Strang, Jan. Mapping of Finland 1532–2005

Mapping of Finland 1532-2005 by Jan Strang

(in Finnish)

This book tells the story of printed maps of Finland from 1532, when the land first time appeared on any map, up to 2005, which can be considered to be the year when the era of the dominance of printed maps ended and a new era of dominance of digital maps started in Finland.

Focus is on maps and series of maps describing the whole of Finland or at least a considerable part of it. For maps published before 1917 also printed local maps are covered. Maps depicting larger areas than Finland, for example maps of Scandinavia, Sweden-Finland or Russia, are treated only in cases when these maps where at least in some respect also best maps of Finland of their time. As a rule, manuscript maps are out of the topic. Exceptions are 18th century maps of the whole of Finland and a few others that I have considered to be important. The book is only about geographical maps. City-plans, thematic maps and sea-charts are not covered. Russian-made maps are covered only partly as they are already widely described in my earlier work "Venäläisten Suomi-kuva" (Mapping of Finland by Russia 1710–1942, Helsinki 2014).

The book has a picture of every general map of any importance of Finland or its provinces up to 1917. Efforts have been made to get these illustrations large enough so that their text contents would be readable. Index sheets for 20th century multi-sheet maps have been created.

At the end of the book there is a detailed annotated bibliography of all maps of Finland from 1532 to 1917 and the most important maps from 1918 to 2005.

This book is a major and basic work on Finnish and Scandinavian map history. It is by far the most extensive work written on the geographic mapping of Finland. Together with my earlier work The Mapping of Finland by Russia these two books together completely cover the subject. The book is an indispensable tool for those who look for information about old maps of Finland and want to know what exists, where those maps can be found, who are their authors and how they should be interpreted.

The book is based on extensive research work during more than three decades in archives and libraries in Finland, Sweden, and Russia. The main source, the book is based on, are the old maps themselves. My goal has been to see a genuine copy or at least a high-quality illustration of each map described. I have measured the maps and calculated their scale if the scale is not mentioned on the map itself.