ABSTRACT
The early nineteenth-century Finnish coastline with its small cities was quite well integrated with the intellectual atmosphere of Europe. At the same time, many Finnish scholars were convinced that from the rural inland, one could find people as yet untouched by the developed contemporary civilisation, still possessing knowledge of ancient national poetry, mythology and customs. Influenced by continental European ideas, the Finns believed that the oral culture would reveal and express the cultural and material conditions of the ancient Finns. In 1809, after the war between Sweden and Russia, Finland was annexed to the Tsar’s Empire and gained autonomous status. The new political situation, with the rising interest in history, posed a problem: The new nation also needed a unique history and culture. Finnish was a spoken language that lacked a literary culture and written sources of its history. Thus, oral tradition was elevated to an important role in defining Finnishness, as it was considered to offer legitimate knowledge of the past as well a seed for a natural formation, or Bildung, of a modern literary culture.
