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The home pages for the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.nordic

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Subject:      Re: Sweden's occupation of Aland (was: Jorn Donner)
From:         Jan Böhme
Date:         1997/09/16
Message-Id:   <5vm3cp$li3$1@news.datakom.su.se>
Newsgroups:   soc.culture.nordic


Jari Partanen wrote:

>Jan Böhme wrote:
>> The book by Meinander, summarised earlier in the thread, makes
>> assumptions about Swedish aspirations that are not borne out in
>> contemporay source material. There are no signs in the sources that
>> Sweden really aspired to take over Åland. BTW, had she wanted to do
>> so, it would have been relatively easy.

>Are you saying, that the case was taken to the League of Nations,
>even though Sweden would have refused to take Åland?

Sweden would have taken over Åland if ajudicated by the League of Nations, yes. But she was not prepared to do anything that seriously disturbed the Finns to do so. I talked to the man who was undersecretary (statssekreterare) at the Swedish Ministry of Defence at the time of the Åland crisis a couple of times about this. His account was that the Swedes were rather disappointed with what they perceived as aggressive Finnish sabre-rattling over the issue, but that there was consensus that Sweden should _not_ back up the ante by making any specific claims, military threats or committments. He wiewed Sweden essentially as looking after the interest of the Ålanders, with no stratergic aspriation whatsoever. His view of the _Finnish_ position vis-à-vis the League of Nations was that Finland had made it implicitly clear that Finland would under no circumstances accept handing over Åland to Sweden, and was prepared to contest such a desicion by military force, if necessary.

Please note, that by the time of the settlement in the League of Nations, the Swedish troops, which were on Åland only for a very short time, were _long_ gone from the islands.

I also have spoken to the British delegate to the League of Nations at the time. A quote from him: "The very sensible attitude by the Swedes made the settlement question a lot easier" (when challenged why the League of Nations could bypass such a huge majority of the population being in favour of Swedish sovereignity, when the voice of the majority of the population had decided, at least of sorts, in all other post-WWI League of Nations settlements, such as North Slesvig, Klagenfurt, Ödenburg/Sopron, etc.)

The consensus from my interviews with these two key figures (albeit made more than fifty years after the fact) seems to be that Finland was _a lot_ more keen on keeping Åland than Sweden ever was on getting it. Sweden's accepting Finnish sovereignty over Åland with far-reaching guarantees for the linguistical and residential autonomy of the Ålanders tend to corroborate the Swedish wiew, that Sweden saw herself essentially as "protector power" for the interest of the Ålanders, and not had territorial aspirations per se.

Because there was nothing for Sweden in the settlement. The Finns got sovereignity over Åland, the Ålanders got far-reaching guarantees for the maintenace of its linguistic integrity. The Swedes got nothing.

Had they really wanted something for themselves, I daresay the settlement _would_ have included a litle piece of candy for them, too.

However, it didn't.

Jan Böhme

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