Projekt Runeberg,
(English summary below.)
Oops, I promised an English summary, so here it comes.
Fifteen years and a month ago I started Project Runeberg as a loose collection of old poems and other texts. The name is a play on Project Gutenberg, but also alludes to the Scandinavian context by using the name of Finland's national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. So how can a Swedish project use the name of a Finn?
It started with a crusade in the year 1200 when the Swedish king conquered the pagan regions on the other side of the Baltic Sea. For the next 600 years, Finland was an integral part of the Swedish kingdom, with Stockholm at its center, all until the Finnish War of 1808-1809. During the Napoleonic wars, when the Swedish king was occupied with defending southern Sweden against Denmark, the Russian czar Alexander I took the opportunity to lay hands on Finland. His biggest victories were the easiest ones, but the removal of one third of the Swedish kingdom left a trauma in the nation that needed repair.
This came in 1848 when poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg published his "Tales of the Ensign Stål" (2nd part in 1860). He wrote in Swedish as all of Finland's upper classes of the time. A young student interviews an old soldier, who tells his rhymed tales of this war. The small Swedish/Finnish victories of the war are described as heroic deeds. Instead of anger, the work is full of nostalgia. It doesn't call for revenge or rebellion against the new emperor, but talks of national pride in a peaceful way. The opening "Our land" became Finland's national anthem at the independence in 1917.
Both Finland and Russia were involved in both World Wars, but for Sweden this was "the last war", with exception for participation in the battle of Leipzig in 1813.
After I had started my e-text project and picked its name, I thought it would be appropriate to have at least one complete text, and the Swedish text of The Tales of Ensign Stål (Fänrik Ståls sägner) was the natural candidate. After having programmed computers for ten years, I also took this opportunity to finally learn proper touch typing. The 164 kilobytes were completed on March 6, 1993, http://runeberg.org/fstal/
Taken together, this means 2008 is Project Runeberg's 15th anniversary, the 160th anniversary of The Tales, and the 200th anniversary of the Finnish War. The war started on February 21.
We have several other scanned books about this war, but they're all in Swedish. There's a list of works in my previous message, http://lists.lysator.liu.se/pipermail/runeberg/2008-January/000434.html I'd welcome any ideas for works in other languages, that we ought to digitize. As long as they pertain to Scandinavian events, the language doesn't matter. But copyright does, of course.
More background information can also be found in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Ludvig_Runeberg