Johan Helmich Roman, by his own account of Finnish extraction, worked in Stockholm as a violinist, oboist, and composer at the Royal Chapel, and with the King’s permission he was given leave to
study abroad. On his travels, he met his idol Georg Friedrich Handel, whose influence on his music is clear and for which he gained the nickname ‘the Swedish Handel’.

Oulu’s finest, Erik Tulindberg wrote a violin concerto that was performed in Turku probably in 1783, and in doing so composed the first large-scale musical composition in Finnish music history. His style
sits in the transitional period between classicism and early romanticism, and this earned him the nickname ‘the Finnish Haydn’.

The violinist and composer Agnes Tschetschulin, star pupil of the Helsinki Music Institute
(later, the Sibelius Academy), continued her studies in Berlin under the tutelage of Joseph
Joachim, who was himself one of the most acclaimed virtuoso violinists of the 19th
century and a close friend of Johannes Brahms. Tschetschulin had a successful career as
a soloist and chamber musician in Central Europe before moving to Great Britain, where
she became professor of the violin at the prestigious Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She
continued performing and composing until the end of her life. The Tschetschulin family
were staunch supporters of women’s equality. Indeed, Agnes’s older sister Maria was the
first woman to graduate from high school in the Nordic countries.

The Norwegian Ole Bull was, without a doubt, the greatest violin virtuoso of his time in
the Nordic countries and a rather peculiar character in general. He played a violin with
a specially shaped bridge, designed for the unique effects he invented. He celebrated his
66th birthday by climbing to the top of the Pyramid of Cheops. His success also brought
great wealth, which allowed Bull to purchase land in North America, where he founded the
Oleana colony in Pennsylvania. He supported the young Edvard Grieg and encouraged him
to explore and incorporate local Norwegian folk melodies into his musical idiom.

In 1838, Ole Bull gave a highly acclaimed concert in Helsinki, and his visit sparked a real
violin craze among young people in the city. The Finnish poet Zacharias Topelius was in the

audience with his fellow students, and there are several entries about the experience in his diaries.