Professor Emeritus Matti Klinge is one of Finland’s most prolific writers. Alongside scholarly works he has written a great many newspaper articles and columns.

“I began writing in the 1950s for a journal called Eteläsuomalainen and the student paper Ylioppilaslehti. Then in the following decade I wrote for the Uusi Suomi newspaper and above all the long-established cultural periodical Valvoja. In addition, I have written plenty of articles for Historiallinen Aikakauskirja (‘Historical journal’) and for many years I was a columnist for the Swedish-language Finnish daily, Hufvudstadsbladet.

Klinge’s journalistic activity has continued uninterrupted since 1999, with the annual publication of an intellectual diary. Volume XVII is well underway and will appear in the autumn of 2015. He has also produced the first volume of his memoirs, with the second coming out in 2014, and the third will appear next autumn. These take the reader up to  1982.

“My academic breakthrough came in 1967-68, when I published a four-part book series on students as citizens. One part was my doctoral thesis Kansalaismielen synty (‘The origins of a civic mind’).  I got the series published in Swedish under the title Studenter och idéer (‘Students and ideas’).

Klinge has managed to get practically all his most important books translated into Swedish and some of them into other languages too. He has also written a great deal in Swedish.

“Many of my substantial books have also been published in German, Russian and English. The most notable fruits of this work carried out over many years are a three-volume history of our University (1987-90, in Swedish, with abridged versions in German and English), a history of the nineteenth century, Keisari Suomi (‘The Emperor’s Finland’), Porvariston nousu (‘The rise of the bourgeoisie’) dealing with Europe, and more recently in 2012, Finnish, Swedish and Russian editions of Pääkaupunki. Helsinki ja Suomen valtio (‘Helsinki and the Finnish state.’).

For Professor Emeritus Klinge himself a very important book “on the imposition of modernity on a periphery” is his 2006 Iisalmen ruhtinaskunta, dealing with two centuries of the northern Finnish principality of Iisalmi. It will soon be available in a Swedish version. Besides these substantial works, Klinge has also written more condensed works: these too form a long list, starting with the 1972 pocket book Vihan veljistä valtiososialismiin (‘From brothers in hate to state socialism’).

“A good deal of attention was attracted – also in Estonia - by my book Muinaisuutemme merivallat (Eng. Ancient Powers of the Baltic Sea. An Illustrated Historical Outline), which was published in 1983. My best known condensed read is Lyhyt Suomen historia- A Short History of Finland, which since 1977 under slightly different titles has appeared in some 20 languages and in total more than 200,000 copies in revised editions. In some sense a sister volume, which I consider one of my most important works is Itämeren maailma (transl. The Baltic World); again, published in a number of language versions. It has gained some standing, especially in Germany.

Professor Emeritus Matti Klinge is clearly the most translated of Finland's historians. He has a considerable readership beyond Finland, above all in Sweden. In Klinge’s view, the interest can be accounted for by the fact that Sweden from the point of view of an interest in Finland is incontestably the most important near abroad.

Translated by John Calton