Conclusion

The society of estates still had a strong influence on the social mobility of nineteenth-century Vyborg Nation students, and it set limits on their future careers. Upward social mobility was usually only possible at the rate of a single step per generation, and it was very hard even to conceive of any upward mobility unless some or all the following preconditions were met:

1.

2. The family had cultural capital (i.e. literacy and language skills in Swedish and Russian).

3. There was the opportunity to attend school (‘being in the right place at the right time’).

4. The social climber had personal qualities and natural talents.

Family background was strongly linked to horizontal mobility as well since the students with a background in the gentry had in practice a much greater choice. Modern professions and commercial activities mostly recruited students with such a background, while the newcomers had to follow more established and traditional routes.

This portrait of Vyborg Nation students probably exaggerates the slow start of the more fluid social mobility in nineteenth-century Finland since the traditional gentry in the province of Vyborg remained relatively isolated and elementary schooling lagged behind the rest of the country.

Early Finnish newspapers also encountered difficulties in the province of Vyborg. ‘Let’s say it straight: there is a lack of education’, wrote the newspaper Otava bitterly in 1863. This radical Finnish-language and pro-Fennoman newspaper was disappointed at its lack of subscribers, and it was once more forced to cease circulation. So, compared to Western Finland, the ‘national consciousness’ of the common people seemed to be at a much lower level (Matikainen 2016, 172; Otava, November 27, 1863).

Fennomania certainly contributed to increased social mobility and brought the classes closer together. Indeed, the first clearly interclass marriages of Vyborg Nation students were at least partly connected to the national awakening associated with Fennomania. Acknowledgements

Parts of this chapter, including Table 8.1, were originally published in Finnish in Matikainen, O. (2014). Ylioppilaat, maakunta ja sivistyneisto. In Viipurin läänin historia. 5: Autonomisen Suomen rajamaa, Kaukiainen Yrjo, Marjomaa Risto & Nurmiainen Jouko (ed.), pp. 337–349. Joensuu: Karjalan kirjapaino.

Notes

1. Älä. Mihingän.Turhin.Rupia.Wijnan. Ja.Kortin. Älä. Ensingän.

2. Until Finnish nationalism—known as Fennomania—developed into a mass movement from the 1850s onwards, adopting a Swedish name was a clear indicator of improving one’s social status. The name Meten no longer appears among the ‘cultured’ families of Finland, but that has probably more to do with the lack of male descendants than a lack of accumulated social capital. The wife of David Meten (1802–1841) was Helena Elisabeth Soderbom, the daughter of Johan Soderbom. Meten’s career was cut short in his late thirties by a fatal illness. Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852: David Alexander Meten.

3. The wife of Mikael Toven (1813–1867) was Maria Magdalena Weilin, the daughter of Georg Aron Weilin. Mikael Toven worked as a teacher and a schoolmaster in his old school in Savonlinna and later continued his career in the town of Sortavala. Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852: Mikael Toven.

4. The Finnish debate around the ‘peasant student’ was evoked by the Norwegian Arne Garborg through his novel, Bondestudentar [Peasant Students], which was published in Finnish in 1891. From the beginning of the 1890s until the early 1920s, several university novels were published in Finland. The most famous of them are Arvid Järnefelt’s Isänmaa [Fatherland] and Juhani Aho’s Helsinkiin [To Helsinki].

5. Searching for the word puoliherra [half-gentleman] in Finnish Historical Newspaper Archives results in various hits from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.

6. This development was most famously described by Arvid Järnefelt in his novel Isänmaa, where the protagonist is a farmer’s son who experiences an identity crisis over the traditional family values of his agrarian background and those of the urban middle class in which he finds himself as he is swept up in the rising tide of Finnish nationalism.

7. Women were first accepted as members of Vyborg Nation in the 1890s. See Mervi Kaarninen’s chapter in this volume.

8. On the province of Vyborg and ‘Old Finland’, see the recent provincial history by Kaukiainen, Marjomaa, and Nurmianen (eds.) 2014.

9. See the chapters by Johanna Annola and Ulla Ijäs in this volume.

10. Kaarlo Wirilander, for instance, combined cultural history and quantitative research in his classic work Herrasväkeä [The Gentry] from 1974. Wiri-lander shows how the old gentry began to adopt new roles during the long eighteenth century. Sociologist Esa Konttinen (1991) has taken this further by analysing how the development of professions was closely tied to the interests of the leading estates, particularly during the transition into the nineteenth century. For similar ideas in the British context, see Corfield (1995).

11. Gunnar Suolahti’s article Statistical Information on Students of the Academy of Turku in the Eighteenth Century (1903) marked the beginning of a new Finnish research tradition on social mobility. Heikki Waris was one of Gunnar Suolahti’s students. Waris’ article Yliopisto sosiaalisen kohoamisen väylänä [University as a Means of Social Mobility], published in 1940, set the bar for later researchers.

12. According to sociologist Risto Alapuro, the relatively simple (by international standards) dual nature of the Finnish class system still remains. Indeed, making good use of this basic class tension between the gentry and the common people has been a standard theme in Finnish populist politics, and it still forms a key component of the Finnish sense of humour.

13. For example, auditor Juho Estlander’s father was a St Petersburg-based merchant called Wirolin. Both surnames point to Estonia and indicate that the father and son belonged to a well-known peasant family from Southeast Karelia, Virolainen; Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852: Johan Estlander; Ketola (2007).

14. For more information on education in the Hackman family, see Ulla Ijäs’ chapter in this volume.

15. Alongside the Thesleff and Zilliacus families, the Alfthans were influential for many generations in the economic, cultural, and political life of Vyborg. Autio (2002, 2007a, 2007b).

16. See also Ulla Ijäs’ chapter in this volume.

17. The wife of Gustaf Hellman was Anna Silventoinen. Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1853–1899: Hellman.

18. Database on Vyborg Nation students 1833–1899 ed. Olli Matikainen is based on Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852, Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1853–1899.

19. The wife of Magnus Forsstrom was Margareta Lievonen. Forsstrom’s brother, the judge E. F. Forsstrom, was one of the first to promote the Finnish language within the judicial system. Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852: Magnus Ernfrid Forsstrom.

20. Sihvonen’s father-in-law was General Johan Fredrik Gripenberg. Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852: Johan Jakob Sihvonen.

21. Blomgren’s late father-in-law was Baron Karl August Rehbinder. Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640–1852: Otto Gustaf Blomgren.

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