I find myself increasingly interested in the history and myths of my own country. One recent trigger was a dinner with some well educated british gentlemen, who were interested in knowing about Kalevala and the Finnish heritage. I was embarrased with my superficial knoweldge.

Kalevala day was celebrated on February 28th. Kalevala is the national epic of  Finland, collected from old folk poetry during the 19th century. The stories themselves date back to 17th century and earlier, the first written verses are from 1670. I heard an interesting radio program on how Väinämöinen, the strong head figure in Kalevala, compares to Greek Gods. The analogue is that in the early ages, both Väinämöinen and Greek Gods were pure, divine figures with little human characters. As time passed, people started to give them human attributes and stories changed both gods and Väinämöinen to include human feelings and behaviors, including weaknesses. Interesting.



This weekend is the celebration of 200 years from the date when Finland was moved from being part of Swedish kingdom into being part of the Russian empire. Finland received an autonomous state of Grand Duchy of Finland, the first such duchy in Russia. Finland was allowed to keep our own governance model, post, money, banks etc. Some people have recently said that this was in fact the savior of Finnish language. When part of Sweden, the oficial language in the country was Swedish, and Finnish was not used in any official documents. Would this have continued until today, maybe Finnish language would not exist in its current formal grammar. Who knows, but it would be an interestig topic for a parallel universe saga.

I have a personal tie to the Diet of Porvoo where the transition from Sweden to Russia happened. The house where Russian Tsar Alexander stayed in 1809 was my childhood home in 1980s.

Last week there was interesting news about Finnish grammar. So far it has been thought that the oldest written Finnish grammar is the Finnish Grammar by Eskil Petraeus (should I adopt that last name?) from 1649. Someone bought an original copy of this very book from Sotheby's last year, and found an unidentified script between the pages. This script is called 'Rudimenta linguae finnicae breviter delineata', and it is estimated to be either from the end of 16th or the beginning of 17th century. In any case dates earlier than 1649. The researchers are fascinated. It's a bit like from Indiana Jones, isn't it.