National Library Receives a Major Donation of Finnish Literature

The book publisher, Professor Heikki Reenpää has donated his FENNICA library to the National Library. Consisting of some 20,000 titles, this priceless collection of Finnish literature will be kept intact and it will be named The Heikki Reenpää Library. It will serve both research and exhibition activities.

The library offers a wealth of material for the study of early Finnish literature. It holds an extensive collection of rare 17th and 18th century literature from the period of Swedish rule. It also has a considerable amount of fiction both in Finnish and Swedish from the early 1800s to the present and a large number of bibles, new testaments and hymnbooks beginning from the first Finnish-language New Testament translated by Mikael Agricola in 1548. The library boasts no less than four books by Mikael Agricola, the creator of Finnish as a written language. There are also plenty of almanacs and statute books as well as doctoral dissertations awarded by the Royal Academy in Turku, the antecedent of the University of Helsinki.

The Heikki Reenpää Library is currently being transferred to the National Library. The books will be entered on the University of Helsinki HELKA Online Catalogue Database and a printed catalogue will be published within a couple of years' time.

For further information please contact:

Sirkka Havu, Rare Books Librarian
Telephone +358 (0)9 19122717,
email sirkka.havu(at)helsinki.fi