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I recently discovered an interesting blog called ‘Migrant Tales‘. The author of which is clearly concerned with immigration matters and writes a lot on Finland’s migration politics. Often, in debates on how immigrants should be integrated into Finnish society, one hears the argument “When in Rome, do as the Romans”; in other words, that integration should mean that migrants to Finland so quickly as possibly forget their own background and take on entirely a Finnish lifestyle - essentially abandoning or replacing their own cultural values and taking on ours completely. This argument comes up in comments to Migrant Tales and in many other online and offline debates on immigration and integration policy.

This “When in Rome, do as the Romans attitude” got me thinking today when I heard a story on Yle Radio Västnyland (I’m on holiday at the moment in my wife’s home area near Ekenäs) this morning about the increase in people moving from the capital region to the rural municipality of Ingå. The report was about this high level of Finnish-speakers moving into Ingå causing the municipality’s sole Finnish-language school becoming overcrowded and featured a Kokoomus (National Coalition party) Finnish-speaking member of the Ingå council suggesting that Ingå ought to urgently look to constructing a new, second Finnish-language school in the municipaltiy as many Finnish-speaking families were “making do” with putting their children in Swedish-language Ingå schools to save them from travelling longer distances to the municipality’s one Finnish school.

Now, I wonder what the “When in Rome, do as the Romans” attitude holders would make of this. Surely if Rome were Ingå, and one was to do as the local ‘Romans’, one should be adopting the Swedish-language rather than insisting on Finnish language services.  Today’s Ingå is a bilingual municipality with Swedish as the majority language (according to the municipal website, around 57% of the 5 458 residents speak Swedish - 40% have Finnish as their mother tongue.)  If one went back to 1950, before any widescale immigration to the municipality had got underway, you would have found that 89,5% of Ingå’s residents spoke Swedish as their mother tongue (according to Folktinget’s statistics). Before the wars of the 40s, you would have found that the municipality was unilingually Swedish-speaking. So, presumably if you held the “When in Rome” attitude, you would be condemning those unthoughtful Finnish-speaking immigrants of today and the latter half of the 20th century for not integrating and insisting on the superceding of their own culture on to the Finland-Swedish.  You would be accusing them of failing to act as one should in Rome.

Incidentally, this argument could be applied to many, many more districts - including municipalities that no Finnish speaker would think of as a traditionally Swedish-speaking area today; for instance, the capital region’s Esbo (Espoo) which is today’s second largest city in Finland with around 235 000 residents (mainly due to immigrants from the rest of the country moving to the capital region) was 43% Swedish-speaking still in 1950. Today it is 8,9%. Before the wars and in the first half of the 20th century it was still a very rural, sparsely populated unilingual Swedish municipality. Is this another example where the “When in Rome” attitude holders would see a failure?

Now, I’m not arguing for the application of the “When in Rome, do as the Romans” (i.e. integrate completely or stay away) attitude in official policy. Hopefully my thoughts here help expose such thinking as unrealistic at the very least. I would love to hear from some “When in Rome, do as the Romans” attitude holders as to whether their beliefs also cover their own Finnish-speaking compatriots when they have chosen to move to Swedish-speaking areas and often cause them to dramatically change in cultural and linguistic character.

The Foreign ministry has released a new publication called Suomi ulkomaisissa tiedotusvälineissä 2007 (Finland in the foreign media 2007) which details what the foreign media reported from Finland during last year.

According to the foreign ministry report, Finland’s success in the annual PISA survey of education quality again earned Finland the title of education superpower with journalists worldwide wondering if their countries could reach the Finnish level of education.  The global media also noted that Finland has the most female dominated government in the world, with more women ministers than men. The large number of women parliament members also gained admiration.

There was a more negative tone in some of the press’ coverage when the well-regarded prominent Financial Times reported that Finland was on the way to an economic crisis. The shooting drama in Jokela and the negative coverage surrounding it left a mark at the end of the year.

Finland’s Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (centre party) has ruled himself out of the 2012 presidential election already. Vanhanen told the newspaper Itä-Savo that he doesn’t want to be president and had already experienced one presidential election (the last one in 2006 where he ran and was eliminated in the first round after coming in third place with 18,6% of the vote). Vanhanen did however state that he was aiming for a third term as prime minister.

This leaves potentially both Centre and the Social Democrats without obvious candidates for the 2012 elections, although it is obviously still a long way off and the SDP will get a new chairman this summer.

Their main rivals, the National Coalition party Kokoomus do however have one obvious candidate, Sauli Niinistö. Niinistö came second in 2006 with 48,2% of the vote in the second round against Tarja Halonen. This was a respectable result considering highly popular Halonen got 49,4% in the first round and before that took place, people were tipping the election to be already settled in one round. Since then, Niinistö has been elected to the Finnish parliament in 2007’s election, getting the most personal votes ever in a parliamentary election, and become speaker of parliament. He’s seen to be popular and easily the favourite right now to become Kokoomus’ first president since Paasikivi who left office in 1956. Still, if a week is a long time in politics, 4 years is surely an eternity.

The Swedish people’s party’s  (Sfp) current member of the European parliament Henrik Lax has said that he will not be standing for reelection in next year’s European parliamentary election. Lax, who is 63-years old, justifies his decision to leave the European parliament after one period by saying that he wants more time to relax and take it easy after having spent 40 years in political life, according to the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet.

Lax was elected to the European parliament in 2004 after Astrid Thors (who nowadays is the minister of migration in the national government and Sfp’s Helsinki MP in the Finnish parliament).  He was elected in 14th place out of Finland’s 14 MEP seats. From next year’s election, Finland will lose a place and only have 13 seats available making it all the more difficult for Sfp to be able to obtain elected representation at the EU level.

Lax hopes that there will be a place created for Swedish-speakers in future representation to the European parliament.  Åland’s government is already loudly calling for its own separate MEP constituency and Åland’s parliament could vote down the Lisbon treaty if concessions are not made by Helsinki. Lax suggests that one seat reserved for Swedish-speakers could be an alternative saying that there ought to be representation for the language minority.

It seems sacked foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva (Kokoomus national coalition party) is having some communications problems in getting his formal resignation to the president’s office.

The Foreign Ministry, from which Kanerva is officially on sick leave since Monday, did announce that Kanerva would be sending his formal resignation request letter by fax.  It’s too late for it to be posted by mail. However, according to Hufvudstadsbladet, the fax plan has failed on the grounds of technical problems. Instead, a car will collect Kanerva’s resignation letter from his home in Turku/Åbo tomorrow morning and drive it to the president of the republic’s office.

Perhaps he would have found it easier to send a text? Then again, given recent events, perhaps Tarja Halonen doesn’t want to give him her number.

The official appointment by President Halonen of Alexander Stubb (Kokoomus) as Finland’s new foreign minister will happen during the government-presidential session this morning at 11.00. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt (from Kokoomus’ Swedish equivalent, the Moderates) will fly to meet Stubb already this afternoon in Helsinki/Helsingfors.

Today, April Fool’s Day, the gossip magazine Hymy printed, as promised, a selection of Ilkka Kanerva’s text messages to the erotic dancer Johanna Tukiainen. This was however no joke but perhaps did make the foreign minister the April Fool de jour. In total, Hymy published 24 of Kanerva’s messages, with a selection being:

- It’s sounds almost like a fantasy. Have you kept your ‘garden’ in shape?

- Would you like to do it at some exciting place? What could that be?

- How would it feel to touch you with my fingers at a nightclub?

- There was nothing wrong with yesterday’s dress either. Very womanly.

Well, you get the idea. Nothing overtly sexual but suggestive none the less. Enough for the chairman of Kanerva’s Kokoomus conservative national coalition party however. It was a clearly emotional party chairman, finance minister Jyrki Katainen, that finally explained to the press this morning that he had sacked Kanerva, “Ike is my friend and he performed his ministerial job brilliantly”, explaining that it was one of the toughest decisions in politics he has had to make but that Kanerva had broken his promise to stay away from his previous tradition of scandals when he had been appointed a minister this time around. For his part, Kanerva has said nothing today and called in sick to the foreign ministry this morning.

Alexander Stubb to be the new foreign minister

Kokoomus has selected Alexander Stubb to be the new foreign minister. The President of the Republic will formally appoint him on Friday.

Alexander Stubb is currently a member of the European Parliament and is 40 years old today. He was a voting magnet in the last European parliament elections, attracting over 115 ooo personal votes. For an MEP, he has a relatively high profile both at home and even in other European countries. He’s known to be an expert on the EU having written a number of books on the institutions and workings of the union. He has also stated favourable attitudes towards Finland’s membership of Nato in the past. However, he told Radio Vega this morning that a foreign minister can’t have personal views and that he will naturally represent the government’s viewpoints.

It is likely that Stubb will quickly gain a higher profile on the EU level with his formidable knowledge and understanding of the union and his already sound reputation.

Alexander Stubb is bilingual, speaking both Swedish and Finnish to mother tongue level. His Swedish-speaking roots (his father) come from Esse in Österbotten with his Finnish-speaking side (mother) having its roots in Viborg/Viipuri (now in Russia). At school level, Stubb attended both Swedish- and Finnish-speaking schools. He has studied in both Paris and USA, receiving a doctorate from London School of Economics on EU matters.

Ironically, another scandal hit politician will return to a job as a result of Stubb’s promotion. Stubb’s replacement in the European parliament will be Sirpa Pietikäinen who previously left active mainstream politics after being convicted of driving whilst drunk.

International media and politicians have followed the events

The events surrounding Kanerva’s departure have been noted abroad. The British news agency Reuters and German DPA have both written about it.

Stockholm’s Dagens Nyheter believes that this could put prime minister Matti Vanhanen (centre party) in a difficult situation, as he has supported Kanerva to the last whilst at the same time being involved in his own attention-grabbing affair with his ex-lover.

Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt thanked Kanerva for his contribution saying that he thought Kanerva did important work for Finland. Bildt explained that he knows Stubb well, having helped him in his election work and that he thinks Stubb has much to give.

The first of a planned series of four books on Finland’s history during the Swedish times has come out.

The first volume is written by the former national archivist Kari Tarkiainen and is called Sveriges Österland (roughly “Sweden’s Eastern Province”). The three later parts are written by Nils Erik Villstrand, Max Engman and Henrik Meinander.

Tarkiainen’s book chronicles Finland from pre-history until Gustav Vasa (who was elected king of Sweden on 6/6 1523) and includes the period before Erik the Holy’s mission to Christianise Finland up to the time of the first king to use the word fatherland.

The timing of the book series’ release is to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the Finnish war (between Sweden, of which Finland was then part, and Russia) which ended Finland’s time as part of the Swedish realm.

Tarkiainen’s book includes an insight into how the relationship between the Swedish and Finnish languages was during the early period of Swedish rule. Apparently it was relatively good; Finnish snapped up over a thousand loan words from Swedish, even some that Finnish already had its own word for. For example, the word leikkiä (from Swedish leka) replaced the word kisata (all meaning “to play”, as in how children do). At the same time, many Finnish place names were incorporated into Swedish. The Swedish language gained prestige as it was spoken by the nobility, civil servants and priests. The Finnish speakers were more typically found amongst the lesser bourgeoisie and the peasantry.
“The peasantry often couldn’t speak a single word of Swedish but there was no prejudice against Finnish. However, social mobility required a change of language” Tukiainen told Hufvudstadsbladet in an interview to mark the release of his book.

However, many ordinary Swedish countryfolk also migrated to the eastern part of the realm as many countryside districts in the area occupied by today’s Sweden were overpopulated. That many of the Swedes that came to Finland to settle were countryfolk is one of the reasons that the Swedish-speaking Finns today are found throughout the social scale. Many Finns also moved to Stockholm, this was not a move to Sweden but rather simply to the capital city.

The priests had to be able to speak the local language, not just Latin, and the demand for Finnish become gradually a way to bar Swedish-speakers from the priesthood. At very least, it lead to the priests becoming bilingual in Finnish and Swedish.
“Mikael Agricola [credited as the creator of written Finnish] was bilingual. He spoke both languages to a high-level. If that was because of his homelife or if he taught himself during his carrier is something people disagree on” says Tarkiainen.

Tarkiainen explains that “if the colonisation had come from the area of the Baltic countries or Novgorod, Finland would have been completely different. It was fortunate that the colonisers came from Sweden; freedom of the peasantary and the inheritance of a state with the rule of law were good for society. In fact, it’s not really right to talk about colonialism because the Finns had exactly the same rights and duties and from 1362 received the right also take part in the election of the king.”

Sveriges Österland is published by Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland (The Swedish Literature Society in Finland) with ISBN number 9789515831552. If you speak Swedish, the society has a video interview with the author Kari Tarkiainen on its website.

The map shows the core of the Swedish realm at around the year 1700, i.e. later than this post covers. At different times, the actual areas controlled by Sweden were smaller/larger, this map is therefore just as a guide.