I’ve moved to Helsinki for a few months and this has opened a whole new opportunity to thoroughly explore the southern part of Finland. Visiting a place for a few days is always nice, but it’s quite hard to get to know it better during a short period of time. But staying somewhere for a longer time lets one do more that just scratch the surface.

For a country so far in the north it’s not hard to figure out that the southern part was populated first and is still the most populous area. Depending on your perspective, this, however, does not also mean that the most interesting things happen in the most populous areas. But here, I’d have to say that this is the case.

For most of its history Finland has been juggled between its two rather powerful neighbours: Sweden and Russia. And it has been under the rule of either one of the two until 1917 when its people have finally managed to claim their independence (see Itsenäisyyspäivä or the Blue and White Day). The time spent under the rule and strong influence of other societies and their values for such a long time has left rather strong influences on the Finnish culture which are still visible today.

Since almost all the territory belonging to Finland today has been under the Swedish rule from the early Middle Ages (13th century) until the 1809, Sweden naturally left more impact on Finnish culture and society than Russia has. Not surprisingly the result of this long rule is also a love-hate relationship between Finns and Swedes.

In Finland there are six minorities: the Swedish speakers, the Sámi, the Roma, the Jews, the Old Russians and the Tatars. Of which the Swedish-speaking Finns are the most numerous and enjoy the most privileges.

However, there is something peculiar about this minority. It is a minority based on the language and not on nationality. Although which language people choose to speak in Finland today is a matter of personal preference, it wasn’t always like that. It was not until 1892 that Finnish language became an official language as a result of the rising nationalistic movement. Only then it was considered to be equal to Swedish as both were, and still are used in both administrative and everyday matters.

Swedish was imposed on local population as Finnish has been the language spoken by the majority throughout the times of Swedish rule. But mere imposing wouldn’t make such a strong presence. In fact, right after Swedish speaking people moving to Finland, the strongest support of Swedish came from the local population who adopted the language mostly for socially ambitious reasons. Contrary to common belief that this is still the case today, Swedish is no longer the language of the social elite. But quite the opposite as the number of Swedish-speaking Finns has been in constant decline for the last hundred years or so.

Nevertheless one can find practically everything marked in both languages: from food products to street names. Despite Swedish being a compulsory course for all schoolchildren for several years, its presence varies greatly depending on where in the country one is. Thus Swedish is strongest on the southwest coast and Ahvenanmaa archipelago where at the same time most of the Swedish-speaking Finns live.

In fact its presence is so strong there that the bilingualism is even reversed. If in the rest of the country almost everything is written first in Finnish and then in Swedish, it is the other way around in the southwestern part (and practically nothing is in Finnish on the autonomous archipelago of Ahvenanmaa). And if in the rest of the country one would (naturally) expect to be addressed in Finnish, here one is practically almost always addressed in Swedish. Which feels quite interesting especially since I’m still in the process of learning one strangely beautiful language, here comes another one to add to the confusion.

And to make things even more interesting Swedish-speaking Finns are not as one would think a uniform minority united by the same language. In Finland alone there are more than 80 different Swedish dialects among which many are so strong that speakers from two different dialect groups even cannot understand each other.

It doesn’t end here. Quite often the people working in the service industry will even say the same thing twice, first in Swedish and then again in Finnish. Which then leaves me thinking should I say “Tack” or “Kiitos” in return.

Mladen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Culture, Finland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.