The Plaque for Johannes Linnankoski

In Vuohensaari, Salo, next to Ahtela’s croft, there is a plaque for author Johannes Linnankoski. The text on the plaque reads: “In a croft at this place lived the author Johannes Linnankoski in the summers from 1903 to 1905.” In Vuohensaari, Linnankoski started writing his success novel, The Song of the Scarlet Flower in the summer of 1904. Linnankoski (Vihtori Peltonen) was an avid supporter of Fennomania, a movement to improve the status of the Finnish language and culture, and he greatly influenced its spread in Salo in the early 20th century. Linnankoski spoke, for example, at an event held in honour of Snellman in Salo in 1906. As a result, people in the Salo region became obsessed with the movement, and a couple of thousand Swedish surnames were changed into their Finnish versions.