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

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Subject:      Finnish "niggers" and Swedish "massas"
From:         Antti Lahelma
Date:         Sun, 10 May 1998
Message-Id:   <6j41b1$ita$1@oravannahka.Helsinki.FI>


Timo Paakkunainen wrote:

> Swedes were the rulers, the higher class, and Finns were the
> lower class, the poor, they were good as taxpayers (and what they
> got back for that - a glory to fight for the Swedish king in the
> wars). Swedes even state arguments that their status was based on
> God's will and won't be changed (which actually wasn't surprising in
> those days). It is obvious that language has no good chances to
> survive in those circumstances as a minority language in Sweden.
> But Swedish as a minority language in Finland had totally different
> status. Swedish was the language of administration, justice,
> schools, etc. If a Finn made or wanted to make any progress in his
> "career" in the society, he had to change his language to Swedish
> and "become a Swede". Swedes had no stress or need to change their
> language in Finland, but Finns had it in both Finland and Sweden.

This I would like to dub the "nigger theory" of Finnish history. The "nigger theory" states roughly that Finns were but "niggers" working on the cotton fields of Swedish "massas", singin' the blues till eventually one day in the 19th century they broke from the Swedish yoke and a new day dawned.

Many of the facts behind this theory are correct: after it had replaced German and Latin, Swedish was indeed by and large the language of administration, high culture, education, even justice (the law of 1734 was translated into Finnish but the translation didn't have official power). It is true that those who spoke Finnish were mostly lower or middle class, while the upper class was mostly Swedish- and German-speaking. If a Finn wanted to advance in social status, he did have to learn the Swedish language and culture.

HOWEVER, the interpretation of these facts is false; a nationalistic "underdog" myth born in the early 20th century language-struggles.

For purposes of cross-cultural communication, every age has had its universal language. Now it's English. The middle ages had Latin and (in the Baltic area) German, the Hellenistic era had Greek, the 18th and 19th centuries had French. During each of these periods, a pre-requisite for advancing in social status has been learning the universal language and the culture associated with it; not because of a forced servitude but because of practical reasons and/or voluntarily accepting one culture's superiority compared to your own (the Romans called Greeks their victors, despite having militarily subdued Greece, and used Greek to write some of the best pieces of Roman literature).

Examples are obvious even today, despite the strong feelings people nowadays have for their native language (which would have seemed strange 300 years ago). If you want to become an international celebrity, you must speak English and perhaps even adopt an "anglified" name: Garbo, McCoy, Harlin, Brava, etc. A pop group that wants to become famous must sing in English. A scientist who wants international fame must publish in English. Even we here in s.c.n have voluntarily given up our native tongues to communicate in English - for purely practical reasons.

Between the middle ages and 18th century lies a period of several small empires, each with its own would-be "universal" language. One such empire was the Swedish, inside the borders of which lived Swedes, Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Germans and Danes. Because the power center of this empire (not a nation-state!) was in Stockholm, the "universal" language of the empire became that variety of Swedish spoken in Stockholm. The non-Swedish-speaking inhabitants of the empire adapted to this just as they had adapted to the use of Latin in the middle ages. Not because blood-thirsty Swedish slave-lords forced them to (although in Scania they may have; but that's an entirely different story), but because in order to function well, an empire had to have only one universal language, just as there had to be only one king, not several. It was part of the ideology of empires and Finns accepted it without a quarrel.

The Finns who adopted the Swedish language most often retained a Finnish identity - they weren't ashamed of their Finnish roots. In fact, some (such as the fennophiles of Turku Academy) were extremely proud of them, but expressed their pride in the Swedish or Latin language. Language just wasn't such a big deal as you might think today.

A final tip that should clue you off is that when Russia conquered Finland in 1809 and a movement emerged to make Finnish a language of culture and administration in Finland, the leaders of this movement were pure upper-class Swedish-speakers. The same "Swedish lords" you accuse of sucking Finnish blood. Some of them, like Snellman, even wanted that the educated upper classes should actively get rid of their mother tongue (Swedish) in favor of the Finnish language because in order to be strong, a nation should have only one language, not several.

LVX,
Antti

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