Strang, J. Finnish directories : Finnish telephone directories, town directories and commercial directories 1847-1960

FINNISH DIRECTORIES - Preface in English

A Bibliography of Finnish Telephone Directories, Town Directories and Commercial Directories as well as Maps and Plans Accompanying them 1847-1960

To the reader who is not familiar with the Finnish language!

This is a bibliography of Finnish directories published between 1847-1960. The word "directory" means here mainly three kinds of publication: telephone directories, town directories and commercial directories. Maps and plans, often attached to these books, are also described in detail. This is the first bibliography of Finnish directories. With few exceptions, directories have not been included in the Finnish national bibliography.

The material for this catalogue has been gathered by checking approximately 170 different directory collections in Finland. Most of these collections are located in libraries, archives, museums and telephone companies. Many of these books are very rare. More than 300 titles were found of which only one copy was preserved. The number of book titles of which not a single copy has been found has been estimated as being more than one hundred. By far the largest collections are held by the depository university libraries in Helsinki, Turku and Jyväskylä. About 300 known titles are lacking in Helsinki University Library - the best collection. Helsinki University Library has made microfiches of the largest part of its collection of pre 1930 town directories. Helsinki telephone directories have been microfilmed by Helsinki Telephone Company ltd (Helsingin Puhelin oy) and the films are available in Helsinki University Library.

The items in the bibliography have been presented in geographical and chronological order. First, items comprising the whole of Finland (= Koko Suomi) - thereafter chapters for towns (or other geographical entities) for which directories have been published. In each chapter the material is in chronological order according to the year of printing.

For the items described the following information has been given so far as the information has been available to the author: Year of printing. - Title = parallel title : other title information / author. - Edition. - Place of publication : publisher (place of printing : printing office). - Pages : illustration and plates ; height of spine in cm + small accompanying material. - Abbreviations in capital letters describing the contents of the item (see below) + Descriptions of accompanying maps (= [Kartta:]) and separate addendum booklets (= [Lisävihko:]). - Notes. - Abbreviations for the collections where the item has been found (see page ___).

A complete list of the abbreviations describing the contents of the directories is in Finnish on page ­___. A complete translation is not provided, but here are two pieces of good advice:

1) If you look for addresses of private persons your choice is PL or HL.

2) If you look for addresses of firms your choice is PL, LL, VLL or VYLL.

Many of the items have parallel titles. Titles taken from covers are always shown in italics. Parallel titles printed in different languages have been taken in the order they appear on the title page (or covers if no title page exists).

The earliest directories in Finland were usually published in Swedish. Later on the directories became bilingual - first Swedish-Finnish and then Finnish-Swedish. In about 1910-20 Swedish was dropped from the directories of towns and regions with a purely Finnish-speaking population.

The first telephone directories in Finland were published in Helsinki and Turku in 1882 - the same year as regular telephone traffic started in Finland. Since both the number and the extent of these books grew until about 1960. Then the very large number of city, town, township and village directories were merged in nine extensive provincial directories.

The earliest directory in this bibliography is the Helsinki town directory which dates from 1847 and is the first book of its kind in Finland. The golden age of town directories was the time from about 1890 to the First World War. The regular publication of town directories ceased by 1930s in all Finnish towns except for Vaasa where the tradition continued until 1969.

The first commercial directory of Finland (Finlands Handelskalender) was published in Turku in 1871 by Viktor Forselius.

Helsinki, 10th of February 1995

Jan Strang