Maamme
| English: Our Land | |
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Frontpage of Vårt land by Johan Ludvig Runeberg
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National anthem of  Finland
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| Also known as | Vårt land English: Our Land |
| Lyrics | Johan Ludvig Runeberg, 1848 |
| Music | Fredrik Pacius, 1848 |
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"Maamme" (Finnish: [ˈmɑːmːe], "our land”) or "Vårt land" (Swedish: [ˈvoːʈ ˈlanːd]) is the title of Finland's de facto national anthem. The music was composed by the German immigrant Fredrik Pacius, with (original Swedish) words by 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 Stål ("Fänrik Ståhls Sägner"), a masterpiece of Romantic nationalism. The current Finnish language text is usually attributed to the 1889 translation of Ensign Stål by Paavo Cajander, but in fact originates from the 1867 translation by Julius Krohn.
The Tales of Ensign Stål 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 (except for in verses 4 and 10, which are rarely sung), 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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