In 1543 Mikael Agricola, rector of the Turku Cathedral School, published the Abckiria, a sixteen-page ABC book. It was the first book printed in Finnish. Five years later came his greatest work: the whole New Testament in Finnish.
From Pernå to Wittenberg
- A boy from the coast. Agricola was born around 1510 in the village of Torsby in Pernå, on the south coast, to a well-off family. Whether his first language was Finnish or Swedish is not known, but his writing shows he spoke Finnish like a native Well documented.
- School and the bishop’s office. He went to the Latin school in Viipuri. In 1528 he came to Turku as a scribe in the office of Bishop Martin Skytte, and he was ordained a priest in the early 1530s Well documented.
- With Luther. In 1536 the bishop sent him to Wittenberg, the home of the Reformation, where he studied under Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon. He returned in 1539 and became rector of the Cathedral School (stop 10) Well documented.
Books for the people
- God’s word in your own language. The reformers wanted ordinary people to hear the Bible and the service in a language they understood. For most people in Finland that meant Finnish Well documented.
- The ABC book, 1543. The Abckiria taught the alphabet and the catechism, from the Ten Commandments to the Lord’s Prayer. No complete copy survives. In 1966 pieces of a later edition were found inside old book bindings Well documented.
- The New Testament, 1548. Printed in Stockholm, it has 718 pages. Agricola worked from Erasmus’s Greek and Latin texts, Luther’s German and the Swedish Bible. The manuscript was ready in 1543, but correcting it took five more years Well documented.
- Nine books in all. A prayer book of about 900 pages came out in 1544, then books for church services in 1549, the Psalms in 1551 and parts of the Old Testament in 1551 and 1552 Well documented.
- Not the first writer. Agricola was not the first person to write in Finnish. But he was the first to print books in it, and others followed his model Well documented.
Making a written language
- No rules yet. Nobody had decided how Finnish should be written. Agricola based his language mainly on the dialects of Turku and the area around it, with features from other dialects too Well documented.
- Creative spelling. He wrote the sound k in ten different ways, and he did not care much whether a vowel was long or short. He wrote w for v, dh for d and x for ks Well documented.
- New words. Church and learned texts needed words Finnish did not have. Agricola created words such as hallitus (government), esikuva (model) and käsikirjoitus (manuscript) Well documented.
- Some did not last. He called a lion jalopeura, “noble deer”, and an ostrich kamelikurki, “camel crane”. Today Finns say leijona and strutsi Well documented.
- Still in use. His books contain about 8,100 different words. About 5,350 of them, nearly two-thirds, are still used today Well documented.
Bishop, and a death on the road
- Bishop of Turku. In 1554 Agricola was consecrated bishop of Turku, without the Pope’s approval (stop 12) Well documented.
- Peace talks in Moscow. In 1557 he led a delegation to Moscow to negotiate peace. On the way home he fell ill and died on 9 April 1557 at Kyrönniemi on the Karelian Isthmus. He was probably buried in Viipuri, but his grave is lost Well documented.
- His day. Finland celebrates Agricola on 9 April. Since 1978 it has also been the Day of the Finnish Language Well documented.
Myth: Agricola invented thousands of words
You may read that he created 8,000 new words. That number is about the size of his whole vocabulary, and most of those words were already in use. How many words he made up himself can only be guessed Well documented.
How do we know?
His books are the main evidence. They carry his name and their dates, and in his prefaces he explains his choices himself. Linguists have counted every word in them. His early life is much less clear: even his year of birth is an estimate.