This paper studies Finnish historians' contact and collaboration with their colleagues in neighboring countries from the late 1960s until the early 1980s, focusing on exchanges concerning the use of computers for historical research. Computers were used by some historians in the Soviet Union, in particular Soviet Estonia, as well as in Sweden and other Nordic countries. With the former, historians in Finland organized regular symposiums starting in 1971; and with the latter, Finnish historians completed joint Nordic research projects during the 1970s. Both forms of collaboration resulted in a stream of publications. Further exchanges took place at seminars and Nordic conferences. The approach in this study is transnational, and the paper argues that this approach helps us understand better the deep roots of Nordic collaboration in the early digital humanities, and more broadly, the spread and circulation of humanities computing internationally.
Historians in Finland, that is, a few of them at first, became interested in the use of
computers during the mid-1960s. First, two Finnish articles on this topic were
published in 1967. Those publications mentioned a handful of history researchers who
were planning to work with computers in Finland. Their research themes varied from
Roman history (Pertti Huttunen) to the Finnish civil war of 1918. Fifty years after that
brutal spring in Finland, in 1968, historian Viljo Rasila published a history book, a
monograph in which he applied computer-aided statistical methods to explore key
themes in recent Finnish social history leading to the 1918 war. His main
computational method, developed in the field of psychology, was factor analysis. The Social
Background of the Civil War (Kansalaissodan sosiaalinen tausta) was the first
booklength study published in Finland in which a historian made use of a computer [
In Sweden, historians’ use of computers had commenced somewhat earlier, and
Finnish colleagues made references to the first history article by Carl Göran Andrae
that presented the benefits and use of the computer, published in Historisk Tidskrift
(Historical Journal) in 1966 [
This paper studies Finnish historians’ contacts with their colleagues in neighboring countries from the late 1960s until the early 1980s, and in particular, attempts to contribute to our knowledge of early international contact and exchanges regarding the historians’ use of computers. It is well-known that Finland balanced in-between the cold war blocs. Did Finnish and Estonian researchers establish contact during the cold war, and despite its tensions, learn from each other about applying the latest information technology? Perhaps historians from Finland also acted as links between Baltic colleagues and Nordic ones.
The materials for this study consist of memoirs, various written documents
(especially digitized history journals), and published research reports. To focus on the
interactions between historians in various countries, the approach applied here is
transnational rather than international, although the terms complement each other. This
view also reminds us of the limitations of methodological nationalism in writing
about historical developments, such as the use of computers by historians, and the
need to balance nationally framed studies with transnational elements [
The international discussion concerning historians’ use of computers increased from
the late 1960s onward. In that exchange, Finnish historians rarely contributed
publications, but Viljo Rasila (mentioned above) wrote two articles for international
scholarly journals. He published the articles in 1969 and 1970, and they summarized his
research process and results concerning the study of the Finnish civil war [
A group of historians in Finland, and especially in Turku, revived contact with
Soviet Estonia gradually beginning in the mid-1960s. After several rounds of
negotiations, the Turku Historical Society was able to organize a joint seminar with
colleagues of the kindred nation in the south, called the Finnish–Soviet social science
history symposium, in April 1971. This first meeting took place in Turku, or Åbo in
Swedish. Attendees consisted of Finnish participants from Turku, Helsinki, and
elsewhere, and four Estonian guests. The next seminar took place in Leningrad in 1972,
and another followed in Turku after several years. After a couple of meetings, the
seminars included representatives from the other two Baltic States of Latvia and
Lithuania, and Soviet Russian historians. The tenth symposium was arranged in 1988, and
the last one took place in 1992 [
At the first meeting in 1971, the Estonian presenters, Juhan Kahk and Enn Tarvel,
told the audience that researchers of agrarian history in Estonia had used computers
for three or four published articles. The first, the presenters said, was completed in
1962 [
Importantly for the broader influence, each meeting resulted in a proceedings or a
book-length publication in the Turku Historical Society series. Many of these
publications were printed in Finnish, but at times, English was also used. For the second
conference, the Estonian scholar Juhan Kahk wrote an article, “New Possibilities of
Using Computerized Historical Analysis in the Study of Peasant Households.” This
study was included in the volume printed in Turku in 1973 and made Estonian
scholars’ results concerning computer use better known to historians in Finland [
Among the Soviet Estonian scholars, Juhan Kahk was able to travel widely and
publish abroad, such as in the French Annales [
Nevertheless, at times Soviet historians had wider opportunities for meetings than
is generally known. For instance, Soviet historians were able to organize a conference
in Tallinn, Soviet Estonia, in 1981, with their American colleagues on the
developments of quantitative history [
For international collaboration, it was significant that during the 1970s and continuing well into the 1980s Finnish scholars had relatively dynamic transnational communications in particular with their Estonian and other colleagues from the Soviet Union who were among those who had pioneered the use of computers in history research. Non-aligned Finland provided an informal international meeting place for such personal contacts and exchanges. This mediating role of the Finnish historians in-between the cold war divisions started during the détente in the early 1970s and continued when the tensions heightened again. Although computers were never the centerpiece of these discussions, quantitative methods including using statistics and data processing with the help of mainframe computers were, early on, part and parcel in these talks.
Conducting research in organized projects became more common in the sciences
during the postwar decades. From the late 1960s onward, in the leading Finnish history
journal Historiallinen Aikakauskirja (Historical Journal), several researchers wrote
about current, fashionable historical research projects in Sweden, and these reports
included mentions of “ADP systems.” ADP stands for automatic data processing.
Research projects either were testing those systems or had taken an ADP solution in
use, to store and handle information (data) [
In Finland, too, the early 1970s saw a new phase in historians’ use of computers
when the technology was incorporated in research projects. Contemporaries
considered such projects cutting-edge, and the reorganized Academy of Finland allocated
funds for up-to-date research projects in the field of history. In 1971, for instance,
Professor Vilho Niitemaa presented a newly funded project focused on far-off
emigrants (kaukosiirtolaiset, from Finland) which included an “ADP department”
working on collecting data and compiling statistics. To store data, the department used
punch cards [
As part of that research project, Reino Kero used computerized methods for his
doctoral dissertation which he defended successfully at the University of Turku in
1974 [
The Nordic collaboration project aimed at comparing migration from the Nordic
countries to North America and within Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and
Sweden. The task proved more complex than was anticipated, and the project faced
difficulties. In the five Nordic countries, the examined local migration cases were those of
Alfta, Toholampi, Torslev, Ullensaker, and Vopnafjordur. Reino Kero emphasized the
differences among the Nordic countries in the materials available for study, which
allowed similar in-depth scrutiny only in the cases of Sweden and Finland. During the
meetings, the researchers must have shared ideas and advice on how to best store and
process their national and local data but obviously that could not help if the historical
information was too limited [
Presenting the results of the collaboration, Sune Åkerman wrote honestly about the
practical downsides [
In these collaborative projects, Reino Kero acted as the key liaison in Finland.
Soon, he further contributed his expertise to planning a national migration study that
commenced in 1977. This collaborative research scheme, called the Migration Project
(Muuttoliikeprojekti), counted and mapped the movements of people inside Finland
between 1850 and 1910 with a focus on industrialization. The project plan was in
large part encouraged by Viljo Rasila’s expertise in data processing and computers.
Pentti Virrankoski, who was a professor of Finnish History, had initiated the
collaboration, and he was its supervisor. In addition, Virrankoski headed one sub-project at
the University of Turku, while Rasila, now an appointed professor, led another
research team at the University of Tampere, and Yrjö Kaukiainen a third team at the
University of Helsinki. In this project, the workload of collecting data manually grew
much larger than had been anticipated. However, the difficulties with the ADP
programs and processing the data proved to be even more significant. Because of these
surprises, the larger project ran out of funding in the early 1980s [
However, the sub-project led by Rasila at the University of Tampere was able to
process the materials with a computer. The Tampere team planned their database
differently from the Turku team, and the Tampere team used the data successfully for
their computerized statistical calculations, and published their research results [
Importantly, the larger Finnish Migration Project had formed ties with the Swedish
project that was building a demographic database in the late 1970s, and the two
groups discussed their projects and swapped ideas at international seminars [
In principle, such historical databases can have a very long lifespan. In Sweden, a
demographic database was first developed in the early 1970s [
In addition to the contacts between research efforts and projects abroad, Nordic
historians maintained well-established connections and gathered at regular meetings.
They started the Nordiska historikermötet (Nordic conference for historians) series in
1905, and they arranged the conferences once every 3–4 years after the Second World
War. In addition, historians organized a Nordic series of methods seminars from the
mid-1960s until the early 1990s [
Nevertheless, not all contacts led to following the same solutions, such as data
processing by computers. Historians discussed these new tools in the case of historical
newspaper research, too. In the 1960s, in Sweden and Denmark, the first major
projects investigated newspapers historically. These press history researchers drew from
the ideas of content analysis developed by Bernard Berelson in the United States in
the 1950s [
Ideas and possible influence on the use of computers for historical research came from many directions in and to Finland during the late 1960s and onward. Although a few historians in Finland designed their own computer-assisted studies, many more learned about such new options from their colleagues in Sweden and other countries in the so-called West, as well as, or from, the Soviet Union, especially Soviet Estonia. Such early international contacts and influence concerning historians’ use of computers are difficult to prove with detailed evidence. However, for example, the series of Finnish–Soviet social science history symposiums and other conferences left sources that confirm these exchanges and that also dealt with computer use. In the changing political climate of the cold war, moreover, Finland offered a safe and relatively harmless place for history professionals from the two political blocs to meet and discuss their research, and thus, strengthen the links between the Baltic and Nordic communities of historians.
We can use these experiences to understand general traits of early computer usage by humanists, and especially historians. The 1960s and 1970s saw the first generation of historians, who were few in number, using computers and related technologies mainly for storing data and processing data for statistical analysis, often drawing influences from social sciences, all of which formed parts of the historians’ larger research agenda. Historians labeled much of this research quantitative history. Today, we should regard it as the early evolution of digital history.
At that time, international collaboration was not without difficulties, especially in practical matters. It was a time of posting letters, and very little digital data on physically much larger computers—approximately two decades before the worldwide internet and email, and all the other digital tools that have gradually expanded transnational scholarly collaboration and made it much less complicated.
These results regarding historians’ connections serve to remind us that we can find
deep roots for Nordic collaboration in the digital humanities, and these contacts help
us better understand the international spread of humanities computing [
Acknowledgements I thank the Kone Foundation for funding this research and Mats Fridlund for guiding the two Finland-based projects in which we investigated and advanced digital history research.