Pacius’s tune was later also adopted for “Mu isamaa” (My Country), the Estonian national anthem from 1918 to 1940 and again since 1990. The composer himself conducted the university choir in a slow, majestic first performance, andante maestoso, which moved the crowd to tears. Several composers had already attempted to set Runeberg’s lofty poem to music before Fredrik Pacius, a German-born composer and music lecturer at the University of Helsinki, but his was the first version to gain widespread popularity. “Vårt land” helped appease the patriotic yearnings of the students, and the bloodshed seen in other parts of Europe was averted in Finland. The main concern of the authorities was to prevent the emergence of radical ideas the revolutionary spirit of the Marseillaise was finding some support in Finland at the time.
Runeberg was a conservative and moderate nationalist, and loyal to the powers that be. Until well into the 20th century, Finns responded strongly to the idealistic and political idealism of Fänrik Ståls sägner and “Vårt land.” Runeberg was promptly elevated to the status of national poet. He is said to have been inspired to write “Vårt land” by Mihaly Vörösmarty’s “Szózat,” the Hungarian national anthem published in 1836. Runeberg’s aim was to stir Finnish patriotic feeling with his epic. As a result of this war, Sweden ceded Finland to Russia in the 1809 Treaty of Hamina. The poem was published in autumn 1846 as the prologue to Runeberg’s Fänrik Ståls sägner (The Tales of Ensign Stål), a collection of 35 heroic ballads set in the days of the War of Finland in 1808–09. Runeberg, headmaster of Borgå Lyceum in Porvoo, had written the original text in Swedish, called “Vårt land” (Our Land), two years earlier. The Finnish national anthem, with words by Johan Ludvig Runeberg and music by Fredrik Pacius, was first performed in 1848 by students celebrating Flora Day (May 13) in a meadow belonging to Kumtähti Manor in Helsinki.
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