Like the origins of the FLS, the foundation of the Finnish Antiquarian Society (FAS) stems from a ‘get-together’, this time in the popular restaurant Kaisaniemi. At the same table sat Johan Reinhold Aspelin, who had recently conducted archaeological excavations in Ostrobothnia, Emil Nervander who, inspired by his Italian tour, was devoted to the history of art and three other young men. They discussed Aspelin’s wish to continue his archaeological research and Nervander’s ideas on charting the art treasures in Finnish churches and manors. The conversation continued at other gatherings, leading finally, in October 1870, to the foundation of a new society which would protect the artistic and ancient monuments of Finland and inspire people to appreciate their cultural heritage. This new society represented three branches of study: archaeology, ethnography and history of art, which, at the time, were often considered, as a whole, antiquarian disciplines. None of these young men had a chair in the University of Helsinki so that they decided to ask the Professor of History, Zachris Topelius, to be the president of the society.344
At the time when the FAS was founded, there were no governmental institutions to protect the monuments of antiquity, which were lost all the time under building sites and widening agriculture. Neither did Finland have a national museum; the
340 See e. g. minutes of the SFFF 7 October 1893 § 14. Archive of the SFFF. SLSA1162:1. Book 7.
FNL.341 Minutes of the SFFF 1 April 1903 § 1. Archive of the SFFF. SLSA1162:1. Book 8. FNL.
342 Minutes of the board of the SFFF 18 October 1909 § 7. Archive of the SFFF. SLSA1162:2�20.
Book 2. FNL.
343 Saalas 1946, pp. 31-46.
344 Tallgren 1920, pp. 15-18, 23-27; Selkokari 2008, pp. 69-70.
museum of university had some modest archaeological, ethnographical and numis-matic collections.345 Archaeological research had been, on a minor scale, pursued in the FLS, which had collected antiquities and funded Aspelin’s first excavations. In 1867, however, it had decided to donate its archaeological collections to the museum of the university.346 The sources are quiet on the development leading to the withdrawal of archaeological research from the FLS. The papers of the FAS often underline the youth of the founders, which refers to the fact that other institutions like the FLS and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters were regarded as the strongholds of the older and more established generation.347 The biographer of Aspelin mentions that his master’s thesis had in 1869 led to a fiery polemic with Yrjö Koskinen, who was a rising star in the FLS.348 On the other hand, contacts with the FLS were at least formally good and co-operation between these two societies continued throughout the whole period. For instance, Aspelin published his thesis Suomalaisugrilaisen muinaistutkin-non alkeita (The Basics of Finno-Ugrian Archaeology) in the Editions of the FLS in 1876.
The idea of publishing a journal was expressed at the first meeting of the FAS, although admitting that the project had to be postponed.349 Soon, however, the FLS proposed that the FAS should use Suomi as a forum of its studies. A lively discus-sion followed and, finally, the members were agreed that the society would lose its independence if it published in the journal of another society. The decision was to apply a government subsidy of 1,000 marks for founding a journal which, like the journal of the Estonian Literary Society, would include the articles, minutes and reports of the society.350 This plan was confused by Nervander, who suggested that the society should publish a popular monthly magazine like Kongl. Vitterhets historie- och antikvitetsakademiens Månadsblad (The Monthly Magazine of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities). Nervander surmised that the Finnish antiquarian disciplines were not mature enough to provide material for a scholarly journal, whereas a popular magazine, including news and short papers, was not so demanding and would encourage people to protect monuments of antiquity.351 Ner-vander’s idea, though responding to the commonly accepted objective of the popular enlightenment, was criticised and he was reminded that there were many qualified
345 Härö 1984, pp. 60-63; Tallgren 1920, pp. 46-47.
346 Minutes of the FLS 3 April 1867 § 12. In SUOMI II:8 (1870), pp. 413-414; Tallgren 1920, pp.
12-15.
347 The youth of the founders is mentioned, for instance: in minutes of the first meeting 1 October 1870 § 2; in the speech of the fifth annual meeting 20 November 1875 § 1. In Suomen Muinaismuis-toyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 1, pp. 9, 343-344; and in Tallgren 1920, pp. 17, 21. Tallgren worked actively in the FAS as an archivist, a secretary and a president.
348 Hackman 1920, p. [1].
349 Minutes of the FAS 1 October 1870 § 2. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 1.
1870-1875, p. 12.
350 Minutes of the FAS 8 May 1871; 6 November 1871 § 2; 11 December 1871 § 3; 12 February 1872
§ 3. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 1. 1870-1875, pp. 83-84, 103, 105-106, 127-128;
Tallgren 1920, p. 125.
351 Minutes of the FAS 6 May 1872 § 12. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 1.
1870-1875, pp. 153-154; Emil Nervander’s Förslag… Archive of the FAS. Fa 1, p. 321. NBA Archives.
papers ready for publishing. A competing idea of a scholarly journal for an interna-tional audience gained strength and was announced in the annual report of 1872:
Without a journal, the society can neither contact the many foreign societies represent-ing antiquarian studies and acquire their works here, nor follow the rapid progress of comparative research and, for its own part, contribute its results.352
The petition for a government subsidy left open both alternatives.353 An interesting feature of this discussion was that instead of taking Suomi or some other Finnish learned journal as a model, the FAS turned to Estonian and Swedish journals. This mirrored the cosmopolitan attitude of the leading members of the society. Though very patriotic, they, obviously, wanted to break away from the traditions of older Finnish societies and build their own practices on international models.
In 1873, a government subsidy of 1,000 marks per year was granted to the FAS, for three years time. When planning the publishing policy, Nervander’s idea of a monthly magazine was rejected. The society decided to publish a journal which would include articles on antiquarian disciplines, descriptions of Finnish monuments, the summaries of presentations at the meetings of the society, book reviews, travelogues, etc. The articles would be published in the language they were originally written, allowing well-known European languages. The domestic language question was resolved by publishing two versions of the journal, one with the minutes of the society in Finnish and the other in Swedish. The international readership was taken into account by the obligation to write captions in French or in German. The editorial board consisted of young researchers of whom only two were doctors, the historian Karl Emil Ferdi-nand Ignatius and the philologist Axel Olof Freudenthal. The board was to review the papers offered to the journal – not only in the light of scholarly criteria, but also considering how well they were understood by the common reader.354 The plan re-flected the ambiguity between the ideas of an international scholarly journal and a popular enlightening journal. The society was not capable of dividing these aims into different forums, neither was it willing to reject any one aim for the sake of another.
The first volume of Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen Aikakauskirja (The Journal of the Finnish Antiquarian Society) appeared in July 1874, and consisted of 700 Swedish and 500 Finnish copies. Considering that at the time the printing of Suomi was at its lowest (150 copies) and that of SFFF serials was 450 copies, the optimism of the FAS seems astonishing. President Topelius was an experienced newspaper editor, which probably led him to overestimate the number of possible subscribers.355 The sale of the
352 Minutes of the FAS 30 September 1872, annual report. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 1. 1870-1875, p. 169. Th e report was written by Otto Donner, who aimed at promoting in-The report was written by Otto Donner, who aimed at promoting in-ternational contacts even in the FLS and in the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. The citation in Swedish: Utan en tidskrift kan föreningen icke såsom annars genom förbindelsen med ett större flertal af sällskaper för fornforskning i utlandet förskaffa sig hithörande arbeten, följa med den rastlöst pågående komparativa forskningen och äfven för sin del bidraga till dess resultater.
353 The sketch for the petition is archived among the letters of the FAS. Archive of the FAS. Fa 1, p. 469. NBA Archives.
354 Minutes of the FAS 20 January 1873 § 4; 10 February 1873 § 3; 17 March 1873 § 5. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 1. 1870-1875, pp. 187-188, 194-195; Tallgren 1920, p. 126.
355 Minutes of the FAS 17 March 1873 § 5. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 1.
1870-1875, pp. 194-195; 11 July 1874 Z. Topelius to J. R. Aspelin. Archive of the FAS. Fa 1, pp. 781-784.
NBA Archives.
first number was very small – only some ten copies were sold in three years. Hence, a government subsidy was necessary to continue the journal. In 1876, 2,000 marks were promised and the planning of the new volume began. Due to the modest sales, two language versions were abolished and the number of copies reduced to 400. Yet, in order to promote archaeological research, the society decided to pay honoraria for scholarly papers.356
Despite the lack of academic education and research in antiquarian disciplines, the various activities of the FAS provided material for publication. In the nineteenth cen-tury, the society organised eight art history expeditions in different parts of Finland.
These groups, which consisted of researchers, artists and architects, documented the churches, manors and other monumental buildings and their interiors and brought back items to the museum collections.357 Topelius suggested that the society should publish an album, including coloured pictures of the most remarkable monuments, with captions in Finnish, Swedish and French. The plan was seconded but post-poned.358 Publishing the material collected by the art history expeditions was dis-cussed intermittently, but the lack of money always hindered the realisation of these plans. Some of the results, however, were published in the Journal, but the art history material remained quite small in comparison with archaeology.359
The national cataloguing of ancient monuments was organised by granting scholar-ships to students and amateurs, who listed and described historical and prehistorical monuments, usually in their home parishes. Before the First World War, the society gave about 70 grants and received about 50 reports, half of which were printed in the Journal, forming a significant part of its contents.360 In practice, this meant that the majority of the papers were written by amateurs. Although some scholarship holders were students who through this cataloguing work adopted the correct methodology and, later in their studies specialised in archaeological research, most of the report writers were local clergymen, teachers and officials.361 The society was well aware that these reports could not have the status of scholarly papers, but it emphasised other values. The printed lists would promote the protection of the national heritage, partly by inspiring people to respect their local monuments, and partly by providing a means to control their preservation. Furthemore, they produced important material for comparative archaeological research.362 In 1884, the responsibility of the protection of archaeological monuments and sites was transferred to a governmental institution,
356 Minutes of the FAS 10 October 1876 § 3; 7 May 1877, annual report; 5 June 1877 § 4. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 2. 1876-1885, pp. 25, 68, 71; 22 March 1877 J. R. As-pelin to the FAS. Archive of the FAS. Fa 2, p. 511. NBA Archives.
357 Tallgren 1920, pp. 72-81; Ringbom 1986, pp. 33-34.
358 Minutes of the FAS 27 January 1874 § 5; 29 October 1874, annual report. In Suomen Muinais-muistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 1. 1870-1875, pp. 238, 274.
359 Minutes of the board of the FAS 4 February 1904 § 2; 3 March 1904 § 2; 3 March 1910 § 6.
Archive of the FAS. Ca 8; Valtionapuanomus Keisarilliselle Suomen Senaatin kirkollisasiain toimi-tuskunnalle. Archive of the FAS. Fa 17, p. 139-141. NBA Archives; Tallgren 1920, pp. 80-81.
360 Tallgren 1920, pp. 55-70; Nordman 1968, pp. 22-23.
361 Tallgren 1920, pp. 57-68, 126-127. The reports formed a subseries of Journal: Luetteloja Suomen muinaisjäännöksistä (Catalogues of the Ancient Monuments in Finland).
362 Minutes of the FAS 8 October 1878, annual report. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 2. 1876-1885, pp. 115-116.
when the Archaeological Commission was founded. The Commission consisted of representatives of the university, the learned societies and the state antiquarian, who was the only hired official. Aspelin was nominated to this post. The Ethnographi-cal and HistoriEthnographi-cal Museum of University was also placed under his supervision. In 1893, the State Historical Museum was founded with two curator posts under the management of the Commission, and the archaeological and ethnographical items collected by the FAS were deposited in this museum, which in 1917, became the Finn-ish National Museum.363
The foundation of these institutions did not mean an end to the collecting and cata-loguing activities of the FAS, but the society could, better than before, devote its time to research and publishing. In the field of archaeology, its most remarkable achieve-ments were the expeditions to Russia. Aspelin had for his doctoral thesis gathered material from the museums, archives and excavations in Russia. He argued that in the Bronze Age the same Finno-Ugrian culture had existed both in the regions of Volga and Kama and in Siberia, hence giving support to the theory Matthias Alexander Castrén had sketched some decades earlier. Aspelin outlined an ambitious programme to research the whole Russian area. The plan was never realised, but various journeys and expeditions were made to Russia, which, in the mind of Aspelin, was becoming an important focus of Finnish archaeology – a sort of a scholarly dominion. At the beginning, they received university funding. Between 1887 and 1889, the FAS organ-ised three Siberian expeditions, whose work in documenting the stone inscriptions of the River Yenisei region was published as a monograph Inscriptions de l’Iénissei. This folio appeared just in time to be presented at the congress of orientalists in Stockholm in 1889. It aroused wide international interest, so much so, that in a few years it was almost out of print. Aspelin, however, did not take effective measures for a new re-vised edition, possibly due to his disappointment with the results of a Danish linguist, Wilhelm Thomsen, which indicated that the text of these inscriptions was written in a Turkic language, not in a Finno-Ugrian language as he had presumed.364 Still, in 1909, the FAS financed the journey of the young archaeologist, Aarne Michaël Tallgren, to the Volga-Kama region. The thesis, written on the material gathered there, disproved the Ural-Altaic theory of Aspelin – the Bronze Age material found in the Volga region did not belong to the same culture as the material from Siberia.365
Due to its various activities, the FAS seldom had a shortage of material to publish in its Journal, but in order to promote archaeological research it declared a prize of 300 marks for the best research in comparative archaeology in 1890. However, no papers were sent – the students of the new discipline were still too cautious to enter a competition.366 The lack of scholarly competition delayed developing the rules of refereeing. The peer review procedure was not openly discussed. The papers of the
363 Härö 1984, pp. 76-84, 163, 174-176; Tallgren 1920, pp. 30-38, 47-48; Nordman 1968, pp. 26-31;
Salminen 2003, p. 91.
364 Salminen 2003, pp. 91-95; Tallgren 1920, pp. 112-115. Salminen states that the second edition was first buried in the internal disputes of the officials of the Archaeological Commission and later in the new interpretations of the Siberian cultures.
365 Salminen 2003, pp. 48-56, 63-64, 67-96, 117-127; Tallgren 1920, pp. 105-117.
366 Minutes of the FAS 7 May 1890, speech; 10 October 1890 § 11; 21 May 1891 § 4; 7 April 1892 § 3. Archive of the FAS. Ca 2. NBA Archives.
authoritative members of the society were often accepted without review, and the reports of the scholarship holders were most easily rejected. Sometimes, the editorial board required corrections before publishing.367
The majority of the papers in the Journal were written in Finnish, while the share of Swedish texts declined after the first volume. German and French papers were published in the Journal only at the turn of the century. In 1888, the society ordered the editor to translate the annual reports into French or German, but the plan was not realised.368 Although the Journal consisted mostly of local descriptions written in Finnish by amateurs, its international character and importance was often emphasised in the petitions for government subsidies. Nevertheless, its domestic contribution as the only forum for antiquarian disciplines was also highlighted.369 The lack of money was a constant problem. The printing was expensive because the antiquarian disci-plines required many illustrations and, at times, the society had to choose between publishing the journal or funding the scholarships or expeditions.370 The government subsidy was raised to 3,000 marks in 1879, which meant a temporary relief. Sup-plementary resources were sometimes received from the Längman funds.371
The FAS constantly had to tread a fine line between maintaining scholarly standards and publishing material suitable for a popular readership. Nevertheless, it rejected Kaarle Krohn’s suggestion that the FLS and the FAS should together publish a popu-lar magazine on questions concerning folklore, ethnology and prehistory.372 Instead, the secretary of the FAS, Hjalmar Appelgren, returned to Nervander’s original idea, suggesting the society launch its own popular monthly magazines. A forum was needed to inspire people to protect ancient monuments – a task where the Journal had not proven successful. The monthly magazines, which would be published in Finnish and Swedish versions, aimed to enlighten people and to clarify the objectives of the society and the State Historical Museum. They would include only one illustrated sheet per volume. The focus on popular material in a particular serial would enable the Journal to further develop and to meet international standards, and to include more papers written in common European languages or with German summaries.373 Ap-pelgren’s idea aroused a lively discussion. Krohn repeated his call for a joint magazine of the FAS and the FLS. Although this was an economically reasonable proposal, it was rejected and the FAS decided to launch its own popular magazines.374 In the
an-367 Statements of the editorial board 9 March 1877. Archive of the FAS. Fa 2, p. 438; Undated [1878]. Archive of the FAS. Fa 3, pp. 45, 47. NBA Archives.
368 Minutes of the FAS 20 November 1888 § 3. Archive of the FAS. Ca2. NBA Archives. Lan- Minutes of the FAS 20 November 1888 § 3. Archive of the FAS. Ca2. NBA Archives. Lan-guages in the papers of the Journal are analysed in Lilja 2007, p. 63.
369 1 February 1876 Petition for government subsidy. Archive of the FAS. Fa 2, pp. 43-44; Undated [1888] Petition for government subsidy. Archive of the FAS. Fa 7, pp. 777-784. NBA Archives.
370 Minutes of the FAS 3 March 1883 § 6; 29 May 1883, annual report. In Suomen Muinaismuis- Minutes of the FAS 3 March 1883 § 6; 29 May 1883, annual report. In Suomen Muinaismuis-In Suomen Muinaismuis-toyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 2. 1876-1885, pp. 318-319, 333.
371 Minutes of the FAS 15 November 1879 § 2. In Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen pöytäkirjat 2. 1876-1885, pp. 148-149, 183; 5 February 1889 § 2; 17 October 1891 § 2; 7 May 1892, annual report.
Archive of the FAS. Ca 2. NBA Archives.
372 Minutes of the FAS 24 April 1888 § 12. Archive of the FAS. Ca 2. NBA Archives.
373 Minutes of the FAS 15 November 1893 § 7. Archive of the FAS. Ca 2; Hj. Appelgren’s memo-randum. Archive of the FAS. Fa 10, pp. 892-928. NBA Archives.
374 Minutes of the FAS 13 December 1893 § 6. Archive of the FAS. Ca 2. NBA Archives; Tallgren 1920, pp. 130-131.
nual report of 1893 – 1894, this new project was presented enthusiastically, irrespective of the fact that it would probably lead to financial loss for the society. An additional government subsidy was necessary,375 but this was not forthcoming, and the new monthly magazines Suomen Museo and Finskt Museum (both meaning the Museum of Finland) had to be reduced so that they appeared every other month. Their price was low and the members of the society received the magazines by paying the postage.376
nual report of 1893 – 1894, this new project was presented enthusiastically, irrespective of the fact that it would probably lead to financial loss for the society. An additional government subsidy was necessary,375 but this was not forthcoming, and the new monthly magazines Suomen Museo and Finskt Museum (both meaning the Museum of Finland) had to be reduced so that they appeared every other month. Their price was low and the members of the society received the magazines by paying the postage.376