Saami Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Originally this low-budget book was written to form part of a series of studies (Skrifter) from the Department of Finnish at the University of Copenhagen, aiming at strengthening the position of Finnish studies. It was complemented a few years later by an anthology of linguistic articles on Finnish and the Finno-Ugric languages, John Lind & Olli Nuutinen (eds.), Det finske sprogs rødder: artikler om finsk og den finsk-ugriske sprogfamilie (Finsk Afdelings skrifter 4, 1992)

This upload is prompted by the misguided decision a month ago (April 2016) by the Danish government to force the University to abolish a number of smaller language studies at the University, including Finnish. The rationale of the authorities being, it seems, that it suffices for Danes to understand and express themselves in English, even though our faith in our ability in this field is wildly exaggerated as demonstrated by the poor performance by our present prime minister at the COP 15 in Copenhagen 2009: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/politik/video-uheldige-loekke-se-sagerne-gennem-aarene.

Basically the book is about the cultural and political history of the Finnish language in a broad sense with a natural emphasis on the ‘Language Strife’ (Kieliriita) from the mid-19th century up to the present day. This strife divided the politically active, culturally conscious and mainly Swedish speaking upper class in Finland, when a substantial number of this upper class, known as Fennomans, decided to abandon their Swedish mother tongue and adopt the language of the mainly Finnish speaking peasantry. This was a deliberate attempt to create a new uniform ‘nationality’ based on the Finnish language, which, it was thought, would serve to strengthen resistance against Russian influence after Finland in 1809 had been ceded by Sweden to Russia. Those who refused to abandon their Swedish mother tongue became known as Svecomans. From then on the language strife has been a dominant feature of Finnish history and culture, even though, for a short period towards the end of the 19th century, the strife abated when a section of the Fennomans (known as Young Finns) joint forces with the Svecomans in resisting forced russification. In this manner the Language Strife has had a major impact on the formation of modern Finland.

The ‘venska’ and ‘vinska’ of the title reflects these linguistic facts, 1) that the first of two initial consonants in Finnish rendition of foreign words is dropped, hence ‘svenska’ > ‘venska’; 2) the sound ‘f’ does not form part of Finnish phonology, hence ‘finska’>’vinska’. That was how these two words could still be pronounced in the Finnish speaking countryside at the beginning of the 20th century.

As a historian/slavicist the topic was strictly speaking outside my academic field. Against such a background it may not surprise that the Scandinavist W. Glyn Jones gave the book a short but devastatingly negative review in The Slavonic and East European Review (1990, p 531-32). After correctly stating that “this book traces the development of Finnish, as the subtitle suggests, from the language of the common people to the official language and the vehicle of culture”, Jones went on to claim, “The foreword couples this admirable intent with an attempt to counter Danish misinterpretations of the difficulties encountered by Finns in discussions with Nordic colleagues. According to the author, these are often thought to result from one of the following: ‘(1) a conscious protest against using the Swedish language; (2) Finnish schools being inferior to Danish schools; or (3) Finns being either stupid or simple.’ This seems to be a curious basis on which to write a scholarly study”. To me, however, the itemising, construed as a quote from the book, looks like a typical strawman fallacy, because nowhere in the book are there any references to Danish schools or school system nor is there any insinuation anywhere on my part that Finns should be “either stupid or simple”, if anything, quite the contrary.

For a book of this nature, written in one of the smaller languages about another of the smaller languages, it was surprisingly widely reviewed. Thus Jones’ American Scandinavist colleague James E. Cathey gave a very different evaluation of the book in Scandinavian Studies (63 № 3 pp. 404–6, 1991/ http://www.jstor.org/stable/40919323). The book “seeks to remedy that lack [interest in and knowledge of Finnish and Finland] with this thorough and very readable external history of Finnish. By “external history” I mean that we are here presented with a cultural and political account of the long struggle for emergence and consolidation of Finnish as a modern language and of its gradual predominance over Swedish in Finland. … The book presents largely the same story as that found in such books as Matti Klinge's Runebergs två fosterland (1983), William A. Wilson's Folklore and Nationalism in Modern Finland (1976) or, for the later period, Pekka Kalevi Hämäläinen's In Time of Storm: Revolution, Civil War, and the Ethnolinguistic Issue in Finland (1979). Lind's book does more than any one of these, however, and gives a very thorough and readable history (in Danish) of the long, sometimes bitter, but ultimately healing struggle for supremacy between Swedish and Finnish and for Finland”.

Soon after its publication the Norwegian linguist Trond Trosterud with expert knowledge of both Scandinavian and Finno-Ugric languages in the region gave a detailed review on the internet (http://www.hum.uit.no/a/trond/vinska.html): ‘God bok om finsk ytre språkhistorie’ (Good book about the external history of Finnish). While deploring from a linguistic point of view that only ten out of 250 pages are devoted to the development of the Finnish language. Trosterud observes that the book displays a strong tendency towards interpreting data, asking whys and applying broader perspectives, … drawing personal conclusions. Also Trosterud stresses that my unconventional background and distance – also geographical – to the problem allows for a more balanced approach and to see the problem in a wider Scandinavian perspective. Thus Trosterud, with reference to my quote from a little known text (1855) by the prominent Norwegian historian Peter Andreas Munch (1810-63), who doubted that Finns were fit to adopt a higher culture like the Indo-European, sees that as a sad forewarning of the handling fifty years later of the Finnish minority population in northern Norway by Norwegian authorities.

It was, of course, most interesting to see if and how the book was received in Finland. Here Henrik Stenius, historian and specialist in popular movements, in Historisk Tidskrift för Finland (‘Finskhetsrörelsens historia fortfarande oskriven’ 1992: 77(2), 283-295) considered the book in a review article together with a large anthology on the history of the Fennoman Movement that appeared the same year (Herää Suomi. Suomalaisuusliikkeen historia – Wake up Finland. The History of the Fennoman Movement [Herää Suomi, being a catchphrase of the mid-19th century]). Here Stenius devoted the last couple of pages to Mellem "venska" og "vinska", which, although its topic was explicitly the position of Finnish language in its entire history, according to Stenius, nevertheless offered the more multifaceted picture of the Fennoman Movement (har den mångsidigare och intressantare bilden av finskhetsrörelsen); Stenius also found that the book presented interesting points, based fx on an ability to penetrate the minds of the Finnish militaries of the young republic and the situation of the students in the independent Finland (I rask fart tar han upp den ena frågan efter den andra, beledsagade med intressanta poänger, som ofta bygger på inlevelseförmåga … i de finska militärernas psyke i den unga republiken, i studenternas situation i det självständiga Finland ...).

The first and largest review to appear was, however, also the most surprising. On February 1 1990, Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s main newspaper and by far largest newspaper in Scandinavia, both with regard to size and circulation, presented the publication of the book as a major event. Its appearance was signalled already on the front page of the News Section (Tanskalaistutkija arvioi uudestaan Suomen kieliriitoja), while in the Culture Section the linguist and expert on Finnish dialects Erkki Lyytikäinen on half a page over all six columns discussed the book under the title ‘The Language strife from hubris to reconciliation. A Danish scholar paints an uglier picture of the Fennoman movement compared to the Finnish view (Kieliriita uhosta sovintoon. Tanskalaistutkijan kuva fennomaniasta on rumempi kuin suomalaisten käsitys). Here Lyytikäinen critically discussed several points I made, but nevertheless found that the book despite differences in opinion was both ‘interesting, exiting, deserving all attention (… teos on mielenkiintoinen, jännittävä, kaiken huomion ansaitseva).

Since this upload was prompted by the decision to remove Finnish studies from the academic curriculum of Danish universities, it is worth quoting Lyytikäinen’s final paragraph. With reference to my acknowledgements in the preface, where I expressed my gratitude to the teachers of Finnish at the University, Olli Nuutinen and Tarja Soutkari, Lyytikäinen maintains, ‘both works as lectures in Finnish in Danish universities. The importance for Finnish culture of their work … is impossible to overestimate’ (… Heidän … työn merkitystä Suomen kulttuurille on mahdoton yliarvioida). This has now come to an end! A dire consequence of the removal of Finnish and a number of other language studies from the curricula of Danish universities may well be that Danish studies of linguistics on a sufficient scholarly level will die out. Certainly it will be impossible for a book like this to be written at a Danish university in the future.