Welcome to Finnbrit 100! In each pop-up box you will find an item such as a unique memory, photograph, article, event, or fact about our journey since 1926. New content will be released in batches—so come back regularly and enjoy stories that have helped build a century of friendship between Finland and Britain.
Welcome to Finnbrit 100
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Finnish-British Society Helsinki, we honour a century of friendship, cultural exchange, and lasting connections. This history is built on the dedication of countless volunteers and employees whose commitment and enthusiasm have kept the Society vibrant and relevant through changing times.
Through the years, language learning and shared experiences have gone hand in hand at Finnbrit. The Finnbrit Language Centre’s courses and examinations provide practical skills and certifications, while the Society’s cultural and social activities create a space where these skills can be used, friendships can form, and perspectives can widen. Together, they support personal and professional growth and reflect our commitment to inclusivity.
As the Chair of the Council, I extend my heartfelt thanks to all who have contributed to our journey so far and invite you to join us in looking forward to the next hundred years.
To all our members, clients, learners and the wider public, we welcome you all to an exciting range of events and activities that are being planned for 2026, our anniversary year.
Niina Lemettilä, Chair of the Council
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The Finnbrit 100 logo
The Finnbrit 100 logo is designed by Sam Schumacher (pictured below on the left). You will have seen more of his work on the wall of the Club Room (see Finnbrit 4/100). There is another piece by Sam permanently on display in the Fredrikinkatu premises. If you have not found it yet, ask a member the next time you visit.
Thank you, Sam, for creating this fantastic and memorable image that will be featured throughout the year.
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“Hidden agendas of Finnish-British parliamentary relations in the 20th century” – a talk by Gunilla Carlander
Friday, 16 January 2026
18:00-20:00
Venue: Finnbrit
During the 20th century, meetings between parliamentarians from different countries developed into a new way for politicians to gather information, observe developments and get to know political realities in other countries. Finland was the first country in the world to give women full political rights. This happened in 1906, the same year that the Finnish “parliament” (Diet of Four Estates) received its first invitation to an international congress from the British Parliament in London. The British Parliament was also the only Western parliament that was interested in regular parliamentary contacts with Finland after the Second World War. Why was the UK Parliament interested in Finland? Was there a hidden agenda behind these British initiatives?
Gunilla Carlander, who worked in the Finnish Parliament for over 30 years, is currently studying the history of Finnish parliamentary diplomacy.
Picture By Signe Brander – Finna: hkm.HKMS000005:km00320sImage record page in Finna: hkm.D18DF20B-2125-4CB3-9878-BE06A2626C02, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68464569
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“Paired Path” by Sam Schumacher
This painting by Sam Schumacher has been part of the Club Room since the young artist gifted it to Finnbrit in 2023. It has found its place even more so after the renovation, and the new dramatic colour scheme of the room. It has been described as an example of naïve art, which is not a bad thing at all, in these turbulent and testing times. We think Sam’s artwork is a perfect fit for our Club Room, alongside the portraits of the former Chairpersons of the Society.
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A new look for Finnbrit
In preparation for our 100th anniversary, the Finnbrit premises underwent a stylish renovation in 2025. Guided by the Council of the Finnish-British Society and enriched by input from customers, staff and members, planning began in 2024, and the work took place during the summer of 2025.
A heartfelt thank you goes to IDEAA and Poutaworks for the interior design—inspired by the history of the Society yet with one eye on the future. We also extend our gratitude to Remoc Oy for the renovation work, Eurokangas for the carpets and blinds, Futra for the furniture, Muuttokarhut for their removal services, and Imoon Finland for the elegant lighting that brings everything together. Here are some photographs taken before and after the refurbishment.
The refreshed spaces not only have more character than ever, but they also provide the practical functionalities the Society needs as it continues its activities in the heart of Helsinki.
We cannot wait to welcome you to our renewed premises. Come and see them for yourself!
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Founding documents
Finnbrit’s history is something we will be returning to many times during our year of celebration. Item number 6 of Finnbrit 100 is the documentation that covers the birth of the Finnish-British Society, or Suomalais-Englantilainen Yhdistys (“Anglo-Finnish Society”) as it was initially called.
Follow this link to the historical founding documents of the Finnish-British Society r.y. The documents are in Finnish.
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The Stuff the North is Made of
by Donald Adamson
When I arrived in Helsinki in 1968 it seemed not-quite-real … dreamlike… a simulacrum of somewhere I’d lived in a previous life. But the big displacement shock came when I took the train through the dark night, through deep forests, to my Finn-Brit post in Rauma. I had no notion of changing trains until the conductor found me waiting in a deserted carriage in Tampere and communicated (in German) to hurry before the Pori train left. Then… a change of trains again in PEIPOHJA – a real place but, as it seemed then, the most isolated spot on this planet, or some other planet (I say sorry now to my friend Rea who comes from there and speaks up for it – I’ve since learned better). Anyway, I got to Rauma, and learned, in time, to appreciate the town, and the lovely people I met and the pupils in the schools, who were indulgent to my callow opinions and inexperience.
The Stuff the North is Made of
I couldn’t believe my eyes –
summer still, tree-lined boulevards
under bright skies, a waking dream
of the south. It was like some place I had been to
(though when?) completely changed
with words, signs, letters, meaningless
scrambled all ways, piled
confusedly, like the coins minted
by the Britons, after the Romans left.
Real enough it felt. Yet wrong:
sibling to a memory constructed
from less than air, a swirling, spinning fog
like in Tarkovsky’s Solaris,
creature-like, sculpting what the mind
in sleep or in a daydream tries to mould
out of what was planted in a person
at time of birth. And surely it was waiting
to seize me when I peered
out of the train window and half knew
that now, from this day on
my life would have a counterpart in that
never-ending – forest was it? That
or some other indefinable thing
that hasn’t got a scientific name,
the dark primordial, elemental stuff
the north is made of.
Donald Adamson
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The Secrets of the Finnbrit Archive
by Janne Mäkelä
Strictly confidential
In 2025, I was given the opportunity to reorganise the Finnbrit archives. Being an archive expert and a researcher of cultural history, I thought that something interesting might eventually come up. It happened sooner than I expected.
On just the second day of the project, a letter caught my eye. This five-page letter was sent to the office of the Finnish-British Society on October 2, 1952.
The title of the letter was: 1st report on English language teaching at the Wärtsilä-Sellulosa English Club – Äänekoski – Finland. The ‘Introduction,’ gave some context: Äänekoski has never had an English Club before […] the Club has been started for the benefit of the staff employees of the factory which is a paper mill. Nothing unusual there. The Finnish cellulose industry, paper mills and other companies were investing in English language teaching during the post-war period.
What really caught my eye were two words at the top of the first page: strictly confidential.
In the report, the writer provides an account of the accommodation, teaching premises and the students. Apparently, the teaching premises are quite modern. The Club Room contains a radiogram (combined radio and record player built into a cabinet with a speaker) and an epidiascope (a projector displaying books, journals and charts onto a screen), yet the writer seems to be slightly disappointed that there is “no evidence of a tape-recording machine”.
There are 60 students. Most of the men speak Swedish as their native language and are working in the factory as engineers, office managers, accountants and buyers. The women (or ‘girls’ as the writer calls them) are mostly native Finnish speakers and work as clerks and typists. Some classes are also held for the wives of the male staff.
As to the personalities of the students, the writer informs us that all “are practical and not exactly overburdened with imagination”. The wives like to read Daphne du Maurier and the men Agatha Christie and P. G. Wodehouse. The students’ level of English language varies: 23 are advanced, 21 are intermediate and 16 are beginners.
The writer has 19 teaching hours per week. Apparently, the students don’t talk spontaneously but that is just one problem among many other others. For example, the composition of the classes alters every day. Some office girls are quite advanced with English but, because of strict hierarchies, they are not supposed to work together with their superiors and are forced to attend the intermediate or beginner classes. Further on, the writer expresses some desperation, “Has anyone any tips on how to teach people English when they don’t know a word?”
There is still some hope: “There is one girl who speaks fluently who does not come to classes but who wishes to acquire an English accent instead of a New York one.”
I don’t know why this letter was labelled ‘strictly confidential’. The writer’s name was not mentioned anywhere, and the letter was unsigned. The mills were important customers for the Finnish-British Society. Perhaps the writer thought the issues were sensitive. Maybe the writer was a spy or just felt guilty: he or she was not speaking very kindly about the factory workers. Although the teacher was not too happy with the students’ language proficiency, he or she does not even bother to write the name of Wärtsilä’s owner or the city of Jyväskylä correctly!
Whatever the case, I find this letter fascinating. It has the vibe of a Klaus Härö film: a young teacher arrives in a remote town and is faced with many problems. It is an interesting account of how the English language started to triumph in Finland – not only as a language of culture but also as a language of business and trade.
Not such a chaotic collection
I started the archive project in mid-March 2025. The Äänekoski letter was in a folder that included incoming post from the 1950s. I scanned the letter, then slipped it back to the original folder and took a deep breath. There were a lot of folders, some with exact titles and well-organised contents; others were mysteries. Most of the folders had been stored in five large plastic boxes but we found more stashed away in the back room.
Time was limited so I did a quick inventory and decided to be as true as possible to the original order of the collection. That is usually the best archival principle if a collection proves to have a certain level of order in it which, in my opinion, the Finnbrit collection did. There were some messy elements, but it was not such a chaotic collection.
After completing the inventory, I classified the folders into categories and then started to deal with them one by one: I threw away all the old folder covers, all the plastic protection sleeves and all the metal paper clips. I had to leave the staples as there was no time to remove them. Plastic is especially bad: some of the 1990s’ Finnbrit paper documents stored in plastic sleeves were already quite corrupted – almost glued together.
Recent materials from the past 20 years or so were left out mainly because there was simply no time to go through them but also because most are in electronic format. During the last five days of the project, I placed all the documents back into folders – not the original folders but in the new archival acid-free folders. They are not as beautiful as the old ones but are perfect for long-term preservation. Then I wrote an archive list. I must admit, the list could have been more detailed, but I can promise that the collection is now easier to use for anyone interested in the history of the Society.
Founding members – some Very Important People
The Society held its inaugural meeting on 15th April 1926. The main person behind the task was businessman and anglophile Jaakko Kahma, who invited 42 people including university professors, politicians, statesmen, clergy and businessmen to the meeting. The first patron of the Society was General Mannerheim, later Marshal and President of Finland. The Society was officially registered in 1930 and members included Risto Ryti who later became Honorary President of the Society and President of Finland. His wife, Gerda Ryti, was at one time vice-chairperson of the Society. Other members included newspaper publisher Eljas Erkko (council member) and the writer, Ester Ståhlberg, wife of former president Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg.
The Society’s early activities included talks, discussion groups, table tennis, music events and a drama group, the peak being English Week which, in 1933, became the talk of the town in Helsinki. Soon after, a library was founded to support the Finnish-British Society’s activities.
Activities paused during the Second World War. After the war, things changed very rapidly. In the 1950s, the Society had around 1,000 members. It organised a range of activities such as lectures, visits from writers and celebrities such as the New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, joint events with students, a lot of balls and fancy dress parties, as well as language teaching for companies. In 1953, the Society moved into its first premises on Puistokatu.
In the 1970s, membership reached 1,500. In the late 1970s, the Society began to publish the Finn-Brit Magazine and member societies were set up around Finland; later, the Federation of Finnish-British Societies was founded. In the 1980s, the Society launched the still on-going essay competition for Finnish schools. The activities of the amateur theatre and folk club were very strong.
Finnbrit Jubilee 1976
In the 1990s, language teaching for employees in medical, banking, business, publishing, secretarial and state administration organisations became more systematic. In 1996, the Society founded a limited company – Finnbrit Language Centre Oy – to better serve its commercial customers. Language exams extended to include Cambridge University exams and IELTS exams, both still present in Finnbrit’s activities today. In 2006, the Society moved from Puistokatu to its current premises on Fredrikinkatu.
A lot of drama
Finnbrit has always been known for its cultural programmes. There is one cultural activity that has pervaded the Finnbrit community through the years: drama. Its golden years were in the 1950s and through the 1980s–1990s but theatre fever was already there from the very beginning – even before the Finnbrit Society was formally registered in 1930. There was a strong aim to bring English-language drama to wider audiences as plays such as The Romantic Age were performed on major stages of the Swedish Theatre and the National Theatre in Helsinki. The Society rented these stages and had advertisements in the Helsinki papers to spread the British word to Finnish audiences.
Drama had its return in the 1950s performing plays by Noel Coward, George Bernard Shaw (an Irishman, by the way) and other playwrights. Apparently, the quality of this amateur theatre group was not bad. One theatre director said that the plays the Drama Group presented at the Swedish Theatre were better than the house’s own plays! Maybe the pressure became too much for the Drama Group as its activities soon faded away. The activity was resurrected in 1981 and from 1985 onwards the Drama Group went under a new name – the Finn-Brit Players – who nowadays perform at the NoName theatre in Kamppi.
In autumn 1995, the Finn-Brit Players performed Macbeth. It was the 26th play in their repertoire that had included musicals such as Joan Littlewood’s satire Oh What a Lovely War, murder mysteries, classics, comedies, children’s entertainment and even one world premiere in the English language, Mr Boo (1987), written by Finnish author Hannu Mäkelä.
Music has always been one of Finnbrit’s main activities. Interestingly, I found a piece of paper proving that my wife’s grandfather performed with his Radio Orchestra Quintet in a Society event in 1931! The legendary Folk Club has been running since 1965. Over the years, the club has presented many musicians, ranging from Finnish folk pioneers such as Guldkurkorna and the Hootenanny Singers to singer-songwriters such as Hector and Dave Lindholm. The club is now called The International Folk Club and still meets regularly.
The Fourparty at Hootenanny Club aka Folk Club 1965 – credit Esko Rahikainen
The strange case of the Russian furniture
Reorganising the archive was my main task. But I also had another task. The task of being a sort of archive detective, keeping my eyes open for thrilling stories, amusing anecdotes or unsolved mysteries. And yes, I think I found some interesting stuff – at least stuff that is of great interest to me as a researcher! The Äänekoski letter that I found in the beginning of the project was the first gem among many others.
In 1945, the Society had its premises in a local restaurant for which it paid rent as well as rent for furniture that was owned by the Russian Club – the owners of the furniture having their roots in the Russian Empire. In Helsinki and in other Finnish cities, there were still thousands of Russian refugees who had fled the 1917 revolution. The Russian Refugee Committee (a special committee for the matters of Russians living in Finland) were willing to sell the furniture to the Finnish-British Society but there were some uncertainties about its ownership and lengthy negotiations about the sum. The Society’s financial situation at the time was weak.
The discussion was left open but, interestingly, returned to the table in 1948, just when the Allied Control Commission, tasked with ensuring observation of the 1944 Armistice Agreement, left Finland. This time, the Russian Refugee Committee had hired a lawyer to represent its requirements. The Society offered 75,000 Finnish marks for the furniture, however, the final sum was 85,000 marks, which is about 5,000 euros in today’s currency. The furniture included a large sofa and three smaller sofas, nine armchairs and 20 seats, all leather covered. There were also two chandeliers, nine heavy curtains and other items such as a wall clock. The deal seems quite harmless and innocent, but it would be nice to find more information about the Russian Refugee Committee and to detect if there was anything else behind the deal. For example, why would the Finnish-British Society and the Russian Club be talking to each other in 1945, or even earlier?
Crime on the premises
If the Russian furniture case distantly echoes a post-war espionage story, there were other mysterious cases of unsolved crime. Take, for example, the burglary in spring 1950. The police report shows that burglars had broken into the Society’s Club Room and taken away 54 bottles of alcoholic liquor plus one can of peaches, one can of asparagus and two pärekori (a traditional Finnish splint basket made of woven pine wood). The haul was valued at 36,390 marks – almost 2,000 euros in today’s currency. That was a lot of booze and probably kept the burglars happy for a long time as they escaped with the drinks and were never caught. [Note from the editor: alcohol is no longer stored on the premises.] Looking back, they made one mistake. In 1950, the Society had a book collection in the Club Room, including copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. There is a chance that the Orwell titles were first editions, which means that nowadays they are worth thousands of euros. Perhaps the burglars later understood their lapse and returned to take away the copies which, as a matter of fact, have been lost for decades.
Books ordered 1950: Christie, Huxley, Orwell…
In 1979, another burglary took place. This time, one cheque book and some cash was taken. The damages were worth 1,800 euros in today’s currency. A cassette player and a pocket calculator were not good enough for the burglars and were left on the office table.
If this is not serious enough, we have a document that proves there has been a… ‘Murder at the Finnish-British Society’! This case took place in 1955. Fortunately, the murder was fictional! What I found in the archives was something between a synopsis and a manuscript draft, written once again by an unknown author. It was perhaps meant for the Drama Group, but I did not see any evidence that it had been performed on stage. It is possible that it was intended for one of the numerous balls or parties that the Society arranged at the time or meant as a literary joke that never materialised. What a pity! As a long-time member of the Finnish Whodunnit Society, I rest this case and leave it for someone else to solve.
There are many facets of British culture in Finland, including language, music tastes, football fandom, royalty fandom, crime fiction and more. The Finnish-British Society has certainly played a role in this history. In fact, I am now planning, together with three other researchers, a project on the history of Anglophilia in Finland. So, it is possible that you will hear more about Finnbrit’s history in the near future.
Computer donation 1993: British ambassador Neil Smith (left), Finnbrit chairman Peter Berner and Finnbrit director Marja Salo
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“Dog in a Bucket” remembered by James Irving (band member)
Around 1995 or ’96, down in the old Finn-Brit premises in Puistokatu an assortment of household bric-à-brac mysteriously appeared, strewn across the Club Room floor. This was the first of many such occurrences and something which, on first viewing, must have given rise to the assumption that a charity shop had missed its shipment.
It was, in fact, something Finn-Brit old heads would soon recognise as a prelude to the Dog in a Bucket jug band putting on a show. Dog in a Bucket pushed the jug band concept of commandeering household objects in the pursuit of happiness well past the jug, tea chest and washboard orthodoxy. Hoover hoses to be whirled or blown, a metallic, Finnish juice maker to be played, an electric cocktail stirrer to be held as an electronic bow on a guitar… all these and more became standard.
The majority missed the one appearance of the ‘midified’ (electrified!) piece of linoleum, though I still recall the delight of the audience trying to leap up and down in a timely manner. The Finn-Brit premises even got in on the act on that very first outing when the power cable for the staffroom kettle was purloined to ensure that when the electronic plastic saxophone was blown, a sound would come out. Recordings are still available of some of the band’s unique instrumentation on YouTube.
**A style of old blues music originating in the southern states of the USA, featuring a bass sound produced by ‘blowing’ into an old whiskey jug or can. The style was taken up during the folk revival of the 1960s in the UK and the USA, famously by Mungo Jerry with In the Summertime.
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The good old days
Nowadays, a click is all that a Finnbrit member needs to do to confirm that they’re coming to a FB event. Things were a bit different in the old days.
Here is a 1932 circular announcing “the first dance arranged by the Society” at Restaurant Börs. Not only did interested parties have to form their own groups, they also had to make their own table bookings and inform the head waiter.
It would seem that many Finnbrit members in those days were fanatical bridge players. Evidently, dancing and eating weren’t enough! Members wishing to play bridge at the dance had to inform a certain Mrs Hampf of their intentions in good time. Not only that, they had to bring their own cards and scoring blocks. Perhaps playing bridge relieved certain members from the onerous burden of social chit chat or having to dance.
Text: Mark Shackleton
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An English Lecturer and His Dog
by Professor Jopi Nyman
University of Eastern Finland
My recently published research article ”Godfrey Greene and Sebastian Cabot: An English Lecturer and His Dog in Helsinki in the 1930s” addresses the life and times of Godfrey George Roundell Greene (1888-1956), a long-time lecturer in English at the University of Helsinki, and his Newfoundland dog, Sebastian Cabot (b. 1929). Representing the field of animal history, the article uses diverse sources ranging from Halliday Sutherland’s travel book Lapland Journey (1938) and university catalogues to newspapers, student magazines, and dog show reports to show the entangled lives of humans and animals in modern Helsinki and its Anglophone circles.
While the story of the man and his dog may initially appear marginal from the perspective of the Finnish-British society, they both played a role in promoting English culture in Finland during that period by contributing to university and cultural life. Godfrey Greene was appointed as a lecturer in English in 1928 and resigned from his position in 1946. In addition to teaching English language and literature at the university, Greene was a regular speaker at the events of the Finnish-British society. Known as a skilful lecturer and literature specialist, and easily available for talks as a Helsinki resident, he gave many public lectures at the Society’s Club Evenings and Monthly Meetings. Writers he introduced to the Helsinki audience include Norman Douglas, George Moore, and J.M. Synge, and many others. These meetings were advertised in several newspapers and often held in fashionable restaurants. Rather than being merely literary, they offered varied entertainment such as film and gramophone records as well as dancing. The meetings were clearly occasions for young Anglophiles to meet others with similar interests. Greene was also an active user of the Society’s library and served on the Book Acquisitions Committee towards the end of the 1930s.
Cabot was one of very few Newfoundland dogs in Finland at the time. Coming from the famous Harlingen kennel in Britain, Cabot was awarded prizes in two dogs shows and described very positively by the judges. Since Greene and Cabot were almost inseparable, Cabot, too, came to play a role in student life in the 1930. When Greene was appointed as the Chair of the Students’ English Society – linked with the Finnish-British society – in 1936 and came to play a key role in its activities, Cabot became the club mascot, attending events and even playing a role in a student dramatization of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. For the students, Greene and Cabot were inseparable: the article that the magazine Studentbladet published on Greene’s 50th birthday in 1938 includes a photograph of the man and the dog as well as a celebratory poem.
The article reveals that both Greene and Cabot played a significant role in promoting English language and culture in Finland in the 1930s. As the article shows in detail, Greene emerges as a significant and active figure in cultural life including the Finnish-British society, and Cabot affected the life of various humans around him through his actions. Their entangled lives offer a further viewpoint onto animal history in the period.
The full text of the article has been published in the refereed journal Faravid: Historian ja arkeologian tutkimuksen aikakauskirja, vol. 57, no. 2, 2025, pp. 57–81. It is available as open access at https://faravid.journal.fi/article/view/161991/120071
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Finnbrit Karaoke
Saturday, January 31, 2026
starting at 18:00
Join us for an evening of karaoke at the Finnbrit premises! Whether you’re a seasoned performer or taking the stage for the first time, this is your chance to sing your favourite songs, cheer on friends, and enjoy a fun, relaxed evening in great company. We will have proper karaoke equipment and over 100,000 songs to choose from via the Muvika karaoke programme.
Don’t worry if you don’t know how to use karaoke equipment, we’ll explain everything. Expect a wide mix of songs, lots of laughs, and a welcoming atmosphere where everyone is encouraged to sing along.
BYOB, nibbles provided.
You can book a place for this event here.
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Finnbrit 100 Birthday Party for Kids!
Saturday, February 21, 2026,
14:00 -15:30
Welcome to Finnbrit’s 100th birthday party! The party is for children aged 7 to 11 with one parent per child (one adult for two siblings within the age requirements is fine). There will be fun party games including the Among Us live game, balloons, and cake!
Please let us know your child’s name, age and any food allergies. The party games will be in English. Limited to 15 children.
You can book a place for this event here.
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Main picture: The Fourparty at the Finnbrit Folk Club taken by Esko Rahikainen,1965.