Finland's language strife
From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.
The language strife was one of the major conflicts of Finland's national history and domestic politics. (The other revolving around the relations to Tsarist Russia, to Socialism, and to the Finnic peoples under Russian jurisdiction.)
Between the 12th century and the 14th century Finland became gradually incorporated into Sweden - what was at the time also known as Sweden-Finland - not through wars between the Swedes and the Finns, but rather a slow process where the skirmishes and battles were conducted between the Finns in the West and the Finns in the East (of area known in Latin as Fennoscandia).
Swedish became the dominant language in administration, gradually also education, although still in the 14th century Latin and French were most often the languages of higher education for the Finnish students studying abroad. Some of the earliest notations of Finnish university students are from 1313, when the Finnish students of the University of Paris signed a petition to the Holy See. By 1420, their numbers in the famous Sorbonne in Paris rivaled those of the largest German bishoprics, and were seven times that of the leading Swedish Bishopric of Uppsala. In 1435, Olavus Magni from Turku, Finland, became the rector of the school.
Fire has destroyed most of the early literature the Finnish church and monasteries must have produced. The first known Finnish author was Jöns Budde, a Franciscan monk who lived in the Brigittene monastery of Naantali, Finland, in the latter part of 15th century, chiefly translating from Latin to Swedish, and becoming the first known author to translate the Bible into the Swedish language. At least parts of the Bible were also translated into Finnish already in the 15th century.
Martin Luther's first Finnish student, Petrus Särkilahti, was one of the early pioneers of teaching science in Finnish language. In 1538, the first known books in Finnish are published by his student, Mikael Agricola.
Finnish recovered its predominance after a 19th-century resurgence of Fennomanic Finnish nationalism (also working to assure Russia of the Grand Duchy's loyalty).
The publication in 1835 of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, comprising of selected and ancient Finnish songs and poems, collected and published by Elias Lönnrot (Elias Loennrot), first stirred the nationalism that later came to lead to Finland's independence from Russia.
The Finnish national awakening in the mid-19th century was mainly the result of members of the Swedish-speaking upper classes deliberately choosing to promote Finnish culture and language. And they didn't just promote the language. Whereas during the centuries before often Finns had changed their names into Latin or Swedish ones, now many Swedish speaking Finns finnicized their family names, learned the Finnish language, and made a point of using it both in the society and at home, giving their children what they lacked themselves: the Finnish mother tongue. However, another faction of the Swedish-speaking elite did not wish to abandon Swedish, as they felt it was a guarantee that Finland would remain within the cultural sphere of Western Europe.
In 1892 Finnish became an official language and gained a status comparable to that of Swedish, and within a generation Finnish clearly dominated in government and society. Inevitably, this situation made for conflict between the supporters of the two languages. In the beginning, the conflict only involved the upper social strata, but the population at large was drawn into it after universal suffrage was implemented in 1906.
The last surge of Finnization frenzy came in the 1920s. After Finland's independence followed strained relations with Sweden in connection with the Finnish Civil War and the Åland crisis, and the attitudes to the language issue sharpened to become a prominent feature of domestic politics during the 1920s and 1930s. This time the surname Finnization was chiefly a middle class phenomenon.
In independent Finland's constitution, the minority language (Swedish) was given far-reaching privileges. The language strife was thereafter centered on these privileges and the role of Swedish in universities, particularly regarding the number of professors lecturing and examining in Swedish. Then, at the resettlement of over 420,000 Karelians after the Winter War, the Swedish-speaking minority feared that new Finnish-speaking settlers would change the linguistic balance of their neighbourhoods. These issues were ultimately settled by the fennoman Prime Minister and later President of Finland Juho Kusti Paasikivi in a way that was too generous to attract criticism from Finland-Swedes.
