Christina Regina von Birchenbaum

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Christina Regina von Birchenbaum, also spelled Börkenbohm, was a seventeenth-century Finnish poet. Her only surviving work is the autobiographical acrostic poem "En annan ny visa" ("Another New Song," 1651).^[1]

"En annan ny visa"

The poem "En annan ny visa" is constructed of twenty-nine stanzas of eight lines each. Birchenbaum's full name is spelled out in acrostic form by the first letters of the stanzas.^[1] The poem's style is reminiscent of Finnish folk poetry.^[2] The only surviving copy of "En annan ny visa", dated 24 July 1651, is preserved in the Diocese Library in Linköping.^[3]

According to the poem, Birchenbaum was born in Karelia; her father died when she was three. She met her future husband early in life.^[4] Marrying him for love, she followed him to Germany for the Thirty Years' War.^[1] Learning from a message that he had disappeared in the war, she traveled across the country looking for him, and eventually gave him up for dead.^[4] After seventeen years alone, in which she kept "all worldly joy and pleasure" out of her mind, she married again, this time to a young nobleman. However, the marriage was an unhappy one, due to "false friends" and local gossip that drove the couple apart.^[1] Birchenbaum concludes the poem by saying that she is alone in the world once again, and is saying goodbye to it.^[4]

Personal life

Very little is known of Birchenbaum's life other than the account given in "En annan ny visa".

Birchenbaum and "En annan ny visa" were forgotten until the mid-nineteenth century, when the poem was rediscovered by the antiquarian Per Hanselli.^[1] It was first published in 1896.^[3] Before the authorship was established, the poem was attributed to a seventeenth-century Swedish poet, Lars Wivallius.^[1]

Birchenbaum is the first known female writer from Finland.^[1] (Maria Simointytär, whose poems were published anonymously in broadside form, was likely the first published Finnish female writer.)^[5] Birchenbaum was also the first known Finnish poet to write in the Swedish language.^[3] She is additionally notable in that "En annan ny visa" is the only firsthand literary account of Finland's participation fighting under Sweden in the Thirty Years' War.^[1]

References

Further reading

• Christina Regina von Birchenbaum at Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon