Literacy and Social Advancement in Nineteenth-Century Rural Finland: Training to be a Cantor as a Path to a Professional Occupation for a Peasant

This article analyses the influence of the development of reading and writing skills in Finland, which came late compared with many other areas of Europe, on the opportunities of the rural population for social advancement in the late nineteenth century. Previously, people living in the remote Finnish countryside had rarely had any opportunity to go to school since, despite the Decree on Elementary Education that came into force in 1866, the establishment of elementary schools was slow in sparsely populated rural areas. Few members of the agricultural population had a chance to obtain training for some other occupation in the educational establishments of the towns or to pursue a professional career. Using oral history as my main source, I conduct a micro-level examination of how this happened in practice, people’s motives for going to school and how their education helped them to obtain important posts in their communities and society. As an example, I examine the occupation of the cantor, and later of the organist and church musician, in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, this profession became an ever more common channel for rural men who obtained further education in towns and attended the school for cantor-organists to attain significant positions in society and their own communities. Previously, the post of cantor had often been inherited by a son from his father, and no formal training had been needed.