Finnish in Sweden
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Working Papers in European Language Diversity 14 Nadja Nieminen Mänty Finnish in Sweden: An Overview of a Language in Context Mainz Helsinki Wien Tartu Mariehamn Oulu Maribor Working Papers in European Language Diversity is a peer-reviewed online publication series of the research project ELDIA, serving as an outlet for preliminary research findings, individual case studies, background and spin-off research. Editor-in-Chief Johanna Laakso (Wien) Editorial Board Kari Djerf (Helsinki), Riho Grünthal (Helsinki), Anna Kolláth (Maribor), Helle Metslang (Tartu), Karl Pajusalu (Tartu), Anneli Sarhimaa (Mainz), Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark (Mariehamn), Helena Sulkala (Oulu), Reetta Toivanen (Helsinki) Publisher Research consortium ELDIA c/o Prof. Dr. Anneli Sarhimaa Northern European and Baltic Languages and Cultures (SNEB) Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Jakob-Welder-Weg 18 (Philosophicum) D-55099 Mainz, Germany Contact: [email protected] © 2012 European Language Diversity for All (ELDIA) ELDIA is an international research project funded by the European Commission. The views expressed in the Working Papers in European Language Diversity are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. All contents of the Working Papers in European Language Diversity are subject to the Austrian copyright law. The contents may be used exclusively for private, non-commercial purposes. Regarding any further uses of the Working Papers in European Language Diversity, please contact the publisher. ISSN 2192-2403 Working Papers in European Language Diversity 14 During the initial stage of the research project ELDIA (European Language Diversity for All) in 2010, "structured context analyses" of each speaker community at issue were prepared. These context analyses will act as a starting point for further deepened research by linguists, sociologists and lawyers. Thus, they will form the basis of further case-specific reports and the comparative report which will be the main outcome of the whole project. However, as these will be available for interested readers only at the end of the project, we wanted to publish shorter versions summarising our work so far already at this stage, thus providing up-to-date information for both the academic community and stakeholder groups. This paper, based on the context analysis by Nadja Nieminen Mänty, gives a brief and up-to-date overview of the status of and research about Finnish in Sweden. As all papers appearing in the series Working Papers in European Language Diversity, these context analyses have been subject to an anonymous peer- reviewing process. Whenever the present document is referred to, due reference to the author and the ELDIA project should be made. For more information about the ELDIA project see http://www.eldia-project.org/. Working Papers in European Language Diversity 14 Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION: SPEAKERS OF SPEAKERS OF FINNISH IN SWEDEN ........... 1 2 SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT ...................................................................... 3 2.1 LEGAL AND POLITICAL POSITION ..................................................................... 3 2.2 ATTITUDES ................................................................................................ 5 3 CULTURAL CONTEXT ................................................................................. 6 4 LANGUAGE ............................................................................................... 7 4.1 GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE LANGUAGE ......................................................... 7 4.2 LANGUAGE CONTACT AND MULTILINGUALISM ..................................................... 9 4.3 LANGUAGE USE AND MAINTENANCE ................................................................. 9 5 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH .......................................................... 12 6 REFERENCES ............................................................................................ 12 Working Papers in European Language Diversity 14 Finnish in Sweden | 1 1 Introduction: Speakers of Speakers of Finnish in Sweden Sweden and Finland have a long mutual history: what is today known as Finland used to be part of Sweden for several hundred years. During the whole documented history of Sweden and Finland, there have been migrations from Finland to Sweden. By the second half of the 20th century, these earlier migrant groups were practically completely assimilated. The Sweden Finnish group, as we know it today, is often defined as the Finns who moved to Sweden after the Second World War, including their descendants. The migration from Finland to Sweden was triggered by massive structural changes (urbanisation, industrialisation) in post-war Finnish society. Sweden offered better job opportunities and a higher standard of living, it was geographically and culturally close, and from the 1950s on, the Nordic Passport Union and agreements supporting a common labour market made it extremely easy for Finnish citizens to emigrate to Sweden. Thousands of Finns used this opportunity, the peak years of immigration being 1964-1965 and 1969-1970. The language of Sweden Finns is Finnish, also referred to as Sweden Finnish and constitutes a main cultural feature (Lainio 1989, Kangassalo & Andersson 2003). There are no exact figures on how many Finnish-speakers live in Sweden. In Sweden immigrants are registered by country of origin and not by for example, mother tongue or ethnicity. In statistics from 2008, the number of Sweden Finns including first, second and third generation migrants was almost 675,000, which was a surprise to many scholars and activists. Although the language situation has not been researched thoroughly in the last few years, there is a firm belief among linguists that the group has been going through an intense language shift and therefore Figure 1 does not reflect language skills or ethnic self definition but is to be regarded as showing the potential maximal size of the group (Sveriges Radio Sisuradio/SCB 20091). 1 http://sverigesradio.se/sida/gruppsida.aspx?programid=185&grupp=10564 Working Papers in European Language Diversity 14 Finnish in Sweden | 2 Figure 1 The first, second and third generation Sweden Finns divided into age-cohorts. Sveriges Radio Sisuradio/SCB Some indication about the language skills was given in a radio audience poll. According to this survey the number of those who understand Finnish in Sweden is 469,0002. The number of speakers is often approximated to be somewhere around 200,000-300,000 (Kangassalo 2007). Sweden Finns are spread throughout Sweden, but a large majority live in a region called Mälardalen (the Mälaren valley), located around the capital city, Stockholm. According to a common estimation the region houses approximately 3 million inhabitants and around 200,000 of these are assumed to be Sweden Finns. Large groups of Sweden Finns also live in the county of Norrbotten in northernmost Sweden and in Western Sweden, in the Gothenburg region (SCB/Sveriges Radio Sisuradio 2009). The majority of the Finns arriving in the peak years of immigration in the 1960s were labour migrants who planned to earn money in Sweden and then return to Finland. At that time the group members were referred to as Finns. Later on, when a considerably large group stayed 2 Of this number 70,000 are estimated to be speakers of Meänkieli (Tornedal Finnish), but this article will not address the situation of Meänkieli. For more information about Meänkieli see Arola, Kunnas & Winsa (2011). Working Papers in European Language Diversity 14 Finnish in Sweden | 3 in Sweden, the discussions about the ethnonym ‘Sweden Finn’ started primarily amongst activists and researchers. Initially it was not necessarily in popular use but has been more widely introduced in later years and is used for example in legislative texts concerning the group´s rights. According to an in-depth interview study from 2005 the most common way of describing ethnicity among Sweden Finns was to call oneself ‘Finnish’. Other popular alternatives were ‘Finn in Sweden’ and ‘Sweden Finn’ (Lainio & Leppänen 2005, see also Skutnabb-Kangas 1994 and Weckström 2005, Ågren 2006). 2 Socio-political Context 2.1 Legal and Political Position The Swedish political and legal situation has gone through numerous changes in language- related politics during recent years. The position of the Swedish language has been considered so self-evident that only in the year 2009 was Swedish declared as the official or main language of Sweden. Swedish language debates have often focused around the importance of immigrants assimilating, learning Swedish and not about for example how to maintain competence in the mother tongue of minorities and immigrants etc. (Huss, 1999, Milani 2007, Prop. 2008/09: 153). For a long time Finns were considered to be a more or less temporary immigrant group. In the beginning of the 1990s Sweden Finnish activists more actively started to demand that Finnish should be viewed as a domestic language, a status that was granted in 1994. In 2000 Sweden ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter Regional for Minority Languages of the Council of Europe, in which Finnish, Meänkieli, Romani Chib, Sámi and Yiddish were accorded the status of national minority languages in Sweden. As pointed out by the Swedish Government, these groups were chosen on the basis of their documented historical presence in Sweden, and