=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2364/31_paper
|storemode=property
|title=International collaboration and Finland in the early years of computer-assisted history research: Combining influences from Nordic and Soviet Baltic historians
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2364/31_paper.pdf
|volume=Vol-2364
|authors=Petri Paju
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/dhn/Paju19
}}
==International collaboration and Finland in the early years of computer-assisted history research: Combining influences from Nordic and Soviet Baltic historians==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2364/31_paper.pdf
International collaboration and Finland in the early years
of computer-assisted history research: Combining
influences from Nordic and Soviet Baltic historians
Petri Paju1
1
Aalto University and University of Turku, petpaju@utu.fi
Abstract. 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 re-
search. Computers were used by some historians in the Soviet Union, in par-
ticular 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 ap-
proach helps us understand better the deep roots of Nordic collaboration in the
early digital humanities, and more broadly, the spread and circulation of hu-
manities computing internationally.
Keywords: Nordic collaboration, history research, history of digital humanities,
Baltic countries, Estonia, Sweden, Finland.
1 Introduction
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 pub-
lished 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 computa-
tional method, developed in the field of psychology, was factor analysis. The Social
Background of the Civil War (Kansalaissodan sosiaalinen tausta) was the first book-
length study published in Finland in which a historian made use of a computer [1].
In Sweden, historians’ use of computers had commenced somewhat earlier, and
Finnish colleagues made references to the first history article by Carl Göran Andræ
that presented the benefits and use of the computer, published in Historisk Tidskrift
(Historical Journal) in 1966 [2]. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, historians in the
350
Soviet state of Estonia had started utilizing computers even before that, in the early
1960s. What, if any, influence did that research have abroad, for example, in Finland?
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 con-
tribute 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 infor-
mation technology? Perhaps historians from Finland also acted as links between Bal-
tic colleagues and Nordic ones.
The materials for this study consist of memoirs, various written documents (espe-
cially digitized history journals), and published research reports. To focus on the in-
teractions between historians in various countries, the approach applied here is trans-
national 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 [3, 4, 5]. Fur-
thermore, this article serves as a small reminder of and correction to the US-centric
view of the history of computing-assisted history. This, too, was an international and
transnational development [6].
2 Finnish historians and their contacts in the Soviet Union
The international discussion concerning historians’ use of computers increased from
the late 1960s onward. In that exchange, Finnish historians rarely contributed publica-
tions, but Viljo Rasila (mentioned above) wrote two articles for international scholar-
ly 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 [7, 8]. The
Finnish ground would soon see a somewhat exceptional international interaction.
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 negotia-
tions, the Turku Historical Society was able to organize a joint seminar with col-
leagues 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 else-
where, 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 Lith-
uania, and Soviet Russian historians. The tenth symposium was arranged in 1988, and
the last one took place in 1992 [9].
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 [10]. In later symposiums, quite a few historians from Soviet Estonia presented
351
and published several articles, in which the authors usually integrated statistical anal-
ysis of historical phenomena using quantifiable sources.
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 publica-
tions 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 schol-
ars’ results concerning computer use better known to historians in Finland [11].
Among the Soviet Estonian scholars, Juhan Kahk was able to travel widely and
publish abroad, such as in the French Annales [12, 13], but in general, travel to Fin-
land was easier than further abroad. According to information online and unconfirmed
by this study, in return, Kahk had to report about his travels to VEKSA (the Society
for the Development of Cultural Ties with Estonians Abroad), which was controlled
by the KGB. To what extent Soviet and Finnish scholars influenced each other’s work
is difficult to know and show because they made few (if any) references to each other
in their publications. Still, that could have been a practice related to performing ideo-
logical purity and for protection from possible accusations: In the Soviet Union, it
was unwise to admit or show one was influenced by historians outside one’s own
camp, so to speak [14].
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 develop-
ments of quantitative history [15]. Meanwhile, Finns entertained lively contacts with
their Western neighbors, especially Sweden, and thus, talked regularly in both direc-
tions, as well as communicated information between the two cold war blocs. Despite
the scarcity of references to Soviet colleagues, most if not all of the few Finnish histo-
rians who led computer-assisted research projects in the 1970s (see below) participat-
ed in the Finnish–Soviet symposiums [1].
For international collaboration, it was significant that during the 1970s and contin-
uing well into the 1980s Finnish scholars had relatively dynamic transnational com-
munications 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.
352
3 Nordic history research projects using computers: migration
and demographic studies
Conducting research in organized projects became more common in the sciences dur-
ing 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) [16]. Such news reached historians in Fin-
land at about the same time that historians were able to create more sustained contact
with Soviet Estonia.
In Finland, too, the early 1970s saw a new phase in historians’ use of computers
when the technology was incorporated in research projects. Contemporaries consid-
ered 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 emi-
grants (kaukosiirtolaiset, from Finland) which included an “ADP department” work-
ing on collecting data and compiling statistics. To store data, the department used
punch cards [1].
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 [17]. Similar to other Nordic students of migration to North America, Kero’s
research contacts with colleagues and university departments in the United States
further supported the use of computers for historical analysis. Soon after and building
on several national Nordic projects on migration history, this network started two
Nordic collaboration projects on emigration to North America. The first project com-
piled an atlas of Nordic migrations, and the closely related second project focused on
comparing patterns of national migration to the United States and Canada. Partici-
pants at a Nordic seminar in Uppsala had first discussed such multinational efforts in
1969, and that probably motivated national projects, such as the one initiated by
Niitemaa and based in Turku, Finland [18].
The Nordic collaboration project aimed at comparing migration from the Nordic
countries to North America and within Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Swe-
den. The task proved more complex than was anticipated, and the project faced diffi-
culties. 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 [19, 20, 21].
Presenting the results of the collaboration, Sune Åkerman wrote honestly about the
practical downsides [18]: “It would be misleading to conceal the extreme difficulties
encountered in this Nordic team-work. The large geographic distances between the
353
research groups has complicated coordination and and [sic] problems of staff etc.
have sometimes caused the project to waver somewhat.”
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 collabo-
ration, 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 re-
search 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 pro-
grams 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 [22, 23]. Most of the
laboriously manually gathered and manually inputted data was never computerized.
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 [1, 22].
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 [24]. Pro-
ject participants arranged a seminar in Tvärminne, Finland, in March 1979. The four
invited Swedish participants included Sune Åkerman, who was also central in the
collaboration on Nordic migration history, two others from a Swedish project on
family history led by Professor Sten Carlsson in Uppsala, and Jan Sundin from De-
mografiska databasen at Umeå University. Afterward, the Finnish project leader,
Pentti Virrankoski, indicated that the results of their productive exchanges had been
heard, for instance, in a presentation by Jan Sundin at the Congress of Nordic Histori-
ans at the University of Jyväskylä two years after the seminar in 1981 [22, 25].
In principle, such historical databases can have a very long lifespan. In Sweden, a
demographic database was first developed in the early 1970s [24] while many Finnish
projects collecting and processing valuable data in history research have had limited
continuity and left a very ephemeral legacy. Meanwhile, since 2017, once again in
connection with and drawing from the long-term Swedish experience, there are plans
at the University of Tampere for historians to refresh the migration database and use it
as part of a larger digital collection aimed at historical demographic research [26].
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 [27, 3]. Some of the early meetings included ex-
354
changes about the use of quantitative methods, as well as computers, all of which, at
the time, the historians considered to open up new options and opportunities for their
scholarship [28, 29].
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 pro-
jects 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 [28, 30], as did the large-scale Finnish press history research that began in
the mid-1970s. The leaders of that growing project were interested in applying quanti-
tative and mathematical methods, but in the end, they did not choose computers for
quantifying and counting, and instead, used other techniques. However, the Finnish
scholars deemed the Nordic contacts and influence overall very important. Subse-
quently, they led to Nordic collaboration in writing and publishing results on press
history and media history [31].
4 Conclusion
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 comput-
ers 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 dis-
cuss 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 in-
fluences from social sciences, all of which formed parts of the historians’ larger re-
search 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 physi-
cally much larger computers—approximately two decades before the worldwide in-
ternet and email, and all the other digital tools that have gradually expanded transna-
tional scholarly collaboration and made it much less complicated.
355
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 [6, 32]. Similar
connections may have been more active in some other fields of research, such as in
linguistics and social sciences, and studying them would increase our knowledge of
the early international history of digital humanities [33, 34, 35]. Most importantly, the
developments of computer-assisted research are well worth studying and remember-
ing from the transnational perspective. Finally, because old databases periodically
interest digital humanist researchers after extended lengths of time, history research
could offer practical help in locating relevant publications and archives, and in the
best case, save long-forgotten data collections from oblivion.
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.
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