Writing about the Past with Green Ink

The Emergence of Finnish Environmental History*

Timo Myllyntaus
Senior Lecturer of Economic and Social History
Dept. of Social Science History, PL 54,
00 014, University of Helsinki, Finland,
Tel. +358-9-191 24900; E-mail: timo.myllyntaus@helsinki.fi

Points of Departure

In terms of the wilderness, Finland is a European superpower. Its forest resources are exceeded only by Russia and Sweden, and the number of its lakes, about 188,000, is second to none. In addi­tion, its territory is the seventh largest in this continent, and only Iceland and Norway are less sparsely populated. As a result, there are good reasons to suppose that in these circumstances, the environ­ment must have played a central role in Finnish history.

Although billions of tall trees are far more visible and numerous than five million people in the country, Finnish historiography, following European academic traditions, has generally preferred the focus on political, cultural, social and economic matters to that on the environment. However, environmental issues have not been neglected completely. They have at least provided settings for societal events and developments documented by history writing for the past nine hundred years, but occasionally the interest of historians has exceeded the basic level. Consequently, Finnish historical research has touched various themes, which are now related to environmental history.

Broadly speaking, Finnish environmental history can be divided in three phases: the embryonic phase from the 18^th century to the mid-20^th century, the formative phase from the 1950s to the early 1970s and the current phase from the mid-1970s to the present.

From pre-industrial times, Finns have discussed and debated mainly about four tangible features of their environment: climate, forests, water resources, and landscape.^[1] This outlook of peasant society was reflected in academic research in the embryonic phase of the emerging discipline. Like other scholars, historians also dealt with these central elements of nature. During the past three centuries, Finnish historical research has not been able to ignore relationships between society and nature; on the contrary, interactions between these two spheres have been discussed in various publications. I admit that very often the approach has been strongly anthropocentric. Occasionally, however, one can see that peasants as well as scholars have understood the importance of nature and emphasised humans’ responsibility to take care of it. However, the environmental awareness of peasant society was not based on scientific knowledge of ecology; it was based on practical experience and common sense. I call it “instinctive environmental consciousness.”

Early climate history started in 18^th century Finland by making observations and collecting data, while a scientific target was to find out climatic regularities. Compiling historical statistics aimed to examine causal relationships between climatic conditions and harvests. Night frosts and consequent harvest failures were a real threat for Finnish agriculture during the Little Ice Age (1500–1870). Timber famines that had troubled Southern and Central Europe since the ancient times caused anxiety in Sweden and Finland, too. In addition, in early modern times a close neighbour, Denmark, faced an environmental crisis because the country had cut its forests.^[2] The governments of the 18^th century Swedish kingdom, which included also Finland before 1809, attempted to find ways to limit and rationalise the use of timber resources. Particularly, inefficient stoves, slash-and-burn cultivation and tar production were thought to waste timber enormously. The poverty, ignorance and underemployment of peasants were seen as preventing more rational forestry. Public debate and research by contemporaries provide a great deal of material although most of available records cannot be classified as environmental history, not even an embryonic one. Dredging rapids and lowering lakes became a substantial part of agrarian policy at the turn of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Earlier historiography gloried those activities as great achieve­ments of civil engineering in pre-industrial Finland. However, the professor of history Ernst G. Palmén conducted research and assessed environmental impact of lowering lakes in the late 19^th century. In a 1903 article, he sharply criticised that policy, claiming it was detrimental to the environment and risky for the economy.^[3] Because Palmén proved to have mature environmental consciousness and highlighted lowering lakes as an environmental problem of his time, I regard him as one of the trailblazers in Finnish environmental history.

In the 19^th century, the national awakening and the rise of the fine arts directed the attention to landscapes. Provincial sceneries and prominent national landscapes were adopted as elements in building a national identity in Finland that at the time was a Grand Duchy under the Russian Emperor. Here the new layer was based on old peasant ideals of beautiful landscapes. A pathbreaking work in the national landscape history is the book Finland framstäldt i teckningar [Finland in drawings] (1845), which was illustrated by several artists and also included an explanatory text by Zacharias Topelius and A. Reinholm.^[4] The editors used landscape drawings to present both famous and historical sceneries of the fatherland in an embellished and romantic light. The book, which has later been reprinted several times, aimed to describe prominent landscapes in all provinces of the grand duchy.

In general, Finnish national landscapes have two central elements: forests and watercourses. Erämaa,^[5] the customary Finnish concept for a wilderness with large old-growth forests, has retained its place in the Finnish mind as a model for a real forest, although such wilderness areas have been diminished to a tiny fraction of the total forested area. A scene of an inland lake is still the most admired landscape.^[6] It is, of course, preferred that these two main elements are both included in the same view. Therefore, the most worshipped icon of the national scenery has been a clear blue lake in the embrace of a thick green forest, viewed from a high granite cliff.^[7]

In the 1890s, Finnish landscape painting made a transition from nature romanticism to symbolism, but did not give up nationalist themes. This genre even strengthened its links to national mythology, a love of the wilderness and an admiration of the simple and traditional way of life. The forested wilderness was used to symbolise a pure, unspoilt nature state and as a contrast to the decadence and complexity of modern industrialising civilization. Several paintings on wild, turbulent rapids and waterfalls have in turn been seen to stand for the strength and determination of the Finnish people in its struggle against russification and in dreaming of political independence.

Formative Phase of Environmental History during the Postwar Decades

After the October revolution in Russia, Finland gained its political independence in 1917. The Civil War of 1918 and the following economic difficulties dampened interest on environmental issues. However, the parliament of the new republic passed the first law on conservation in 1923. Important research was also done on the relationships between people and nature on the regional level, but in the interwar years, the number of works remained very few in this field.^[8]

In the 1950s, Finnish historians, geographers, anthropologists and social scientists who turned their interest again to the historical interactions between humanity and the environment were influenced by three sets of foreign models, and consequently a new, formative phase in Finnish environmental history embarked.

The first model for new environmental history was adopted from France, where a school of historians had gathered around the journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, founded by March Bloch and Lucien Febvre in 1929. The Annalists were interested more in the slowly changing structures of the past and phenomena of extensive periods than in the history of individuals and events. Following this Annalist tradition, Fernand Braudel claimed that environmental history is, at its best, so-called history of long duration, histoire de la longue durée. “To perceive and trace underlying structures one has to cover, in spendthrift fashion, immense stretches of time,” Braudel wrote about the foundations of civilizations.^[9]

The second model, or actually a set of models, was derived from American anthropology, human ecology and historical research. For example, the Finnish professor of economic geography Ilmari Hustisch followed the model of an American symposium Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth of 1955 and arranged a series of lectures on the same topic four years later in Helsinki.^[10] These lectures were later published in English as a book entitled Symposium on Man’s Influence on Nature in Finland.^[11] Finnish environmental historians of the 1970s were also very interested in the Canadian school of the staple theory, based on work by Harold Innis.^[12] This school aimed to link national economic history not only to the develop­ment of institutions and technology, but also to the environment. One of the school’s goals was to connect the history of the exploitation of national resources to world trade. The point was to claim that the utilisation of national resources for export products led to the decrease of natural resources and the degradation of the environment. Cases in point were the overexploitation of whales and Canadian “cut-and-run” forestry. Some Finnish researchers were so excited by the Canadian school that they attempted to apply the staple theory to Finnish history.^[13]

The third model for environmental history was adopted from a current debate on the exhaustion of natural resources. The first impulse was received from an article, The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis, by American historian Lynn White, Jr.^[14] Public discussion began in the media after the publication of a report called The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome. The book was translated into Finnish in 1973, just a year after its publication in London.^[15]

In the early 1970s, the terms ekologinen historia, ecological history, and ympäristöhistoria, environmental history, were coined by Finnish researchers and considered more or less synonyms for each other. The first research project focusing on environmental history was set up in 1973,^[16] and its head, the licentiate of philosophy Veijo Saloheimo, was among the pathbreakers who first used the term ympäristöhistoria in print.^[17] Furthermore, in its final report the project defined the discipline in a modern way.^[18] At the time, the first courses on the topic were held at Finnish universities and various publications by Finnish researchers in the field were completed. It has sometimes been claimed that the 1970s were a decisive turning point in environmental awareness among Finnish historians. However, although new terms and fresh viewpoints established the cornerstones of a formative discipline, there were, at the time, less than a dozen scholars actively researching history from environmental viewpoints.

It is noteworthy that the rise of modern environmental history took place simultaneously in Finland and the USA, where the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) was founded in 1975. In the following year, the society started to publish its journal Environmental Review.^[19] Therefore, Finnish developments were not merely reflections of contemporary trends in the United States or Central Europe. The coincidence of events does not support a hypothesis of imitation or a mechanical transfer of ideas. In contrast, if we examine the content of Nordic environmental history of the late 20^th century more closely, we may notice that approaches, topics and terminology have only partly been adopted from current foreign models. The other part was mainly derived from deeper layers of common national experience and historical research. Besides external influences, national traditions have played a significant role in the rise of environ­mental history in Scandinavia and Finland. In the Nordic Countries, environmen­tal aspects were being resear­ched even before Rachel Carson wrote her book Silent Spring in the early 1960s and before the American approach to environmental issues reached the shores of the Baltic Sea.^[20]

The rest of this article focuses to analyse the third phase, the past thirty years, in Finnish environmental history because during that time the discipline has matured and developed considerably although it has not yet managed to gain an established status in any university of the country.

Contributions  during the Last Quarter of the 20^th Century

A pathbreaking rise clearly took place in Finnish environmental history in the late 1970s, when novel viewpoints and concepts were launched. A benchmark of this vital phase was the publication of the book Natur och byte [Nature and trade] by professor Sven-Erik Åström in 1978.^[21] It was received with enthusiasm by a small number of specialists but the mainstream of historians and the reading public ignored the book. Consequently, the author bought the bulk of the edition from the publisher just to prevent the sales of its copies at a reduced price.

After the second oil crisis in the late 1970s, Finland entered the next decade with a steadily growing economy. While the Yuppies dominated the 1980s, green ideas seemed to stay in the background. No major breakthroughs were made in the research on environ­mental history, although various books and articles were published. They were prepared mainly by scattered individuals, because at the time there were no big projects or research teams in the field. The high tide turned to an ebb.

In the 1980s, Maria Suutala wrote on national concepts of nature and the intellectual traditions in environmental history.^[22] Zoologist Yrjö Haila sketched “eco­historical phases.”^[23] Antero Heikkinen pondered what would be promising objects for ecohistorical study.^[24] Social scientist Ilmo Massa continued his work on the history of Lapland and completed a book based on his licentiate thesis.^[25] He concentrated his study on the use of natural resources in the northernmost part of the country and applied an old German term Raubwirtschaft, “plunder-economy,” as his key theoretical concept. Another major theme of the decade was slash-and-burn cultivation. On that theme, Jussi Raumolin collected and edited a special issue for the Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society and even managed to attract international attention to the topic.^[26] Anthropologist Matti Sarmala also wrote articles on Finnish slash-and-burn cultivation as a cultural system.^[27] In addition, meteorologist Reijo Solantie included the cultivation of rye in his study on climatic history.^[28] An important theme was also the research on environmental movements and policies. Sociologist Timo Järvikoski was the most productive in that field. During the decade, he published his Ph.D. thesis and some smaller research reports on environmental protests.^[29]

In the early 1990s, another turning point took place and a quick growth in research followed.^[30] Professor of botany Yrjö Vasari gathered a group of younger researchers together. As a result, the group organised an international symposium at the Lammi Biological Research Centre in 1992 and launched some new research projects.^[31] The boom was supported by special educational funds from the Uni­versity of Helsinki and the Ministry of Education. Several lecture series in environ­mental history were delivered to dozens of students.^[32]

In the 1970s and 1980s, very few Finnish environmental historians had studied history as their major. Thus, it was a significant breakthrough in autumn 1991 when Historiallinen aikakauskirja, the Finnish Historical Journal, published a special issue on environmental history authored partly by “amateur historians.”^[33] It also meant an important symbolic recognition by mainstream historians. The issue included survey articles on environmental history in various countries and analyses on the characteristics of environmental history as a discipline. After this issue and the Lammi symposium, several students of history became interested in the field and began to prepare master’s and doctor’s theses on environmental themes.

Intellectual history continued be a major trend of research in the 1990s. Yrjö Haila wrote on ecology, science and society, while he turned his focus more on the research of current environmental policy.^[34] The research of gender issues in environmental history has been a rapidly growing sub-discipline abroad since 1974, when Françoise d'Eaubonne launched the term “ecofeminism” in her book.^[35] Although gender studies form an established field of research in Finland, ecofeminism has not, however, gained much popularity in this country. In environmental history, Maria Suutala represents a tiny group of Finnish ecofeminists. As an intellectual historian of Central Europe, she examines the relationships between humans and animals as well as gender issues mainly from the viewpoint of German traditions.^[36]

Forest history, in contrast, remained very popular during the past decade, while researchers expanded their field of interest to other topics than slash-and-burn cultivation. Ari Lehtinen earned his Ph.D. degree in geography with his research on timber-line conflicts in northern Finland.^[37] Jussi Raumolin prepared his doctoral dissertation in social policy on debates around forest-based development.^[38] Finally, a book on Finnish ecohistory by journalist Juha Kuisma^[39] and an anthology edited by Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku dealt with forests extensively.^[40]

Conservation and environmental movements attracted several researchers in the 1990s.^[41] Forester Eeva Hellström studied forest conflicts.^[42] Ari Lehtinen and Pertti Rannikko gave attention to local environmental movements. For sociologists, local controversies were fascinating objects for research at a time when citizens were losing their interest in traditional politics. Environmental conflicts especially attracted the younger generation.^[43] New social movements and the rise of the Green party to become a member of the Finnish government have also aroused international interest.^[44] In these studies, nature conservation was overshadowed by political movements.^[45] Political historian Sirje Nienstedt described the politisation of conservation and the rise of environmental policies in Finland.[^46]  

Finnish landscape history has recently moved from the countryside to deal with urban areas, too. Among others, Maunu Häyrynen has specialised in researching the past of parks and gardens besides traditional national landscapes.^[47] In his publications, he deals with urban landscapes in their Finnish political and social context.^[48]

New Trends of the 21^st Century

At the turn of the millennium, a new, energetic period started in Finnish environmental history, although several of research themes remained the same as before. Forest history is still well represented. Ismo Björn wrote a long-term history of forests and timber use in Northern Karelia.^[49] Also, Eeva Hellström’s Ph.D. thesis is related to forests and environmental conflicts.^[50] A new feature in Finnish forest history is that its focus is expanding over national borders, while research results are more often published in foreign languages and abroad.^[51] In addition, old themes of forestry are researched from afresh viewpoints.^[52] Examples of studies on foreign countries include books by Antti Erkkilä and Harri Siiskonen,^[53] who examined forestry in Southwest Africa, and publications by Mikko Saikku, who has been studying deforestation in a delta of the southern USA.^[54]

Another novel phenomenon during the past few years has been the rise of water history and local environmental history. These two have frequently been connected. Books have been published on the history of water supply systems in Helsinki, Turku, Tampere and Hämeenlinna;^[55] an outline of national development has been issued as well.^[56] Many of these studies not only aim to relate water supply to the sewage system, but also to place both of them in a larger context.^[57] A special issue on the history of water utilisation was published in the connection of the centenary anniversary of the law on water rights.^[58] In addition, a monumental work by Juha Ylimaunu on sealing methods in the Baltic Sea represents another direction in water-related environ­mental history.^[59]

The third new feature is the great interest in environmental threats and catastrophes. This theme also often contains the history of diseases. Compared to other recent Finnish research topics, the history of environmental disasters differs clearly because of its close integration with international discussion. This is understandable since the greatest threats and the worst disasters have been abroad where most of the source material related to them is located and where these issues have been discussed more frequently. In the book compiled by Hannu Salmi, the term “catastrophes” is understood quite broadly and his team does not focus solely on environmental disasters.^[60] Furthermore, in their book, another group headed by Risto Marjomaa, Jouko Nurmiainen and Holger Weiss concentrated on wars, famines, diseases and death in their book,^[61] and there is a similar emphasis in the publication compiled by history students from the Tampere University.^[62] In his recent book, Heikki S. Vuorinen, in turn, approaches the history of diseases from a perspective of the history of medicine.^[63]

The fourth fresh feature is a recent discussion on the relationships between technology and the environment. The key point there is how economic growth and technological development have affected the environment during the industrialisation. Have consequences been only negative or have there been some positive impact as well?^[64] This debate have been related to the Finnish studies on the environmental Kuznets curve.^[65]

Environmental history has been included in the curricula of various Finnish universities since the late 1980s. The past twelve years witnessed a number of master’s, licentiate’s and doctor’s theses in the field, but the discipline does not have any teaching posts or study programmes of its own. In this respect, Finland lags far behind the United States and Sweden. Visits and lectures by several American and European environmental historians have assisted to bridge the gap. For example, Donald Worster has been to Finland a few times and Alfred Crosby has twice been a visiting professor at Helsinki University, both times an academic year.^[66]

Considering the number of researchers and publications, it can, how­ever, be claimed that the study of environmental history in Finland has had an auspicious development.^[67] In the European context, Finland can hardly be classified as a latecomer, although environmental history lacks institutional recognition. Finnish researchers have continued previous traditions in this field of history, while at the same time opening new directions of inquiry. Further­more, they have not restricted their research to the environmental history of their home country but have contributed, for example, to the study of African, Caribbean, European, and North American environmental history. In addition to active participation in con­ferences abroad, Finns have also organised international meetings on environ­mental history in their own country.

 Concluding Remarks

An analysis on Finnish research traditions suggests that the historiography of the discipline did not actually start three decades ago when the term ympäristöhistoria, environmental history, was introduced. Nor can the period of environmental consciousness among historians be limited only to the past thirty years. Even a short survey on Finnish historiography can show that environmental issues have been part of Finnish historical research for at least two and a half centuries.

Although the 1970s was not the very beginning of Finnish environmental history, it was an epochal turning point of this emerging discipline. Since then, a clear change towards ecocentric approaches and explicit environmental concern has taken place.

The main traditions of research, such as the history of climate, forests, water resources and landscapes, arose as early as the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Research topics have partly changed during the decades but various traditional works created a basis for current Finnish environmental history. First of all, they raised several issues that today are still essential. In addition, these sources continue to supply information, statistical data, concepts and methods for present studies on the two-way interactions between humanity and nature.

Current environmental history is built on previous traditions. Therefore, continuity and national heritage are strongly interwoven into recent concepts, even in the latest publications on Finnish environmental history. Owing to these long traditions, the rapid rise of environmental history in Finland has been possible and the achievements of his discipline without any established position have been impressive. However, I find something missing. Greater innovations, new breakthroughs, and pristine perspectives are issues that are at the moment lacking in the field. In my view, agricultural history, for example, is a rather old-fashioned discipline still containing various taboos. Although there are several options for re-evaluating our agricultural history, hardly any environmental historian has dared tackle this field. However, Harri Siiskonen took a big step to a new direction with his book Poison, spray, destroy.... Plant protection instructions in Swedish and Finnish professional agricultural journals, 1940 – 1980, where he, among other topics, compares reactions of the leading Finnish and Swedish agricultural journals to Rachel Carson’s striking claims in the early 1960s.^[68]

 While I wonder why nobody has written on agricultural history from a vegetarian or vegan viewpoint, for instance, I well understand that such a task would need exceptional courage. In Finland, agricultural history is heavily charged with emotions and national myths. Presumably there are many questions that no one dares ask.

Old traditions may not always be beneficial; often they are mixed blessings. Without them, the impact of recent foreign studies on Finnish environ­mental history could have been much stronger than it has been. In my view, we Finnish environmental historians have perhaps been too engaged in our old traditions. They may have become burdens preventing us from seeing things from new angles. One might suggest that the absorption in traditional issues and old debates has postponed the inflow of new impacts into current Finnish environmental history.

*ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This article will appear in an edited book, Miljöhistoriska aspekter och aspekter på miljöhistoria, ed. by Erland Mårald & Christer Nordlund, Skrifter från forskningsprogrammet Landskapet som arena nr X (Umeå, 2003), and is published online with the kind permission of the editors and author.

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