Svenskfinland in English has been taking a little (okay, long) break of late. I have simply had too much to do with work and, if I am honest, I lost the urge to blog. But had I been blogging away as usual during the last six months or so, I fear that this blog would not have made happy reading.
The language climate in Finland is becoming ever less tolerant and the position of Swedish risks being so seriously maligned that a future in which it is possible to access public services in one’s mother tongue seems ever more bleak.
Amongst things that have happened in the last few months include the ongoing saga of the orientation of the city of Karleby (Kokkola) in Österbotten. Despite various bodies stating that for linguistic reasons it should be included in the Österbotten region with its state services located in Vasa, the Centre party (led by very vocal support from new Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi) continues to call for its incorporation into the district led by the unilingual Finnish-speaking city of Oulu/Uleåborg. The question seems to have become a matter of stubbornness amongst Centre party members who do not want to back-down even in the face of the Constitution which would seem to make any northern orientation illegal because of the linguistic consequences.
Maternity services at Ekenäs hospital in Western Nyland have closed down despite massive protests by local inhabitants and many, mainly Swedish-speaking, politicians. The municipality of Raseborg, where the hospital is located, has a majority of Swedish-speaking Finns and the hospital was the last in a Swedish-speaking majority area in southern Finland to offer maternity services. Residents of Raseborg will now be forced to travel to hospital in Lojo or Esbo to give birth, where Swedish-speaking service is often hard to obtain. Ludicrously, some Finnish-speaking members of the hospital board covering much of southern Finland suggested that Raseborg residents could travel to Borgå hospital if they wanted to be sure of Swedish service when they give birth – a journey of 153 km taking around 2 hours by car – hardly feasible for a mother entering labour!
The debate surrounding Swedish-language instruction in Finnish-speaking schools heated up during the last six months with debate on its future even making the main headlines in the Finnish-language media. The debate – even in the mainstream media outlets such as Yleisradio and Helsingin Sanomat - continues to use the pejorative term pakkoruotsi to describe the teaching of Swedish, meaning roughly ‘forced/compulsory Swedish’ – strangely one never hears of ‘forced mathematics’ or ‘forced biology’ classes. The debate gained prominence largely because the National Coalition Kokoomus party’s congress voted against the party leadership’s direction on a measure calling for the abandonment of Swedish as a compulsory school subject for Finnish-speakers. The Confederation of Finnish Industry (EK) also called for its abolishment. According to EK, schools ought to offer a broader range of languages instead of compulsory Swedish. This seems to suggest that the teaching of Swedish is an impediment to the learning of other languages, which is of course very strange logic indeed. Learning Swedish is naturally of no hindrance to also learning Russian, German, French, Chinese or any other language. Finland’s bilingualism ought to be a plus for Finnish industry’s competitiveness, especially when Finland is a Nordic country. EK’s reasoning was dealt a further blow when a survey showed that 80% of companies in the finance sector regarded the knowledge of Swedish as a decisive factor when choosing how to employ.
In a move that has the potential to cause the loss of life, reports of a 112 emergency call centre failing to be able to speak Swedish to a unilingual Swedish-speaking caller from Sibbo have again been in the media in recent weeks. Fortunately, the call was not concerning a life-threatening medical condition and the caller was eventually able to pass her phone to a neighbour who spoke good Finnish – but the example shows that authorities are not living up to their legal obligations in even the most serious areas of service-provision. What would have happened if it was a serious condition and an ambulance was not dispatched in time to save a life? Emergency messages to the public that are broadcast on television screens as text have also failed to appear in Swedish in two incidents recently, once concerning a severe fire in the largely Swedish-speaking town of Hangö.
In film-related news, Swedish subtitles have also been missing from many cinema film showings of late with cinema films blaming it on digitalisation. Apparently modern technology means that it’s not possible to do what was quite achievable before – namely to show subtitles in two languages at the same time. A debate has also blown up in the Swedish-speaking press surrounding the new Moomintroll film. The film will premier in Finnish and English with the Swedish-language version to follow only a few weeks later. Given that the Moomintrolls are probably the most famous Swedish-speaking Finns, concern has been raised that this is a sign of ever increasing Finnish-language cultural imperialism in Finland. An attempt to deny that the Swedish language is part of Finland’s culture – even with the now world-famous Moomintrolls, a Swedish-speaking creation.
It is not all bad news, the increasing indifference and lack of understanding for Swedish has raised concern even amongst prominent Finnish-speaking politicians. Elder statesmen Martti Ahtisaari (former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner) and Paavo Lipponen (former Prime Minister) have spoken in favour of Swedish. President Tarja Halonen has also expressed her concern for recent developments.
Pictured: Protesters against the closure of the maternity ward in Ekenäs on the steps of Parliament in Helsingfors/Helsinki.
9 comments
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Wednesday 4.8.10 at 21:47
Prometo
Greetings Jonas, I find all the developments that you have stated as positive. The Finnish language is the cohesive glue that binds all of Finland’s inhabitants together, whether there native language is Finnish, Finland Swedish, Thai, Swahili or English. Pakkoruotsi is the correct political term to refer to the mandatory lessons in Swedish. If time, resources and -money- is thrown at propping up Swedish language instruction, then naturally other languages will not be learned. The oddest thing for me as an immigrant from a Western country to Finland is how Finland-Swedish speakers keep insisting on the fact that THEIR peculiar and odd dialect of Swedish somehow binds Finland not only to Scandinavia, but ALL of western civilization, as if Finnish by itself in Finland would automatically place Finland within the same group as Azerbaijian, Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. I challenge this ethno-centrist and -extremely- outdated view. The Finnish language is a precious and unique gem that is a bridge to other western countries like Estonia and Hungary, and Finnish is a Nordic, Scandinavian language. Finland-Swedes are only a bridge to a bygone era when the coast of modern Finland was colonized by Sweden and children were hit in school for speaking their mother tongue. As a new Finn (with no ethnic-Finnish background), and as a Finnish speaker, I look forward to the day when Swedish is removed as an official language of the Republic of Finland and made an official minority language like Sami or Tatar. Then finally Finnish speakers can breathe free in their own country. The vast majority of immigrants also support this view.
Thursday 5.8.10 at 9:48
Jonas
Hello,
Thank you for your comment. I must confess I find it difficult to understand that you find discrimination positive, and all the more surprising given your background.
Unfortunately your statements base themselves in some untruths, some purposely cultivated by some on the right-wing.
Naturally, there is no impediment to learning more languages. Previously, we were quite good at it in this country. But now, all the more municipalities fail to offer anything other than English as the main foreign language. Even if you want to study Russian, French, German etc as your main foreign language (before English), you can’t in most places. This has nothing to do with Swedish teaching, trying to blame it on that is just cheap. Swedish-speaking school children spend many, many, many more hours (and begin far far earlier in their school careers) in Finnish-language classes than children attending Finnish-speaking schools spend learning Swedish. Children attending Swedish-speaking schools often start their first foreign language later than their Finnish-speaking compatriots, yet they still manage to learn their first foreign language (almost always English due to the earlier mentioned reasons) to a high degree. In other words, Finnish language classes don’t seem to obstruct them – so why should Swedish classes (especially when many less hours) obstruct Finnish speaking children? Do you suggest that Finnish-speakers are naturally less intelligent?
Finland-Swedish is not exactly a dialect, anymore than say American English is a dialect of English. There are many different dialects of Swedish spoken in Finland. If I spoke in dialect, my Eastern Nyland/Uusimaa dialect would be completely different to someone who came from, say, Jakobstad. In the same way, the dialect from Skåne is different to that in northern Sweden. To say that any one is superior to the other is a rather outdated view. Everyone who speaks Swedish (almost without exception) can speak a form of standard Swedish as well (whether that be the so called rikssvenska of Sweden or högsvenska of Finland) and we can all understand each other perfectly. It is one language. It is frustrating to sometimes here people suggest they are somehow so different as to be different languages. I imagine this is done for political purposes – to downplay the argument of Swedish linking Finland to the rest of the Nordic region.
The Finnish language is certainly not a Scandinavian language. It is completely unintelligible to speakers of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. I don’t understand where you have got that idea from. Finnish, which is a beautiful and interesting language, does not even belong to the Indo-European language family.
Your last lines are the most concerning, I am very surprised that you seemed to have swallowed the extreme right-wing rhetoric so fully. Finland is a bilingual country. This is our country equally as much as it is that of the Finnish speakers. Finnish speakers are not prevented from breathing free in their own country. When have you ever read in your newspaper that a Finnish-speaker could not access services in her/his mother tongue? When has a Finnish-speaker dialled for an ambulance and not been understood? Yet, in areas where Swedish-speakers have lived for hundreds of years before Finnish-speakers, such occurrences happen almost daily. Trying to blame today’s entire population of Swedish-speaking Finns for the attitudes of the elite (note, most Swedish-speaking Finns do not belong to any elite upper class, despite the ludicrous stereotypes) hundreds of years ago is as ludicrous and unjust as blaming all modern Germans for the actions of the Nazi party. Such attitudes just foster an atmosphere of mistrust and hate as they place language group against language group. This is one country with two languages.
Thursday 5.8.10 at 11:24
Prometo
Dear Jonas, You are continuously spreading half-truths and misconceptions to the wider world at large. 5 percent of the inhabitants of Finland (exluding the semi-independent Åland) speak dialects of Finland-swedish. I do not know of any other nation on Earth where a 5 percent minority would be so pompous as to demand services in their own ethnic language. I consider myself to be left-leaning and progressive.
Finland-swedish speaking children in Finland are surrounded by Finnish in all places with the exception of the social circles that their Finland-swedish speaking parents place them in. Finnish speaking children have to spend many hours trying to understand an -essentially foreign- language spoken by our neighbor to the west. Due to the fact that virtually all entertainment media in Finland is in English anyways, it is not a major challenge for a child whose mother tongue is Finnish or Finland-swedish to learn English. Children should be free to choose what language they want to learn, not have one forced on them due to political dictat.
The Finnish language is not a Scandinavian language in the sense that it is not related to Swedish, Norwegian or Danish. It is a Scandinavian language in the same sense as Saami, meaning that geographically it has been spoken historically in the region, it wasn’t brought from somewhere else. The variants of “Swedish” spoken in Finland together are called Finland-swedish, which I refer to in my original post. Finland-Swedish is the name given to those variants together, as a whole.
I have not “swallowed the extreme right-wing rhetoric so fully”. All it takes is being an immigrant in Finland for 10 years or so for you to begin to see how the people and society of this country truly function. Finland-Swedes and their policies of division and conflict are the largest barrier to many native Finnish speaking Finns having a more global and international mindset and profile of their own language and culture. Money thrown at propping up a peculiar and archaic form of Swedish could be better spent offering free Finnish language courses to the 10′s of thousands that move to Finland every year. This is a “bilingual country” by -a law- in a constitution from -1919-, when Finland-swedish was spoken by an overwhelming 11 percent of the population. Now that figure lies at 5 percent and is dropping.
Finland-swedes are continuing to prop up an idea of Finland as a people of 3 islands, the “ethnic barbaric Finns”, “Finland-Swedes, gods of western civilization and truth”, and then the “idiot foreigners, who will never understand Finland or how this country really works”
You, Jonas, have not stated the truth in this entire blog, and its purpose. Finland-swedes are the most pampered minority on Earth. (According to the New York Times, you can google the article) Millions of Euros a year in tax revenues go to propping up the archaic Finland-swedish language and culture. People that speak Finnish, whether they were born in Joensuu, Mogadishu, Phuket or Dallas such as myself are denied career advancement in the upper echelons of Finnish industry and government due to the fact that knowledge of Finnish is considered a “disadvantage” due to the fact that we would not be serving THE minority and their language.
Its 2010 Jonas, not 1610. Swedish should be removed as an official language in Finland and made a minority one (which in reality it is) like Saami. It should have the same status in Finland as Finnish does in Sweden. A municipality should be bilingual only when the minority language is spoken by 20 percent of the population (EU recommendations), not the ludicrous 6 percent or minimum 3000 speakers! This leads to ridiculous situations, such as in Vantaa, with nearly 200000 inhabitants, translating all government documentation into Finland-Swedish because of the 3000 (or 1,5 % of the population!) speak Finland-swedish.
And if someone does not speak Finnish or English when calling 112, perhaps they should not live, because this is FINLAND, hello ?
It’s all truly mind-boggling. In what reality do Finland-swedes live in?
Thursday 5.8.10 at 11:56
Jonas
I have never not said that we are approximately 5,5%. Naturally you are right that we were once 11%. But in raw numbers we have remained essentially stable (we’re around 300 000 today, about the same as Iceland’s population). We certainly demand services in our native land in the areas in which we live. I would not go to Jyväskylä and expect to get served in Swedish there and nor would I have a right to get them if I did. Yet, Finnish-speaking Finns who have moved to many areas that we’re previously overwhelmingly Swedish-speaking often do not live by the same practice.
I simply do not agree that children should be completely free to chose their school subjects. Should children who dislike maths or think that they will never use history in their later lives be allowed to miss classes in these subjects? The real problem in language teaching – and there are problems – is the lack of breadth of modern foreign languages today (as I mentioned earlier, it was not always so). It is also sad that Finnish-speaking schools start the teaching of Swedish so late. By this time, children are in their teens and it’s harder to pick up a new language, plus enthusisiam is often less at such an age (the rebellious teens!).
Not all Swedish-speaking children are surrounded by Finnish as you claim. Finnish is a beautiful language, but it’s not easy to learn if it’s not your mother tongue. I suspect from your blog address that you live in Helsinki. Do not make the mistake of judging “Svenskfinland” by just the capital. Even here in my hometown of Borgå (Porvoo), where today mass migration of Finnish-speakers has turned this town into one dominated by the Finnish language (Swedish-speakers make up a third of the population today), there are villages outside of the town itself that are still almost entirely Swedish-speaking. I live and grew up in such a place. My children (who are now at university) grew up in such a place. My wife is Swedish-speaking, my children obviously went to Swedish-speaking schools. Until upper secondary school, essentially all their friends were Swedish-speaking (or at least that was the “lingua franca”, or perhaps “lingua playground” in this instance
) and we mainly watched television in Swedish. My grandparents could not speak any Finnish at all. And all this is in a relatively Finnicised (in the linguistic sense) municipality. Imagine the situation in places in Österbotten where Finnish speakers are often only 5-10% of the population.
Your comments amuse me. Can you really believe what you wrote in your fourth paragraph? I find it amazing if so. Incidentally, money is not really thrown at propping up Swedish. We also pay taxes! An economic research project about two-three years ago (I can try and dig it out if you like) actually showed that the Swedish-speaking population are net contributors to the state; mainly because of significantly lower levels of sickness and sick pensions.
Your fifth paragraph about Swedish-speakers propping up some idea of Finns being barbarians and Swedes the “gods of western civilisation and truth” is something I simply can not recognise in the slightest. I have no idea why you should think such a thing. This is a country based on equality. Perhaps you have picked up on the common stereotype of Swedish-speaking Finns being the elite? This is based on tarring the entire Swedish-speaking population with one brush based on Swedish-speaking ruling class during earlier periods and the current few rich Swedish-speaking inhabitants in places like Grankulla or Eira. Unfortunately, this stereotype seems to have stuck despite it being completely impossible for the vast number of ordinary Swedish-speaking Finns (like me) to recognise ourselves in it. Obviously it is convenient for people against Swedish-language in Finland to play it up in order to try and place the two language groups against each other. In reality we’re all part of Finland. We just happen to speak two languages in this country.
Knowledge of Finnish is never considered a disadvantage in this country! Have a look at ams.ax, the employment service on Åland for an extreme illustration of this truth. Take a look at their job adverts and see how many need knowledge of Finnish! And that’s on Åland, constitutionally unilingually Swedish. I would say that it is not the fault of Swedish-speakers in the predecessor munipalities of Vanda who made up the majority of the population (of what was then essentially just farmland and forest) pre-war that the place has seen such massive inwards migration of Finnish-speakers and rapid urbanisation. Should they be punished for this? Should Andorrans or Catalans have their rights taken away from them in their own villages and towns just because they have been outnumbered by inward migrants? Of course not. We have a very sensible, liberal and forward-thinking legal basis in Finland which states that both language groups are equal. If you should choose to move to Raseborg tomorrow, you as a Finnish-speaker would not have to learn Swedish to get served by the town council despite it being the native language there. I think that is very fair and just.
Wednesday 18.8.10 at 8:41
English isn't enough - Page 2 - World Literature Forum
[...] is not considered worthy of much attention. Finland's Swedish-speaking minority is also viewed with increasing suspicion by the rest of the population these days – as in the recent debate surrounding Swedish-language [...]
Wednesday 29.9.10 at 7:08
Timothy Bryan
Jonas,
What an excellent site, it is a real joy to read. I think you are doing the right thing by “fighting the fight” for your native tongue, and am encouraged by the fact that Swedish exists on a relatively wide basis in Finland.
Just to let you know, I will be moving to Ekenäs/Raseborg with my wife and son as an American immigrant/student within the next 2 years, and it is because of the possibility to speak Swedish that we are going. It is a beautiful language, and I am very happy that we have the chance to experience the area.
One small thing: I am certainly right-wing, but have a great deal of good thoughts towards language diversity. Perhaps it is not a political issue, but rather a social one? In any case, try to post more, your site is wonderful
Wednesday 29.9.10 at 15:09
Jonas
Hello Timothy,
Thank you for your very kind comment.
I am sure you will enjoy living in Ekenäs. As it happens, my wife is from a village just outside of Ekenäs but we live outside of Borgå these days. However, we are frequent visitors to your future hometown. It’s an extremely pleasant place in the summer time.
I don’t think that the advocacy of language diversity is restricted to either the left or the right either. It is often nationalist groups that are described as ‘far-right’ who wish to limit such things, but obviously there is a massive distinction between them and democratically anchored centre-right political movements. As you may know, the Swedish People’s Party is quite unique in Finnish politics in the breadth of political views it houses amongst its membership. That is perhaps a case in point, that the stronger issue of language unity and preserving the rights of Swedish-speakers ranks above ideological left-right issues.
I will try to write more in the future. Work keeps me increasingly busy these days!
Good luck with your move!
Wednesday 29.9.10 at 18:07
Timothy Bryan
Jonas,
thanks for the reply, and I will check in on your site here on occasion. The waiting is going to kill me until I can get there
Thursday 23.12.10 at 13:28
All packaged up | Jees Helsinki Jees
[...] inspiring less of the positively lyrical and more of the angry and unhappy commentary (thoughtful Svenskfinland in English feels it too). But really, normal service at JHJ has been curtailed because – as we say in [...]