Penny-pinching professor leaves EUR 22 milllion to humanities researchers

Eino Jutikkala lived to be 99 and was a shrewd and patient investor

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By Teemu Luukka
     
      A couple of months ago Matti Saarnisto, the Secretary-General of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, received the mother and father of telephone calls from the bank.
      "It's a good thing I was sitting down, because I'd definitely have fallen flat on my backside at the point when I heard what it was all about" says Saarnisto.
      The bank official passed on the information that the Academy of Science and Letters had received a "substantial donation" from the personal estate of Academician Eino Jutikkala (1907-2006), who passed away last December at the age of 99.
      And then the caller revealed the scale of what "substantial" meant: 22 million euros!
      "And on top of that, all of it specifically for the humanities", gasps Saarnisto with enthusiasm.
     
It is not surprising that Saarnisto went a little wobbly at the knees.
      The long-serving fund manager at the Finnish Cultural Foundation Ralf Sunell cannot recall any private individuals ever having given such a huge bequest to the Finnish humanities branch, and the same goes for Prof. Paavo Hohti, the Managing Director of the Council of Finnish Foundations.
      The bequest was formally announced last Monday at an Academy gathering. Present for the event was a large selection of fellow Academy members and members of the Finnish scientific community.
      They all knew that Eino Jutikkala was a wealthy man, but nonetheless the scale of the donation had them all in shock, including a close personal friend of Jutikkala's, Professor Päiviö Tommila, a former Rector of Helsinki University.
      "No, he never talked about money", says Tommila, who knew Jutikkala well for half a century.
      Dr. Keijo K. Kulha, who published a biography of Eino Jutikkala last year, commented that he believed the most important secret to Jutikkala's wealth was that the former history professor lived very modestly indeed and kept a tight rein on his personal spending.
     
Jutikkala was born into a wealthy family and grew up in the family mansion near Valkeakoski, now long since turned into a foundation.
      The house and estate passed to his elder brother, but a part of the value of the family inheritance went west over the years when the brother's adopted child indulged in a somewhat less frugal lifestyle.
     
The money that is now passing to the Academy and to the Finnish humanities scholars is only in small measure actually inherited wealth.
      Those who come to benefit from it in years ahead should rather thank Jutikkala's methodical and patient style of investing, his disciplined way of life, and his aversion to conspicuous consumption. Jutikkala was the sort of man who skied in his old age on a pair of skis dating from the 1930s.
      The childless professor was a lifetime customer of the now-vanished Kansallis Bank (these days absorbed into the Nordea financial services group), and he would invest any monies left over at the end of the month in various stocks and securities.
      He had cash left over from his salary and from the royalties on his numerous books.
     
Jutikkala was a cautious and painstaking investor, who seems by all accounts never to have sold off any of the stocks he bought.
      Hence the value of much of his stock portfolio has grown over decades rather than years. He invested only in Finnish securities.
     
Eino Jutikkala is known above all for an exceptionally long and prolific academic career. He started teaching at the University of Helsinki in 1933, and was the Professor of History and of Economy History for more than a quarter of a century from 1947 until his retirement in 1974.
      He is widely regarded as the man who knew more about Finnish history than anyone else alive. He was also the youngest Finnish person - at the age of 24 - to take a doctorate in history. The record was only broken in the early 21st century.
     
There are legions of stories about his parsimony (though he was never mean), and about his almost pathological aversion to taking taxis. He lived healthily, took exercise, and always wanted to walk from place to place or use public transport.
      Last autumn, however, he broke with tradition and took a cab to the publishers for the launch of his biography. The action and the sight of Eino Jutikkala climbing out of a taxi caused consternation and astonishment among those who knew him of old - and this in spite of the fact that he was celebrating his 99th birthday at the time.
      Jutikkala lived for more than 40 years in an apartment in a fine address on Helsinki's Merikatu, with a magnificent sea view opening up from the windows in front of his desk.
      In the summer months, when he would decamp to the estate near Valkeakoski, he would cover the windows of the Helsinki apartment with paper, so that the direct sunlight would not fade the furnishings.
     
Around a year ago, a local newspaper printed an interview in which Jutikkala expressed his dismay at threats that the No. 17 bus that served his part of southern Helsinki might be discontinued.
      He had found as the years racked up that he increasingly often had to use the bus rather than walking to the centre of town.
      "But everything is fine as long as that bus is still there", he said.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.4.2007

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 Humanities research stands to benefit by hundreds of thousands annually

TEEMU LUUKKA / Helsingin Sanomat
teemu.luukka@hs.fi