Ella Kivikoski matriculated from Forssa Grammar school in 1919. However she did not enter higher education immediately, as before commencing her university studies, she worked as a clerk in her father’s bank for several years. Kivikoski eventually enrolled to studying history and Finnish language and received her BA from the University of Helsinki in 1930.

During her study years, archaeology had begun to interest her more and more, and she already had the chance to join excavations run by Professor Alfred Hackman in her graduation year. Her actual archaeological career got underway after she completed an advanced course in in Finnish and Nordic archaeology in 1931. She was appointed supernumerary amanuensis of the Archaeological Commission (later to become the National Board of Antiquities) the following year and director of the Commission’s department of prehistory in 1947.

When Kivikoski defended her doctoral thesis in 1940, she became the first Finnish woman with a PhD in archaeology. Her dissertation focused on the Iron Age in the River Aura region of Southwest Finland. The Iron Age in Finland became Kivikoski’s main topic of research. She adopted and developed Hackman’s theory that the Finnish people had moved from the Baltic region to Southwest Finland around the beginning of the Common Era and had then populated the interior of the country all the way to Lake Ladoga.

Kivikoski’s favourite regions for research were Southwest Finland and Åland, her mother’s home. At times, however, her research was also directed towards the east. Kivikoski carried out excavations in the Karelian Isthmus at the end of the 1930s, and in the summer of 1943, during the War of Continuance, she conducted field research in Finnish occupied territories on the eastern side of Lake Ladoga.

Ella Kivikoski was appointed Professor of Finnish and Nordic Archaeology in 1948, which also made her the first woman professor of the then Faculty of Philosophy. However, Kivikoski’s never felt that her gender was an issue in her professional life, whether at the university or on archaeological digs. Kivikoski retired in 1969.

References

• Matti Huurre, Kivikoski, Ella, National Biography online publication. Accessed May 7, 2015. Available for free on the Nelli portal
• Christian Carpelan, Kerkko Nordqvist & Pirjo Uino, Etnografin ja muinaistutkijan luvattu maa, (‘The promised land of the ethnographer and archaeologist’) Hiidenkivi online publication. Accessed May 7, 2015.
• Ella Kivikoski, Tiedenaisia online publication. Accessed May 7, 2015.