Emerging Finnish Literature

The bilingual character of Finnish society and culture as it developed during the nineteenth century has been sketched in the previous chapters. Increasing the use of Finnish language in education, administration and ecclesiastic matters was a long and painful process that greatly impacted speakers of both Finnish and Swedish. This chapter will sketch the development of nineteenth-century Finnish-language poetry as part of this larger evolution as well as Sibelius’s relationship thereto, before discussing the specific Finnish texts that he set for solo voice.

The Reformation had shaken the power of the Catholic Church and created a demand for translations of devotional literature into national languages, though Latin continued to be the language of the learned. Mikael Agricola (ca. 1510–1557) laid the foundation for the written Finnish language when he presented a Finnish translation of the Bible in 1548, a feat which earned him the title “the father of Finnish literature.” Over the next few centuries, Agricola had few followers within the clergy, and thus Finnish-language literature remained undeveloped. From the seventeenth century on, priests and civil servants were educated at the Royal Academy of Åbo, founded in 1640, and its language was Latin. Although Henrik Gabriel Porthan, a professor at the Royal Academy in the late eighteenth century, came to be known as “the father of Finnish history” (see chapter 1), it was not until 1851 that the first chair in Finnish language and Finnish literature at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki was established: a prerequisite for the development of the language and culture. The first newspaper to be published in Finnish was Suomalaiset Tieto-Sanomat (Finnish Information News) in 1775, but longer running Finnish-language publications did not emerge until the second half of the nineteenth century.

Establishing a Finnish language culture was closely tied to national and political aspirations. “The early Emperors were well aware of the importance of distancing the Finns from their previous Swedish identity and heritage: fostering or promoting an alternative Finnish nationalism was one way of combatting possible revanchism and rebellious sentiments. Consequently, the national university benefited greatly from Russian administrative measures.” The discovery of and interest in folk poetry in the spirit of Porthan strongly supported the development of a Finnish-language culture.