Finland (Finnish Suomi or Suomenmaa, 'the land of fens and lakes'), a grand-duchy annexed to Russia in 1809, though politically a part of that country, is an independent state from an administrative point of view. Finland lies between 60° and 70° N. lat., and 20° and 32° E. long., and is bounded on the N. by Norway, on the E. by the Russian governments of Archangel and Olonetz, on the W. by the Gulf of Bothnia, and on the S. by the Gulf of Finland. Its greatest length is 717 miles, its average breadth about 185 miles. The population of the grand-duchy, which was less than 1,000,000 at the time of the annexation, rose to 1,636,915 in 1850, and to 2,431,953 in 1892, of which number about 85 per cent. are of the native Finnish race, 12 per cent. Scandinavian (i.e. descendants of the Swedes who governed the country or settled in it during the six and a half centuries that Finland formed an integral part of the kingdom of Sweden), the rest being Russians, Germans, and Lapps. Of the population all but some 50,000 Russo-Greeks are of the Lutheran state-religion. The inhabitants of Helsingfors, the capital (pop. 67,000), are mostly of Swedish descent, as is also the case at Abo and all along the south and west coasts. About 80 per cent. of the inhabitants belong to the agricultural class, being for the most part peasant-proprieters, with holdings of from 10 to 30 acres. The area of Finland is nearly 145,000 sq. m. (or rather larger than Great Britain and Ireland), the surface presenting a singular aspect.
A glance at a map shows the coast to be extremely indented, and studded with thousands of small islands, forming a perfect archipelago (Swedish skärgård), whilst the interior of the country is occupied with countless lakes, some of vast size, and mostly connected with each other naturally or artificially by means of canals. In fact, it is doubtful whether any country in the world is so well supplied with the means of inland navigation as Finland, 12 per cent. of the total area being occupied by lakes, and 15 per cent. by marsh and bog, the quantity of which latter is gradually being diminished by the united efforts of nature and man; for it has been proved by careful observation that the surface of Finland (which is a tableland from 300 to 400 feet above the level of the sea) is gradually rising from its watery bed, and that, too, in some places at a rapid rate. Thus, it has been calculated, by means of points fixed on the sea-shore, that on the Gulf of Bothnia the land has risen at the rate of 3 feet 1 inch in 100 years, and on the Gulf of Finland at the rate of 1 foot 11 inches. The largest of the lakes—besides Lake Ladoga, of which part belongs to Russia—are Lakes Saima, Enare, Kemi, Uleå, and Päijänne. The Saima consists of 120 large lakes and several thousand smaller ones, all connected, and having a natural outlet into Lake Ladoga, over the famous Imatra Falls—more correctly rapids—the finest in Europe both from the scenery and volume of water. Lake Saima is likewise connected with the Gulf of Finland by means of a splendid canal 36 miles long, with no less than twenty-eight locks. The canal, which took twelve years to complete, was designed and carried out by Finnish engineers at the cost of the state, and is a triumph of engineering skill, as it runs for many miles through granite rock, and there is a difference of 250 feet between the levels of the extremities. The surface of Finland consists of primitive rocks, as gneiss, granite, diorite, and gabbro. Neither fossils nor coal are found.
Finland has no mountains worthy of the name, the highest being Haldefjäll, in Lapland (Lapp Haldischok), 4126 feet high, near the frontier of Norway, and really belonging to the Norwegian range. The highest hill in the south is Türismaa, and this does not exceed 754 feet above sea-level. The average height of the interior of Finland is about 325 feet above the level of the sea. On account of this lack of mountain-ranges, the rivers of Finland are unimportant, the principal being the Kemi and Uleå in the north, and the Kymmene in the south. They are usually navigable only for a part of their length, owing to rocks and rapids, but they are well suited for floating logs from the forests of the interior to the coasts, besides which they serve as motive power for many mills, and are also rich in fish. The forests of Finland are of vast extent, covering no less than three-fifths of the land-surface. More than half of them belong to the state; for this reason it may safely be said that Finland will never exhaust its stock of timber, as the cutting of the forests is carefully regulated; whereas private owners have hitherto distinguished themselves by a reckless and extravagant system of tree-felling. The Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris) and Norway spruce (Abies or Picea excelsa) are the most widespread and most productive; then come the birch, alder, ash, oak, &c., of which the three first mentioned alone grow far north, the others being found only in the centre and south of Finland. Among the fruit-trees which have been successfully acclimatised in Finland are the apple, pear, cherry, &c., but they produce no fruit in the north of the country beyond lat. 63°; currants, raspberries, strawberries, &c. thrive almost everywhere. Of cereals, rye is the most grown, then barley, oats, and wheat; this latter, however, rarely ripens beyond lat. 61°. The potato flourishes as far north even as lat. 69°; after rye it forms the staple food of the inhabitants. The fauna of Finland is very rich. Among wild animals we find the bear, wolf, fox, lynx, ermine, otter, and hare; but the elk (Alces) and beaver, which were formerly abundant, are now rare. Seals are plentiful along the coast, as also in the Saima and Ladoga lakes. All domestic animals thrive in most parts of Finland, but are replaced by reindeer in the far north. Finnish horses are remarkable for their speed, hardihood, and docility. Of birds there are 211 species—not counting the domestic sorts—including ptarmigan, blackcock, moorcock, swans, geese, ducks, many varieties of birds of prey, and most of the smaller birds common in Great Britain. We find 80 species of fish in the rivers, lakes, and seas of Finland. Of these, a kind of herring (Swedish strömming) is very abundant on the south and south-west coasts. Salmon, trout, perch, pike, gwyniad, &c. abound in most of the rivers, and give employment to a considerable proportion of the population. Fish forms an important element in the food of all classes, large provision of the same being salted or smoked for the winter season.
The climate of Finland is very rigorous in winter, even on the south coast, where 20° and 25° below zero (Fahrenheit) are often registered; but it is generally healthy, and, owing to the proximity of the sea, it is far milder than North Russia or any other region in the same latitude except Sweden and Norway. The summer, though short, is occasionally very hot in June and July. The ground is generally covered with snow from the middle of November till April; then follows a brief spring, accompanied by a rapid growth of vegetation. Autumn is likewise short, September being often very fine and October wet. The long summer days, when the sun only goes below the horizon for an hour or two, have a peculiar charm. At Abo the mean temperature of the year is (Fahrenheit), and at Helsingfors . At the latter place February is the coldest month, with an average of (Fahrenheit), and July the hottest, with . In the north and north-east of Finland, of course, the winters are longer and more severe, the mercury frequently freezing in the thermometer. The annual rainfall at Helsingfors is 20 inches, the prevailing winds being south and south-east.
The emperors of Russia are at the same time grand-dukes of Finland, with considerable power, such as the right of declaring war and peace, the imposition of duties, the appointing of the senators and other high officials; nor do the various bills that pass through the House of Representatives become law till they have received the imperial sanction. The country is governed by the grand-duke, the senate, and the diet (Swedish Landtag). The senate consists of 20 members, appointed by the grand-duke from among the Finnish subjects recommended to his imperial majesty by the governor-general of Finland, who is a Russian subject, and commands the Russian troops that garrison Sweaborg and other strong places in the grand-duchy. The diet consists of four chambers—nobles, clergy, burgesses, and peasantry; the nobles having hereditary legislative rights, whilst the others are elected by the members of their respective classes. The numerical representation in these chambers is some 125 nobles, 37 clergy, 55 burgesses, and 61 peasantry. According to law the diet must meet once in five years; of late it has rarely been convoked (in 1888-95 not once).
Education in Finland is in a highly advanced state, no less than 91 per cent. of the adult inhabitants being literate, whilst of the children capable of attending school only 2 per cent. are not in receipt of instruction. There is one university, at Helsingfors, with four faculties (theological, legal, medical, and philosophical) and 1800 students (75 ladies), against a total of 411 students in 1863. There are besides 32 lyciums, 160 elementary and real-schuler for boys, 50 girls' schools, 4 seminaries for the training of teachers, and over 1000 popular schools, besides several nautical, commercial, and agricultural schools. Formerly Swedish was the official language of Finland; but since 1883 Finnish and Swedish have been placed on the same footing. At the university and the higher educational establishments Swedish is still mostly used, but in the popular schools Finnish is the medium of instruction as a rule; Russian is almost an unknown tongue in Finland.
For administrative purposes the grand-duchy is divided into 8 counties (Swedish län): Nyland, Abo-Björneborg, Tavastehus, Viborg, St Michel, Knopio Vasa, and Uleaborg. Each county has a governor at its head. The courts of law are held at Abo (the former capital), Vasa, and Viborg. The chief towns are Helsingfors (66,734), Abo (32,184), Tammerfors (22,169), Viborg (21,870), and Uleaborg (13,050).
The railways of Finland, which with the exception of one short line all belong to the state, show a total length already of 1450 miles, whilst other lines are in course of construction. The telegraphic department is under the control of the
Russian government; and telephones in the hands of private companies have been established throughout all the towns of the grand-duchy. In Helsingfors the telephone system has reached an astonishing development, few houses being without it.
The finances of the grand-duchy are in a most flourishing condition, and are quite distinct from those of Russia. The revenue now reaches £2,700,000, including generally a surplus from the preceding year, whilst the expenditure is rather less. The public debt of Finland amounted in 1895 to £2,927,000 (as against £3,405,000 in 1890), nearly all of which sum has been expended on public works, education, &c. By the law of July 1886 the French decimal system, which had previously been adopted for the Finnish currency—the mark = 1 franc, and the penni = 1 centime—was extended to weights and measures as well, the French names being retained. The rate of exchange of the Finnish mark has hardly varied during the last 20 years, and notes or gold are at par.
Finland's army consists of 5400 men in time of peace, with about 20,000 reserves. These troops are divided into nine battalions of sharpshooters and one regiment of cavalry, this latter formed in 1889. Both officers and men must be Finnish subjects, and are only to be employed for the defence of Finland, except as regards the battalion of Finnish guards, which generally accompanies the emperor and grand-duke in his wars, as was the case in the last Russo-Turkish campaign. Finland has no navy of her own, but possesses a thriving commercial marine, which numbers some 2300 vessels of 270,000 tons register. Finnish ships, however, sail under the Russian flag. The value of the merchandise annually exported from Finland exceeds £5,000,000, timber ranking for about a half, the other chief exports being butter and paper. The imports amount to a little more, the principal items being cereals (£1,500,000), coffee, sugar, iron and hardware, cotton, machinery, and chemicals. Nearly half of Finland's trade is with Russia; Germany being second, and Great Britain third on the list. There are some 1800 factories and other industrial establishments in the grand-duchy, employing 22,000 hands. Of these the sawmills are the most important. Large quantities of iron are found in Finland, and copper, tin, silver, and gold exist; gold does not pay the cost of working. The grand-duchy formerly suffered severely from occasional famines—the last was in 1868—owing to short or wet summers; but these disasters have now been obviated by means of railways, canals, and improved agriculture. Physically the Finns proper are a strong, hardy race, with round faces, square shoulders, fair hair, and blue eyes, though intermarriage with Scandinavians and Russians has in many cases caused variations. They are of a somewhat phlegmatic temperament, but are honest, hospitable, clean, strictly moral, and very religious. The love of strong drink by which they were once distinguished is rapidly giving way before the spread of education and temperance doctrines. They possess many of the characteristics of the Mongolian races, to which they are ethnically related, and have a keen sense of independence and personal freedom, serfdom never having existed in the country except in the county of Viborg when it was in Russian hands.
History.—The Finns belong, as their tongue indicates, to the great Turanian or Ural-Altaic family, which still predominates in northern and central Asia. About the end of the 7th century or the commencement of the 8th the Finns, driven as it is supposed by the Bulgarians from their settlements on the Volga, took possession of the country they now occupy; but they found inhabitants there already, whose memory popular tradition has handed down under the names of Hïdet, Jättiäset, Jatulit, and Jotunit. Probably the modern Lapps are the descendants of those primitive inhabitants. In the 12th century the Swedes turned their attention to Finland, more especially for the introduction of Christianity; but the struggle with paganism was long and obstinate, lasting for nearly 200 years. Three separate crusades (1157, 1249, 1293) finally brought about the subjection of the country to Sweden, and the adoption of the Christian religion. The first of these crusades was led by King Erik the Holy, accompanied by Henrik, Bishop of Upsala, an Englishman by birth. The latter was soon afterwards cruelly murdered by a fanatic Finnish peasant, and Henrik the Martyr has ever since been regarded as the patron saint of Finland. For over 600 years Finland was united with Sweden, and thus received the incalculable advantages of Christianity, civilisation, a constitution, and liberal laws. The Reformed religion was introduced into Finland by Gustavus Vasa in 1528, and King John III. raised the country to the dignity of a grand-duchy. Finland, however, became the theatre of frequent bloody struggles between Russia and Sweden, culminating in the cession of the whole country to Russia in 1809 by the peace of Fredrikshamn. Alexander I., however, in annexing Finland to Russia, promised the inhabitants that their constitution, religion, and laws should be faithfully preserved, as when under Swedish rule. This promise has in the main been kept; though since 1890 the Russian government has repeatedly interfered in the internal arrangements of this anomalously constitutional state in an autocratic empire, and awakened some serious discontent.
See Koskinen, Finnische Geschichte (Leip. 1873); Ignatius, Le Grand-duché de Finlande (Helsingfors, 1878); Jonas, Das Grossfürstentum Finland (Berlin, 1886); Mechelin, Droit public de Finlande (Helsingfors, 1886; Eng. trans. by present writer, 1889); J. C. Brown, Finland in Archaic Times (1893); Finland in the Nineteenth Century, by Finnish authors (London, 1895); Clive-Bayley, Vignettes from Finland (1895).
Language and Literature.—Finnish is a member of the Ugro-Finnic branch of the Ural-Altaic family, which comprises the languages of the Ugro-Finnic, Manchu, Mongol, Turkish, and Samoyede tribes (see ASIA, Vol. I. p. 493). The Ugro-Finnic group includes (1) the language of the Finns in Finland, and the Estonian (q.v.), (2) the tongue of the Lapps, (3) of the Finns of Perm, (4) of the Finns of Vologda, and finally (5) that of the Ugrian Finns, to which last belong the Vogul and Ostiak dialects in Siberia, and the Magyar in Hungary (see HUNGARY). The most highly cultivated language of the group is that spoken by the Finns proper, the Suomi of Finland. The Finnish dialects are all agglutinative forms of speech, with tendencies towards true inflection, so that occasionally the difference between agglutination and inflection is somewhat obscure. The nouns are not inflected, an additional word being used to denote the variations of case, number, and sex, whilst the prepositions and pronouns are suffixed to the words they modify. The verbs have only a present and past tense, another word being required to indicate the future. Rask considered the Finnish language to be one of the most sonorous and harmonious of tongues, and there is no doubt that as it is developed it will be more and more appreciated.
The literature of Finland was formerly almost entirely devoted to religious subjects. Part of the Old Testament had been translated in the 16th century, but it was not till 1642 that the whole of the Bible was made accessible to those who did not know Swedish or Latin. The credit of rescuing the Finnish language from comparative oblivion belongs to Dr Zacharias Topelius and to Dr Elias Lönnrot of Helsingfors. The former published a collection of scattered songs in 1822, but in 1835 Dr Lönnrot gave to the world his famous epic Kalevala, being a systematic collection of popular songs taken down from the lips of the peasantry during years of patient research and wandering. By unwearied diligence he succeeded in collecting 12,000 lines of runor and saga that for generations had been handed down by the Runolainen, or singers, to the sound of the kantela, a sort of primitive harp. Not much notice was paid to this remarkable publication at first, but when in 1849 Dr Lönnrot, who had energetically continued his researches meantime, published a new and extended edition of 22,793 verses in fifty runes, its importance was soon recognised by philologists, and it was translated into Swedish, German, and French. The Kalevala is a singular monument of the earlier culture of the people, and has given rise to much critical literature, scholars not agreeing as to the character of the plot, some regarding the incidents as allegorical, others as referring to definite epochs. All, however, are of accord in considering the poem a pure epic with an oriental appreciation of nature, and rich in images, tropes, and synonyms. The poem is written in eight-syllabled trochaic verse, and an idea of its style may be obtained from Longfellow's Hicawatha, which is known to be an imitation of the Finnish epic. Professor Max Müller compares the Kalevala with the Iliad in length and completeness, and adds that 'it will claim its place as the fifth national epic of the world, side by side with the Ionian songs, with the Mahabharata, the Shahnameh, and the Nibelungen Lied.' The Kalevala has been translated into English by J. Martin Crawford (New York, 1888, and London, 1889). There are translations by Kollan and by Castrén (Swedish), by Barna and by Ujfalvy (Hungarian), by Schiefner (German), and by Le Duc (French). A Finnish-English grammar was published in 1889 at Oxford, by E. J. Eliot, secretary of embassy.
The first Finnish printed book was an Abecedarium in 1543; the Bible was not translated till 1642. During the 19th century, and especially within the last twenty years, there has been great literary activity in Finland, and the Russian government encourages in every way the development of the Finnish tongue versus the Swedish, which latter language, though still spoken by the higher classes, seems destined to practically disappear in the course of two or three generations. Most of Shakespeare's plays have been translated into Finnish, and the standard works of England, France, Germany, and Russia have long since been rendered into that language. At Helsingfors there is a Finnish theatre, in addition to a Swedish and a Russian theatre, with very good native actors. There are a great many Swedish and Finnish newspapers, and scientific or literary journals, and the publications of the various learned bodies are most valuable; amongst others, those of the Society of Finnish Literature (founded 1831), which has fostered the editing by Lönnrot, Borenius, Krohn, and other scholars, of precious collections of epic songs, ballads, 'songs-of-tears' or metrical laments for the dead, folk-tales, magical formulas, proverbs, riddles, and beast-fables. Porthan and Koskinen are the principal historians of the grand-duchy; Runeberg is undoubtedly the greatest poet and dramatist that Finland has produced, and Professors Krohn and Donner have made themselves most eminent for their works on Finnish. Professor
Donner has published in German a Comparative Dictionary of the Finno-Ugrie Languages (Helsingfors and Leipzig, 3 vols. 1874-88); and there are several Swedish-Finnish dictionaries, besides Lönnrot's.
See the works of Castrén, Elmgren, and Weske; on the Kalevala, the works of Krohn, his letter quoted by Max Müller in the Athenæum, October 1888, p. 519, his posthumous Kalevalan Toisinnot, 'Variants of the Kalevala' (1888), and the 'Kalevala-studien,' trans. by Viktor Hackmann, in Veckenstedt's Zeitsch. für Volkskunde for 1889. Kaarle Krohn published at Helsingfors in 1886 a rich collection of beast-fables, &c. (Suomalaisiu Kunsansatuja I. Eläinsatuja).