Join us as we unravel the intriguing tale of Finland's national anthem, "Maamme," which unexpectedly emerged from a light-hearted student celebration into a powerful symbol of national identity. We’ll explore how this song, initially penned to quench revolutionary fervor, ultimately became a rallying cry for a nation yearning for independence. Traveling over 7,600 kilometers from the last country, we’ll encounter a conspiracy theory that ridiculously claims Finland doesn’t exist and is in fact just a clever ruse to keep the waters of the Baltic Sea stocked with fish. Along the way, we’ll delve into the lives of the poet Johan Ludwig Runeberg and composer Fredrik Pacius, whose contributions shaped Finland's cultural landscape. With a dash of wit and historical context, we’ll reflect on how a simple tune transformed into a beloved anthem, bridging the gulf between past and present, and solidifying Finland's identity in the hearts of its people.

1. https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/66569 
2. Jussila, Osmo: The Grand Duchy of Finland 1809–1917 . Helsinki: WSOY, 2004. ISBN 978-951-029500-7
3. https://web.archive.org/web/20070227172733/http://www.fimr.fi/en/tutkimus/fysikaalinen-tutkimus/vedenkorkeuden-vaihteluiden-ajalliset-muutokset.html 
4. https://www.national-anthems.org/history.php 
5. https://horserookie.com/how-far-can-a-horse-travel/#:~:text=Depending%20on%20the%20horse%20and,days%20to%20travel%201%2C000%20miles. 
6. https://www.mcislanguages.com/mcis-blog/fatherland-vs-motherland-what-is-the-gender-of-your-country/ 
7. https://archive.ph/20121224213536/http://froste.oso.chalmers.se/hgs//Bifrost_01/ 
8. https://kansallisbiografia.fi/kansallisbiografia/henkilo/2599 
9. Keskisarja, Teemu: Murder Angel. The human history of the Great Northern War , p. 246. Helsinki: Siltala, 2019. ISBN 978-952-234-638-4
10. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/finland/ 
11. https://web.archive.org/web/20161020135441/http://www.tuglas.fi/v%C3%A5rt_land_maamme_mu_isamaa,_mu_%C3%B5nn_ja_r%C3%B5%C3%B5m 
12. https://research.chalmers.se/publication/197898 
13. Jonsson, Leif (1990). Guardians of enlightenment: [19th century student songs as a form of "public art" in Swedish society] . Studia musicologica Upsaliensia, 0081-6744 ; NS, 11 [Student song in the Nordic countries] ; [1]. Uppsala: Univ. page 31
14. https://yle.fi/a/3-10540671 
15. https://www.google.com/books/edition/External_Danger_and_Democracy/O7COAAAAMAAJ?hl=en 
16. https://runeberg.org/hymner/0117.html
17. https://blf.fi/artikel.php?id=1441
18. https://web.archive.org/web/20151208021745/http://www.runeberg.net/fin/a_8_t.html 
19. https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/sanomalehti/binding/647431?page=3 
20. https://finland.fi/arts-culture/runeberg-a-patriotic-rapper-of-the-19th-century/ 
21. https://yle.fi/a/3-9439870 
22. https://finland.fi/facts-stats-and-info/the-finnish-national-anthem/ 
23. https://epa.oszk.hu/00300/00381/00145/richly.htm 
24. https://www.pacius.fi/index.php?catid=76&blogid=5 
25. https://www.sls.fi/sv/ 
26. https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/1410869/itsenaisyyden-juhlavuosi-kannusti-suomalaisia-liputtamaan 
27. https://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-2000004640344.html 
28. https://web.archive.org/web/20030211180848/http://www.porvoonmuseo.fi/artMuseum.php 
29. https://www.thecollector.com/revolutions-of-1848-anti-monarchism-europe/ 
30. https://www.kirjastot.fi/kysy/kuka-kaytti-ensimmaisena-suomesta-ilmaisua?language_content_entity=fi 
31. https://kansanmuisti.fi/la-158-2003-laki-suomen-kansallislaulusta-kamu/ 
32. https://kansallisbiografia.fi/english/person/2846 
33. https://www.nykarlebyvyer.nu/sidor/texter/poesi/jlr/vartland.htm 
34. http://www.kuurojenmuseo.fi/?p=431&lang=en 
35. https://www.sls.fi/publications/biografiskt-lexikon-for-finland/ 
36. https://web.archive.org/web/20071010061033/http://www.fimic.fi/fimic/fimic.nsf/mainframe?readform&CD84D3E8EA030D05C22567F400403499 
37. https://375humanistia.helsinki.fi/en/humanists/johan-ludvig-runeberg 
38. https://litteraturbanken.se/f%C3%B6rfattare/RunebergJL 
39. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14270821/fredrik-pacius 

https://web.archive.org/web/20151213065044/http://csridentity.com/finland/about.asp

Foreign hello and welcome to the Anthems Podcast.

I'm Patrick and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation.

Today we are traveling 7,686 kilometers, or 4,786 miles, and I was kind of hoping we could do this one on horseback.

It looks like it is actually physically possible, whether or not geopolitical realities and needing to feed a horse and a human over a very long distance would allow for it.

I got wrapped up in trying to figure out how long it would take since an average horse can do like 25 miles a day if the human can ride, which to be clear, I do not know how to do.

I got this from reference number five in the show notes.

At that pace, it will take very close to 192 days for us to ride to Finland, officially known as the Republic of Finland.

We are in the land of a thousand lakes because of a wacky conspiracy theory that grew out of a Reddit thread.

Now, conspiracy theories are not a new thing that came with the Internet, and neither are real conspiracies.

But every once in a while it spawns one kind of novel and less scary than some of the stuff that's happening regarding the other conspiracy theories.

Ready?

Finland doesn't exist and is actually just open water that the Japanese and the Russian government have a fishing agreement about and they use it to feed their people.

You got a Nokia phone?

No you don't.

That is a fake company.

Been to the capital, Helsinki?

No you have not.

That is just in a bit of eastern Sweden.

Of course this is nonsense and it actually grew out of a thing that some guy's parents told him and is a funny idea, but that is how we got flat earthers, so be careful.

Either way, dispelling misinformation around Finland is a good excuse to tell you about Mame or our country.

It turns out that I didn't really know much of anything about Finland apart from Helsinki being the capital.

I also knew that the best rye bread I've ever had originated in a Finnish kitchen, and I am genuinely afraid of trying salted black licorice, which I hear is something somehow popular over there.

But food preference is like taste in music.

I don't knock anything that people are eating, even though I might refrain because I think a fed human is the best kind.

I also think that Finland is the land of a thousand lakes because the land of 188,000 lakes doesn't really have a ring to it or any marketability, but we're going to move quickly on before you notice I'm not funny and we'll spend a couple of minutes listening to an anthem.

Enjoy Ra Sa My first impression is that we've got an anthem here.

Before I knew anything else about it, I knew the song fit the bill.

It's a very western sounding anthem, which here makes sense because Finland is part of Western Europe.

With the choir and a smallish brass ensemble playing outside while a crowd is partly singing along in the background, it captures the spirit of the song in some measure.

It's a welcoming sounding tune from a country where they'll welcome you to enjoy a sauna with them if they like you.

I was actually very surprised at how serious the Finnish people take their sauna.

Gotta tell you though, a nice relaxing steam cleanse in a special little house on the side of a lake sounds pretty good.

So let's find out where we've gotta go to make that happen.

Finland is one of the Nordic countries and we've already been to one other when we learned about Iceland.

Unlike that nation, Finland is attached to the mainland European landmass.

Easiest way to find it, I guess is to go to the northern part of Russia's eastern border and everything on it north of St.

Petersburg is Finland, except for the last maybe 160km.

Because Norway sort of wraps around the shoreline on the Scandinavian peninsula.

It means that Finland's western border is Russia, to the south is the Gulf of Finland with Estonia on the other side, west is Sweden and the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia plus a land border to the northwest.

We round out the perimeter with Norway to the north.

All told, Finland is just a bit bigger in landmass than the British Isles and is mostly bore oriole, forest, saunas, lakes with honest and direct people.

And seriously, why so many lakes?

I wonder aloud.

It sent me on a search that led me to the new to me term for this episode.

And we're back to geology here with post glacial rebound.

In a strange twist of geography that is slightly frustrating given the conspiracy theory that brought me here, a whole bunch of modern Finland used to actually be underwater.

The shortest answer to the question, excuse me, what is that?

Glaciers are very heavy and they had a bunch of time during the ice age to sit on top of the land and push all of it toward the center of the planet a bit more.

Then when the ice melts and it's gone, the landmass starts to float back up unevenly, but at a rate that is measurable and In Europe they measure it with a GPS system called the Bifrost.

Just like the Rainbow bridge to Asgard from Norse mythology.

Interesting stuff.

But enough of that.

It's time to figure out where to get into the story.

We have a historically interesting place in Finland.

It's not a country wrapped up in colonialism.

It has not been substantially affected by the ancient Romans but but it was still dramatically affected by Napoleon's wars.

But it's been pretty quiet there compared to a lot of the rest of Western Europe.

They have been in wars in the modern world though, such as the three month long conflict that resulted in a non communist win for the so called whites when they defeated the Reds.

After that they were on to fighting Russia to either take or prevent the taking of territory.

And then they fought some Nazis which I'm always a big fan of.

The US did, did drag them into the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But that is way past where we are going to be in history chronologically speaking.

We just need to get to the civil war that I mentioned.

Context does matter.

So I mentioned all these other things in order to frame how we're going to talk about the winding down of the Great Power era.

Because in pre 17th century Western Europe it turns out that the Swedish Empire was kind of a big deal and a superpower.

But King Charles VII was young and sort of new at being a king.

Some of the end of this conflict resulted in the founding of St.

Petersburg, the end of Sweden's great power status, the exile of Charles vii and roughly the current Russia Finland border.

It fluctuated in between there and here.

But we'll get to that.

It also left more than half a million people dead due mostly to famine and left the population of Finland at just 250,000 and also still ruled by Sweden, albeit with a shiny new parliamentary democracy.

That left the Hats and the Capps there, the two political parties struggling for control and court loyalists with no influence at all.

The Capps wanted a peaceful coexistence with Russia and the Hats wanted revenge.

While causing many economic issues, it also resulted in yet another Russian occupation.

Apart from those rough spots, though, it was relatively common.

Finland.

In the second half of the century, the population rebounded significantly and the intellectual seeds of a separate Finnish state were planted by the Russian occupations.

We'll be circling back to this point in a little bit to brush up on how it's Napoleon's fault because it's instrumental in moving the timeline forward.

And in a new spin on things for the show, we have a pretty well detailed record of this guy's life.

Runberg was born to Swedish speaking parents in Finland, in Jakobstad, on the Gulf of Bothnia.

He was a sickly boy and he contracted something called scrofula as a result of tuberculosis.

And it not only looks like it was absolutely terrible to have, but it kept him from learning to walk until he was nearly four years old.

His family was kind of poor, though, so they sent him to a rich uncle's house for schooling focused on classical Latin and Greek.

Then he moved over to Porvo on the south coast of Finland, with a professorship at the Borgi Gymnasium, which is equivalent to what Americans would call a high school.

Ruenberg was of course, a poet and writing major works exclusively in Swedish.

He wrote an astonishing 72 collections of work.

But our poet was best known for the heroic epic the Tale of Ensign stahl.

I have not read those other two.

You'll hear more about that war from me in a little bit.

Right now we are interested in the very first installment of the Tales of Ensign Style, because it is in fact the poem Mame and the very reason that the very talented Finnish poet turned into a person that I've read a literal book's worth of information about.

As a widely loved man, there are many tributes to him in Finland.

Most prominently is Runeberg Day, celebrated on his birthday, and the delicious Runeberg Tart, a pastry of almonds, jam and icing that the poet was said to enjoy as a breakfast on most days.

But before I tell you about the circumstances of the anthem writing, actually writing the anthem, we need to get to know the composer a bit and then we'll catch up some of the timeline.

Here again we have a fairly detailed look at his life.

And again that is unusual for my show, at least so far because there are many more to get through, so maybe well known people turn out to be more common.

The young Pasius was initially apprenticed to a businessman by his parents.

I'm assuming they intended for him to become a wine merchant.

However, his father was also a talented musician and Frederick learned to play the violin when he was very young.

At 15, a friend of the family said, hey, you should have him get apprenticed in music instead of being a businessman.

After that he spent about a year doing concerts.

Then a friend of his backed out of a job offer to be a lecturer in music at the University of Helsinki.

But he told the school that he knew the perfect person for the role and recommended his friend Passius, who was fairly immediately offered the position once they figured out who this guy was.

And he was also offered it ahead of five or six people that actually applied for the job.

So our composer founded a musical association, a men's choir that still exists 186 years later and a full sized orchestra.

Frederick Passius is considered by many to be the father of Finnish music, having made dozens of compositions, trained hundreds of musicians and took part in a music filled life that expanded his adopted homeland's culture.

We'll discuss more about that in a little bit.

So Napoleon again and Russia taking Finland from Sweden.

Recall that I said it's Bonaparte's fault that the Finnish War happened.

We're gonna have a little hand waving here about some of this because the Napoleonic wars are really complicated and messy and I would enjoy not getting too mired in the complicated mess that they are.

So Emperor Alexander the first of Russia signed the Treaty of Tilsit that divided Central Europe between Russia and France at the expense of the Prussian Empire.

Alexander used this as a sort of Damocles over Gustav's head.

That's the King of Sweden.

Lots of names here this time.

And he demanded that Sweden obey the continental system that Napoleon established and blockade Britain.

However, Gustave literally thought that Napoleon Bonaparte was the Antichrist.

So he attacked Denmark thinking Russia would never invade in the winter.

And they launched a war that I'll mention basically nothing about except to say that it resulted in the Grand Duchy of Finland ruled by the Tsar who was now also the Grand Duke of Finland.

And on December 18th the Soviets officially recognized Finland as a separate country.

But the non communists won that war and the long fostered spirit of an independent and separate Finland was finally set free.

So we can talk about the birth of the anthem and the spark of that spirit.

One of the things I say a lot reading history that combines my historical legwork in my training in Calculus is that this stuff is almost always a local maximum, whether in place or in time, or in substance.

That is, there's always a broader context that we have to consider in the run up to larger events.

So in short, I'll be talking about this year again, and I have before.

But the springtime of the people in Europe was indeed felt in the country.

The idea of Finland as an independent entity, as I said, was germinated during the initial occupations of Russia.

That's S a I M A if I'm pronouncing it wrong.

And there was a graduation poem written for the University of Helsinki that many people say is the very beginning of Finnish nationalism.

All of this, coupled with the student habit of singing, worried the powers that be.

And one of those powers that be at the university was the poet Runberg.

And he responded to the raucousness of the students at a May party with the distinctly counter revolutionary Swedish poem Vartland, which in English is our land, or in Swedish is Mame.

There was a strong interest in making sure that Russia felt like Finland, was loyal and would spare them from harsh measures.

Runberg's poem was used as the starting point for the celebration, and the singing teacher, who was none other than Mr.

Frederick Passius, was commissioned to write a tune for the peace.

Despite the idealized image the composition has garnered, the piece it was really written with a light touch, probably because he only had two days to do it and get it rehearsed by the choir, and then another two days to arrange it for and get it practiced by the horn orchestra.

I'm not going to say it was a rush job, but it was certainly made to happen.

In fairly short order.

After all, despite being, what is, because of Frederick's inherent skill, a good composition.

A procession set off from the university to a venue just outside of the city.

They played Mamey the whole way to make sure that there was no revolutionary music played over it.

I have said national anthems are a nationalist thing and this is a pretty plain, if actually unintentional example of that happening.

There was a speech, more performances of the anthems, and the kids got too drunk to think about revolution.

It sounds about right for the end of a few of these things.

Among other things, it dramatically changed the tone of the song.

This is probably not specifically what got the song on track to be the anthem, Even though in 11 first poem feels real, real long.

But what I think really cemented Maame as the de facto anthem in Finland was the short civil war that determined a non communist future.

Because this song became the song of bourgeois celebration.

And when the so called whites won, it vaulted up the anthem status despite debates, challenges and nearly a century passing.

With all that, I'll say that we have the anthem and I will go on to discuss the song itself.

Musically speaking, we have a song that is accidentally just the right music for a Finnish anthem.

I say it's just the right music because that's what the country collectively picked over time.

But actually it's quite different from what you would expect to be the anthem in a place like Finland.

The composition is light and almost a danceable tune, even if it's a little bit low energy, with a tempo of 60 to 80 beats per minute and an original key of B flat major.

Remember that this is a song written not just for a student celebration, but also to keep other more revolutionarily worded songs off of people's lips.

Despite its simplicity, or perhaps in part due to it, the originality of Passius's composition has been disputed.

Modern sources are more clear though, and they say that the song was inspired mostly by the Polish Mazurka music, which is kind of a pre poka folk dance that happens in three quarter time just like Mame and was also a very popular couples dance in Finland well into the 20th century.

An interesting composition to end up backing an anthem.

Now lyrically, I was initially undecided about this thing.

I'm not sure.

I wasn't sure how I was going to present the lyrics to you folks.

The original composition clocks in at 11 verses of Swedish or Finnish iambic pentameter and it's a lot to hand to you talk about and then say, but really all we need are the first and last verse and then have to talk about the whole thing again because the tone is very different.

I know I've done stuff like this before and I probably will again, but each of these songs is a unique creature with its own place in history and the overall lexicon of my show, so each has got to be considered on its own merits.

So in short, ish, I guess we are not hearing all 11 verses of the song, so I will just convey the first and final because that is how it is sung.

The tone is very different.

As I have said a couple times, Ruenberg's poem was written to repress the revolutionary spirit of the students.

Have I made the right choice?

I have no idea, but it feels correct in the moment and maybe there are no wrong answers in this kind of decision.

Regardless, here are the lyrics.

And please note that the poem was originally written in Swedish, translated into Finnish and then English, which is what I will be reading it in.

Also note that in a performance of the song, the last four lines of both verses are repeated twice.

But I'm not going to do that here.

Our land, our land, Our fatherland Ring out dear word, O sound no rising hill or mountain grand no sloping dale, no northern strand There is more loved to be found than this.

Our Father's ground, Thy blossom hidden now from sight shall burst its bud Air long lo from our love shall rise all right.

Thy son, thy hope, thy joy, Thy light and higher Once more full and strong shall rise Our Country Song the work starts off with a triple invocation of our land to immediately establish a reverential tone to the fatherland.

I mentioned way back somewhere on this show that there is some interesting history and etymology with respect to the choice of motherland versus Fatherland versus a gender neutral term.

My most recent reading on that can be found in reference 6 in the show notes.

In Northern and Nordic European countries, fatherland is generally more common.

Same thing happens in South America, but that is not specifically important here, just interesting.

Maybe because this was written in Finland when it was part of Russia and motherland is more common in Russia.

But Runberg was a Swedish speaker that was born in Finland, so layers and layers.

Runberg goes on to say that Finland is a land with no equal in its beauty and nothing is more loved.

At least I'm pretty sure that's what the line means, because every translation I've found that gets this into English, and there are many of them, is equally awkwardly phrased, so we're going to chalk that up to slightly archaic Swedish language idiosyncrasies.

As the verses change, the song turns from a sacred extolling of nature's virtue to speaking of a metaphorical national destiny.

Describing some hidden blossom waiting to bud is symbolic of the restrained but real potential in a nation restrained by Swedish and Russia.

Runberg writes of people's love for their country being like the light of the sun and emphasizing the collective effort of the people.

The poem ends with lines suggesting a future full of patriotic pride and self determination.

Kind of timeless stuff.

Mommy is an interesting song because despite not having been written as an anthem, it was written as a nationalistic song.

So it unintentionally checks off a lot of boxes that I expect to see in an anthem.

I don't understand Swedish, but when I look at the poem in that language, you can still see the repetition in structure and and the use of alliteration.

Runberg uses these devices to underscore the interconnectedness of land and ancestry that combines with the imagery to provide a tangible sense of place.

Very useful for a song that becomes tied to the Nation.

The inclusion of Romantic era style writing about the country is not a surprise, but it helps to explain why it's had such staying power for the Finnish people.

Although it's peppered throughout the entire 11 verses of the original, we really only see one metaphor here in these two.

But comparing the country to a flower emphasizes growth and it's a very anthem appropriate topic.

Finally, this anthem fosters an emotional connection between Finland and and the people by imbuing the nation with human qualities such as blossoming, shining and being loved.

A text that intertwines patriotism and national appreciation while viewing the homeland as a sacred and beloved entity makes Mame make some sense as the song that came to be the nation's anthem.

If we were to listen to the entire poem as originally written though.

Ah, the tone's super different.

You should give it a read, but clearly I don't think you need to for the story to make sense as I read it to you.

The piece opens by setting a tone of devotion and pride, and it ends by looking forward with a determined hope.

The song frames Finland as a land to be cherished and containing a heritage for its people to love for generations.

And we got a good story that has shown me that sometimes there is in fact a whole lot of information.

The journey continues and and I suppose we can go on to the credits.

The writing, recording and production for the show are done by me and I wrote and played the theme music.

The music was used with my permission.

Unless otherwise noted, the anthems I play are public domain.

Some equivalently free thing or a thing I got permission to play or made a good faith effort to get permission to play.

This time I have reached out to the person that posted the audio I'm using despite it being Creative Commons license, and I have not yet heard anything back as of this recording.

You can also go there and volunteer your time or join up as a creator.

I can be found on Facebook and WhatsApp as the anthems podcast and also I am now on Reddit as the Anthems podcast.

Although I'm mostly just there to get information for the show.

I don't post stuff, but you might see my name pop up.

So potentially hi, I have basically no advertising budget, so I try to get the episodes onto whatever platform I can with the hashtag anthemspod.

Think Instagram, Mastodon, Blue Sky, Twitter or whatever.

I'm not on any of those platforms.

It would be cool if you hashtag the post of some kind like that, and perhaps it helps dispel the ridiculous notion that Finland does not exist.

As always, you can email me corrections, comments, concerns, suggestions, ideas, instructables or actual instructions on how to do stuff.

Even ask me questions@anthemspodmail.com perhaps you want me to hear exactly how mad or pleased you are with me.

Same reason it helps.

Maybe you're going on a medium length cruise next week and you get invited up to have dinner with the captain and he thinks this episode is interesting enough to play for the entire ship.

But even if the only thing that happens is that you listen again next month, that's very cool.

And you're still cool for doing that later.

Sa.