Out of approximately one hundred songs published during Sibelius’s lifetime, twenty-six were set to texts by Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–1877). It is only natural to begin the presentation of Sibelius’s poets with this giant among nineteenth- century writers in Finland. Runeberg had been the Latin teacher of Sibelius’s father, and the poet was held in high esteem in Sibelius’s home in Hameenlinna (Tavastehus). Sibelius’s biographer Erik Tawaststjerna describes the six-year-old Janne’s visit with his mother to Porvoo (Borgå) and the old bard, who had been paralyzed by a stroke in 1863. After Runeberg’s death in 1877, Sibelius again visited Porvoo, laying flowers on the poet’s newly dug grave.

Early childhood influences were certainly not the only reason for the composer’s affection for the poet. Runeberg’s iconic patriotism and his strong connection to nature harmonized with the composer’s basic worldview. His first song, Serenad, was set to a Runeberg poem and published when he was still a student at the Helsingfors Musikinstitut (Helsinki Music Institute), and in 1889, when Sibelius was leaving to study in Berlin, his teacher Martin Wegelius gave him an edition of Runeberg’s poems. We have already quoted his early letter to Aino from Vienna in November 1890: “I think his poems are more real than any others I have read so far.”

The Runeberg poems were at hand in Vienna and easily consulted, resulting in fifteen attempts at setting music to Runeberg texts (in addition to the published ones) between 1889 and 1894. Runeberg became Sibelius’s pre-eminent poet, mirroring the Goethe-Schubert and Morike-Wolf pairings and obliterating the hoary old maxim that only second-class poetry is apt for setting music. The poems’ classical heritage – restraint, balance and concentration – and folk poetry simplicity attracted Sibelius, and, in his last song opuses (opp. 88 and 90), he once again turned to Runeberg poems. Valerie Siren writes: “The twenty-seven [sic] poems by Runeberg used by Sibelius in the solo songs demonstrate the poet’s predilection for tragedy and pathos, although it is interesting to see how Sibelius’s flair for the dramatic modifies these sentiments.”