Background: National Awakening, Finnish-Language Newspapers, and Emerging Civil Society
Finland belonged to the Swedish Realm until 1809, and Swedish was the administrative and judicial language. When Finland became an autonoÂmous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire, the overwhelming majority of the population, 87%, of more than 830,000 inhabitants were FinnishÂspeaking in 1812.[549] As Swedish remained the legal language, for most Finns, lacking language skills proved an obstacle for learning the law despite Finnish-language translations of the Law of 1734, and another hurdle for managing their legal affairs.
Swedish legal formularies, books with model documents for the most common legal acts, started to be printed in the eighteenth century. These were bought and used also in Finland, before the first Swedish-language formulary written in Finland (1833) replaced them. It was translated into Finnish in two different verÂsions in 1847 and 1849. In the later nineteenth century, an expanding selection of legal books for a lay audience also became available.[550]Influenced by the nineteenth-century national romantic trends, Finland was awakening as a nation. The development of Finland’s neglected majorÂity language, Finnish, became a burning topic. The Finnish Literature Society (FLS, Finn. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura) was founded in 1831 in order to further writing and publishing in Finnish, elevating it into “a language of civilisation.”[551] One of the aims of the FLS was providÂing even “ordinary people” access to useful and educational books.[552] This reflected increasing national romanticism and political activism improving the status of the Finnish language and increasing the political power of Finnish-speakers. The language strife started to emerge in the 1850s and 1860s, when the so-called Fennomans, favouring Finnish language, culÂture, and national identity, formed the Finnish party.
Petitions for increasÂing the status of Finnish also suited Imperial Russian policies, and the ensuing Language Decree (1863) granted people the right to submit Finnish-language documents to courts and the central administration. However, it took several decades before Finnish was used in the entire court system and the senate.[553] Consequently, Finnish was actively develÂoped into an administrative and legal language.The Diet of Helsinki passed numerous legal reforms after parliamentary work recommenced in 1863 after a standstill of several decades.[554] These included major legal reforms of communal administration and public law. Thanks to these, more people became involved in communal administraÂtion even if participation was still largely gendered and dependent on property in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Local administration that had largely been in the hands of the local clergy and major landÂowning peasants became increasingly complex and required recordÂkeeping. As these norms were new, and there were few lawyers in the countryside, communal duties could become an avenue for social advanceÂment for literate men outside the traditional rural elites.
Civil society was emerging in the latter part of nineteenth-century Finland. The Finnish Diet assembled relatively regularly and new legislaÂtion was drafted. This was also discussed in both Swedish- and
Finnish-Ianguage newspapers and a growing public sphere.[555] The Fennoman movement aimed at educating responsible Finnish citizens. Popular education, public libraries, and schools established in the countryÂside became important elements of the political agenda.[556] The Finnish Lifelong Learning Foundation (Kansanvalistusseura, est. 1874) became a significant cultural marker.[557] However, the Fennoman movement split into competing factions based on individual rivalries and ideological disÂagreements in the 1860s.
Later in the 1880s, the Fennoman party was divided into the “Old Finns” and the Liberal Party or the “Young Finns” (“Jung Fennomans”), who in turn had sub-groups. The “Young Finns” emphasised programmatically social equality and justice. Moreover, they advanced enlightened ideas about education including non-formal adult education.[558]This political development played a considerable role in the newspaper boom of the later 1800s and early 1900s. Indeed, the establishment of Finnish-language newspapers reflected the national awakening and Fennoman ideology. These papers aimed to create a civil society. Later, they had party-specific objectives and attempted to reach out to potential voters. Finnish-language newspapers were slower to build a sound ecoÂnomic base because they lacked clear target audiences having to appeal both to townspeople and to country-dwellers. There had been some Finnish-language newspapers before the 1840s, but only the HelsinkiÂbased Suometar (est. 1847) became successful and had a nationwide readership.
Suometar,s objectives included educating the people, giving a voice to common people, and inviting readers to join in writing so that Finland would “fulfil its destiny among nations.”[559] Thus, it is unsurprising that Suometar and its successor, Uusi Suometar, became the Finnish pioneers of the so-called rural correspondence (Finn. maaseutukirjeenvaihto), letÂters from the readers. In 1854, such correspondence formed about a third of its contents, and at its peak (1855), it published 386 rural letters, about 5 or 6 per issue, emanating from all over the country. Such rural correÂspondence was also crucial for Suometar,s growing distribution, geoÂgraphical expansion, and overall success.[560]
After Suometar, Finnish-language newspapers were also published in Turku and Oulu. In the 1870s and early 1880s, many more new Fennoman newspapers were established, contributing to the emerging civil society and popular education.[561] Thus, the Finnish-language and popular educaÂtion movements inspired novel newspapers. Their discussions helped to build the foundations of a developing civil society especially from the 1870s onwards.[562]