This work is part of a series on the history of learning and science in Finland, to which Jouko Hautala’s classic account of the history of Finnish folklore studies (1969) also belongs. The temporal frame, which is the same for all monographs in the series, is contemporaneous with the existence of the Imperial Alexander University, the only academic institution in Finland under Russian rule. As the authors point out, this delimitation does not sit well with the history of Finland-Swedish folklore studies, since many significant developments take place after 1918. However, they have solved this problem by appending relations of these developments as epilogues to their texts when necessary.
The book begins with a short preface (chapter 1) outlining the socio-cultural and ideological background of the emergence of Swedish folklore studies, such as its role in the formation of a Swedish-speaking identity and its scholarly links to linguistics and ethnology. These aspects are discussed in more depth in the subsequent chapters. Of these, chapter 2 covers the prehistory of the discipline in the work of prominent eighteenth-century scholar Henrik Gabriel Porthan (1739–1804), who was primarily concerned with Finnish-language folk poetry, but in the capacity as editor of Finland’s first national newspaper, Tidningar utgifne af ett sällskap i Åbo (Journals Published by a Society in Turku), he also saw a number of topographical descriptions dealing with Swedish-speaking parishes into print.
The history of Finland-Swedish folklore studies begins in earnest with Johan Oskar Immanuel Rancken (1824–1895), who was the first to advocate the collection of the folklore of Swedish-speakers too, on a par with Finnish folklore, as an important contribution to a joint national enterprise. This was in an intellectual climate in which the majority of the Swedish-speaking intelligentsia felt it had to abandon its own language and culture in favor of the Finnish. Somewhat later, a group of students with a pro-Swedish bent founded Illegala Nyländska afdelningen (The Illegal Association of Uusimaa) in order to document Swedish dialects and folklore in the region of Nyland. They eventually published the material they had gathered in the six volumes of the collective work Nyland (1884–1896).
Several of the members of Nyländska afdelningen became involved in the activities of the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, founded in 1885 (chapter 4). The aim of the society was to gather evidence of the origin and development of Swedish culture in Finland, and this included collecting “folksongs and fairytales.” From 1887 onwards, the society therefore granted scholarships for folkloristic fieldwork, which were open to anyone deemed suitable for the task, but in 1908 the policy changed and only “fully competent persons” were enlisted. The society also published its material, in the monumental twenty-three volume Finlands svenska folkdiktning (The Swedish Folk Poetry of Finland, 1917–1975).
During the period studied, Finland-Swedish folkloristics was more concerned with performing and reviving Swedish folklore than conducting scholarly analyses of it (chapter 5). This was due to its instrumentality in promoting a common Finland-Swedish identity, which required striking performative practices and symbols to unite an otherwise dispersed and heterogeneous population. Song festivals, the local history movement, youth societies, and the revitalization society Brage founded in 1906, were all exponents of this language-political use of folklore. The scholarly study of Swedish folklore in Finland finally gained official status in 1926, when Otto Andersson (1879–1969) acceded to his chair in Musicology and Folkloristics at Åbo Akademi University.
This summary of the contents of the book does not really do it justice, because its contribution does not lie in the presentation of wholly new material, or in a complete rewriting of the history of Finland-Swedish folklore studies (which would be quite uncalled for). Many of the main points have been covered in its immediate predecessor, Otto Andersson’s Finländsk folklore (The Folklore of Finland, 1967), and the work of Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Anne Bergman, and Bo Lönnqvist, among others. However, very little of this research has been available in English, and I definitely welcome an overview, one written in such a lucid and eloquent style at that.
The authors are also well acquainted with their material. Carola Ekrem, who has written chapter 4, has worked for the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland for many years, and Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, who has taken care of the remainder, has obviously read Tidningar utgifne af ett sällskap i Åbo and Rancken’s publications, along with the early scholarship on Finland-Swedish folklore. It is from this familiarity with the sources that the true value of the book emanates: the authors extend and subtly shift the emphasis of prior research, quoting many examples that have not been discussed at length before. Along the way, they make many illuminating remarks teasing out the implications of previous work, and put their own stamp on the account of the discipline’s history. I, for one, will be very glad to add this work to my references.
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[Review length: 808 words • Review posted on January 12, 2010]