Finnish folktales derive from two European traditions. Folktales arrived in western Finland from Scandinavia, primarily from Sweden, whereas the folktales of eastern Finland were shaped by traditions of northern Russia.
Because Finland was the endpoint of two major streams of tradition, its volume of folktales surpassed those in many neighboring countries. Approximately 160 animal tale plots are known, as well as 140 tales of magic, 100 novellas (realistic tales), and some 560 humorous tales (jokes, anecdotes, and stories of the stupid ogre). Because these tales have been collected as several variants, the folklore archives of the Finnish Literature Society contain more than 90,000 folktale texts. Research suggests that magic tales (see Wonder Tale) began to circulate in Finland in the 1500s and 1600s, whereas animal tales were probably told since medieval times. In the past, scholars agreed that Finnish folktales, like Kalevala-meter poems, represented an ancient tradition that was transmitted only orally. Present-day folklorists are of a different mind. Most of the folktales now housed in the archives were written down in the 1880s and 1890s and clearly evince their links to the written tradition. Folk narrators had access to cheap broadsheets and chapbooks since the late 1700s. What is more, newspapers published in the early 1800s also contained a wealth of entertainment, including folktales and legends. Fairy-tale literature published in Sweden also was available in Finland. Thanks to the existence of bilingual folktale narrators, examples and elements derived from this source also came to enrich the folktale tradition among Finnish speakers.
Internationally, the best-known fairy-tale writers are Zacharias Topelius and Tove Jansson, both of whom wrote in Swedish. Finnish-speaking writers, such as Anni Swan, initially drew their influences from German and Nordic Romanticism and Finnish folktales, especially from the anthology edited by Eero Salmelainen, Suomen kansan satuja ja tarinoita (The Marchen and Legends of the Finnish People, 1852-66). After World War II, inspired by British classics of children's literature (for example, Lewis Carroll, Sir James Matthew Barrie, and A. A. Milne), Finnish writers also modernized their contributions to fairy-tale literature.
