Paul Fryer

(Joensuu, Finland)

 

A glimpse into current Finnish academic geographical research and journals

 

Despite its small geographic and demographic size, Finland has a strong tradition of geographical studies that is reflected in its strong position in the university system and notable publishing activities. In this short article, I will give a short history of the discipline in Finland and introduce Russian readers to current geographical journals.

Under Swedish rule, no real formal research took place in the country as Finland remained a somewhat backward province of the Swedish realm. Geographical studies in Finland trace their origins back to the Russian period (1809-1917), with increasing links to German universities and to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Within the Empire, Finns took an active role in the Tsar’s service, and many explorers and officials sent to the north and east of the Empire had Finnish origins. Notable examples include Adolf Erik Nordenskiold, who was the first to travel the length of the North-East Passage and return via the Bering Strait in 1878, and Adolf Karlovich Etolin, who was a part of the Bering Sea survey of the 1820s.

The formal origins of geographical studies in Finland can be traced back to 1888, when two organisations (the Geographical Society of Finland and the Finnish Geographical Association) were founded. Already by 1899, Finnish geographers had received international recognition for their newly-compiled Atlas of Finland, the world’s first comprehensive national atlas, which was awarded a special prize at the Paris World Fair in 1900. The two organisations joined together in 1921 to form the Finnish Geographical Society (http://www.helsinki.fi/maantiede/geofi/), which remains until the present day. The society – reflecting Finland’s official bilingual nature – functions in both the Finnish and Swedish languages.

One of Finnish geography’s most distinguished personalities, often referred to as the ‘Father of Finnish Geography’, was Johannes Gabriel Grano (1882–1956). Appointed Professor of Geography at the Universities of Tartu (Estonia), Helsinki, and Turku in the 1920s-40s, Grano wrote his major work, Reine Geographie (Pure Geography, 1928), which put Finnish geography on the world map. Beyond a general theoretical contribution to the field, Grano established the idea of landscape regions alongside urban areas.

In the post-war period, Finland has seen the development of teaching at the university level expand along with the growth in the number of provincial universities across the country. In 1969, the University of Joensuu broke with tradition by establishing the department of geography in the Faculty of Social Sciences, rather than in Natural Sciences, which heralded a movement away from physical geographical research towards increasingly humanities-focussed geography. From the 1970s, Finnish geography increasing fell under the influence of Anglo-American geography, resulting in the gradual abandonment of the traditional dominance of the German school.

Today, geography is taught at 10 universities across the country, both in Finnish and Swedish, with special degree programmes in English available for several years. Within the discipline, Finnish geographers engage in active debate over the use of language – after years of publishing mainly in English, human geographers have started to re-emphasise Finnish (and Swedish) in scholarly publications, while physical geographers continue to publish mainly in international journals in foreign languages.

Due to the history of the discipline, Finland has developed three geographical journals: Terra, Fennia, and Alue ja ymparisto (Region and Environment). Bothe Terra (http://www.helsinki.fi/maantiede/geofi/terra/) and Fennia (http://www.helsinki.fi/maantiede/geofi/fennia/) are peer-reviewed journals published by the Finnish Geographical Society devoted to publishing all fields of geographical research. Both journals have their births in 1889 and have gradually evolved according to language. While both journals published in several languages before the war, including Finnish, Swedish, Russian, German, French, etc., since then Terra has exclusively published 4 times per year in the Finnish and Swedish languages for primarily the domestic market, while from the 1970s Fennia has published twice-yearly exclusively in English as the Society’s international peer-review journal. Beyond these publications, the Finnish Regional and Environmental Studies Society has published the Alue ja ymparisto (Region and Environment: http://www.helsinki.fi/maantiede/AYS) journal twice per year mainly in Finnish since 1971, with a focus on current social science debates on regional and environmental studies. Both Terra and Alue ja ymparisto provide abstracts for the main articles in English for the non-Finnish speaker, though some other materials are exclusively in Finnish. While all journals have some focus on issues that fall within Finnish geographical borders, the scientific community publishes works by authors from outside the country and on themes covering all parts of the world, though Finland’s neighbours, including Russia, have a special place in research.

To the occasional reader or academic, much about Finland may remain a mystery, partially due to the limited knowledge of the Finnish language in the outside world. And yet Finnish geography stands as one of the fields of research that has most attempted to go global and publicise the country and its people, an effort that overall has been quite successful. Finnish geographical research will continue to play a leading role in this endeavour and offers readers from around the world and in Russia a wider glimpse into the country though the work presented in its quality journals.

 

© Paul Fryer

 

Мы публикуем и английскую версию статьи и ее перевод, поскольку считаем, что информация, представленная в статье П. Фрайера представляет интерес не только для русскоязычного читателя – главный редактор.

 

 

 

Журнал создан в сотрудничестве с Министерством регионального развития Российской Федерации

 

 

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