Opiksi - Lecture notes from the 18th century to the present
Café Rotunda
6.10.-8.1.2021
The Opiksi exhibition provides an overview of the history of university teaching in various disciplines, from the period of Matthias Calonius (1738–1817) and Henrik Gabriel Porthan (1939–1804), professors at the Royal Academy of Turku, to Johan Vilhelm Snellman (1806–1881) and all the way to the late 20th century. Lecture notes tell us about the topics of teaching and the languages used, and reveal the handwriting of professors and students. By exploring various samples, we find out more about the teaching activities of important figures in the Finnish history of learning.
Notes taken by Gustaf John Ramstedt (1873–1950), a linguist and an explorer, when he attended lectures given by Heikki Paasonen (1865–1919), professor of Finno-Ugric linguistics, at the University of Helsinki in 1893. After completing his MA degree in 1898, G. J. Ramstedt undertook several expeditions to Siberia, Central Asia and Mongolia. He completed his doctoral degree in 1902 and was appointed professor of Altaic linguistics at the University of Helsinki in 1917. Later, Ramstedt worked, for example, as a diplomat in Tokyo, where he secured Japan’s support for Finland in what is known as the Åland Islands dispute.
The National Library of Finland’s Manuscript Collection includes G. J. Ramstedt’s personal archive as well as the Mongolian library he collected during his expeditions, which includes Mongolian and Kalmyk manuscripts and printed products.
Over the centuries, the Manuscript Collection of the National Library of Finland has accumulated a considerable amount of university lecture material, recorded by either the professors themselves or the students who attended the lectures. Lectures have been part of university teaching through the ages. Early on, the main guideline for academic teaching, also followed at the Royal Academy of Turku, was that teaching must be based on docendo et disputando, meaning lectures and the defence of theses. Both lectures and theses are still part and parcel of academic teaching.
The lecture notes on display tell us about lectures given in the 18th and 19thcenturies, of which our information is scarce, unlike the information we have of theses, most of which are still available in printed form in the National Library’s collections and will, in the near future, be made available in digital form in the digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi service.
In the early years of the National Library, in the era of the Royal Academy of Turku, it was customary to include not only books, but also manuscripts in the collection. The manuscripts of well-known 18th-century authors were a great source of pride for the National Library. Gradually, sources describing Finnish history as well as manuscripts authored by professors serving at the Academy of Turku (later the Imperial Alexander University and the University of Helsinki) also came to be seen as valuable. In the 19th century, the collection grew with not only individual manuscripts but also entire personal archives, including correspondence, notes and diaries. Thus, the National Library’s Manuscript Collection now includes a unique range of archive material on the Finnish history of learning and education from several centuries. Today, the collection comprises roughly 900 personal archives and several thousands of individual manuscripts, in total, approximately 3,000 metres of shelf space. The National Library continues to accept material for the Manuscript Collection. These days, paper-based material totalling approximately 30 to 50 metres of shelf space as well as born-digital documents are added to the collection each year.
The Manuscript Collection is available to customers in the Special Collections Reading Room. Orders and enquiries: [email protected]
Further information: Jouni Ahmajärvi, head of services ([email protected])