The ‘ancient’ independence in Finnish historiography and popular uses of history 1920–2020
Abstract
In this article, we analyse the impact of early twentieth-century historiography and popular histories on the twenty-first-century representations of history and cultural memory. The object of study is early Finnish history, sometimes named the ‘tribal era’ or ‘Kalevala culture’, meaning the late Iron Age before written sources and the consolidation of the Swedish kings’ power in present-day Finland. This vaguely defined era refers to the period commonly known as the Viking Age (c. 800–1100). We propose that early twentieth-century historiography and popular and amateur histories formulated ideas that continue to affect discussions about the Viking Age and the Finnish Early Middle Ages, even though their original historiographical and political context has been forgotten. For closer analysis, we have chosen the idea of the ‘ancient’ or first independence, and the Swedish crusades to Finland which have been regarded as the end of this ancient independence. The Swedish crusades to Finland have been a crux of Finnish historiography, but also a topic of significant public interest. We explore how the discussion surrounding these topics has moved between academic research, public and popular history, and pseudo-histories. The article’s central conclusion is that even extreme interpretations such as pseudo-histories of the ancient Finnish kings have followed the general interest in early history and the Middle Ages, and have utilised arguments formulated in mainstream historiography. Theories about the ancient Finnish kings were popular in the early twentieth century, which was also the golden era of Finnish national medievalism. The most recent interest in these imagined kingdoms was born in the 1980s and has continued, along with other forms of popular and participatory medievalism, and a new wave of Finnish academic medieval studies. The last especially has been markedly European in its perspective and has been connected with the production of a European identity. Pseudo-histories must therefore be understood as an extreme case of the nationalistic interpretation of history. Their representatives feel they are marginalised with respect to the mainstream cultural memory and representations of history.
