This article is all about the Lord’s Prayer in Finnish, which is called “Herran rukous“, but often referred to as “Isä meidän“. Thanks to Beth for requesting this topic!

While this is a prayer all Christians know, the exact wording of the Lord’s Prayer in Finnish can differ somewhat based on what version of the Bible is used and which Church you belong to. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is the most popular religion in Finland. Their Lord’s Prayer is the main version I will be using in the explanations below.

Where needed, I will also add alternative phrases for the Orthodox and the Catholic versions. In English, there are even more versions. Check out the Wikipedia page about Isä meidän to see all three Finnish versions completely. Please don’t get upset if my English translation isn’t the one you’ve grown up with. We’re focusing on the Finnish version here.

1. The Words of the Lord’s Prayer in Finnish

One thing you should right away notice when reading this through is the length: the Finnish version’s word and sentences are much longer than in the English version.

2. Glossary of abbreviations used

The following grammar terms have been abbreviated.

I have marked different elements of the analysis using the following symbols.

3. Analysis of the Finnish Lord’s Prayer

The Finnish version of the Lord’s Prayer contains less archaic language than the English version. In it, God is addressed in the sinä-person (“sinä olet“) rather than the ultrapolite te (“te olette“).

The words “Isä meidän” are in reversed word order from normal language. This corresponds closer to “Father of ours” than “our Father”.

The word taivas can mean both “sky” and “heaven”. The difference becomes apparent when we want to express that something is in the sky versus in heaven. The sky will get -lla, while heaven gets -ssa: Lentokone on taivaalla vs. Jumala on taivaassa. In this prayer, the plural form of taivaassa is used: taivaissa.

The third person imperative ends in -koon/köön, and is very rare in everyday Finnish, but appears in multiple parts of this prayer. It can be translated as “let […] be done”. In this sentence, “olkoon pyhitetty” means “let […] be sanctified”, with the dots of course being “thy name”.

Just like in the previous section, Finnish uses the third person imperative -koon/köön in order to express “let [your kingdom] come”.

And another third person imperative.

The word päällä means “on” or “on top”. It’s a postposition, which means that the word it relates to will appear in front of it and be inflected in the genitive case: maan päällä. This is the opposite word order from English; literally “earth on” rather than “on earth”.

In this section, we use the singular form taivaassa rather than the plural form taivaissa like in the first line of the prayer. The two can be used interchangeably.

“Tämä päivä” becomes “tänä päivänä” when you want to say “on this day”.

The words “joka päivä” mean “every day”. For example, the sentence “Syön joka päivä leipää” means “I eat bread every day”. The adjective jokapäiväinen has been created out of those words: our everyday bread.

The next few lines are so much shorter in English than in Finnish! The English verse “and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” contains 16 syllables. The Finnish verse contains a mind-blowing 36 syllables:

“Ja anna meille meidän syntimme anteeksi,
niin kuin mekin anteeksi annamme niille,
jotka ovat meitä vastaan rikkoneet.”

Note that these are the words in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s (ELC) prayer! In the Orthodox (OC) and Catholic (RCC) version of the Lord’s prayer, you have this verse instead:

“Ja anna meille anteeksi velkamme,
niin kuin mekin annamme anteeksi
velallisillemme.”

In Finnish you usually uses the phrase “antaa anteeksi” to say “to forgive”. There is also the verb armahtaa, but it’s used less often. In religion, however, armahtaa is a pretty common verb, which appears in phrases such as “Herra, armahda meitä!” ie. “Lord have mercy on us!”. In the Lord’s Prayer, however, the phrase “antaa anteeksi” is used instead.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s (ELC) prayer uses the word synti, which means “sin”. In the Orthodox (OC) and Catholic (RCC) version of the Lord’s prayer, you will find the word velka instead. In modern Finnish, velka means “debt”, usually the financial kind.

If you want to use all the Finnish words in the translation of “Ja anna meille meidän syntimme anteeksi“, you end up with something like: “and give to us our sins forgiveness”.

When translated literally, “niin kuin mekin anteeksi annamme niille” means “Just like we as well forgiveness give to those”. Some bible versions have a phrase that’s closer to the Finnish sentence. For example, the King James Bible starts this phrase with “For we also forgive…”.

This sentence is only used in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s (ELC) Lord’s Prayer. An easier to understand word order would probably be: “Jotka ovat rikkoneet meitä vastaan“.

Rikkoa is an unusual word choice, because usually it means “to break”, either concrete (rikkoa ikkuna “to break the window”) or abstract (rikkoa laki “to break the law”). I would say this phrasing is closer to the Contemporary English Version of the Bible’s “who has done wrong to us”.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELC) uses the long phrase “Niin kuin mekin anteeksi annamme niille, jotka ovat meitä vastaan rikkoneet“. The Orthodox and Catholic prayers have a much shorter phrase. They replace that whole last sentence with a single word: “Niin kuin mekin annamme anteeksi velallisillemme.” This is the word velallinen (noun: debtor) in the plural allative case velallisille, with the first person plural possessive suffix -mme: “to our debtors. The use of velka in this verse is mirrored in, for example, the King James Bible: “forgive every one that is indebted to us”.

“Älä saata meitä kiusaukseen” means “don’t lead us into temptation”. When we want to add “and” at the beginning of the phrase, we don’t use ja, but rather the suffix -ka/-kä added to the end of the negative verb älä. This is the same concept as “ja ei” becoming eikä and “ja emme” becomes emmekä.

The word “but” is usually mutta in Finnish. However, when our sentence starts with a negative (älä), we use vaan rather than mutta. We can translate vaan as “but rather”. You can read more about the difference between vaan and mutta in this article.

The word paha is interesting from a linguistic perspective. In Finnish paha can be both an adjective and a noun, so it can be both translated like in the King James Bible as “but deliver us from evil” and like in the New King James Bible as “but deliver us from the evil one“.

This particular phrase differs between the three main versions on the Finnish prayer.

Firstly, the Finnish Catholic prayer doesn’t include this phrase at all. Secondly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s (ELC) prayer has the short version, similar to the King James Bible in English: “Sillä sinun on valtakunta“.

The Finnish Orthodox prayer contains “Sillä sinun, Isä, Poika ja Pyhä Henki, on valtakunta“, which includes the words Isä (Father), Poika (Son) and Pyhä Henki (Holy Spirit).

The phrase analyzed above is from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s (ELC) prayer. The Finnish Orthodox prayer ends this verse with: “Sillä sinun, Isä, Poika ja Pyhä Henki, on valtakunta, voima ja kunnia, nyt, aina ja iankaikkisesti,” ie. “now, always and forever”. The Catholic’s prayer doesn’t contain this phrase at all.

So there you have it: the Lord’s Prayer in Finnish. I hope you found this helpful!

Related posts:

Religion – Uskonto – Finnish Vocabulary