Finland

Finland (Finnish, Suomi or Suomenmaa), a grand-duchy governed subject to its own constitution by the emperor of Russia as grand-duke of Finland. It is situated between the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, and includes, moreover, a large territory in Lapland. It touches at its south-eastern extremity the government of St Petersburg, includes the northern half of Lake Ladoga, and is separated from the Russian governments of Arkhangelsk and Olonets by a sinuous line which follows, roughly speaking, the water-parting between the rivers flowing into the Baltic Sea and the White Sea. In the north of the Gulf of Bothnia it is separated from Sweden and Norway by a broken line which takes the course of the valley of the Torneå river up to its sources, thus falling only 21 m. short of reaching the head of Norwegian Lyngen-fjord; then it runs south-east and north-east down the Tana and Pasis-joki, but does not reach the Arctic Ocean, and 13 m. from the Varanger-fjord it turns southwards. Finland includes in the south-west the Åland archipelago—its frontier approaching within 8 m. from the Swedish coast—as well as the islands of the Gulf of Finland, Hogland, Tytärs, &c. Its utmost limits are: 59° 48′—70° 6′ N., and 19° 2′—32° 50′ E. The area of Finland, in square miles, is as follows (Altas de Finlande, 1899):—

Government and Administration.—From the time of its union with Russia at the Diet of Borgå in 1809 till the events of 1899 (see History) Finland was practically a separate state, the emperor of Russia as grand-duke governing by means of a nominated senate and a diet elected on a very narrow franchise, and meeting at distant and irregular intervals. This diet was on the old Swedish model, consisting of representatives of the four estates—nobility, clergy, burghers and peasants—sitting and voting in separate “Houses.” The government of the country was practically carried on by the senate, which communicated with St Petersburg through a Finnish secretary attached to the Russian government. War and foreign affairs were entirely in the hands of Russia, and a Russian governor had his residence in Helsingfors. The senate also controlled the administration of the law. The constitutional conflict of 1899-1905 brought about something like a revolution in Finland. For some years the country was subject to a practically arbitrary form of government, but the disasters of the Russo-Japanese War and the growing anarchy in Russia resulted in 1905 in a complete and peaceful victory for the defenders of the Finnish constitution. As a Finnish writer puts it: “just as the calamities which had befallen Finland came from Russia, so was her deliverance to come from Russia.” The status quo ante was restored, the diet met in extraordinary session, and proceeded to the entire recasting of the Finnish government. Freedom of the press was voted, and the diet next proceeded to reform its own constitution. Far-reaching changes were voted. The new diet, instead of being composed of four estates sitting separately, consists of a single chamber of 200 members elected directly by universal suffrage, women being eligible. By the new constitution the grand-duchy was to be divided into not less than twelve and not more than eighteen constituencies, electing members in proportion to population. A scheme of “proportional representation,” the votes being counted in accordance with the system invented by G.M. d’Hondt, a Belgian, was also adopted. The executive was to consist of a minister-secretary of state and of the members of the senate, who were entitled to attend and address the diet and who might be the subject of interpellations. The members of the senate were made responsible to the diet as well as to the emperor-grand-duke for their acts. The diet has power to consider and decide upon measures proposed by the government. After a measure has been approved by the diet it is the duty of the senate to report upon it to the sovereign. But the senate is not obliged to accept the decision of the majority of the diet, nor, apparently, is the sovereign bound to accept the advice of the senate. The first elections, April 1907, resulted in the election to the diet of about 40% representatives of the Social Democratic party, and nineteen women members. The budget of Finland in 1905 was £4,273,970 of “ordinary” revenue. The “ordinary” expenditure was £3,595,300. The public debt amounted at the end of 1905 to £5,611,170.

History.—It was probably at the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century that the Finns took possession of what is now Finland, though it was only when Christianity was introduced, about 1157, that they were brought into contact with civilized Europe. They probably found the Lapps in possession of the country. The early Finlanders do not seem to have had any governmental organization, but to have lived in separate communities and villages independent of each other. Their mythology consisted in the deification of the forces of nature, as “Ukko,” the god of the air, “Tapio,” god of the forests, “Ahti,” the god of water, &c. These early Finlanders seem to have been both brave and troublesome to their neighbours, and their repeated attacks on the coast of Sweden drew the attention of the kings of that country. King Eric IX. (St Eric), accompanied by the bishop of Upsala, Henry (an Englishman, it is said), and at the head of a considerable army, invaded the country in 1157, when the people were conquered and baptized. King Eric left Bishop Henry with his priests and some soldiers behind to confirm the conquest and complete the conversion. After a time he was killed, canonized, and as St Henry became the patron saint of Finland. As Sweden had to attend to her own affairs, Finland was gradually reverting to independence and paganism, when in 1209 another bishop and missionary, Thomas (also an Englishman), arrived and recommenced the work of St Henry. Bishop Thomas nearly succeeded in detaching Finland from Sweden, and forming it into a province subject only to the pope. The famous Birger Jarl undertook a crusade in Finland in 1249, compelling the Tavastians, one of the subdivisions of the Finlanders proper, to accept Christianity, and building a castle at Tavestehus. It was Torkel Knutson who conquered and connected the Karelian Finlanders in 1293, and built the strong castle of Viborg. Almost continuous wars between Russia and Sweden were the result of the conquest of Finland by the latter. In 1323 it was settled that the river Rajajoki should be the boundary between Russia and the Swedish province. After the final conquest of the country by the Swedes, they spread among the Finlanders their civilization, gave them laws, accorded them the same civil rights as belonged to themselves, and introduced agriculture and other beneficial arts. The Reformed religion was introduced into Finland by Gustavus Vasa about 1528, and King John III. raised the country to the dignity of a grand-duchy. It continued to suffer, sometimes deplorably, in most of the wars waged by Sweden, especially with Russia and Denmark. His predecessor having created an order of nobility,—counts, barons and nobles, Gustavus Adolphus in the beginning of the 17th century established the diet of Finland, composed of the four orders of the nobility, clergy, burghers and peasants. Gustavus and his successor did much for Finland by founding schools and gymnasia, building churches, encouraging learning and introducing printing. During the reign of Charles XI. (1692-1696) the country suffered terribly from famine and pestilence; in the diocese of Åbo alone 60,000 persons died in less than nine months. Finland has been visited at different periods since by these scourges; so late as 1848 whole villages were starved during a dreadful famine. Peter the Great cast an envious eye on Finland and tried to wrest it from Sweden; in 1710 he managed to obtain possession of the towns of Kexholm and Villmanstrand; and by 1716 all the country was in his power. Meantime the sufferings of the people had been great; thousands perished in the wars of Charles XII. By the peace of Nystad in 1721 the province of Viborg, the eastern division of Finland, was finally ceded to Russia. But the country had been laid very low by war, pestilence and famine, though it recovered itself with wonderful rapidity. In 1741 the Swedes made an effort to recover the ceded province, but through wretched management suffered disaster, and were compelled to capitulate in August 1742, ceding by the peace of Åbo, next year, the towns of Villmanstrand and Fredrikshamn. Nothing remarkable seems to have occurred till 1788, under Gustavus III., who began to reign in 1771, and who confirmed to Finland those “fundamental laws” which they have succeeded in maintaining against kings and tsars for over two centuries. The country was divided into six governments, a second superior court of justice was founded at Vasa, many new towns were built, commerce flourished, and science and art were encouraged. Latin disappeared as the academic language, and Swedish was adopted. In 1788 war again broke out between Sweden and Russia, and was carried on for two years without much glory or gain to either party, the main aim of Gustavus being to recover the lost Finnish province. In 1808, under Gustavus IV., peace was again broken between the two countries, and the war ended by the cession in 1809 of the whole of Finland and the Åland Islands to Russia. Finland, however, did not enter Russia as a conquered province, but, thanks to the bravery of her people after they had been abandoned by an incompetent monarch and treacherous generals, and not less to the wisdom and generosity of the emperor Alexander I. of Russia, she maintained her free constitution and fundamental laws, and became a semi-independent grand-duchy with the emperor as grand-duke. The estates were summoned to a free diet at Borgå and accepted Alexander as grand-duke of Finland, he on his part solemnly recognizing the Finnish constitution and undertaking to preserve the religion, laws and liberties of the country. A senate was created and a governor-general named. The province of Viborg was reunited to Finland in 1811, and Åbo remained the capital of the country till 1821, when the civil and military authorities were removed to Helsingfors, and the university in 1827. The diet, which had not met for 56 years, was convoked by Alexander II. at Helsingfors in 1863. Under Alexander II. Finland was on the whole prosperous and progressive, and his statue in the great square in front of the cathedral and the senate house in Helsingfors testifies to the regard in which his memory is cherished by his Finnish subjects. Unfortunately his successor soon fell under the influence of the reactionary party which had begun to assert itself in Russia even before the assassination of Alexander II. One of Alexander III.’s first acts was to confirm “the constitution which was granted to the grand-duchy of Finland by His Majesty the emperor Alexander Pavlovich of most glorious memory, and developed with the consent of the estates of Finland by our dearly beloved father of blessed memory the emperor Alexander Nicolaievich.” But the Slavophil movement, with its motto, “one law, one church, one tongue,” acquired great influence in official circles, and its aim was, in defiance of the pledges of successive tsars, to subject Finland to Orthodoxy and autocracy. It is unnecessary to follow in detail the seven years’ struggle between the Russian bureaucracy and the defenders of the Finnish constitution. Politics in Finland were complicated by the rivalry between the Swedish party, which had hitherto been dominant in Finland, and the Finnish “nationalist” party which, during the latter half of the 19th century, had been determinedly asserting itself linguistically and politically. With some exceptions, however, the whole country united in defence of its constitution; “Fennoman” and “Svecoman,” recognizing that their common liberties were at stake, suspended their feud for a season. With the accession of Nicholas II. (see Russia) the constitutional conflict became acute, and the “February manifesto” (February 15th, 1899) virtually abrogated the legislative power of the Finnish diet. A new military law, practically amalgamating the Finnish with the Russian forces, followed in July 1901; Russian officials and the Russian language were forced on Finland wherever possible, and in April 1903 the Russian governor, General Bobrikov, was invested with practically dictatorial powers. The country was flooded with spies, and a special Russian police force was created, the expenses being charged to the Finnish treasury. The Russian system was now in full swing; domiciliary visits, illegal arrests and banishments, and the suppression of newspapers, were the order of the day. To all this the people of Finland opposed a dogged and determined resistance, which culminated in November 1905 in a “national strike.” The strike was universal, all classes joining in the movement, and it spread to all the industrial centres and even to the rural districts. The railway, steamship, telephone and postal services were practically suspended. Helsingfors was without tramcars, cabs, gas and electricity; no shops except provision shops were open; public departments, schools and restaurants were closed. After six days the unconstitutional government—already much shaken by events in Russia and Manchuria—capitulated. In an imperial manifesto dated the 7th of November 1905 the demands of Finland were granted, and the status quo ante 1899 was restored.

But the reform did not rest here. The old Finnish constitution, although precious to those whose only protection it was, was an antiquated and not very efficient instrument of government. Popular feeling had been excited by the political conflict, advanced tendencies had declared themselves, and when the new diet met it proceeded as explained above to remodel the constitution, on the basis of universal suffrage, with freedom of the press, speech, meeting and association.

In 1908-10 friction with Russia was again renewed. The Imperial government insisted that the decision in all Finnish questions affecting the Empire must rest with them; and a renewed attempt was made to curtail the powers of the Finnish Diet.

Ethnology.—The term Finn has a wider application than Finland, being, with its adjective Finnic or Finno-Ugric (q.v.) or Ugro-Finnic, the collective name of the westernmost branch of the Ural-Altaic family, dispersed throughout Finland, Lapland, the Baltic provinces (Esthonia, Livonia, Curland), parts of Russia proper (south of Lake Onega), both banks of middle Volga, Perm, Vologda, West Siberia (between the Ural Mountains and the Yenissei) and Hungary.

Originally nomads (hunters and fishers), all the Finnic people except the Lapps and Ostyaks have long yielded to the influence of civilization, and now everywhere lead settled lives as herdsmen, agriculturists, traders, &c. Physically the Finns (here to be distinguished from the Swedish-speaking population, who retain their Scandinavian qualities) are a strong, hardy race, of low stature, with almost round head, low forehead, flat features, prominent cheek bones, eyes mostly grey and oblique (inclining inwards), short and flat nose, protruding mouth, thick lips, neck very full and strong, so that the occiput seems flat and almost in a straight line with the nape; beard weak and sparse, hair no doubt originally black, but, owing to mixture with other races, now brown, red and even fair; complexion also somewhat brown. The Finns are morally upright, hospitable, faithful and submissive, with a keen sense of personal freedom and independence, but also somewhat stolid, revengeful and indolent. Many of these physical and moral characteristics they have in common with the so-called “Mongolian” race, to which they are no doubt ethnically, if not also linguistically, related.

Considerable researches have been accomplished since about 1850 in the ethnology and archaeology of Finland, on a scale which has no parallel in any other country. The study of the prehistoric population of Finland—Neolithic (no Palaeolithic finds have yet been made)—of the Age of Bronze and the Iron Age has been carried on with great zeal. At the same time the folklore, Finnish and partly Swedish, has been worked out with wonderful completeness (see L’Œuvre demi-séculaire de la Société de Littérature finnoise et le mouvement national finnois, by Dr E.G. Palmén, Helsingfors, 1882, and K. Krohn’s report to the London Folklore Congress of 1891). The work that was begun by Porthan, Z. Topelius, and especially E. Lönnrot (1802-1884), for collecting the popular poetry of the Finns, was continued by Castrén (1813-1852), Europaeus (1820-1884), and V. Porkka (1854-1889), who extended their researches to the Finns settled in other parts of the Russian empire, and collected a considerable number of variants of the Kalewala and other popular poetry and songs. In order to study the different eastern kinsfolk of the Finns, Sjögren (1792-1855) extended his journeys to North Russia, and Castrén to West and East Siberia (Nordische Reisen und Forschungen), and collected the materials which permitted himself and Schiefner to publish grammatical works relative to the Finnish, Lappish, Zyrian, Tcheremiss, Ostiak, Samoyede, Tungus, Buryat, Karagas, Yenisei-Ostiak and Kott languages. Ahlqvist (1826-1889), and a phalanx of linguists, continued their work among the Vogules, the Mordves and the Obi-Ugrians. And finally, the researches of Aspelin (Foundations of Finno-Ugrian Archaeology, in Finnish, and Atlas of Antiquities) led the Finnish ethnologists to direct more and more their attention to the basin of the Yenisei and the Upper Selenga. A series of expeditions (of Aspelin, Snellman and Heikel) were consequently directed to those regions, especially since the discovery by Yadrintseff of the remarkable Orkhon inscriptions (see Turks, p. 473), which finally enabled the Danish linguist, V. Thomsen, to decipher these inscriptions, and to discover that they belonged to the Turkish Iron Age. (See Inscriptions de l’Iénissei recueillies et publiées par la Société Finl. d’Archéologie, 1889, and Inscriptions de l’Orkhon, 1892.)

Finnish Literature.

The earliest writer in the Finnish vernacular was Michael Agricola (1506-1557), who published an A B C Book in 1544, and, as bishop of Åbo, a number of religious and educational works. A version of the New Testament in Finnish was printed by Agricola in 1548, and some books of the Old Testament in 1552. A complete Finnish Bible was published at Stockholm in 1642. The dominion of the Swedes was very unfavourable to the development of anything like a Finnish literature, the poets of Finland preferring to write in Swedish and so secure a wider audience. It was not until, in 1835, the national epos of Finland, the Kalewala (q.v.), was introduced to readers by the exertions of Elias Lönnrot (q.v.), that the Finnish language was used for literary composition. Lönnrot also collected and edited the works of the peasant-poets P. Korhonen (1775-1840) and Pentti Lyytinen, with an anthology containing the improvisations of eighteen other rustic bards. During the last quarter of the 19th century there was an ever-increasing literary activity in Finland, and it took the form less and less of the publication of Swedish works, but more and more that of examples of the aboriginal vernacular. At the present time, in spite of the political troubles, books in almost every branch of research are found in the language, mainly translations or adaptations. We meet with, during the present century, a considerable number of names of poets and dramatists, no doubt very minor, as also painters, sculptors and musical composers. At the Paris International Exhibition of 1878 several native Finnish painters and sculptors exhibited works which would do credit to any country; and both in the fine and applied arts Finland occupied a position thoroughly creditable. An important contribution to a history of Finnish literature is Krohn’s Suomenkielinen runollisuns ruotsinvallan aikana (1862). Finland is wonderfully rich in periodicals of all kinds, the publications of the Finnish Societies of Literature and of Sciences and other learned bodies being specially valuable. A great work in the revival of an interest in the Finnish language was done by the Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura (the Finnish Literary Society), which from the year 1841 has published a valuable annual, Suomi. The Finnish Literary Society has also published a new edition of the works of the father of Finnish history, Henry Gabriel Porthan (died 1804). A valuable handbook of Finnish history was published at Helsingfors in 1869-1873, by Yrjö Koskinen, and has been translated into both Swedish and German. The author was a Swede, Georg Forsman, the above form being a Finnish translation. Other works on Finnish history and some important works in Finnish geography have also appeared. In language we have Lönnrot’s great Finnish-Swedish dictionary, published by the Finnish Literary Society. Dr Otto Donner’s Comparative Dictionary of the Finno-Ugric Languages (Helsingfors and Leipzig) is in German. In imaginative literature Finland has produced several important writers of the vernacular. Alexis Stenwall (“Kiwi”) (1834-1872), the son of a village tailor, was the best poet of his time; he wrote popular dramas and an historical romance, The Seven Brothers (1870). Among recent playwrights Mrs Minna Canth (1844-1897) has been the most successful. Other dramatists are E.F. Johnsson (1844-1895), P. Cajander (b. 1846), who translated Shakespeare into Finnish, and Karl Bergbom (b. 1843). Among lyric poets are J.H. Erkko (b. 1849), Arwi Jännes (b. 1848) and Yrjö Weijola (b. 1875). The earliest novelist of Finland, Pietari Päivärinta (b. 1827), was the son of a labourer; he is the author of a grimly realistic story, His Life. Many of the popular Finnish authors of our day are peasants. Kauppis Heikki was a wagoner; Alkio Filander a farmer; Heikki Maviläinen a smith; Juhana Kokko (Kyösti) a gamekeeper. The most gifted of the writers of Finland, however, is certainly Juhani Aho (b. 1861), the son of a country clergyman. His earliest writings were studies of modern life, very realistically treated. Aho then went to reside in France, where he made a close study of the methods of the leading French novelists of the newer school. About the year 1893 he began to publish short stories, some of which, such as Enris, The Fortress of Matthias, The Old Man of Korpela and Finland’s Flag, are delicate works of art, while they reveal to a very interesting degree the temper and ambitions of the contemporary Finnish population. It has been well said that in the writings of Juhani Aho can be traced all the idiosyncrasies which have formed the curious and pathetic history of Finland in recent years. A village priest, Juho Reijonen (b. 1857), in tales of somewhat artless form, has depicted the hardships which poverty too often entails upon the Finn in his country life. Tolstoy has found an imitator in Arwid Järnefelt (b. 1861). Santeri Ingman (b. 1866) somewhat naïvely, but not without skill, has followed in the steps of Aho. It would be an error to exaggerate either the force or the originality of these early developments of a national Finnish literature, which, moreover, are mostly brief and unambitious in character. But they are eminently sincere, and they have the great merit of illustrating the local aspects of landscape and temperament and manners.