Swedish Literature

chapter 5 Longing and Belonging in Contemporary Finland- Swedish Literature Kaisa Kurikka, Hanna Lahdenperä, Kristina Malmio and Julia Tidigs Abstract Recent Finland- Swedish prose fiction frequently problematises not only the thematic of place but also the ways in which spatiality is depicted in fiction, which in turn rais- es specific questions regarding language- spaces and links to literary traditions. The triggers for this “spatial turn” in Finland- Swedish writing include its minority status and the affect of longing to belong, since these problematics include the territorial while interweaving actual, material as well as metaphorised territories. Using works by Bo Carpelan (1926–2011), Monika Fagerholm (b. 1961), Pirkko Lindberg (b. 1942), Sara Razai (b. 1979) and Johanna Holmström (b. 1981), this essay discusses contemporary Finland- Swedish literature as a minority literature and its in-betweenness by focusing on the affects of belonging and longing. We argue that recent Finland- Swedish prose fiction can be situated in the heterotopian space of in- betweenness consisting of diverse encounters, tensions and interruptions in relation to past traditions in literary expression. By focusing on the themes of multilingualism, spatial orientation and especially female characterisation, our readings also discuss belonging/longing in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Literature written in Swedish in Finland has in many ways been a literature steeped in nostalgia; it has for several decades been longing for its great past in the 19th century, when Swedish language and literature still had a promi- nent place in the cultural life of Finland. Nowadays Finland- Swedish literature is marginalized, and in terms of language, the Finland- Swedish literature of today can be described as a minority literature. There have been persistent questions for several generations of Swedish authors in Finland: Will Swed- ish literature continue to exist or not? Will it survive despite the fact that the Swedish population in Finland diminishes? Will it be reviewed and acknowl- edged also in Sweden? However, this minority literature presents features that are not typical of a marginalized literature, namely good economic resources, dedicated publishing houses, and a potential audience both in Finland and in © Kaisa Kurikka ET AL., 2019 | DOI:10.1163/ 9789004402935_ 007 This is an open access chapter distributed Kaisaunder Kurikka, the terms Hanna of theLahdenperä, CC BY-NC-ND Kristina 4.0Malmio, license. and Julia Tidigs - 9789004402935 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:02:51AM via free access 84 Kurikka et al. Sweden. Because of its status as a minority literature, Finland- Swedish fiction can also be defined as a literature of the in- between: it resides between two nations, Finland and Sweden, and between Finland’s literature and Swedish literature at large. In this essay, we elaborate on the notion of the in-betweenness of contemporary Finland- Swedish prose in relation to the affects of longing and belonging. Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg (2010, pp.1– 2) have stated that “(a)ffect arises in the midst of in- between- ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon. […] Affect is born in in- between- ness and resides as accumulative beside- ness”. At a conceptual level, therefore, affect is already tied to the questions of belonging and longing, since affects express the relations between diverse bodies and the world around them – when dealing with affects, we are dealing with encounters, connections and interruptions between different bodies, both human and non-human. According to Seigworth and Gregg (2010, p.2), affect marks a body’s belonging to a world of encounters, but it also takes place in non- belongings, or in mixed encounters that impinge in- between. Synonymous with force or forces of encounters, affect can be under- stood as a body’s capability to act or be acted upon, varying from the tiniest sensations to huge sensibilities – affect appears both as an intimate and as an impersonal force- field. Longing and belonging are especially significant for minority literatures not only due to their position in- between, but also because of their often directly or indirectly threatened conditions of existence. Questions of belonging and of community have been posed in relation to the language(s) of Finland’s Swedish- speaking minority and its literature since the late 1800s, when Finland- Swedish national consciousness was first raised (Zilliacus, 2000, p.5). This invention of “Finland- Swedishness” was above all a political project and involved imagining a community out of disparate groups and classes of Swed- ish speakers, rural and urban, in different parts of Finland, from Ostrobothnia in the northwest to Viborg near the Russian border – these were people who, until then, had had rather little to do with each other (Ekman 2011, 25). Some of the key questions still discussed today with regard to the language of Finland- Swedish literature are: How far can Finland- Swedish diverge from standard Swedish? How much of regional traits, of slang, of Finnish, can be present if Finland- Swedish literature is still to be comprehensible to Swedes, or able to somehow represent a Finland- Swedish community? Another cru- cial question, especially since the early twentieth century, has been: How is Finland- Swedish literature to depict life in Finland, when this everyday life is lived, to a large extent, not in Swedish, but in Finnish? Being unable to depict everyday life and dialogue in Swedish in Finland realistically, authors have Kaisa Kurikka, Hanna Lahdenperä, Kristina Malmio, and Julia Tidigs - 9789004402935 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:02:51AM via free access Longing and Belonging 85 invented a new form of fiction: they have constructed a space for use of the Swedish language, which exists only in fictional reality. In contemporary literature, new strategies concerning language are being put to use. Contemporary Finland- Swedish authors have encountered the dimensions and forces of in-betweenness by expressing different aspects of belonging and longing. On the one hand, they express a yearning to belong to a larger Swedish- speaking community and a longing for a world within which their mother tongue is not neglected or threatened. On the other hand, the in- betweenness is highlighted by the fact that these authors do not belong to the community of authors in Sweden and they use a slightly different variety of Swedish, more or less marked by the nearness of Finnish. In- betweenness can also be seen within so- called Finland- Swedishness itself, since it is, in fact, a category of belonging that is constantly being performed and re-negotiated in new ways – Finland- Swedish language is by no means a homogeneous entity, since it differs both regionally and socially. The force-field of in-betweenness exists in other ways as well. Eric Prieto (2012) has argued that the concept of entre- deux (in- between) is particular- ly important in the current postmodern, postcolonial and globalizing world. According to Prieto (2012, p.1), “[t] he term entre- deux designates the many different kinds of sites that fall between the established categories that shape our expectations of what a place should be and that often tend, therefore, to be misunderstood, maligned, or simply ignored.” What will this dominant mode of late modern belonging in a world of the in-between mean, then, for a minority literature, which seems by definition to belong somewhere in-between? Does it mean double in-betweenness? Or a new form of belonging? Or something else, a utopian/ dystopian form of belonging, maybe? The affects of longing and belonging pose specific questions when one tries to map the spatialities of a linguistic minority literature, whether in terms of language- spaces, spatial depictions or relations to literary traditions. These are the three force- fields we wish to discuss in this essay. We will concentrate on the spatial dimensions surrounding the affects of belonging and longing – it seems that recent Finland- Swedish prose fiction problematizes not only the thematic of place but also the ways in which spaces are depicted in fiction. Per- haps this “spatial turn” of Finland- Swedish writing is triggered by the minority status of the literature, or it stems from the affect of longing to belong, since the problematics concerning minority literatures and the affects of belonging and longing are also territorial problems, intertwining actual, material, as well as metaphorized territories. In our essay, the in- betweenness of Finland- Swedish literature appears as a heterogeneous territory of a heterotopian quality: it is filled with multiple variations of literary expressions. Constantly Kaisa Kurikka, Hanna Lahdenperä, Kristina Malmio, and Julia Tidigs - 9789004402935 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:02:51AM via free access 86 Kurikka et al. changing and allowing various tensions, frictions and dynamics to emerge, the in- betweenness of Finland- Swedish literature seems not to be a space to escape from but an ongoing process of negotiation between different affects. In what follows, we take up issues concerning language(s) and depiction of characters, especially female characters, in Finland- Swedish novels of the in- between. First, however, we relate a contemporary Finland- Swedish novel to a previous tradition of prose writing to highlight the encounters between the traditional forms of prose and the attempts undertaken to strive towards something new. Narrow Rooms During the past decades one of the most persistent metaphors epitomising prose literature written in Swedish in Finland has been the expression “the narrow room”. This metaphor derives from Merete Mazzarella’s influential study with the same title, Det trånga rummet, published in 1989. According to Mazzarella, the settings of the traditional Finland- Swedish novel are based on middle- class values, and the novels are detached from the rest of society and the world by their tendency to describe a Swedish- speaking reality as something isolated.

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