Abstract
Literature created in Finland is of relatively late origin. Only from the nineteenth century onward can we speak of a thriving Finnish literature, and for the first half of that century this meant literature written in Swedish: Finnish-language literature was not produced to any considerable extent or quality before the 1860s. Down to the end of the nineteenth century Finnish was the mother tongue of the majority of the population, while Swedish was the language of administration, schools and public life. From 1890 to the present, the percentage of Swedish speakers—omitting the bilingual—has fallen from about 14 percent to some 5 percent of the population. (What is new today, compared to the situation in 1880, is that the country now includes a considerable population speaking something other than either Finnish or Swedish as their mother tongue. Paradoxically, one of the largest linguistic minorities today is that of Russian speakers; during the years 1812–1917, when Finland was part of Russia, very few inhabitants spoke Russian as their mother tongue. Over the past few decades, however, Russian immigration to Finland has been considerable. One reason, though not the only one, is that the Ingrians, descendants of Finns who centuries ago settled along the coast south of St. Petersburg, have since the 1980s been granted the right of “return” immigration and to claim civil rights in Finland.) Literature in Swedish has nevertheless continued to thrive in Finland along with that written in Finnish. Finland therefore also has two traditions of literary historiography: one in Finnish and another in Swedish.
In Part 4, this chapter was authored by Liisa Steinby and Elina Arminen, Chap. 16 by Elina Arminen, Chaps. 17–20 and Conclusion by Liisa Steinby, and Chap. 21 by Aino Mäkikalli and Liisa Steinby.
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Notes
- 1.
What is new today, compared to the situation in 1880, is that the country now includes a considerable population speaking something other than either Finnish or Swedish as their mother tongue. Paradoxically, one of the largest linguistic minorities today is that of Russian speakers; during the years 1812–1917, when Finland was part of Russia, very few inhabitants spoke Russian as their mother tongue. Over the past few decades, however, Russian immigration to Finland has been considerable. One reason, though not the only one, is that the Ingrians, descendants of Finns who centuries ago settled along the coast south of St. Petersburg, have since the 1980s been granted the right of “return” immigration and to claim civil rights in Finland.
- 2.
Statistics from that time, however, are lacking; the earliest statistics date back to 1880, when 97.6 percent of the adult population was able to read. Writing skills were far less common; they were not considered equally necessary for ordinary people before the nineteenth century.
- 3.
Villages were plundered and burnt down, their inhabitants willfully killed, and young people in great numbers captured and taken as slaves to Russia. Poor people fled for their lives into the woods, while the upper classes sought shelter in Sweden. In Finnish historiography, the period is known as the Great Wrath. Another period of Russian occupation, from 1742 to 1743, following another war between Sweden and Russia, was less devastating than the first one, and is known as the Little Wrath.
- 4.
The university, known by its Swedish name Åbo Kungliga Akademi, was now renamed the Imperial Alexander University of Helsinki.
- 5.
To mention just one example: the Russian Pan-Slavist Nikolai Danilevsky, in his book Rossiya i Evropa (Russia and Europe, 1869) described the Finns as an “unproductive” race, whose historical destiny is to be assimilated into the culture-creating Russian race (see Aalto et al., 1984, 211).
- 6.
Lenin accepted Finland’s Declaration of Independence, envisaging a future Socialist International in which the Finns would participate.
- 7.
This holds true especially for the former; “the spirit of the Winter War” was often later recalled as the great moment of national unanimity. Finland could not avoid being involved in a new war, the Continuation War, against the Soviet Union, and in this it was supported by some German troops. The separate treaty between Finland and the USSR included the obligation for Finns to expel German troops from Northern Finland, precipitating the so-called Lapland war of 1944–1945, in which the German troops burnt down everything along their route of retreat.
- 8.
Finland thus succeeded in warding off the fulfillment of the secret additional Protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact from 1939, which identified Finland, along with the Baltic countries and the eastern part of Poland, as part of the “sphere of interest” of the Soviet Union.
- 9.
Fänrik Ståhls sägner (Tales of Ensign Ståhl, 1848).
- 10.
Topelius’ main work, Fältskärns berättelser (Tales of an army surgeon, 1851–1867) is a wide-ranging historical novel about the lives of two (fictitious) Finnish families during the turbulent years in Swedish history, from the Thirty Years’ War to the end of the eighteenth century.
- 11.
A more extensive final version was published in 1849.
- 12.
Kivi’s best-known work is the novel Seitsemän veljestä (Seven brothers), published in 1870, but he was also the first to create Finnish comedies of permanent value, a tragedy (Kullervo, 1859, on a topic in the Kalevala), and original poetry in free verse.
- 13.
Important predecessors in Finnish literary historiography are Henrik Gabriel Porthan’s study of Finnish oral poetry, De poësi Fennica (1766–1778), and the bibliographies of literature—in a broad sense—published in Finland by Anders Johan Hipping (1820), Anders Johan Sjögren (1821) and Fredrik Wilhelm Pipping (1856–1857). Hipping’s work covers titles in Finnish, Latin and Swedish, while Sjögren’s and Pipping’s include only texts in Finnish.
- 14.
The year 1640 refers to the establishment of the University.
- 15.
From the late eighteenth century onward, the Fennophiles studied Finnish history and folk culture; from the beginning of the nineteenth century, their efforts were aimed at the creation of a culture and literature in the Finnish language. The goal of the Fennomans, who were active from the middle of the century onward, was fortifying and increasing Finland’s political autonomy.
- 16.
At stake in this controversy was the question of whether the Finnish literary language, whose development had been neglected in previous centuries, should now be enriched and developed on the basis of the East-Finnish or West-Finnish dialects. Present-day Standard Finnish contains elements of both dialect clusters.
- 17.
Published in two collections, Helkavirret 1 (1903) and 2 (1916).
- 18.
Tarkiainen’s book was supplemented in a second edition by Eino Kauppinen, with a short section on the subsequent development of Finnish literature up to the 1960s.
- 19.
According to Yrjö Varpio (2002, 97), all Finnish literary histories up to that of Koskimies were influenced by Gervinus’ Geschichte der poetischen Nationalliteratur der Deutschen. This, however, is difficult to confirm: Gervinus’ name does not occur in any of the three literary histories which contain an index (i.e., Krohn, Tarkiainen, Koskimies).
- 20.
- 21.
Esko Ervasti and Pertti Karkama’s Suomen kirjallisuushistoria (Finnish literary history, 1973), intended for use in schools, takes a Marxist approach. Rather than directly preaching a political doctrine, however, this means primarily establishing a clear connection between on the one hand literary works and movements, on the other their social background (Ervasti & Karkama, 1973). It may also be mentioned that three volumes on Finnish literary history, from folk poetry to the beginning of the twentieth century, by the Soviet Karelian Marxist scholar Eino Karhu, were translated into Finnish and issued by a publisher close to the Communist movement in Finland (Karhu, 1979a, b).
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Steinby, L., Arminen, E. (2024). Literary Histories from Mid-Nineteenth to Mid-Twentieth Century: The Viewpoint of Nationalism. In: Steinby, L., Kalnačs, B., Oshukov, M., Parente-Čapková, V. (eds) The Politics of Literary History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18724-7_16
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