The Turku Romantics (Turun romantiikka, Åboromantiken) were a generation of young intellectuals active in Turku/Åbo in the 1810s and ’20s. Not a self-organized group in the strict sense of the word, and even prone to internal disagreements, they evinced a sense of Finnish nationality as emanating from, and informing, the language and history of the country, into which they also introduced a Romantic literary aesthetics. The journals Aura (1817-18) and the more ambitious Mnemosyne (1819-23) manifested their presence publicly. The group’s most famous and outspoken member, Adolf Ivar Arwidsson (1791–1858), also published his own newspaper, Åbo Morgonblad, in 1821; owing to its openly critical tone it was suppressed, prompting Arwidsson’s subsequent emigration to Sweden. The group also followed in the footsteps of Henrik Gabriel Porthan (1739–1804), who had laid the basis for the study of Finnish history, literature, and language at Turku Academy. Apart from Arwidsson, other intellectuals associated with Turku Romanticism were Johan Jacob Tengström (1787–1858), Anders Johan Sjögren (1794–1855), Axel Gabriel Sjöström (1794–1846), and Carl Axel Gottlund (1796–1875).

The Turku Romantics were much preoccupied with new forms of literature, in particular the new school in Sweden known as the Phosphorists (from the title of their journal Phosphoros). Aura and Mnemosyne included poetry by the group, as well as translations of Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, Arndt, Novalis, and others. The writings of the Turku Romanticists show a progressive interest in transformation and innovation, often using metaphorical ideas of dawn, morning, light, and spring (a discourse which many national and radical movements of the 19th century were to adopt as well). Arwidsson’s own paper, Åbo Morgonblad, was born out of discontent with Mnemosyne and more politically oriented. It carried a lengthy article on the freedom of print, in which he positioned himself as a defender of liberties in the restrictive political climate of the post-Vienna-Congress period.

The Turku Romanticists showed great interest, in the mode of Herder’s cultural philosophy, in the emerging language issue in Finland. All of them had started their studies after the incorporation of Finland into the Russian Empire and had to navigate the unaccustomed relations between the dominant Swedish language, Russian as the main language of the Empire, and the yet undeveloped majority language, Finnish. Although the group wrote almost exclusively in Swedish, the language of learned life in Finland at the time, they were convinced of the need to develop Finnish as a written language in order to strengthen Finnish national consciousness. Arwidsson famously wrote about the need to teach Finnish to the students at the Academy and the need to vitalize the Finnish nationality. Eric Gustaf Ehrström (1791–1835) on the other hand was also open to using Russian as a language of university instruction. Carl Niclas Keckman (1793–1838) and Gottlund also used Finnish in their own writings: Keckman as a translator and Gottlund as a collector of Finnish folklore.

These were the last young intellectuals to obtain their degrees in Turku, where a devastating fire in 1827 prompted the university’s move to Helsinki, the new capital of the Finnish Grand Duchy. Subsequent intellectual groups were formed in that urban environment: important nodes for post-1830 literary life in Finland were the Saturday Society (Lauantaiseura, Lördagssällskapet), founded in 1830 in Helsinki, and the partly overlapping Finnish Literature Society (Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Finska litteratursällskapet), founded in 1831; among the founders was Keckman, then a lecturer in Finnish at the University of Helsinki and soon to be involved in the publishing of Lönnrot’s Kalevala.