Elina Suomela-Härmä

Born 30 November 1946 Helsinki

Master of Arts, 1970, Licentiate of Philosophy, 1973 and Doctor of Philosophy, 1981 (University of Helsinki)

Acting Lecturer and acting Assistant in Romance Philology, 1972–81, University of Helsinki
Assistant, 1981–86, Docent, 1984–98; lecturer, 1987–92, Professor of Italian Philology, 1998–2014, University of Helsinki
Junior Researcher, Academy of Finland, 1985–87 and Researcher, 2006–07
Associate Professor and Professor of French, 1992–98, University of Tampere
Visiting Associate Professor of Finnish Language and Culture, 1988–91, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III
Associate Professor of Medieval French Literature and Language, 1994–96, Université Paris Diderot

Publications, research projects and other academic activities

Research interests: Medieval French literature, contemporary Italian pragmatics and literature, Italian-French translation, esp. sixteenth century.

Awards and special achievements:
Chevalier des Palmes Académiques (‘French knight of the order of academic palms’)
Cavaliere dell’Ordine “Stella della Solidarietà italiana” (‘knight of the order of the star of Italian solidarity’)
Chair, Suomen italianopettajien yhdistys (’Finnish association of Italian teachers’),1980–85
Chair, Helsinki Dante Alighieri Society, 1992–2008
Member, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2002-
Board Member, 2006–12 and Chair, 2011–12, Società Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia italiana
Board Member, 2009-, Société des Anciens Textes français ('French medieval text society')

Written by Elina Suomela-Härmä
Translated by John Calton

The Italian language in Finland, past and present

In his work De vulgari eloquentia (c.1303) Dante Alighieri ponders what language God might have addressed Adam in. The present author, for her part, would be interested, with a good deal more modesty, to know who was the first person in Finland to speak Italian. The earliest known Italian text, if not indeed the earliest, is by Claes Agraeus aka Claudius Åkerman. His congratulatory note, written in 1660 AD, was for a fellow student Ericus Falander. Both Agraeus and Falander defended their doctoral theses in the same year under the tutelage of professor Olof Wexionuis at the Royal Academy at Turku. In those days the Italian virtuoso in the Academy was Michel Stochado, under whose direction Agreus may have acquired his skills in Italian. Even though Agreus’s turns of phrase were not entirely successful, he did wish to emphasise the Italianate nature of his text by presenting his name in an Italianate style. The gist of the congratulations is to encourage the excellent and diligent Falander to progress in his career; his reward (for diligence) is a (laurel) wreath.

When the 12th SILFI (Società Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia italiana) congress was organised by the University of Helsinki in summer 2012, over a hundred Italianists gathered in the Metsätalo building, most of them from Italy. At that moment anyone wandering into the place could have been forgiven for thinking that a ‘rare’ language – for Finland – had been elevated to the status of lingua franca..