Nordic Journal of African Studies 1(2): 95–110 (1992) Oral and Written Tradition during the Creation of the National Culture Early Fieldwork on the Kalevala

A work about Finnish 19th century history, published in 1973, is entitled Kansakunta löytää itsensä (The nation finds itself). Who or what was the seeker? For his part the Dane Bengt Holbek called his article, which appeared in 1991, The invention of the folk. Who was the inventor? Both studies examine the background to the birth of the Finnish national epic Kalevala. Are these texts referring to the same folk? In both the basic information is similar. The title of the latter may be considered more cynical, but in fact both crystallize the fact that all kinds of attempts were connected with the national idea and the development of Finnish literary culture. During the period of Swedish rule, a situation arose in Finland in which alongside the vernacular oral culture, a literary culture first based on Latin and later Swedish was constructed. When in 1809 Finland became an autonomous grand-duchy within the Russian empire, there was a university, the Turku (Åbo) Academy, founded in 1640, a Lutheran church using the vernacular, and a judicial system, whose judges were not in practice required to speak Finnish (Danielsson