Language tensions mount in bilingual Finland

[Sifjar]

"Finland tries to teach everyone a lesson about morality but minorities in China are treated better," blasted Juhan Janhunen, an expert on Asian languages, comparing one of the most egalitarian countries in the world to the Communist regim''

Language tensions mount in bilingual Finland
Published: 4 Dec 07 09:53 CET
Finland's struggles as a bilingual country can hardly be compared to those in Belgium or Canada, but the tiny Swedish-speaking minority is nonetheless concerned the country's second official language is at risk.
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"Finland tries to teach everyone a lesson about morality but minorities in China are treated better," blasted Juhan Janhunen, an expert on Asian languages, comparing one of the most egalitarian countries in the world to the Communist regime.

Janhunen is a member of an umbrella lobby group, The Swedish-speaking Association of Finland, that travelled from Helsinki to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, on November 22nd to denounce "Finland's attempts at Finlandization."

Finnish and Swedish, which are not related, have been Finland's two official languages since 1922.

Finnish speakers represent 92 percent of the country's 5.3 million inhabitants, compared to just 5.6 percent Swedish speakers. Almost all Swedish speakers are bilingual, while up to 40 percent of Finnish speakers more or less understand Swedish.

Swedish speakers in Finland, which was ruled by neighbouring Sweden from 1150 to 1809, retain considerable influence in society -- almost every coalition government in modern times has included ministers from the Swedish-speaking Liberal Party.

Three of the country's presidents have been native Swedish speakers, though the current head of state, Tarja Halonen, speaks it decently but not perfectly.

But the Swedish language's heyday seems to be over.

The share of Swedish speakers has dropped by a third since 1880, when they represented about 15 percent of the population.

The fall is attributed to many Swedish speakers moving to Sweden, while the emigration of Finnish-speaking Finns to Sweden and the United States had faded by 1900.

Since Swedish holds official language status, bilingual signs are everywhere and almost all government documents must be published in both languages, though the Swedish translation is not always immediately available.

But most speakers say they need Finnish to get by in their daily lives as Swedish has increasingly lost ground.

Elderly Swedish speakers have difficulty getting health care in their mother tongue, public television has cancelled some of its Swedish-language programming and the once-mandatory Swedish language exam for university studies was abolished in 2005.

And as a result of budgetary cutbacks, Swedish-speaking police stations, courts and municipal offices will in the coming years be integrated into Finnish entities.

"It's scandalous! We don't even know who was here first, the Swedes or the Finns," thunders a judge, Charles Lindroos, whose court is due to close.

Heikki Tala, the head of the Association for Finnish Culture and Identity, doesn't see a problem.

"Swedish speakers enjoy privileges like no other linguistic minority in the world," he said.

"The 500,000 Finns in Sweden have no rights," he pointed out.

Contrary to Canada or Belgium, where certain regions are defined by their languages, Finland's Swedish speakers are spread out across the country, with the exception of the autonomous Åland archipelago whose sole official language is Swedish.

Sonia Parayre, an expert at the Council of Europe tasked with monitoring the implementation of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, said Swedish speakers were right to be concerned but noted that Finnish language legislation was among "the most protectionist" in Europe.

"The message to authorities is: okay you have reforms underway, but beware, you have to respect a number of rules on language rights," she said.

In 2005, Finnish-language author Arto Paasilinna, who wrote The Year of the Hare, told Kaleva magazine he believed "the question will be resolved naturally. The Swedish speakers will die off, taking their language with them."

AFP's Gael Branchereau

[Susi]

This reminds me a little of problems in Canada between English and French speakers. However, the French speakers in Canada aren't confined exclusively to Quebec. There are pockets in Manitoba, Northern Ontario, and also in the Maritimes (especially New Brunswick). Though there are two official languages in Canada and it may appear to be "working" from the outside, there are considerable political tensions and it can be difficult to find French service in smaller (primarily English) areas and in nongovernment places. *shrug*

[wilpuri]

Swedish as an official language is on the way out. And its about time, in my opinion. It should not be up to the state to uphold artificial bilingualism in this case, and I think it would be good if Swedish-speakers realized this (I am myself from a bilingual family).

[Menydh]

The more I learn about it, the more that it looks to me as a mess of uncertain consequences.

If the ethnic Swedish minority faded away or if it lost completely its signs of identity to be engulfed by the Finnish, how would this affect the relations between Sweden and Finland? Or between Swedes and Finns? And what about the Finnish minority in Sweden?

[Weltschmerz]

I'm only asking for one thing, to Finns who read what I'm writing here. I don't want another Swedish vs. Finnish conflict. Please, just don't assume that I mean something that I don't say clearly.

Finnish and Swedish, which are not related, have been Finland's two official languages since 1922.

The share of Swedish speakers has dropped by a third since 1880, when they represented about 15 percent of the population.

The fall is attributed to many Swedish speakers moving to Sweden, while the emigration of Finnish-speaking Finns to Sweden and the United States had faded by 1900.

Judging from this, the wane of Swedish seems to be a part of a long process with demographical consequences.

up to 40 percent of Finnish speakers more or less understand Swedish

I wonder what this figure implies, since according to the curriculum, all Finns have to learn Swedish. I want to hear from the Finns.

Three of the country's presidents have been native Swedish speakers, though the current head of state, Tarja Halonen, speaks it decently but not perfectly.

If she's the president of a bilingual state, shouldn't she be able to master both languages??? She should, indeed.

And then, there are clear indications that the law from 1922 is not practiced, and has been overrun systematically:

Since Swedish holds official language status, bilingual signs are everywhere and almost all government documents must be published in both languages, though the Swedish translation is not always immediately available.

But most speakers say they need Finnish to get by in their daily lives as Swedish has increasingly lost ground.

Elderly Swedish speakers have difficulty getting health care in their mother tongue, public television has cancelled some of its Swedish-language programming and the once-mandatory Swedish language exam for university studies was abolished in 2005.

And as a result of budgetary cutbacks, Swedish-speaking police stations, courts and municipal offices will in the coming years be integrated into Finnish entities.

"It's scandalous! We don't even know who was here first, the Swedes or the Finns," thunders a judge, Charles Lindroos, whose court is due to close.

Certainly, there is a great deal of hipocrisy involved, probably on both sides. But demographically it is evidently clear that Finnish speakers have the upper hand.

I'm not surprised at tensions, especially since what is said to be a bilingual state seems to mean [Language #1 = Finnish] and [Language #2 = Swedish], and to begin with the state is founded upon two rather different groups culturally. Just look at this statement:

In 2005, Finnish-language author Arto Paasilinna, who wrote The Year of the Hare, told Kaleva magazine he believed "the question will be resolved naturally. The Swedish speakers will die off, taking their language with them."

It sounds like a threat. What a gentleman.

Originally Posted by wilpuri

Swedish as an official language is on the way out. And its about time, in my opinion. It should not be up to the state to uphold artificial bilingualism in this case, and I think it would be good if Swedish-speakers realized this (I am myself from a bilingual family).

I can relate to what you say, but I don't think that I agree fully. I'm an ethnopluralist, and rather consequential about it. Furthermore, the presence of settlers of Swedish stock seems to go way back before recorded history, for all we know, so the Swedish speakers cannot not be treated as if they were recent gold-diggers or even immigrants at any point in history, as far as I can see. But you can take what I say with a pinch of salt. I'm confident that you know more about what is realistic and what isn't.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

The more I learn about it, the more that it looks to me as a mess of uncertain consequences.

If the ethnic Swedish minority faded away or if it lost completely its signs of identity to be engulfed by the Finnish, how would this affect the relations between Sweden and Finland? Or between Swedes and Finns? And what about the Finnish minority in Sweden?

I'm not sure about this question. I disagree with how this issue has been dealt with, just like I disagree with the history of Swedish ethnopolitics generally. On the question of importing labour force from abroad, I'm generally negative. A lot of resources have been spent on helping Finns retain their heritage, but still there has been nothing like an attempt at a bilingual state, just a great many bureaucratic and institutional measures. I don't even know of as much as an attempt to deal with this question rationally in real politics. What was done was on the level of well we'll grant you this, this and this, and then let's hope we will all be happy for a while now, which is not what I would call a good approach. Tage Erlander, who was Sweden's statsminister 1946–1969, during the period when most of the Finns immigrated, was of Finnish descent. His original family name was Suhoinen.

Exactly how far back ethnic Finnish presence in Sweden dates I also don't know. We had a discussion on shared ethnic minorities between Sweden and Finland, and opinions differed on the question. What was agreed upon was that Finnish presence goes at least as far back as somewhere around the year 1600 or shortly after.

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

Once I got to know a Finn (woman) who told me that she learned Swedish at school, as all do, however, that she did not speak it. She said she understood Swedish well when heard and that she had a reading knowledge of it.

[Kalevi]

Originally Posted by Seekers

I wonder what this figure implies, since according to the curriculum, all Finns have to learn Swedish. I want to hear from the Finns.

This legislation has only existed from the seventies, so there's many older people who don't know the language virtually at all (most notably the generation born in the baby boom after the war). And you have no idea how large scale is the attitude problem the legislation has caused, especially in the areas that have virtually no Swedish-speakers. Many people feel Swedish as a burden and limit their studying efforts to minimum. This has caused the educational system to lower the threshold to a ridiculously low level to prevent people failing their primary studies because of Swedish.

Finland is one of the most linguistically homogenous countries in Europe, and I see no reason why the whole country should remain officially bilingual. There's traditional minorities in many countries that aren't officially bilingual. While I already support moving power increasingly to local levels, I would naturally prefer language issues to be decided locally. I don't have anything against preserving Swedish language in Finland, but there simply is no way to prevent Finnish being used as a common language of the country and trying this in the state level is extremely impractical.

Speculation of the originality of Swedish language in Finland is irrelevant in this discussion, because it is known that the group contains a majority of Finnish-speakers that at certain point of history were changing their language to improve their status. So the group is not anything 'foreign' or imported anyway (and personally I wouldn't care if they'd all be immigrants from the 14th century). But the same can be said about the (traditional) Finnish minority in Sweden: in the 17th century the Swedish crown simply moved some of his subjects to a different area inside it's realm. The modern, economically based migrations are a whole different issue, of course.

[Weltschmerz]

Attachment: More background and information, in English and French, on Finlandswedes and Swedish in Finland, in handy PDF format. My thanks to Mynydd who found it.

For example, this publication debunks the sadly enough rather commonplace idea that there are no ethnic Finlandswedes. Thread moved to Ethnopolitics, where it belongs.

[Kalevi]

Originally Posted by Seekers

More background and information, in English and French, on Finlandswedes and Swedish in Finland, in handy PDF format.

Just as a note: The Swedish Assembly of Finland is not a neutral party but an interest group, like they state by theirselves in the document. Most of the information seems correct, however.

The Swedish-speaking population in Finland is
mainly descended from peasants and fishermen
who settled on the western and southern coasts
and islands some time between 1000 and 1250 A.D.

There's very little preserved written documents concerning Finland from those ages, and so far as I know there's not any indication of Swedish immigration before Finland was annexed by Sweden starting from 1249. Being associated with an armed conquest is bad PR?

Under Swedish rule, many ethnic Finns changed
their language and started speaking Swedish, but
most of them reverted to Finnish in the late 1800s.

I don't know to which extent this has been researched, but so far as I know the Fennoman movement was not somehow exclusive to only those Swedish speakers who were aware that their ancestry (or part of it) had been Finnish speaking.

This sounds like an attempt to give the reader a picture of a straight-forward ethnogenesis that resulted in a distinct, uniform population. Genetics tells a different story: all estimations of Finnish ancestry in modern Swedish speakers that I have seen have given results ranging from a little more than 50% to 75-80%. These kind of studies are however quite dependent on the Finnish speaking reference population. The more recent population developments in Sweden may also have some influence.

[wilpuri]

Finland-Swedes are a very heterogenous group and to simplify the situation into a question of an ethnic Swedish minority in Finland is simply atrociously false.

[Ikutiera]

Uppsala social services manager issues ’Swedish only’ decree


Last year, the Finnish employees at one office of the Uppsala City Social Services Department were forbidden to speak Finnish to each other at work.
The ban has led to a dispute that is now being handled by both the Swedish Discrimination Ombudsman and the Council of Europe.

The decree issued by one manager provoked bad feeling among the staff in the spring of last year. The employer stressed that the official language of the Social Services Department is Swedish, while no other languages must be used in public premises, including the hall and the coffee room.

Helsingin Sanomat

[Menydh]

Originally Posted by wilpuri

Finland-Swedes are a very heterogenous group and to simplify the situation into a question of an ethnic Swedish minority in Finland is simply atrociously false.

Please, help me understand this.. According to what you say, they call themselves "Swedes" but they are not?

This is curious. Something that you said earlier looked to me as if you were calling or wishing for the ethnic disintegration of "Finland Swedes", and their assimilation into the Finnish ethnic group:

Originally Posted by wilpuri

Swedish as an official language is on the way out. And its about time, in my opinion. It should not be up to the state to uphold artificial bilingualism in this case, and I think it would be good if Swedish-speakers realized this (I am myself from a bilingual family).

But then you call them "Swedish-speakers" (Finns?), not "Finland Swedes".

Quite some strong statements here.

[PeterThaGreat]

Originally Posted by wilpuri

Finland-Swedes are a very heterogenous group and to simplify the situation into a question of an ethnic Swedish minority in Finland is simply atrociously false.

Go say to that to Aland islanders; Fennoswedish from Nyland ceased to consider them as etnic-Swedes for about two hundred years ago, and why should've them, they were too busy of building a new nation previously referred as "Östland" in addition to the four other Swedish admistrative regions, Götaland, Svealand and Norrland. However, this has nothing to do with Aland islanders and certain rural regions of Österbotten whose alighment to Finland can be seriously questioned.


I am not referring myself as a Swede despite stemming from Swedish extraction and the fact that my mother even holds a Swedish citizenship, however I believe it's perfectly justified for Swedish descended folk native to Swedish language to refer themselves as "Swedes" if they wish to do that. Besides many Fennoswedes are of relatively recent Swedish stock (in an addition to the initial wave in (1250-1400) such as my family and Mannerheim f.e whose both lineages (materal and paternal) came to Finland from Sweden very recently back in his times, ofcourse.

[PeterThaGreat]

Originally Posted by Kalevi

There's very little preserved written documents concerning Finland from those ages, and so far as I know there's not any indication of Swedish immigration before Finland was annexed by Sweden starting from 1249. Being associated with an armed conquest is bad PR?

Atrociously false, pure arbitrary. Swedes have settled Finland since the Iron-age (1500BC) and proto Scandinavian languages have been spoken in the country through the Iron-and Bronze age, this can easily be backed by any recent genetical study on Finnish etnogenesis and by archelogical fact as well, these early arrivals were only finnicized and eventually adopted to Finnish language, however this group has left a significant impact on the genetic pool of contemporary Finns.

(Just a recent article in Finnish illustrating the topic by the emeritius professor of history of the university of Åbo)
Turun Sanomat

I don't know to which extent this has been researched, but so far as I know the Fennoman movement was not somehow exclusive to only those Swedish speakers who were aware that their ancestry (or part of it) had been Finnish speaking.

The Fennoman movement was orchestrated by large part by Fennoswedish scholars, it started first only as a sympathy for the underpriviledged folk but after the Finns accused the Fennoswedish of being of alien stock who should return to their original homeland, they quicly left the movement. However, many notable fennoswedish families adopted to Finnish language and even finnicized their names.

This sounds like an attempt to give the reader a picture of a straight-forward ethnogenesis that resulted in a distinct, uniform population. Genetics tells a different story: all estimations of Finnish ancestry in modern Swedish speakers that I have seen have given results ranging from a little more than 50% to 75-80%. These kind of studies are however quite dependent on the Finnish speaking reference population. The more recent population developments in Sweden may also have some influence.

or 0%, I can post some studies form you are interested.
Stay out from the genetics not your sharpest tool. The fact is that genetical affinities can only be reliably tested by genomine DNA studies and so far Fennoswedes have not been sampled. Most Fennoswedes are descended from Central-Swedish settlers, particularly from Helsingland. Fennoswedes have Finnish admixture in varying degree depending on a region (close to zero in Alanders, little in the rural coastal dwellers, pretty much in the city bourgoise) due to the fact that there's always been Finnish chicks involved to some extent, however I don't see this as a prove of heterogenenity, the overwhelming majority of Fennoswedes live in a very uniform culture, whether they had some additional Finnish or German influence. Also, remember Fennoswede in racial context is only a person born the Fennoswedish parents, not to a parent.