Breakdown of Viime viikolla olin ollut rauhaton, koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin.
Questions & Answers about Viime viikolla olin ollut rauhaton, koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin.
Olin ollut is the Finnish pluperfect (pluskvamperfekti), which corresponds to English “had been”.
- olin = simple past (imperfekti) of olla → “I was”
- olin ollut = past tense of olla
- past participle ollut → “I had been”
In this sentence, Viime viikolla olin ollut rauhaton, the speaker is talking about a state (being restless) that was already in the past relative to some other past point (here, the time when they are narrating or when they realized the reason).
So:
- olin rauhaton → “I was restless (last week)”
- olin ollut rauhaton → “I had been restless (last week, before some later past moment / in the lead‑up to something)”
The pluperfect gives a more “background / earlier” feeling to the restlessness, just like in English.
Yes, Viime viikolla olin rauhaton is perfectly grammatical.
Viime viikolla olin rauhaton → simple past: “Last week I was restless.”
- Neutral description of how you felt then.
Viime viikolla olin ollut rauhaton → pluperfect: “Last week I had been restless.”
- Implies that you’re viewing that restlessness from a later past point (for example: “When I went to the doctor, I had been restless last week because…”).
So the sentence with olin ollut is a bit more narrative and “layered in time,” while olin is simpler and more straightforward.
Viime viikolla uses the adessive case (-lla/-llä) to express time: “during last week” or “in/over the last week.”
In Finnish, certain time expressions commonly use the adessive:
- viime viikolla – during last week
- tällä viikolla – this week
- viime kerralla – last time
- ensi kerralla – next time
Compare with other time expressions that use other cases:
- viime vuonna (essive: “last year”)
- tänä aamuna (essive: “this morning”)
- tänä iltana (essive: “this evening”)
So viime viikolla is the normal idiomatic way to say “last week (during that week)”.
Pidetty is the passive past participle of the verb pitää (“to hold [an event]”, among other meanings).
The pattern is:
- Verb: pitää
- Passive past participle: pidetty
To make the passive pluperfect (past perfect passive), Finnish uses:
olla (in past) + passive past participle
So:
- tentti oli pidetty
- oli → past of olla
- pidetty → passive past participle of pitää
- = “the exam had been held”
In other tenses:
- tentti pidetään – “the exam is (will be) held” (present passive)
- tentti pidettiin – “the exam was held” (past/imperfect passive)
- tentti on pidetty – “the exam has been held” (perfect passive)
- tentti oli pidetty – “the exam had been held” (pluperfect passive, used here)
In Finnish, the passive is very common when:
- The doer is unknown, not important, or obvious from context, or
- The focus is on the event itself rather than on who did it.
An exam is usually organized by the teacher or the institution, but that detail is often irrelevant. The important information is simply that the exam had taken place.
So instead of something like:
- Opettaja oli pitänyt tentin – “The teacher had held the exam”
Finnish naturally favors:
- Tentti oli pidetty – “The exam had been held” / “The exam had taken place”
This sounds very natural and neutral in Finnish in contexts involving official events, meetings, exams, etc.
Both are passive, but in different tenses:
tentti pidettiin
- past (imperfekti) passive
- “the exam was held”
tentti oli pidetty
- pluperfect (pluskvamperfekti) passive
- “the exam had been held”
In the sentence:
- …koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin.
→ “…because the exam had been held only recently.”
The use of oli pidetty lines up with olin ollut in the main clause: both actions (the exam being held, and you being restless) are in the past of the past, viewed from some later point.
If you said:
- …koska tentti pidettiin vain äskettäin.
it would still be understandable, but you would lose that “earlier past” layering. It would sound more like simple past: “…because the exam was held only recently” without the same narrative pluperfect feel.
- äskettäin = “recently”, “a short time ago” (adverb)
- vain = “only / just”
Together, vain äskettäin emphasizes that the event was not just recent, but “only just recently”, i.e. the time gap is quite small.
You can say just:
- …koska tentti oli pidetty äskettäin.
→ “…because the exam had been held recently.”
That is correct. Adding vain strengthens it:
- “…had been held only recently / only just recently.”
Other similar options, with slightly different nuance:
- juuri – “just” (often very immediate: juuri äsken = just a moment ago)
- hiljattain – also “recently”, stylistically a bit more neutral or formal
So the original phrasing vain äskettäin nicely underlines how close in time the exam was.
Rauhaton is an adjective meaning “restless” or literally “without peace” (rauha = peace, -ton = -less).
In olin ollut rauhaton:
- olin ollut = “I had been”
- rauhaton = predicate adjective describing the subject (minä, implied “I”)
Predicate adjectives after olla stay in the nominative (basic form), so rauhaton is the expected form.
Rauhattomana is the essive case of the same adjective and has a different nuance:
- olin rauhattomana – more like “I was in a restless state / while being restless” (often used to express a temporary role, manner, or state in which something else happens)
In your sentence, you’re simply saying what you were like, so the basic nominative predicate rauhaton is the right and most natural choice.
In Finnish punctuation, you normally must put a comma before most subordinating conjunctions that introduce a dependent clause, including:
- koska – because
- että – that
- jos – if
- kun – when
- vaikka – although
So:
- Viime viikolla olin ollut rauhaton, koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin.
The comma marks the boundary between the main clause:
- Viime viikolla olin ollut rauhaton
and the subordinate clause explaining the reason:
- koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin
Even in fairly short sentences, Finnish still keeps this comma, more consistently than English does.
Yes, Finnish word order is flexible, and several variations are natural, with small differences in emphasis.
All of these are grammatical:
Viime viikolla olin ollut rauhaton, koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin.
- Emphasis: time frame “last week” first; then the state and its cause.
Olin ollut rauhaton viime viikolla, koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin.
- Similar meaning; focuses first on I had been restless, then specifies when.
Olin ollut rauhaton, koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin, viime viikolla.
- Feels more marked; viime viikolla at the end adds afterthought‑like clarification.
You normally keep the koska‑clause after the main clause, as in the original. Putting it first is possible but less common in neutral style:
- Koska tentti oli pidetty vain äskettäin, olin ollut rauhaton viime viikolla.
This is still correct; it simply foregrounds the reason (“Because the exam had been held only recently…”).