Jukka-Pekka Pietiäinen, the head of The Finnish Association of Non-fiction Writers, has partnered with professor Joel Kuortti to assemble a list of 100 significant Finnish non-fiction books. Each book is introduced with a compact summary. The collection offers an excellent tour of the history of Finnish non-fiction: it starts in 1543 with Agricola‘s ABC book and ends with Elina Grundström’s recent The Black Orchid, which deals with global climate change. Reading the list, you make interesting discoveries. Matthias Calonius created a foundation for Finnish law with his Civil Law Lectures; in the 1700s, Pehr Kalm’s North American Journey was translated into many European languages; in the background of the publisher of Statistical Yearbook you find an institution established in 1748, which began compiling Sweden’s and Finland’s population statistics, the oldest continuous statistics in the world. The real bestseller has been Pikku jättiläinen (The Little Giant), first published in 1924, which was printed in 300 000 copies. Elo’s arithmetic was published in 1915; its 32nd edition was still in use in the late ’60s. A work unknown to me, Recreational Fishermen, has sold amazingly for a book in Finnish: 50 000 copies in Finland and 150 000 copies in Russia.
The 100 books will be the subject of a special exhibition at the Tampere Main Library from 26 January to 7 February 2015. Come on by!