This is the conclusion of sociologist Thomas Rosenberg from Lovisa on why some of the Finnish-speaking population are irritated by their Swedish-speaking compatriots.
His remarks come in the wake of the story of an 18-year old Swedish-speaking woman being assaulted at a restaurant in Åbo/Turku by a Finnish-speaking man because she was speaking Swedish.
According to Rosenberg, such a case is nothing new. “I don’t even know how many times I myself have been forced to flee from a pub because I was speaking Swedish – but it’s many”, he told the new Swedish-speaking youth website Peppar.fi. “During the 1970s and 1980s, the aggression against us Swedish-speaking Finns was strong, perhaps stronger even than today.”
Few researchers are prepared to – or dare to – comment on the subject of aggression towards Swedish-speakers by Finnish-speakers, reports Peppar.fi.
Thomas Rosenberg suggests that the reasons behind the increase in anti-Swedish feelings amongst Finnish-speakers may be down to the fact that there has been an increase in Finnish chauvinism in recent times at the same time as populism has grown. According to Rosenberg, this is partly because Europe has become more international and all the more immigrants have arrived. This has caused a kickback reaction. Rosenberg says that we know from the past that negative attitudes towards other cultures have always been strong in Finland, “we are a young nation. What we see now is a strong will to defend Finnishness. It is somewhat comic that this aggression is often directed towards us Swedish-speakers instead of towards immigrants”.
On being asked what Swedish-speakers can do to counteract this aggression, Rosenberg replied that “it is hard because the Finnish-speakers have a picture of us as being happy, positive and pleasant people. This image that they have created of us creates envy. We are not really freed from the stamp of being “bättre talande folket”* just because we are so damned happy and integrated and social competent and cocktail-knowledgeable and succeed so well. We appear to seem as governors of the poor Finnish-speakers in their image. That can be irritating for them. The stamp of us being the elite remains.”
Rosenberg suggests that Swedish-speakers lower their demands in order to improve relations. He suggests that a regional dimension is bought to the fore and suggests that we should abandon the concept of “forcing” people to learn Swedish throughout the entire country.
“I belong to the those that spoke in favour of abandoning compulsory Swedish language lessons in Finnish-speaking schools. We paid a high price for ‘compulsory Swedish’ because it was so unpopular. In the coastal areas [where the majority of Swedish-speakers live], people absolutely ought to study the minority’s language, but I think it is politically unwise to do this in the whole country. We should think in regional terms and restrict Swedish in Finland to the coastal areas – but there we ought to get stronger rights”
On being asked whether he was speaking about a ‘reserve’, Rosenberg answered yes. “Svenskfinland [Swedish-speaking Finland] is already a reserve to a great extent. We ought to reach a historic compromise and wind down the demand for a bilingual Finland and give up ‘compulsory Swedish’, just so long as we do not need to beg an apology for speaking Swedish in Svenskfinland.
Rosenberg hopes that reaching such a compromise would be possible. “Swedish is currently continually being undermined as an official language. There is just an long series of loses, and it is certainly the fault of politicians. We have too long lived with the belief that we have a good language law – but it reflects an early twentieth century reality that we no longer live in. I do believe that in the long run, the historically dependant prejudice based on us being ‘occupants’ will disappear. But we’re not there yet”.
* Svenskatalande bättre folk – “Swedish-speaking better people”. A common stereotype held of the Swedish-speaking Finns, usually with a derogatory meaning. Based on an untrue image that the Swedish-speakers are all rich and perhaps snobbishly assume that they are a ‘better people’ than the Finnish-speakers.
This article is based heavily on Peppar.fi’s article, which can be found here [SV]. Thus, any errors and the woodenness of the translation are entirely my fault!
3 comments
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Wednesday 2.3.11 at 15:40
Lars Uusitalo
That map is a wishful thinking. The coastal areas are waaayy too broad and thick. A map with small dots would be a appropriete one. For example the area in and around Turku is totally marked as swedish speaking. That is totally dillusional. I live in Turku and here is a minority of around 5000 people of swedish speaking (out of 175000) so this city is hardly and swedish speaking. Please find a correct map for yourself.
Finland is not bilingual, that is a wet dream of some swekofiles who are living in a fantasy land called norden. Finland is in the world scale probably most homogenous language when it comes to having one language, and that is finnish. For example, Sweden has 89% of population who speak swedish. For Finland the percentage is 93,5%. Still Sweden has only one official language.
The current situation will calm down when swedish language will be put to the place it belongs. As a minority language. Like it should have been all the time. After compulsory swedish has been removed from all levels of education and civil servant swedish language reguirement has been removed, then we are going to have peace with this.
Thursday 3.3.11 at 15:54
Jonas
Hello Lars and welcome, as I believe this was your first comment here.
This blog is not principally concerned with cartography. The map gives a good idea of where the Swedish population in Finland lives. As you say, Åbo does not have a high proportion of Swedish-speakers, but it is none-the-less undoubtably a part of what is known as Svenskfinland, it certainly has a long history of Swedish-speaking inhabitants that continues today – even if they may not be so many today. I think this particular map’s mission is to give a high-level overview of the fact that Swedish-speakers tend to live in Nyland, Åboland, Österbotten and on Åland.
Finland and Sweden have had very different ways of dealing with languages. Fortunately, Finland has always been more progressive. As a percentage of speakers in Finland, both Swedish and Finnish are in decline. The percentage of Finnish speakers in Finland at the end of 2009 was actually 90,67% according to the Central Statistics Agency. I am sure though, that as with Swedish, the number of speakers are increasing. The change is due to increasing numbers of people who speak languages other than Finnish or Swedish as their mother tongue.
Monday 7.3.11 at 9:18
Lars
Thank you Jonas and hello to you too.