Twelve Steps Forward in Finland

THERE has been AA work in Finland since 1948. The first messages about AA came from Sweden and Denmark, but along with those messages many "improvements" came, too--i.e., a brand new program with seven paragraphs and no steps. The original program of Twelve Steps arrived here in 1949 but it first spread among alcoholics during the autumn of 1950 when it was printed on the cover of the first number of the Finnish AA Journal. The AA Traditions were received at the same time but it took another two years for AA members to become familiar with them. The Finnish translation of the first part of the Big Book was published in 1956 and the second part (the first half of the story section) in the summer of 1959. The Third Legacy Manual was printed in pamphlet form in the summer of 1960.