HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Finland's language strife (; ) was a major conflict in mid-19th century
Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
. Both the Swedish and Finnish languages were commonly used in Finland at the time, associated with descendants of Swedish colonisation and leading to class tensions among the speakers of the different languages. It became acute in the mid-19th century.


Background

Finland had once been under Swedish rule. Swedish (with some
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
) was the language of administration and education in the Swedish Realm. Swedish was therefore the most-used language of administration and higher education among the Finns. To gain higher education, one had to learn Swedish, and Finnish was considered by the upper classes to be a "language of peasants". Immigration of Swedish peasants to Finland's coastal regions also boosted the status of Swedish by sheer number of speakers. Although Mikael Agricola had started written Finnish with '' Abckiria'' in the 1500s, and a Finnish translation of the
Civil Code of 1734 The Civil Code of 1734 ( Swedish: ''1734 års lag''), was a code of law passed by the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates in 1734, and put in effect after it had been ratified by Frederick I of Sweden 23 January 1736. It became the foundation of the lat ...
was published in 1759 (''Ruotzin waldacunnan laki''), it had no official status as a legal publication since the official language of administration was Swedish. The rise to the ruling upper class usually required being Swedish-speaking, and therefore the language of some Finnish-speaking families changed completely to Swedish. In the Middle Ages, the majority in the Uusimaa region became Swedish-speaking. Only in the early decades of the 20th century did the Finnish language return to the majority language of
Uusimaa Uusimaa (; , ; both lit. 'new land') is a region of Finland. It borders the regions of Southwest Finland, Tavastia Proper (Kanta-Häme), Päijänne Tavastia (Päijät-Häme), and Kymenlaakso. Finland's capital and largest city, Helsinki, alo ...
. As a result of the
Finnish War The Finnish War (; ; ) was fought between the Gustavian era, Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire from 21 February 1808 to 17 September 1809 as part of the Napoleonic Wars. As a result of the war, the eastern third of Sweden was established a ...
, Sweden ceded Finland to
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
in 1809. Finland became the autonomous
Grand Duchy of Finland The Grand Duchy of Finland was the predecessor state of modern Finland. It existed from 1809 to 1917 as an Autonomous region, autonomous state within the Russian Empire. Originating in the 16th century as a titular grand duchy held by the Monarc ...
within the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
. Under Russian rule, the laws of the era when Finland was under Swedish rule remained largely unchanged, and Swedish continued to be used in administration. The language strife became more acute in the second half of the 19th century.
Johan Vilhelm Snellman Johan Vilhelm Snellman (; 12 May 1806 – 4 July 1881) was an influential Fennoman philosopher and Finnish statesman, ennobled in 1866. He was one of the most important 'awakeners' or promoters of Finnish nationalism, alongside Elias Lönnr ...
, a Swede who wished to increase education in Finland, became a chief initiator of conflict in the 1850s due to his concern about the changing language use among the educated classes, many of whom were using Russian or Finnish. He wrote to Finnish author Zachris Topelius in 1860: "My view is this: Whether Russian or Finnish will win, only God knows. I dare not hope for anything. But that Swedish will lose - that I do know." Elias Lönnrot compiled the first Finnish-Swedish dictionary (''Finsk-Svenskt lexikon''), completing it in 1880.


Nationalism and the question of language

The rise of Fennomanic Finnish
nationalism Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Theory, I ...
in the 19th century eventually led to the revived predominance of Finnish use in the country. A significant contribution to the Finnish national awakening from the mid-19th century onward came from the members of the mostly Swedish-speaking upper classes deliberately choosing to promote Finnish culture and language. Snellman was himself an ethnic Swede and was later ennobled. These Finnish Swedes, known as the Fennomans, Fennicized their family names, learned Finnish, and made a point of using Finnish both in public and at home. However, another group of the Swedish-speaking population, the Svecomans, did not wish to abandon Swedish and opposed the Fennoman ideology and Fennoman-inspired reforms. In 1863 Alexander II (AsK 26/1863) ruled that Finnish had an
official language An official language is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as, "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." Depending on the decree, establishmen ...
status comparable to that of Swedish; it could thereafter be used in an official capacity in legal and state office matters. Within a generation, the Finnish language use gained predominance in the government and the society of Finland. During the
Russification of Finland The policy of Russification of Finland (; ; ) was a governmental policy of the Russian Empire aimed at limiting the special status of the Grand Duchy of Finland and possibly the termination of its political autonomy and cultural uniqueness in 18 ...
, Tsar Nicholas II attempted to change the official language to Russian (''Language Manifesto of 1900''), but Russification was halted by the general strike of 1905.


After independence

After Finland gained independence in 1917, its relations with Sweden unexpectedly became strained in connection with the
Finnish Civil War The Finnish Civil War was a civil war in Finland in 1918 fought for the leadership and control of the country between Whites (Finland), White Finland and the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (Red Finland) during the country's transition fr ...
and the
Åland crisis Åland ( , ; ) is an Federacy, autonomous and Demilitarized zone, demilitarised region of Finland. Receiving its autonomy by a 1920 decision of the League of Nations, it is the smallest region of Finland by both area () and population (30,54 ...
. These events aggravated the language dispute, and the controversy over Swedish and Finnish became a prominent feature of domestic politics during the 1920s and 1930s. In the newly independent Finnish constitution of 1919, Finnish and Swedish were given equal status as national languages. The language strife thereafter centered on this and on the role of Swedish in universities, particularly regarding the number of professors who spoke and wrote in Swedish in their teaching. In the
interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...
, the
University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...
was the scene of conflict between those who wanted to advance the use of Finnish and those who wished to maintain the use of Swedish. Geographer
Väinö Tanner Väinö Alfred Tanner (; 12 March 1881 – 19 April 1966; surname until 1895 ''Thomasson'') was a leading figure in the Social Democratic Party of Finland, and a pioneer and leader of the cooperative movement in Finland. He was Prime Minist ...
was one of the most vocal defenders of Swedish. A campaign initiated by the
Swedish People's Party of Finland The Swedish People's Party of Finland (SPP; , SFP; , RKP) is a Finnish political party founded in 1906. Its primary aim is to represent the interests of the minority Swedish-speaking population of Finland. The party is currently a participant i ...
collected 153,914 signatures in defense of Swedish in a petition that was presented to the parliament and government in October 1934. The conflict at the university generated an international reaction when academics from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland sent letters to the diplomatic representatives of Finland in their respective countries warning that diminishing the role of Swedish at the university would result in a weakening of Nordic unity. The government issued a language decree on 1 January 1923 making Finnish and Swedish equal in status. During the resettlement of more than 420,000
Karelia Karelia (; Karelian language, Karelian and ; , historically Коре́ла, ''Korela'' []; ) is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Russia (including the Soviet Union, Soviet era), Finland, and Sweden. It is currentl ...
n refugees after the Winter War against the Soviet Union (1939–1940), the Swedish-speaking minority feared that the new Finnish-speaking settlers would change the linguistic balance of their neighborhoods. Since the late 20th century, there has been discussion of whether the policy of
mandatory Swedish Swedish language, Swedish is a mandatory school subject in Finland for Finnish language, Finnish-speaking pupils in the last four years of Education in Finland, primary education (grades from 6 to 9), although only about 5% from citizens of Finl ...
classes in schools should continue.


See also

*
Language revival Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community group ...
*
Language policy Language policy is both an interdisciplinary academic field and implementation of ideas about language use. Some scholars such as Joshua Fishman and Ofelia García consider it as part of sociolinguistics. On the other hand, other scholars such as ...


References


Further reading

* * Hult, F.M., & Pietikäinen, S. (2014). "Shaping discourses of multilingualism through a language ideological debate: The case of Swedish in Finland", ''Journal of Language and Politics'', 13, 1-20. {{Finland topics Linguistic rights Finland Swedish Language strife Finnish nationalism Finnish language Linguistic controversies Language policy in Finland