Mikael Agricola’s anniversary

Mikael Agricola created the Finnish standard language. The year 2007 marks the 450th anniversary of Agricola’s death.


Finnish connections with the culture of continental Europe continued when the Lutheran Reformation was revolutionizing the German spiritual landscape. The Finnish reformer Michael Agricola (ca 1510-1557) had studied at Wittenberg under Luther and Melanchthon. Wittenberg remained for decades the principle seat of learning for Finns.

One of the chief aims of the Reformation was to bring the Bible to the common people by translating it into their own language. Agricola was sent to Wittenberg in 1536 with the express purpose that he should be trained to translate the Bible into Finnish. Even before he left he had started to translate the New Testament into Finnish. This task was not, however, completed until twenty years later, in 1543; it was printed in 1548 under the title Se Wsi Testamenti. Agricola managed to publish a translation of almost a quarter of the Old Testament. This appeared in three volumes between 1551 and 1552.

Vital as the aim of translating the Bible into Finnish was, Agricola was compelled to work on other basic literature in the language of the people. He was indeed a productive writer: a good 1 500 pages coming from his pen were published in printed form. Between 1543 and 1552 he published nine books in total, all of them printed in Stockholm by Amund Laurentsson.

Agricola's first publication was a primer called Abckiria, the first edition of which may have appeared in 1543- only some twenty years after the publication of the Manuale Aboense. The publication year of the first edition of the primer is unknown because only pieces of two pages have been preserved. The second edition probably appeared in 1551; eight pages of this edition still exist.

The find of the century was made in 1966. In that year 8 missing pages of Agricola's primer were discovered in the library of the Västerås see in Sweden. This meant that the complete text of the primer was now available. Furthermore, the Västerås pages revealed a hitherto unknown third edition of the primer, published in Stockholm in 1559, two years after Agricola's death.

Agricola's greatest creative contribution was a prayer book, Rucouskiria Bibliasta (1544), a beautifully printed work of 877 pages. It was primarily intended for the clergy, as can be seen for instance in the ample liturgical material. Other publications by Agricola include a manual of church offices, Käsikiria castesta ja muista christikunnan menoista (1549), and a missal, Messu eli Herran echtolinen (1549).

Agricola, who became Bishop of Turku in 1554, is known as the father of the written Finnish language because of his extensive literary production; his influence is apparent even to this day. Of the 8 500 Finnish words he used, 4 500 are still in use.


Text: Virtual Finland















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