Daniel Juslenius
Encyclopedia
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
. He was a professor of Hebrew, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
at the Royal Academy of Turku.
Juslenius is considered Finland's
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
first Fennoman
Fennoman
The Fennomans were the most important political movement in the 19th century Grand Principality of Finland. They succeeded the fennophile interests of the 18th and early 19th century.-History:...
and a firm advocate of Finnishness
Finnishness
Finnishness is a concept which discusses what makes a Finn a Finn. Ethnic Finnishness can be defined as the identifying focus on Finnish and the nation-state of Finland based on ethnic identity or nationality...
. In his works, he presented completely overblown images of the past of the Finnish people. He wrote, for example, Aboa vetus et Nova ("Vanha ja uusi Turku", 1700, "The Old and New Turku"), in which it was claimed that the civilisations of Rome
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
and Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
had come from Finland. He also wrote Vindiciae Fennorum ("Suomalaisten puolustus", 1703, "The Defence of the Finns"). Both works represent homeland images which were fashionable to write about in the late 17th century. The purpose of this depiction was to make an inventory of the possessions during Sweden's time as great power.
Juslenius' picture of Finland
Juslenius derived the family roots of the Finns from the family of MagogMagog (Bible)
Magog, Hebrew מגוג, Greek Μαγωγ, [ ma'gog ], is the second of the seven sons of Japheth mentioned in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. It may represent Hebrew for "from Gog", though this is far from certain....
in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. According to him, the descendants of Magog migrated to Finland after the Deluge. This so-called tradition of Gothicismus
Gothicismus
Gothicismus, Gothism, or Gothicism is the name given to what is considered to have been a cultural movement in Sweden, centered around the belief in the glory of the Swedish ancestors, originally considered to be the Geats, which were identified with the Goths. The founders of the movement were...
aimed to provide a foundational myth for the people. It gave the people a feeling of genetic unity and right to possession while living in their own country.
Juslenius glorified Finland from all angles. He praised the excellent productivity of crops in the country and the civilised nature of the Finns. According to Juslenius, the Finns had invented their own writing system, even before the Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. He utilised linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
in his research, a typical method of his time. Among others, he explained the reputation of the Finns as being hakkapeliitta
Hakkapeliitta
Hakkapeliitta is a historiographical term used for a Finnish light cavalryman in the service of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden during the Thirty Years' War...
, brave soldiers, by deriving the term hakkaa päälle from a compound word:
The never-ending passion of the Finnish people to strike an enemy down forms a new word hakkapeliitta ('hakkaa päälle' means to strike, hit, bludgeon with all your might), with which PolandPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
always trembled and the AustriansAustriansAustrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....
and the defenders of the Holy (if God allows us to say) League will end up in the grip of fear and will lose their lives.
According to Juslenius, words are not born in vain, in other words, without the presence of meaningful facts. If the Finns cried that they will strike their enemies once, they had to be one up in battle.
The firing up of his country leads us to think that his motivation would have been to glorify the image of Finland. For this reason, he is considered the first Fennoman of Finland. The works of Juslenius, however, were scholarly dissertations which complied with the requirements of academics of the time. The so-called method of dialectics was used in his research, this dialectic configuration counterpoint in the works of Juslenius came from the struggle of two images of Finland. Juslenius appeared to be an advocate of the Finns and he encountered appreciative foreigners on his imaginary soapbox. His mission was to eliminate all of the unfavourable claims against the Finnish people and prove the exact opposite. With the dialectic method, the subject and content were side factors in his research. It was more important to show his scholarliness by using Latin clearly and logically. Finland and its people were the subject of debate in a crowd of others.
Juslenius as a linguist and clergyman
Juslenius was an expert in linguisticsLinguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
. His inaugural presentation for the position as language professor in 1712 dealt with the relationship of Finnish with Hebrew and Greek (De convenientia lingvae Fennicae cum Hebraea et Graeca). Juslenius' interest in language led him to create the first extensive Finnish-language dictionary Suomalaisen Sana-Lugun Coetus, which was published in 1745. It was the first dictionary to have Finnish as the reference language and contains 16,000 lexical entries. Juslenius was also bishop of the Church of Sweden
Church of Sweden
The Church of Sweden is the largest Christian church in Sweden. The church professes the Lutheran faith and is a member of the Porvoo Communion. With 6,589,769 baptized members, it is the largest Lutheran church in the world, although combined, there are more Lutherans in the member churches of...
in Porvoo
Porvoo
Porvoo is a city and a municipality situated on the southern coast of Finland approximately east of Helsinki. Porvoo is one of the six medieval towns in Finland, first mentioned as a city in texts from 14th century...
(Borgå) (1735–1742) and in Skara
Skara
Skara is a locality and the seat of Skara Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden with 18595 inhabitants in 2005. Despite its small size, it has a long educational and ecclesiastical history. One of Sweden's oldest high schools, Katedralskolan , is situated in Skara...
(1744–1752).
In 1975, a new building at the University of Turku
University of Turku
The University of Turku , located in Turku in southwestern Finland, is the second largest university in the country as measured by student enrollment, after University of Helsinki. It was established in 1920 and also has faculties at Rauma, Pori and Salo...
was named Juslenia after Daniel Juslenius.