Maamme

Maamme (Finnish) or V?rt land (Swedish), meaning Our land, is the title of Finland's de facto national anthem.

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The music was composed by the German Fredrik Pacius, with (Swedish) words by the Finland-Swede Johan Ludvig Runeberg, and was performed for the first time on 13 May 1848. The original poem, written in 1846 but not printed until 1848, had 11 stanzas and formed the prologue to the great verse cycle The Tales of Ensign St?l ("F?nrik St?hls S?gner"), a masterpiece of Romantic nationalism.

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The Tales of Ensign St?l were much appreciated throughout all of Scandinavia. Up until the time of Finland's independence in 1917–18, when the song began to be recognized as specifically applying to Finland, Pacius's tune and Runeberg's text were often also sung in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Note that in the original Swedish text there is no reference to Finland, only to a country in the north, but the Finnish text explicitly refers to Finland. The poem's theme is, furthermore, remarkably similar to that of the national anthems of Sweden (Du gamla, Du fria) and Norway (Ja, vi elsker dette landet).

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Some Finns would now like the Finnish national anthem to be changed to Finlandia by Jean Sibelius (also a Finland-Swede): partly because the original V?rt land was written in Swedish, not Finnish; partly because Pacius's tune is also used for the national anthem of Estonia with a similarly themed text, Mu isamaa, My Fatherland (1869); and partly because Pacius was German. It is also said that he composed the tune in a mere fifteen minutes, with no idea that it would become so important to the people of Finland that they would eventually make it their national anthem. Jean Sibelius is Finland's national composer. Finlandia, however, was written as a purely instrumental piece and is difficult to sing (neverthless it briefly became the national anthem of Biafra). Some people would say that the national anthem of Finland is unlikely to change because of conservative traditions.

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Here are the lyrics of the first verse in Finnish, in Swedish (as originally written), and in an English-language version:

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Finnish: Finnish may refer to:...

Swedish: The term Swedish can refer to:...

Finland: The Republic of Finland (Finnish: Suomen tasavalta Swedish: Republiken Finland) is a Nordic country in northeastern Europe, bounded by the Baltic Sea to the southwest, the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west. Finland has land frontiers with Sweden, Norway and Russia. The...