In the late Middle Ages and the Reformation era the diocese of Turku (Swe. Åbo) was the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Besides present-day Finland it encompassed some further areas outside. In the present chapter the earliest manuscripts including chants as well as medieval and Lutheran hymns in Swedish and Finnish preserved in Finland will be examined. The Gregorian tradition has been seen as continuing in the Swedish kingdom long after the Reformation while the metrical hymns written by Martin Luther and his entourage have been viewed as reaching Finland rather late. Several researchers mention the ‘hymns’ of Michael Agricola as the first attempts at ‘Lutheran hymn singing’. Our investigation of some chants and hymns with their melodies will tend to prove these suppositions. We try to define the relationship of the different manuscripts to each other, with a special focus on how Swedish and Finnish translations have been adapted to fit traditional melodies.

The Gregorian Tradition in Medieval Finland

At the beginning of the sixteenth century liturgical books printed in Germany were in use in the diocese of Turku. Several missals, psalters, and breviaries from the 1480s and subsequent decades have been found in Finnish Church archives, and the Missale Aboense (1488) as well as the Manuale Aboense (1522) were printed especially for Finland. The liturgy of the Turku diocese was strongly influenced by the Dominicans. Before these printed books, only manuscripts were used for liturgical chants, based on the style and settings of the Middle Ages. This material has been researched thoroughly since the 1920s. The National Library of Finland has recently launched a research database, Fragmenta Membranea, of medieval parchment fragments. This internationally important collection includes more than 9300 parchment leaves dating from the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries to the sixteenth century. After the Reformation the book leaves were used as covers for bailiffs’ account books. Through the study of these parchment fragments it is possible to gain a broad overview of early Finnish literary culture, as well as the northern dimension of the Latin cultural sphere and the transnationality of medieval literary culture.