He had a quick and splendid career in academia: He graduated at age nineteen, wrote his dissertation at 22 at the University of Helsinki, where seven years later he was appointed professor and head of the department of Latin literature.

He would keep in close contact with German universities for the rest of his life; as a teacher and scientific leader he was known for his "Anglo-Saxon style" — clear and simplistic in his presentations, emphasizing the grand lines rather than intriguing details and exceptions — but also as demanding, authoritarian, keen of the dignity of his office, and maybe too self-confident.

His memoirs describes his astonishment over how the Socialist half of Finland's population turned out to be equally patriotic defenders as the non-Socialists after the Soviet Union's attack in November 1939.

However, in the 1950s, after the disappointment over Sweden's limited support during the wars, he contributed energetically to inter-Nordic contacts and cultural exchange, and may be credited for the at least partial healing of the rupture between Conservatives in Finland and Scandinavia, that had its background in fennomania and the Åland Crisis.

An assessment of Linkomies's role as politician is complicated by the fact that he at, in at least two critical moments in Finland's history deliberately spoke and acted against his own conviction, if one is allowed to believe his account in his memoirs.