Flora uncovered

The earliest known Flora’s Day celebration in Finland dates back to 1815 in Turku, when the Pohjalainen Osakunta student nation convened in the Kärsämäki field to celebrate the beginning of spring, enjoying ballgames and punch. The location was tactically chosen outside the city’s customs border, beyond the remit of the town council and police. At the time, the spring celebration was held on 1 May, or May Day. It was later postponed by two weeks, when a volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1816 resulted in a year without a summer in Europe. In Turku, snow cover persisted until May Day for many years. The celebration of spring moved to mid-May, expanding rapidly from one student nation to a joint celebration for all students. These student gatherings were inspired by examples from Germany and Sweden. At the time, the German student sphere was in turmoil following the Wartburg Festival and the formation of the first student associations (‘Burschenschaften’) in the country. 

In 1817 agitated students in Turku were propelled to joint advocacy by recently established police regulations, which threatened to transfer students from the jurisdiction of academic cursores and beadles to that of the police. This would result in the students of the Royal Academy of Turku being thrown into not their own detention room but the town hall common gaol alongside journeymen and other brawlers and drunkards. At the time, street brawls and scuffles between journeymen and students were regrettably frequent disturbances in Turku, to the consternation of the academic leadership, or professors. As the restriction of academic privileges did not sit with students pursuing the principles of academic freedom, they came together and wrote a petition to the Emperor requesting, among other things, a uniform of their own to distinguish them from other townspeople. The uniform would help beadles and the police deliver students to the academy detention room instead of the gaol. In this atmosphere of Romanticism in Turku, with leading figures Sjögren and Arwidsson, the joint spring celebration became the first festival for all students outside the supervision and authority of professors. Such an independent gathering and display of mass power by students caused concern among representatives of the older generation who had positioned themselves as supporters of the conservative principles of the system established at the Congress of Vienna. In fact, the joint spring celebration was banned, in exchange for which Emperor Alexander I granted students a uniform of their own as requested and confirmed that students remained under the jurisdiction and disciplinary authority of the academy.  

Following the University’s relocation to Helsinki after the Great Fire of Turku, the celebration of Flora’s Day was revived. In Helsinki too, rural areas beyond the city turnpike, outside the jurisdiction of the town council and sentries, were established as the location. At first, the venue was the now Hakaniemi district in Sörnäinen, but as the city expanded and the turnpike moved farther to Hämeentulli, the location of the celebration also moved further away in the 1840s to the Kumtähti field situated on the Kumpula Manor grounds. The choice of location was also influenced by the fact that Kumpula Manor was run by Johan Gabriel von Bonsdorff, a member of a professorial family associated with the University, who generously pledged the meadow as a venue for students in perpetuity. The meadow as the venue for spring festivities eventually gave a district its name, as the park established in a fenced pasture became Toukoniitty (May Meadow; Majängen in Swedish) and the surrounding district became Toukola (Maytown; Majstad in Swedish).  

Flora’s Day, the name of the spring celebration, stems from research focused on ancient Rome and Greece, revived under neohumanism in the late 18th century. This cultural trend engendered artistic and architectural styles that sought to mimic the Roman buildings, furniture and interiors discovered in Pompeii to match the taste of the final stages of the Age of Enlightenment. In Roman mythology, Flora is the goddess of flowers and spring, bringing with her the season and awakening plants to grow and bloom. In ancient Rome, the Floralia festival was celebrated in honour of the goddess, with flowing wine and jubilation. Correspondingly, wine, punch and other beverages were consumed by the cask at the Kumtähti field celebrations, from which details describing the noted occasion in 1848 have been preserved. These festivities included the first performance of the student-commissioned song entitled Vårt land (‘Our Land’, now also known by its Finnish-language title Maamme) composed by the University’s music teacher Fredrik Pacius with lyrics by J.L. Runeberg.  

The participants began practising the song the moment they left the steps of the University’s Main Building, singing it in the procession from Senate Square to Kumtähti led by the Student Union, under the association’s first own flag. This was also the first nationalist flag flown in Finland. At the celebration itself, the song was sung at frequent intervals, as the permission for the spring festival had been granted during the revolutions of 1848 on the condition that nothing revolutionary would take place. In fact, Vårt land, sung in nationalistic fervour, served as an obstacle to singing the French revolutionary song La Marseillaise, which Nicholas I had forbidden. Fredrik Cygnaeus, the curator of the Pohjalainen Osakunta student nation and the master of ceremonies, managed to guide the celebration in a patriotic direction and keep it clear of any demonstrations undesirable to the Emperor. The abundant drinks served on the field played their part. In fact, the hay barn on the edge of the meadow turned into a rest spot for weary celebrants, both students and professors, from where wagons fetched them back to Helsinki the next day. 

In Helsinki, Flora’s Day celebrations were intertwined with the selection of the official wreath weaver, a new tradition established for the conferral of master’s degrees at the University’s Faculty of Philosophy. This practice was modelled after the wreath carriers seen at the conferment ceremonies of Lund University. From 1811 onwards in Lund, nine daughters of professors, to match the number of the ancient muses, and one son representing Apollo carried laurel wreaths and master’s rings to the podium representing Mount Parnassus at the initiative of Conferrer and Professor of History Nils Henrik Sjöborg. However, the Apollo figure was soon left out, and the number of the wreath carriers began to vary from the original nine.  

The Lund tradition of wreath carriers gained visibility in 1829, when Esaias Tegnér placed a wreath on the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger in Lund, with photographs published in the Swedish press. In Helsinki, master’s graduands ended up transforming the tradition by appointing, instead of young girls, only one professor's daughter of marriageable age, similarly to the role of queen of the ball. In the late 18th century, the tradition of the debutante ball had begun to spread from the English court to Europe, accompanied after the French Revolution by the black-and-white dress fashion associated with bourgeois ideals that took the upper class by storm. On the opposite shore of the Atlantic in the United States, the debutante ball evolved into the prom, while the opera ball emerged in Vienna, the central European capital of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Vienna Opera Ball, still held today, is one of the city’s great spectacles, with tourists paying a high price for admission, dance courses and outfits. For Finns, the most familiar element associated with the Vienna ball tradition is the dancing couple on Fazer’s box of nougat pralines.  

In 1832, Professor of Philosophy Johan Henrik Avellan’s daughter was appointed as Finland’s first official wreath weaver. With this new role and honorary position, the students to be conferred with their degrees wanted to acknowledge a well-liked professor who, due to his illness, was unable to serve as the conferrer in the ceremony in question. Avellan assumed the role of deputy conferrer, while the next most senior professor, Professor Pipping, served as the conferrer. Avellan officiated as the inspector of the Hämäläis-Osakunta student nation until his death. Placing a wreath of flowers on Ida Avellan’s head, the students crowned her as the queen of spring and the weaver of the master’s wreaths. This ceremonial proposal and crowning of the wreath weaver was established as a natural part of the spring festivities, highlighting the contribution of the myth of the goddess Flora to the celebrations. Indeed, the official wreath weaver became in the Flora’s Day celebrations an heir, shaped by Romantic ideals, to the priestesses of the spring goddess and the mediaeval Countesses of May, May Queens and other mythical figures.  

Flora’s Day and the official wreath weaver are part of a broader and more ancient tradition of celebrating vernal goddesses in Europe. In the British Isles, May Queens are still crowned with flower wreaths, after the Celtic Beltane celebration, while Maimädchens are traditionally chosen in German-speaking Europe. In Catholic Europe, crowning human recipients with wreaths of flowers has turned into paying tribute to statues depicting the Virgin Mary. In Riga, Latvia, the mediaeval tradition of the Count and Countess of May has been revived as part of a historical festival. Subsequently, through conferment balls, the role of the official wreath weaver was also associated with the role of the queen of the ball, reflecting the fashion trends of Romanticism, today best known in the prom queens of American culture. In the United States, the role of prom king has served as a counterpart, a sort of precursor of the male official wreath weaver. Similarly, the Count of May had been the equivalent of the Countess of May since the Middle Ages, a role performed by John III of Sweden, known as Duke John in Finland, when he held court in Turku in the 16th century. The role of official wreath weaver is the surest way to spend a day as a princess in Finland.  

As a joint spring celebration for students, Flora’s Day was frequently banned due to the suspicious attitudes of the Emperor and University administration towards gatherings of young people. In the late 19th century, Flora’s Day was largely overshadowed by May Day, celebrated on 1 May. Mother’s Day, a new celebration in Finland in the 20th century, also pushed Flora’s Day away from the spotlight. The resurgence of Flora’s Day took place in the 1940s after the war, as the Student Union wanted to celebrate the first performance of Vårt land (Maamme), sung in the Flora’s Day festivities of 1848, by organising a celebration in the Kumtähti field. On 13 May 1948, a memorial designed by Erik Bryggman was uncovered, with reliefs sculpted by Viktor Jansson, the father of Tove Jansson.  

In the 2010s, the Student Union’s Flora’s Day celebrations turned into an event touring the University’s campuses. Today, academic spring ceremonies are held in the Kumtähti field only in connection with master’s conferment ceremonies. The celebrations themselves have quietened down since the 1840s, with the refreshments lightened from casks of wine and barrels of beer to glasses of sparkling wine. A development prophesied already in the 1890s came to pass in the new millennium, as the first male official wreath weavers were appointed and the gender division of the preceding era began to dissipate in conferment ceremonies. At the initiative of Ella Peltonen, PhD, Flora’s Day has since 2021 also been about parading doctoral hats, a tradition joined by academic organisations.