In world literature, there are many forests of significance, e.g. oak forest of Mamre and in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Finnish literature has abounded with forest topics since ancient folkore. We have a literature of floaters, loggers and paper workers of industrialized Finland, not to speak of a hunting literature. A major theme is ”from forest to town”, where the first work, Aleksis Kivi’s ”Seven brothers”, is a landmark in Finnish literature. Forests of many other authors are also presented, as well as ancient chants and poems.
The paper is based on a lecture given in the seminar ‘The forest as a Finnish cultural entity’, held in Helsinki in 1986. The PDF includes a summary in English.