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Although Richard Wagner is, of course, a figure of world importance, he and his work have had a particularly distinctive impact within the Baltic Sea region--in Sweden, Finland, and the cities of what are today Poland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This story--or, rather, these overlapping stories--are here told for the first time in all their richness, starting with Wagner's own years as an apprentice conductor in Königsberg (in East Prussia, now the Russian city Kaliningrad) and Riga (Latvia) as well as his eventful concert tour to Russia in 1863.Wagner and Wagnerism in Nineteenth-Century Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic Provinces explores how Wagner's operas were performed and received in the theaters of Stockholm and other cities of the region and how excerpts from them were arranged for amateur performances in private homes.Wagner's music and his polemical writings aroused lively discussion around the Baltic, as it did everywhere else in the western world. Thanks to detailed accounts in newspapers, journals, contemporary literature, and writings of music historians (including some by Sibelius's teacher and friend Martin Wegelius), we are privileged, in Hannu Salmi's book, to "listen in" on these debates, which often deal with crucial questions of national self-determination and of cultural independence from Europe (especially Germany, in this case) and imperial Russia.Finally, Wagner and Wagnerism in Nineteenth-Century Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic Provinces reveals the surprising extent to which music lovers and operagoers from the various countries, many of them women, traveled to Wagner's Bayreuth Festival to attend performances. It also reconstructs the imaginative and patient efforts by which confirmed Wagnerians established Wagner societies in order to promote an understanding of the composer's work. Each country, each city, each local composer and conductor shows a distinctive approach--welcoming, resistant, or some of each--to the challenge of Wagner. In the process, we see music history and cultural history in the making.Hannu Salmi is professor of cultural history at the University of Turku, author of Imagined Germany: Richard Wagner's National Utopia, and an editorial board member of wagnerspectrum. ... Read more

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Finland is snow and ice, midnight sun and endless forest, sauna and Santa Claus. But it is much, much more. In more than 300 key words by almost 80 Finnish experts and scholars, Finland: a Cultural Encyclopedia tells what this country between East and West is made of. It shows what distinguishes Finland from the rest of the world and what unites it with it. The book introduces the central names in Finnish music, scholarship, design and architecture. It covers Finnish culture from religion to rock'n'roll, from mythology to media, from eating to education, from sisu to sex. It reveals the hidden meaning for Finns of snow, light, trees and lakes. Secure against the passions of men, and fearing nothing from the anger of the gods, they have attained that uncommon state of felicity, in which there is no craving left to form a single wish. Tacitus, Germania, A.D.98. ... Read more

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In this work the author describes the animal husbandry practices and the use of wild resources in early modern Tornio (northern Finland) based on zooarchaeological evidence. The animal bone assemblages from Tornio have not previously been published or reported, and the urban animal husbandry practices and the use of wild resources have not been analysed archaeologically, apart from a preliminary analysis of the seventeenth-century faunal materials from two plots. The author uses these results to consider the connections between animals and urban social interaction, and the changing human-animal and human-environmental relationships in early modern Tornio. In this sense, the study also contributes to the understanding of the emerging modern worldview and social order in the northern European periphery during the early modern period. ... Read more

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The awakening of national awareness and the gradual emergence of a nation state have long been issues of interest to historians, folklorists, and ethnologists. In the absence of a broader history of Finnish ethnography, the role of the researcher in the national process has remained somewhat in the background. One of the tasks of this book is to make up for this omission. ... Read more

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Conflict and Compromise, Volume 3: Finland examineshistorical and developmental patterns during the Swedish, Russian andpost-independence periods of Finland's history. McRae outlines Finland'schanging social structures, showing how the language groupshave evolved within these structures in the twentieth century. Hecompares how Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking citizens perceivethemselves and other language groups, as well as the similarities anddifferences in their views on political and social issues. Further,the book describes in detail the constitutional and institutionalarrangements for languages in Finland's political and administrativesystem, as well as in education and the mass media. ... Read more

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This text is one in a series on alcohol and drug use and abuse, and covers the history of the Finnish Temperance Movement. ... Read more

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This book, which is one of a series devoted to European building traditions, takes the reader to a Nordic land that has been a leader in architectural design throughout the 20th century, Finland. Beginning with its independence from the Russian Empire in 1917, Finland has carved out its national identity using a new language of form, provided by noteable designers like, Alvar Aalto. ... Read more