Fennoman

The Fennoman movement or Fennomania was a Finnish nationalist movement in the 19th-century Grand Duchy of Finland, built on the work of the ''fennophile'' interests of the 18th and early-19th centuries.

History

After the Crimean War, Fennomans founded the Finnish Party and intensified the language strife, yearning to raise the Finnish language and Finnic culture from peasant status to the position of a national language and a national culture. The opposition, the Svecomans, tried to defend the status of Swedish and the ties to the Germanic world.

Although the notion of ''Fennomans'' was not as common after the generation of Juho Kusti Paasikivi (born 1870), their ideas have dominated the Finns' understanding of their nation.

The mother tongue of many of the first generation of Fennomans, like Johan Vilhelm Snellman, was Swedish. Some of the originally Swedish-speaking Fennomans learned Finnish, and made a point of using it inside and outside the home.

Several Fennomans were from Finnish or bilingual homes. Some originally had Swedish surnames, common in Finland at that time.

Most of the Fennomans also Finnicized their family names, particularly from the end of the 19th century.

In the last years of the 19th century, and in the first years of the 20th, the Fennoman movement split into two political parties: the Old Finnish Party and the Young Finnish Party.

Motto

The Fennoman motto attributed to Adolf Ivar Arwidsson was actually coined by Johan Vilhelm Snellman:
"Svenskar äro vi icke, ryssar vilja vi icke bli, låt oss alltså vara finnar."
:"''Swedes we are not,''
:''Russians we do not want to be,''
:''So let us then be Finns.''" Kari Tarkiainen:
Adolf Ivar Arwidsson
', in Matti Klinge (ed.): ''Suomen kansallisbiografia'' 1. SKS, Helsinki 2003, (page 406)

Prominent Fennomans

* Daniel Juslenius
* Fredrik Cygnaeus
* Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen, formerly Georg Zacharias Forsman
* Alexandra Gripenberg
* Lauri Kivekäs, formerly Stenbäck
* Johannes Linnankoski
* Agathon Meurman
* Hjalmar Mellin
* Julius Krohn
* Juho Kusti Paasikivi, formerly Johan Gustav Hellsten
* Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, formerly Carl Johan
* Eemil Nestor Setälä
*Johan Vilhelm Snellman
*Eero Järnefelt
* Otto Donner
* Heikki Renvall
* Toivo Kuula
* Yrjö Jahnsson
* Pietari Hannikainen

See also

* History of Finland
* Turanism

References

External links

The Association of Finnish Culture and Identity

{{National revivals

Grand Duchy of Finland
Finnish nationalism
Nationalist movements in Europe