As mentioned earlier about this old Finnish primer, I became most fascinated by the variety of fonts shown side by side. Imagine a young child just learning the ABCs and beginning to read, also learning to read along with what I would call a regular print text, a German Gothic or fraktur font and a copperplate style script. I used to be able to read the Gothic in my childhood because the Finnish church in Winnipeg had very old hymn books with that font. Now I struggle with some of the letters, though the little tales in this reader really help with context. Hand writing styles surely aren’t that easy for new readers either.

I’ve zoomed in on a few pages of the alphabet itself below, so you can see how complex it all is. Vieraat kirjaimet translates as foreign letters, that is, those not part of the native Finnish alphabet. Aakkoset is alphabet.

(Apologies with the varied colours of each page as I struggled to make the letters appear clearer and sharper.)

I just had to go find my own Finnish Aapinen, printed in 1954, to check out its fonts. The first part of the book has all capital letters, then soon after the small case are introduced along with it. Though there are a few other fonts later in the book, they are all fairly standard and easy to read. One page near the end shows a handwriting exercise on ruled paper like we see even today. Gothic and copperplate were not to be found.

When I found my mother’s old Finnish cookbook, with it was a little aapinen, a Finnish ABC book or primer. A sad little thing without a cover, unlike this one, so I don’t know when it was published, possibly in the 1940s. I don’t recall if it was one of my books. Next time I will show you more pages of the fascinating fonts.

This was my mother’s beloved cookbook, a 1948 edition, which came with her on our emigration to Canada many decades ago now. After her passing, I have kept it all these years safely tucked away. I’ve thought of photographing this well-worn artifact many times, especially after doing so with the similarly disintegrated English-Finnish dictionary.

As I wrote about that dictionary, this cookbook was in some ways also:
an immigrant’s tool, an almost-bible, a book of days
a history of heartache, homesickness, hope and a new home

I was recently re-inspired to finally do this when daughter Elisa asked for a certain favourite family recipe which she wished to post in the spring quarterly of her newsletter. (If interested you may request it from her!) I may put up a few more photos of the book’s interior in another post.

Remembered and added next day:
my beloved worn book of Grimm’s fairytales in Finnish
and my first Finnish alphabet book

Added later: Please visit part 2 for views inside the cookbook