”O Jumalan Karitza”

1800-luvun pietistisestä arkkivirrestä

• Tuula Hökkä Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74722

Abstract

”O Jumalan Karitza”: On the Nineteenth Century Pietistic Broadside Hymn

This article deals with a pietistic broadsheet hymn called “O Jumalan Karitza”, published in 1834. The published version of the hymn names no author, as was typical of broadside songs at the time, and also makes no reference to a melody to use for singing along. According to Matthias Akiander’s Historiska Upplysningar om Religiösa rörelserna i Finland i äldre och senare tider (1857–1863), the author might be Margareta Högman (1786–1849). In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Högman was the leader of Ystäväliike, the Friend Movement, a revivalist Christian movement in Finland that pursued spirituality and piety, and promoted pastoral care and other cultural and social activities, especially near the town of Mikkeli.

Old hymns printed as broadsheets suggest to us a multi-disciplinary field of research. They often reflect commonsensical interpretations of faith, the meaning of hymns and their singing. My aim is to verify the authorship of this influential hymn, but also to investigate the larger pietistic context that is displayed in its poetics: how the concept of Christian faith, traditional Christian beliefs and the understanding of faith in the Friend Movement all play a part in the lyrics of the hymn and in what we know about its performance. The anomalous structure of the hymn, its faith content and liturgical references, as well as professor Akiander’s description of praying in the Friend Movement, imply that the performance of the hymn may have taken varied forms between singing, recitation and speech.