Stamps and Philately of Finland

Before and After Independence

Before Finland became independent in 1917, it was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire for 108 years. (Before that, it had been a province of Sweden.) For most of that period, Finland had a great deal of autonomy, and was allowed to keep its own postal system and issue its own currency and postage stamps. Beginning in the 1890s, however, Russia tried to "Russify" Finland. One step in this process was to abolish separate designs for Finnish stamps. Beginning in 1901, all Finnish stamps had to resemble Russian ones, differing only in the denomination, which was still in Finnish currency.

Two covers illustrate Finnish postal services before and after independence. Both are insured letters from Evijärvi, a village near the Baltic coast about halfway up the Gulf of Bothnia, to Jakobstad/Pietarsaari, the nearest town on the coast itself. I suspect that they contained payments from merchants in Evijärvi to suppliers in Jakobstad/Pietarsaari.

(Incidentally, my mother's father was born on a farm near Evijärvi in 1881, so I was very happy to find these two covers. They were the first covers from Evijärvi that I had seen in twenty years of collecting Finnish stamps and covers!)

The first cover is postmarked October 5, 1911. Note the Russian designs of the stamps, with the imperial eagle. Also note Evijärvi's bilingual Finnish/Russian postmark. The handstamped WÄRDE is Swedish for "value" (a remnant of the former predominance of the Swedish language in government affairs), and indicates that the letter is insured. On the back are wax seals of the Evijärvi post office, with the Russian eagle and the town name in Finnish and Russian; and the trilingual Swedish/Finnish/Russian postmark of Jakobstad/Pietarsaari, which had (and still has) a majority of Swedish-speaking inhabitants.
The second cover is postmarked December 31, 1926. The lion of the Finnish coat of arms has returned to Finnish stamps, in the design by architect Eliel Saarinen. The postmarks (Evijärvi on the front, Jakobstad/Pietarsaari on the back) are from the same handstamps as before, but with the Russian versions of the town names removed. You can see traces of the old Russian inscription in the Jakobstad/Pietarsaari postmark. And of course the Evijärvi post office has a new seal, with the Finnish lion instead of the Russian eagle, and the town name in Finnish only.