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Finland beat Sweden 4-0 in the bronze medal match at the World Icehockey Championships in Canada last night. It’s great that Finland take away a medal from the tournament after widely being tipped to perform badly at this event. And I must admit, it always feels good to beat the Swedes!

Finland’s goal tender Niklas Bäckström played an exceptionally good game. The shots on goal statistics back that up. The Swedes had 36 shots on goal against our 13. However, Bäckström’s performance meant Sweden came away scoreless.  Antti Pihlström (who played a great game) scored twice for Finland. Janne Niskala and Mikko Koivu were the other Finnish goal scorers.

The game was the last for Teemu Selänne in the Finnish national team after 124 appearances.

A Pirate Party has now been established in Finland, according to the newspaper Turun Sanomat. The party’s main policy is to loosen regulations surrounding copyright.

The group has modelled itself on Sweden’s longer-established Pirate Party which has the aim of legalising the sharing of materials such as films, music and games via file-sharing services on the internet. According to the law, such activity is at present illegal and a breach of copyright. It must be said, that the Swedish party has not received many votes in Swedish elections since its founding but has had some success in bringing debate on copyright law higher up the political agenda. The Swedish Left Party (which is represented in the Swedish parliament) has said that it now supports an easing of copyright restrictions, so long as file-sharing doesn’t become commercial.

None of the Nordic countries’ prime ministers are ready to boycott the summer Olympics in China.

“I’ll make my decision in the summer but I’m likely to take part in the opening ceremony” said Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen (centre) from Sweden.

None of his colleagues are planning to travel to Beijing but the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen underlines that this shouldn’t be seen as a political position, “I didn’t take part in the opening ceremony in Greece either”

The Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg commented that one should never say never but was extremely doubtful that a boycott would have the desired effect, “Even the Dalai Lama isn’t calling for a boycott”.

The prime ministers are taking part in the Nordic Globalisation Forum in Riksgränsen in Sweden. The host is the Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who also has firmly rejected the idea of a boycott, “Sweden shall not boycott the Olympic games, neither opening ceremony nor any other aspect”.

Reinfeldt has come under a lot of criticism during the last few weeks, particularly from the Swedish opposition Social Democrats, for his planned official visit to China this coming Saturday.

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.