis: it informed the coding of the data, the primary focus being on the social networks and other important resources of the surfer-travellers, as well as the agency of the surfer-travellers.

In the following analysis, I first explore how the interviewees became engaged in the surf-travel lifestyle. In doing so, and following the principles of the life course perspective, I focus on the social networks and other important resources utilized by the surfer-travellers, as well as on the historical time and place. The surfer-traveller lifestyle does not take place inside the borders of a nation-state, and thus the transnational features of surf-culture need to be taken into account. To put it simply, the first part of the analysis addresses the influences behind and initiation into the surf-travel lifestyle, mainly in childhood and youth. Second, I analyse the agency and choices of the surfer-travellers. Agency connects and interacts with phases of transition and the accumulated capital and resources gathered through one’s life course. Here, the focus is on how the lifestyle is established in youth and young adulthood. The third part of the analysis focuses on and explores how the life course and its choices lead to a lifestyle—and (early) adulthood—that is regarded as ‘different’.

Results

Becoming a Surfer-traveller

Three key ‘routes’ of engagement to the surfer-traveller lifestyle were identified through the analysis, and they are discussed in the following. First was a travelling lifestyle learned in childhood or adolescence, typically from one’s own parents or from and with late teenage peers. Over the course of one’s life, the most influential forms of capital are often acquired from family members. Family history and life experiences transform into ‘wandering potentialities’ (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002) for young people. Many surfer-travellers in this study became accustomed to travelling when they were children. While their early travels were not ‘nomadic’, but typically a vacation to the Mediterranean, they helped to socialize them into travelling. These and social capital acquired from home provided a different way to look at the world:

Mom and pop took us around Europe pretty much. Practically every year we were somewhere, I’ve been to almost all the countries in Europe. And my [relative’s] family has lived around Europe too, so yeah the inspiration is from there. Finland is quite a small pimple, with people thinking pretty much the same way. […] When you travel since you’re small you see people who think differently. From there on I’ve wanted to get to know people.

—Male, age 30–34

Alongside the development of the ‘potentiality to wander’, more practical types of capital are important: funding and the ability to travel and move freely (see also Cohen et al., 2015, p. 157). Many claimed that they have ‘the best passport in the world’, and considered themselves to be fortunate. The interviewees valued the opportunities provided by growing up in Finland and were not oblivious to them being privileges:

I feel really privileged, and there is always the safety net, that even if everything goes to hell you can always come back, there are those things you can trust in. And I am really grateful for that.

—Male, 25–29

For many, the push to travel and surf came from peers. Several described having been ‘bitten by the travel bug’ in their late teens, and taking on the surf-travelling lifestyle slightly later. Second, a boardsport lifestyle, typically having snowboarding or skateboarding as a hobby and indulging in ‘boardsport culture’, was for many an important route of initiation. Surfing was often tried for the first time with friends from other boardsports—snowboarding or skateboarding—or travel companions. Doing it together lowered the bar of entry, and many said that they might not have done it alone.

I happened to be travelling with a friend who influenced me a lot, who always wants to see many places, explore and search. […] Maybe two things were combined there, the desire to do some boardsport […] and also to travel and see those cool places.

—Male, 30–34

Additionally, the people involved in boardsport cultures were seen as sharing a similar ‘vibe’—laid back, welcoming, and nomadic. For the ones who had practiced snowboarding, it was a smooth transition. The cultures of these two boardsports were seen as relatively similar (see also Thorpe, 2012). For some interviewees, surfing had been ‘the number one boardsport’, a thing they had wanted to try. This indicates that surfing has subcultural appeal.

(Sub)cultural capital is important in maintaining social networks and knowing the habits, codes, and various other aspects of the cosmopolitan surfer-traveller lifestyle. Additionally, the globality of boardsports cultures and the cultural products crossing national borders introduced surfing to larger audiences in Finland. In the following the interviewee recollects pre-surfing days:

I remember when following snowboarders, especially yankees and foreigners, they had as a counterbalance surfing when on holidays. I probably picked it up there for the first time. And maybe from magazines… There were elements that attracted me. Sea, warmth, sun. And the freedom. As in snowboarding, but even more.

—Female, 30–34

The third identified route was being a ‘water animal’. Many interviewees described a childhood interest in playing in the water, such as swimming, typically during family summer vacations (see also Langseth, 2012, for similarities). Oftentimes the process of initiation to surfing was a combination of more than one of the three routes, as illustrated here:

Yeah, with my family, no half-year trips of course, but family vacations a few times a year. And some relatives lived [abroad], so we went there quite often, and in the Alps to downhill ski. I remember, since I was very small, spending whole days in a pool [abroad]. I felt it was so liberating, already back then. I liked the warmth and swimming and water, and could’ve spent entire days like that. And in Finland, at beaches during the summers… clearly since I was very small I’ve enjoyed it a lot.

—Female, 30–34

The interviewees almost unanimously described finding surfing as becoming ‘hooked’. Similarly, Langseth (2012) found that for many surfers the first surfed wave becomes a defining moment in their surfing career, and part of an identity transformation—becoming a surfer. Indeed, the first experiences of surfing are often a turning point, an ‘epiphany’ (Denzin, 1989). Following the life course perspective, this can be seen as leading or contributing to a transition, a period in life where the ‘former’ life was abandoned and the surfing life started. The natural step forward was to organize one’s life in order to continue surfing (and travelling).

Maintaining the Surfer-traveller Lifestyle

Finding an appealing lifestyle and enjoying surf and travel is one thing—maintaining such a life is another. The interviewees emphasized that many practical choices had to be made. After realizing that ‘this is my thing’, this interviewee re-organized his whole life around surfing:

One month in Sri Lanka, training every day. Not so many waves yet but getting the grips of it. From there to Bali, then back to Sri Lanka, the whole winter passed by. The same thing continued, repeated year after year. Not much else I’ve been doing after that. Working the summers. Just the journeys have become longer, new destinations… Australia almost a year, I’ve travelled to the Philippines, in Sri Lanka one whole winter.

—Male, 30–34

Destinations are chosen for surf, and work is (re)arranged so that it permits travel, often for long periods of time. The interviewees were often involved in seasonal, short-term, or part-time jobs, working summers in Finland and travelling the rest of the year. Some worked on a reduced schedule to be able to make shorter trips from Finland. A few had moved abroad for the time being, to live close to surfable waves, and made a living in a profession connected to surfing (such as teaching surfing), or had been able to connect their careers and surfer-traveller lifestyles in a meaningful way, often as small-scale entrepreneurs. In brief, their jobs were either flexible or surf-related (see Ford & Brown, 2006, p. 75; Rickly, 2016, for similar observations). Indeed, the divide between work and leisure was often blurred (Cohen et al., 2015).

The word ‘vapaus’ (Finnish for freedom or liberty) was frequently used in the interviews. It referred not to freedom of movement solely, but a whole lifestyle, where the possibility to roam around freely was the cornerstone around which choices were made:

I was around 20 when I first went there [on a surf travel], I was alone in the airplane. And I was like ‘here I am going myself, I can go where I want, do what I want’, and I’ve felt that it is liberating.

—Female, 25–29

In this discourse, the individual is seen as free to steer their own life in the desired direction (see e.g., ‘choice biographies’, Du Bois-Reymond, 1998). It coincides with the notions of freedom and adventure, which have a long history in surf folklore (e.g., Ormrod, 2005). While lifestyle migrants often emphasize and talk about their personal freedom, they are never quite as free as this discourse implies (Korpela, 2013, p. 138). Mobile people still need their passports, economic resources, nationalities, and so on. ‘Choice biographies’ are rarely just a matter of choice (Vogt, 2018).

Furthermore, making certain choices, due to the cumulative nature of human life, prohibits other choices. Many interviewees sacrificed a steady career and/or income. Several reported having very few possessions—some did not have a permanent home, either rental or owned. This was seen as part of the lifestyle chosen: what they earned, they used in their surf-travels. Here an interviewee describes busiest period doing odd jobs:

Working in [an office job] during the day, [a side job] during the nights, I did it really intensively, saving money. And on the road I’ve done it all, bars, […] whatever came by. That’s the other side of it. Nothing comes for free, and you gotta make sacrifices. If you do a 100-hour week, it makes the next journey possible.

—Male, 30–34

The lifestyle on the road was described as semi-ascetic: ‘not eating only rice and rice, but no luxury either’, as one interviewee put it. None of the interviewees could be defined as ‘luxury surfers’ (Towner, 2016), as they were rather independent travellers arranging their own travel and sleeping in cheap local homestays, thus resembling the archetypal ‘soul surfer’ (e.g., Stranger, 2011, pp. 232–235). While not wealthy ‘back home’, they are well-off compared to ‘locals’ in many surf destinations—which they acknowledged as a privilege. Their salaries earned in Finland provide for long trips, or affluence of time ‘on the road’. Furthermore, when it comes to choosing a destination, they can often afford to cater to multiple desires: not only searching for the best waves suited to their level of skill, but also finding refuge in an appealing climate during the Finnish winter.

To summarize, the mobility practiced by the interviewees can be roughly divided into three different types: (a) soul surfer-travellers, who spend the summertime in Finland working (often in precarious jobs) and earning money in order to spend half a year abroad, often in one location at a time, such as Indonesia; (b) surf tourists, who live and work permanently in Finland but travel constantly overseas for surf trips, with the typical length being 1 week to 1 month; (c) lifestyle migrant surfers, who live all or most of the year abroad in a location suitable for constant surfing, such as California or Australia, and work there in a job often related to surfing or other watersports.

The position of any given individual often moved between these categories. For instance, some had started to make shorter surf trips instead of spending long spells of time abroad as they grew older.

While the career decisions had been deliberate, they were not easily, if at all, undone in later life. This did not seem to bother the majority of the interviewees. Some other ‘closing doors’ did cause worries, however. Not seeing ageing parents or other relatives, missing time with friends, not being able to settle down and possibly start a family, were some renunciations that caused self-reflection. This was especially the case with women (see also Thomson & Taylor, 2005). Thus, the surfer-traveller lifestyle was not necessarily seen as something that would be practiced forever, but rather might get ‘toned down’ in the near future (see also Porter & Usher, 2018; Wheaton, 2017; Willing et al., 2019). Issues, such as gender and age connect with agency, and have an influence on what choices are made and seen as possible.

Living Differently

The interviewees emphasized that their lifestyle is different from what could be described as a normal or normative life course (see, e.g., Du Bois-Reymond, 1998). They highlighted the mental and cultural difference between the lifestyle they had chosen and the lifestyle of ‘others’. Many felt they had ‘jumped the rat race’:

I got out of the rat race, felt liberated and like I was living more. Saw new places and cultures, met new people… It’s freedom […] It’s a completely different world, stunning, I’ve gathered happy things, moments, and memories. Wouldn’t change them for money, never, to think about it. […] Life differs from the basic formula, the one you are taught by your parents, the safe basic life where you buy an apartment and pay the mortgage. It’s an oppressing thought, gotta say. Boring and monotonous.

-Male, 30–34

Finding a ‘different’ way to live, one that values immaterial happiness and experiences, was often regarded as the most important lesson learned from surfing. The choices made were seen as pointing the way towards a less stressful and altogether better life. An ideal life included a notion of freedom from the constraints of a ‘normal’ life course: expectations of work, education, family life, and so forth (Du Bois-Reymond, 1998).

Leading this kind of life is not always trouble-free. While the youth of today are encouraged to travel in order to gather the types of capital regarded as useful for ‘productive citizens’ (van Mol, 2013), many interviewees described the deprecation they had faced—often from older family members or other non-surfers. Their lifestyle can be seen as a ‘wrong kind of mobility’ (Nikunen, 2013). As Sheller (2018, p. 41) points out, traditionally ‘good mobility’ has been performed by Western, white, youthful, and ‘free’ people. The interviewed surfer-travellers match these attributes, but their lifestyle could also be interpreted as bad mobility—‘nomadic, vagabondage and unproductive’ (Sheller, 2018, p. 51).

For the interviewees that had faced disapproval, the biggest concern was conflicts with family members, friends, and other close people. They often did not understand the ‘vagabond’ lifestyle choices, especially if a job career was sacrificed. This was not merely a conflict of different views on how life should be lived, but a lack of shared understanding altogether:

Your social life takes a hit of course, in Finland that is. You are out of your community a lot. Then you see new stuff of which you can’t talk about with everyone, ‘cause they don’t understand. They reflect things through their world view and their understanding. You see various things and people, and want to talk about it with your friends at home, but it becomes difficult. […] I’ve had the feeling that you separate from your circle of friends and your community.

—Male, 30–34

Life choices are difficult to articulate to ‘folks back home’, but they are also something that those folks do not quite understand, or even refuse to understand. This can make returning to Finland difficult, or cause feelings of rootlessness and a sense that ‘home’ is somewhere else, ‘on the road’.

Nevertheless, the interviewees typically emphasized that, for them, having some work and contributing meaningfully to society was important. Convincing family members and other important people were often regarded as crucial. This leads to negotiations where a life course can settle somewhere ‘in between’ being a vagabond and doing meaningful work. As Thomson and Taylor (2005, p. 337) have observed, ‘in practice, young people are torn between competing forces in relation to notions of home, tradition and fixedness on one hand and of mobility, escape and transformation on the other’. Thus, it is not a complete departure from the premises of ‘how life should be lived’, but rather seeking alternatives and making a novel use of the resources received (see also Bertaux & Thompson, 1997). Social networks built ‘on the road’ influence life course decisions on a larger scale:

I’ve met people who have inspired me, like they do really cool stuff, but it’s not my cup… it’s like too extreme, too much away from society. I’m more like looking for the middle road. But through them I’ve got some confirmation that I could direct my life more that way too.

—Male, 25–29

While surfing is often regarded as youthful, regardless of the age of its practitioners, it could be argued that for many the surfer-traveller lifestyle is not merely a prolonged period of youth, but a way to live adulthood differently (Du Bois-Reymond, 1998; Mary, 2012; Wheaton, 2017; Willing et al., 2019). As Mary (2012) has argued, the prolongation of youth is partly a misconception: rather, it is adulthood that is changing. This is reflected in how (some) youth of today view their education and work careers differently and are thus challenging old conceptions. This became evident in the interviews:

Yeah, I hear criticism a lot, but all the time more and more, especially among young people, it is respected. That you dare to go and do things. And be more open towards other ways to live, that it is not so career-oriented anymore.

—Female, 30–34

Similarly, many emphasized how young people are more understanding of different lifestyle choices. Thus, this is not just a phenomenon of an avantgarde group of surfers, but part of a wider social change.

Conclusions

The results reveal how mobile lifestyles are developed and established throughout a life course. The seeds of mobility are often sown in early life, and they then influence choices and transitions in later life, emphasizing the cumulative nature of a life course. The travelling habits of families, involvement in boardsport culture, and being generally fond of water (a ‘water animal’) were emphasized as specific routes of initiation for Finnish surfer-travellers. The analysis has emphasized that surf and travel have become inseparable elements in the lifestyles of the interviewees, justifying the reference to them as surfer-travellers.

Some of these findings coincide with earlier research on surf tourism (e.g., Barbieri & Sotomayor, 2013; Porter & Usher, 2018), lifestyle (sport) migrancy (Thorpe, 2012), and lifestyle mobilities (Cohen et al., 2015; Rickly, 2016), on issues, such as practices, values, and identity construction. Finnish surfer-travellers are often ‘in-between’: neither tourists nor migrants, blurring the lines between home and away, work and leisure, youth, and adulthood. Furthermore, they share many of the key ideals of surf travel and surf culture in general, as they value freedom, adventure, and individualized experiences (e.g., Anderson, 2013; Ormrod, 2005). The transnational nature of surf culture has helped it spread to corners of the globe that lack a world-class surf altogether. Despite this, surf culture in Finland has its own local expressions and particularities.

As Finland has irregular surf and a relatively novel surf culture, first contact with and initiation to surfing has typically taken place during travels. While Finnish surfers often claim they ‘have to’ travel, they also can travel, enabled by the various forms of mobility capital they have gathered. Involvement in other lifestyle (board) sports and the exposure to international surf media (see also Ormrod, 2005), as well as other water hobbies, are important elements of engagement. In other words, exposure to surfing has been indirect rather than direct, which it likely is for many who grow up next to high-quality waves.

Finnish surfers are following waves, and often the sun too: summers are typically spent in Finland, doing work in order to fund trips that take place preferably during the Finnish winter. It speaks of resources and privileges that life can be structured around these desires. Furthermore, interviewees acknowledged and appreciated the safety nets and resources provided by Finnish society.

Among the studied surfer-travellers, the pursuit of a mobile lifestyle that seeks individual rewards is principally seen as a choice, and they organize their life around surfing and travel. This, however, shuts out other possibilities, and perhaps paradoxically may also limit one’s agency and ability to make choices in later life. Furthermore, some choices create friction both with the dominant culture and, on an individual level, with significant others. It should be noted that the markers of what is ‘normal’, ‘normative’, or unusual are in a constant state of flux, and they vary between societies (Plug et al., 2003; Vogt, 2018). Nevertheless, surfer-travellers argue that they depart from the ‘ways of the older generations’. This departure is not total, but rather a negotiation: many seek a ‘middle road’, wherein a meaningful life is found somewhere in-between the expectations of others and of one’s self.

Although mobility has come to be regarded as a resource ensuring the smooth transition to productive adulthood (Robertson et al., 2018), surfer-travellers do not seem to utilize mobility in an expected manner. The young people and young adults of today have grown up in a society and culture emphasizing individual choices, but when they take advantage of this to actually choose, their choices can be disapproved of as being too extreme. Oinonen (2018) discovered in a study of university students in Finland and Spain that the life of ‘an expert-nomad’ did not seem to attract students—some saw working abroad as an option only in the early stages of a work career. In light of this, high mobility continuing well into so-called adulthood years is atypical. Surfer-travellers’ devotion to a mobile lifestyle, thus, is relatively strongly connected with the very practice of surfing. The activity of surfing—which provides ‘ecstatic experiences’ and a sense of the sublime (Stranger, 2011)—plays an important part in what makes them go ‘on the road’ in search of waves time and time again (see also Rickly, 2016).

Lifestyle sports are often regarded as ‘extreme’ and as an alternative to ‘mainstream sports’, providing ways to do sports ‘differently’ (e.g., Wheaton, 2004). They can also go hand-in-hand with extreme mobility, contributing to a lifestyle that challenges conventions of not just sports, but of how life in general should be lived. As Rickly (2016) reminds, leisure is often an important factor in lifestyle mobilities. This might be even more the case among surfers from countries without world-class surf; for many Finnish surfers, the leisure practices of snowboarding and skateboarding have functioned as one doorway to surfing, and surfing itself has become a key motivation to maintaining a mobile lifestyle. And throughout the life course these effects accumulate, establishing leisure-oriented forms of mobility which in many ways differ from what is expected from youth and (early) adulthood mobilities.

In future research, the potential of the life course perspective could prove valuable in understanding the (im)mobilities of (socially, geographically, and so on) distinct groups of youth. Through this, mobile privileges and injustices (Sheller, 2018) could be better understood. A possible future theme of study is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the surfer-traveller lifestyle and lifestyle (sport) mobilities in general. Will surfers reduce travel and search for surf nearby, potentially settling for lesser quality waves, but perhaps enhancing the local culture? Or will they renew their mobility if and when the possibilities for travel recover? If the findings at hand offer any hint, it may well be that mobile practices are not easily renounced, as they have been developed throughout a life course and function as constituents of identity.

Finally, it seems that surfer-travellers seek to define not only how youth should be lived, but how adulthood could change. This causes friction, but also inevitably leads to change. Their mobile lifestyle mirrors larger changes in society, wherein youths and (young) adults are making use of their social capital, networks, and competences, and through them are looking for individually meaningful ways to live.