FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

Palestine Research of Hilma Granqvist: An Analysis of
Academic Discrimination in Finland
• •
Dr. Riina Isotalo
University of He/sinki, He/sinki, Finland
Introduction
In the early twentieth century, relations between Palestine and
Finland were mostly spiritual and discursive from the Finnish
perspective. Palestine was first and foremost regarded by the
Finns as the Holy Land, which for the Finns meant, the land of
the Bible. Scholarly and missionary relations of a more concrete
nature also often had the Bible as their main frame of
reference. Most Finnish scholars attached to Palestine in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century were classical
Orienta lists.
The few Finns who traveled to Palestine those days often contributed
to the Finnish discourse on the Holy Land by a popular
Finnish tradition of travel writing in newspapers and other
journals: it was regarded almost a duty of those who could travel
to faraway places to share their impressions with those
who stayed at home. Also Hilma Granqvist added to this tradition
by giving talks in radio programes and writing regularly to
journals. Reading her non-academic texts about Palestine of
the 1920's and early 1930's, gives an impression of a keen observer
of international and regional Middle Eastern politics and
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