Finnish thematic atlases: An examination of their content and methodology

Pentti Yli-Jokipii's study treats the 1960 edition of the Atlas of Finland as the latest of four editions (1899, 1910, 1925, 1960) examined alongside the Atlas of Social Statistics of the Rural Communes in Finland (1901), the Atlas of Finnish History (1959), the Atlas of the Archipelago of Southwestern Finland (1960) and the Atlas of Finnish Folk Culture (1976). Every diagram and thematic map is broken down into components and compared across editions by number of illustrations and the page area they occupy, topics, cartographic design (colour, classification, texture), scale, areas and areal units mapped, dates of the data, and cartographic methods, with the results presented through generalized diagrams rather than numerical tables. The 1960 volume is thus assessed as one stage in a quantitative account of how Finnish thematic atlas-making and the principles behind it changed over time, not as a stand-alone review.