In the course of the last ninety-four years...

The way it was then, and how it is now

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By Riikka Haikarainen
     
      When Finland declared herself independent in 1917, there was a threat of widespread food shortages in the air, and a WC was a luxury enjoyed by the privileged few.
      Helsingin Sanomat has examined what things, large and small, have changed in the everyday Finnish experience between then and now.
     
     
POPULATION AND THE FAMILY
     
     
In 1917, the population of Finland stood at 3,346,853.
      In October 2011 the figure was close to 5.4 million, or more precisely 5,396,292.
      Between the years 1916 and 1920, the average age of someone marrying for the first time was 24 years in the case of women, and 27 years for men.
      By 2010, the age of taking the plunge had shifted quite appreciably, to 30 years and 33 years respectively.
     
An even more dramatic change relates to the number of people who might be marrying "for the second time" (or even the third time), for while in 1917 the share of divorces relative to marriages celebrated in that year was 1.8%, by 2010 it had risen to 45.5%
      At the same time as the likelihood of a marriage surviving "until death do us part" has crashed and burned, families have grown smaller.
      In 1910, the average number of children born to women between the ages of 15 and 44 years was roughly 4,600 per 1,000 women.
      This figure of 4.6 children per family slumped to below three during the Civil War of 1918, then spiked up again to nearly four, before declining steadily to the onset of the Second World War.
     
There was a brief "baby-boomlet" in 1941 after the Winter War was concluded, and a much bigger boom from 1945 through to 1950, taking the figure as high as 3.6/family, with over 100,000 children born in a single year on several occasions.
      Things peaked in 1947, with 108,000 live births. The boom was intense, but did not last as long as in some other countries, where it extended well into the 1950s.
      These baby-boomers are the age-cohort now entering retirement and turning Finland into the country with the world's fastest ageing population.
     
Thereafter we have seen a long slide downwards, bottoming out in 1973, when the total fertility rate stood at 1.5 and fewer than 57,000 children were born.
      Since the 1970s, the numbers have fluctuated only slightly from one year to the next, and the fertility rate has remained below two children per family, albeit that a slight upturn has been witnessed in the last couple of years.
      In 2010, the figure just failed to reach 61,000 births and the fertility rate stood at 1.87, still below the threshold for "population renewal" of around 2.1.
      As marriages have lost their lustre, so the number of children born out of wedlock has increased sharply. In 1917, 8% of children born were illegitimate, while in 2010 the figure was 41%.
     
Between the years of 1914 and 1918, the average height of a woman of 20 was 162 cm (roughly 5' 4") and for a man of the same age 173 cm (c. 5' 8").
      We have grown.
      In 2007, the average height of women between 25 and 34 years of age was 165 cm and of men 178 cm.
     
The most popular names (in this instance "first given names") for Finnish girls born between 1910 and 1919 were Maria, Anna, and Aino.
      Among boys it was Johannes, Olavi, and Eino that headed the tables.
      Names have come and gone since then, with some achieving remarkable popularity only to disappear off the demographic map almost completely.
      One classic example drawn from the statistics kept by the Population Register Centre is the girl's name Päivi, which was given to only 132 infants between 1920 and 1939, to more than 10,000 over the next two decades, to no fewer than 21,984 (!!!) between 1960 and 1979, but then withered to the point where just 57 Päivis were named in the first nine years of the 21st century, and only 8 so far this year.
     
At least one name has nevertheless stood the test of time: Aino.
      In 2010, Aino, Emma, and Venla were the most common first given names for baby girls, while on the male side it was Elias, Onni, and Eetu.
      If we consider ALL names given to children, including second and third forenames, Maria and Juhani were the most commonly chosen in 2010 and 2011.
      Juhani has been at the top of the Finnish table as "one of the names" ever since the 1940s, and Maria has dominated among the girls since the 1980s.
     
     
LIVING AND GETTING AROUND
     
     
In 1917, more than half of the adult population of Finland got its livelihood from agriculture and forestry. The current figure is less than 10%.
      We used to be a rural lot, but now we all live in the cities. Urbanisation was already under way in 1917, with Helsinki full of young girls arrived from the countryside, many of them going into domestic service.
      In 1917, more than 80% of the population still lived in rural areas, while today the figure is less than 20%.
      Some moved further afield. In 1917, a total of 2,773 individuals got a passport and moved abroad.
      Their professions were registered, and the largest single group - 348 persons - were categorised as "landless or crofters".
      In 2010, a total of 11,905 people moved abroad from Finland.
     
Getting around has changed quite a bit, as one might expect. There were fewer than 1,000 cars in Finland in 1917. The very first automobile was imported into the country in May 1900, a Benz Velo Comfortable belonging to a Turku trader named Victor Forselius.
      At the end of 2010, there were 2,877, 484 cars on the register, or slightly more than one for every two individuals, men, women, and babes-in-arms included.
     
In 1918, around 8% of the residents of Helsinki owned a telephone. Switchboards were often jammed, and calls were limited to a maximum of five minutes.
      In 2010, practically everyone in Finland had a mobile phone, though the same could no longer be said for fixed-line phones, as an entire generation has grown up using mobile telephony, and a great many young people will never buy a fixed phone.
      In households in the southern province of Uusimaa, Internet penetration is currently at 91%.
     
Finns have gone into the closet - the water closet, that is.
      In 1920 a WC was a luxury and a wonder, found in just 4% of dwellings. By 2009 the incidence of flushing loos had fortunately risen to 96.6% of households.
      There are reportedly also saunas in 53.5% of dwellings, though this does not include saunas either in or attached to summer homes.
      Roughly 93.5% of households have central heating. As recently as 1950, barely 13% could boast this.
     
     
FREE TIME
     
     
How are the mighty fallen. At the Antwerp Summer Olympics of 1920, the newly-independent Finland collected 34 medals, 15 of them gold, and finished fourth in the medals table behind only the United States, Sweden, and Great Britain.
      A total of sixteen medals came in athletics, with Paavo Nurmi collecting the first four of a total of twelve Olympic medals won between 1920 and 1928.
      Four years later, in Paris, we got 37 medals, and even beat the host nation France.
      At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Finland took four medals, including one gold. Two came in shooting, one in rowing, and just one in athletics (a bronze in the men's javelin).
      This was at least a shade better than the all-time low of just two medals, from Athens four years earlier, but Finland's Olympic glory days are long gone.
     
In 1917, there were fourteen magazines and periodicals published for children.
      In 2011, magazines targeting children and young adults numbered 42.
      The most popular authors in the first year of Finnish independence were Hedwig Courths-Mahler (Germany), and the British novelists Elinor Glyn and Berta Ruck.
      These last two were splendid representatives of the hit fiction of the day; slightly saucy (especially Ms. Glyn) romantic novels aimed at women.
      In 2011, the most popular authors are more likely to be Finnish, and include Laila Hirvisaari, Mauri Kunnas (an illustrator and writer of children's books), Sofi Oksanen, Ilkka Remes, and Jari Tervo. Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell is also a big seller.
     
Let's found an association! Finns are great ones for setting up societies and assocaitions.
      In 1919 this enthusiasm was still relatively modest in numbers, with 90 being established, including the Christian Art Society, the Finnish Yacht Club, and the Kannus Workingmen's Association.
      By the end of September 2011, the total for this year was a much more impressive 1,852 such bodies created, including the Afghani Cultural Association of South-Western Finland, Creative Odd-Job Men, and Trick Kickbikers.
     
     
LABOUR AND CONSUMPTION
     
     
In the Turku-based newspaper Sosialisti from 1917, the situations vacant columns included job openings for such professions as "bushing turner", "woodchopper", "lime-workings breaker" [sounds like a heavy job, more suited to a chain gang], "bookbinder (female)", and "dung carter".
      For some reason, these professions were not in great supply on Helsingin Sanomat's oikotie.fi portal in November 2011, but they had instead been replaced by such things as "scent promoter", "face designer", "balcony glazing fitter", "cloud services architect", and "helicopter pilot".
     
In the home, the ninety-four years since 1917 have seen the decline of the humble potato and the apparently irresistible rise of sugar, beer, and spirits in our daily lives.
      Here are a few staples, with their annual consumption per capita in 1917 and 2010 (2010 in parentheses): potatoes 112.96 kg (58.4 kg); granulated sugar 7.08 kg (31.8 kg); coffee 1.72kg (8.9 kg); spirits 0.31 litres (7.2 litres); beer 5.47 litres (82.8 litres), and tobacco 1.43kg (0.5 kg).
      In 1917 the average working man's diet contained potoatoes, rye bread, milk, butter, buttermilk, fat, and salted Baltic herring.
      When there was no hot food to be had, cups of coffee served as a substitute.
      During the Civil War there were food shortages and rampant inflation, which saw a threefold rise in the cost of foodstuffs.
     
     
EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
     
     
Finland has long had a tradition of smart and upwardly-mobile women.
      In 1917, women made up some 41% of those taking their matriculation exams at the end of secondary schooling, with a view to going on to university.
      By 2010 and 2011, girls had far outstripped the boys in this department, with no fewer than 57% of those sitting the exams being female.
      In 1917, just seven per cent of the year's age-cohort entered grammar school with a view to going on to take matriculation.
      The year was also the first in which women were no longer required to seek special dispensation on grounds of their gender when applying for university teaching posts.
     
Vote, vote, vote! Participation in elections has not actually progressed very far from the earliest days of independent Finland.
      In October 1917 69.2% of those eligible voted in parliamentary elections, shortly before Finland ceased to be an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire.
      Last April, the turnout in the parliamentary elections was 70.5%. This was at least an improvement on 2007, when just 67.8%, the lowest figure since 1939. In fairness, there have been times when Finns voted more enthusiastically - in 1962 the figure topped 85%.
      These days a very much larger share of the population chooses to vote in advance - in 2011 it was nearly 30% of those eligible. Since elections are traditionally held on Sundays, this suggests perhaps that people feel they have better things to do with their precious weekends.
     
Women got the vote in Finland (and the right to stand for election) in 1906.
      The first female MPs (19 of them) were elected in 1907, and in 1926 Miina Sillanpää became the first female government minister.
      Tarja Halonen (2000-2012) is the first female Finnish President, and in 2003 Anneli Jäätteenmäki was the first woman to hold the office of Prime Minister, albeit not for very long.
      In 2007 Matti Vanhanen's second cabinet made a little bit of history, as for the first time there were more women than men in the Finnish cabinet (12, against eight men).
     
Behind bars. Finland is a rather violent society, and always has been, although the violence is to some degree tempered by the fact that it is most commonly associated with alcohol and the perpetrators and victims are generally known to one another - random killings remain mercifully rare, and few Finnish murders (generally inept, intoxicated, and unpremeditated) would make much of a detective story in the English Agatha Christie mould.
      In 1917, 55 individuals were locked up by the lower courts on charges of manslaughter.
      In 2010, the commensurate figure for manslaughter sentences handed down by district courts and the courts of appeal was 48 persons.
      Finland currently has 16 closed prisons and 19 open prisons, with a total prison population of around 3,500 in 2009.
      Life imprisonment can be sentenced for only a few specific offences, and a life sentence prisoner can be released on parole, i.e. conditionally released, at the earliest when at least 12 years of the prison sentence have been served.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / Edited from an article first published in print 6.12.2011


Links:
  Many of the current figures contained in this article can be found from Statistics Finland

RIIKKA HAIKARAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
riikka.haikarainen@hs.fi