Once in a while I get really excited about something. This weekend it was an application developed in University of Jyväskylä on Finnish folk songs and what they tell about the people's lives and emotions in different areas of Finland from late 19th century. The researchers have digitalized 9000 folk songs from their musical notes, dating between 1898 and 1933, and mapped them on amap of Finland based on tune (minor or major), and by lyrics (love, joy, sadness, drinking). The maps are amazing.

Here's how sadness ("suru") presents itself in songs:

The color bar tells how much of the attribute displays over area. The number explains attribute's proportion in all songs. Here you can see that most sad songs were sung in the Karelia area (now part of Russia, close to St.Petersburg).

Here's Joy ("ilo"):

This is the opposite of sadness, but notice that therei is more joy in the west (0.14)  than there is sadness in the east (0.04). Maybe we aren't such a sad nation after all ;)

Here's one on minor key. The more red the area, the more songs were sung in minor key. The bluer the map, the more major key folk songs were sung.



Pretty neat, huh?

A colleague asked me about the Finnish folk saga Kalevala. I mentioned that it is somewhat more gloomy than Norwegian or Icelandic tales, and here's a good visible explanation why. The Kalevala tales were gathered mainly from the Carelia area, i.e the area that you can see as red in the "minor key" map. Minor key songs and minor key saga, what more can I say?

Except perhaps that you shouldn't draw too direct conclusions from Kalevala or the folk songs to the mentality of Finnish people today. For centuries the country was part of the Swedish kingdom (until 1809), so many cheerful influences came from the west. Sadly, also the "saddest" parts of the country are now part of Russia, lost in 1940.

It is true, however that you do notice a difference in the way people are in the western and eastern parts of Finland. Food culture, behaviors, housing and construction styles etc. have taken influences from neighbors on both sides.

There is one folk song map, however, where east and west were equal: most drinking songs were sung in the swedish speaking west coast and around St. Petersburg area.