Hannikainen became a deputy surveyor in 1835 and received the title of surveyor in 1843. He worked as a deputy surveyor in
Viipuri Province from 1849 as a permanent commission surveyor in 1857–1866, as a permanent commissioner 1866–1874 and as a senior commissioner 1874–1879. Parallel to his work as a surveyor Hannikainen became deeply involved in linguistic and literary aspects of
Fennomania writing numerous plays and works in Finnish and working as a journalist and editor for the newspaper Kanawa. The newspaper was considered as the Finnish version of the Swedish language newspaper Saima which at the time was run by
Johan Vilhelm Snellman. The Kanawa newspaper was published in
Vyborg between 1845 and 1847. It dealt with religious and state (political) issues. Snellmann, who was a prominent
Fennoman philosopher, often translated articles from Hannikainen’s Kanawa and printed them in Saima. Kanawa was closed down by the authorities in 1847. Hannikainen later contributed to several newspapers, such as Suometar
Uusi Suomi, of which he was the editor-in-chief until 1848. His play Silmänkääntäjä, ie Jussi Oluvisen matka Hölmölään (The Conjurer, ie Jussi Oluvisen’s travel to Foolsville), the very first publicly presented play in Finnish language, was first performed in
Lappeenranta in 1846 and then in
Kuopio in 1847. Hannikainen already wrote the play end of 1830, when he was working as a surveyor's assistant in Hölmölä village in
Ruokolahti. In total, Hannikainen wrote nine plays, four of which were unpublished. Hannikainen also wrote poems and translated numerous works including plays by authors such as
Ludvig Holberg,
William Shakespeare and
Miguel de Cervantes. The words he forged or introduced into the general Finnish language are modern, guardian, publicity, profitability, gaze, accounting, accountant, craftsman, business, sales, council, name (verb), act (verb), pre-school, people’s school, learning school (see
Education in Finland), share (noun), dividend, purchase, print, protocol, heroism, commit, conjugate (words), financial, commission (noun), wholesaler, future, import, photograph, vice judge (
varatuomari), society, community and vowel. ==Works==