Hellenization of imagination in the Grand Duchy of Finland

Abstract

This article examines the domestication of the Greek past in autonomous Finland (1809–1917). It explores the relationship between ancient Greek inheritance and nation-construction and seeks to show how the scholars and other builders of the Finnish-speaking educated public imprinted Hellas on the nation’s memory. Taking a long-term view of the wide-ranging Finnish revivalist movement, I wish to demonstrate why the Neohellenic ideas, texts, and images constituted a prominent feature of nationalistic imagination in these years. Philhellenism (the love of Hellas) is a word and a concept which many associate with the classicist admiration of the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, or the nineteenth-century political movement to liberate Greece. Here, my aim is to focus on the ways in which revivalist writers made Hellas a part of the national culture stock in the northernmost corner of Europe and to shed new light on archaic imaginary and its importance for communal memory.

Keywords

• 19th-century Finland
• Philhellenism
• Nationalism
• Historical imagination
• Scholarly culture