THE FINNISH LITERATURE SOCIETY (SKS) was founded in 1831 and has, from the very beginning, engaged in publishing operations. It nowadays publishes literature in the fields of ethnology and folkloristics, linguistics, literary research and cultural history.

The first volume of the Studia Fennica series appeared in 1933. Since 1992, the series has been divided into three thematic subseries: Ethnologica, Folkloristica and Linguistica. Two additional subseries were formed in 2002, Historica and Litteraria. The subseries Anthropologica was formed in 2007.

In addition to its publishing activities, the Finnish Literature Society maintains research activities and infrastructures, an archive containing folklore and literary collections, a research library and promotes Finnish literature abroad.

STUDIA FENNICA EDITORIAL BOARD

Markku Haakana, professor, University of Helsinki, Finland

Timo Kaartinen, professor, University of Helsinki, Finland

Kimmo Rentola, professor, University of Turku, Finland

Riikka Rossi, docent, University of Helsinki, Finland

Hanna Snellman, professor, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Lotte Tarkka, professor, University of Helsinki, Finland

Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen, Secretary General, Dr. Phil., Finnish Literature Society, Finland

Pauliina Rihto, secretary of the board, M. A., Finnish Literary Society, Finland

EDITORIAL OFFICE

SKS

P.O. Box 259

FI-00171 Helsinki

www.finlit.fi

LOTTA WECKSTRÖM

Representations of Finnishness in Sweden

Finnish Literature Society • SKS • Helsinki

Studia Fennica Linguistica 16

The publication has undergone a peer review.

The open access publication of this volume has received part funding via a Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation grant.

© 2016 Lotta Weckström and SKS

License CC-BY-NC-ND

A digital edition of a printed book first published in 2011 by the Finnish Literature Society.

Cover Design: Timo Numminen

EPUB Conversion: Tero Salmén

ISBN 978-952-222-326-5 (Print)

ISBN 978-952-222-408-8 (PDF)

ISBN 978-952-222-759-1 (EPUB)

ISSN 0085-6835 (Studia Fennica)

ISSN 1235-1946 (Studia Fennica Linguistica)

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21435/sflin.16

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license.

To view a copy of the license, please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

A free open access version of the book is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21435/sflin.16 or by scanning this QR code with your mobile device.

Contents

Foreword

Prologue

I Introduction

II Changing Faces of Migration

Why Definitions?

Finns Abroad

European Post-War Migration

Research Review

Previous Studies about Finns in Sweden

Research concerning Second Generations of Immigrant Finns

III Research Process

Cornerstones of Ethnography

Methods and Considerations

Discourse Analysis

Fieldwork

Fieldwork Periods and Participants

How to Conduct a Good Interview?

About Ethics in Ethnography

About Entering and Leaving the Field(s)

Interviews: Places, Questions and Methods

Transcription of Vernacular and Dialects, Imitations and Accents

Research Steps

Starting the Search Engine

Learning to Use the Tool, Detours on the Way

Locating Landmarks, Finding Paths, and Orientation

Zooming Down, Dwelling in: 2004, 2005, 2006

IV Language and Communities in the Construction of Finnishness

Growing up in a Family Speaking a Minority Language

Going to School

Sport Communities

Extraordinary Feelings

Humour and Joking

Functional and Emotional Values of Language(s)

Finnish in the Family

The Problem of ‘I love you’

Is Language Essential for an Ethnic Identity?

Dual Identities Linked to Languages?

Responsibility to Maintain a Language

‘To Get a Language for Free’

V Being Different

Sounding Different

Looking Different

Ethnicity and Ethnic Identity

Who is an Immigrant?

Second Generation of Immigrants?

Sweden’s Finns?

Being Different

VI What is Finnishness?

A Place Called Finland

Visits Beyond Family Holidays

Roots

Finnishness as Bravery

Social Awkwardness?

Are We Talking about Finnishness?

VII The End

Kaleidoscopic Identities

Changing Contents

Finnishness as Language

Finnishness as Difference

Feeling and Being

Reliability, Responsibilities and Research Practices

My Contribution

Bibliography

Transcription key

,

pause, less than a second, not necessarily between clauses

.

pause more than a second, not necessarily the end of a sentence

…

significantly longer pause

word

emphasis

!

louder than the surrounding

?

question, rising pitch

//

overlapping speech

[word]

minimal response

word

code switching (Arial)

[…]

words missing

(explanation)

explanation of the situation

Foreword

The research process and the writing of this book took place between 2001–2011, and during these years I have had the great pleasure to work with fantastic people both in Europe and in the United States. I especially want to thank my mentor and friend, Professor of History and Ethnology Hanna Snellman at Jyväskylä University, for her can-do approach to life, academic and beyond; and my thesis supervisor, Senior Researcher Sari Pöyhönen, at the Centre for Applied Language Study at Jyväskylä University for encouraging and inspiring conversations. Furthermore, I thank everyone at the Department of Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley where I worked on this book as a visiting scholar.

Interviews with young people with Finnish background in Sweden form the core of this book. I am in deeply grateful to everyone in Sweden who participated as an interviewee and provided me with such wonderful data. I hope to have captured some glimpses of your realities and your thoughts in this book. My heartfelt thanks to my host family in Köping, and to everyone else who took me in during the fieldwork periods over the years. Thank you for your hospitality, friendliness and great conversations.

Several foundations have supported this research over the years. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) financed the first year of my research and the Nordeuropa Institut at Humboldt Universität in Berlin hosted me; Helsingin Sanomain 100-vuotissäätiö enabled my postgraduate studies in Amsterdam; Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth’s Foundation participated by financing one year of the research; the Finnish Migration Institute has backed me up at several occasions by providing office space and practical help, as well as financing the first fieldwork period. The Finnish-Swedish Cultural Foundation co-funded the fieldwork periods in 2004, 2005, and 2006. The Department of Rhetoric and Study of Argumentation at the University of Amsterdam hosted me as a visiting scholar, and trusted me with teaching; for these opportunities I especially thank Professor Frans van Eemeren. Jyväskylä University employed me during 2006 and 2007 to finish my dissertation. I am grateful to each and every source for the opportunity to explore the world of scholarly work. Every department with its group of researchers and other staff, starting in Berlin and ending in Berkeley, have given me a warm welcome and made me feel at home, and I salute you all.

Warm thanks to Sonia Wichmann for proofreading the manuscript and providing careful comments, and to Erika Weckström for her irreplaceable help in the home stretch. I thank Markku Haakana at Helsinki University for insightful editorial revisions. Whatever errors remain, are, of course, my own. Many thanks to publishing secretary Pauliina Rihto at the Finnish Literature Society, for the dexterity and care with which she handled the publication process.

I’m grateful to my parents, Eira and Anders, for living out their belief in the importance of loving and nurturing your languages, in whatever combinations they might come. And, finally, I thank my wonderful family, Gilad, Thea and Dean, for filling my life with (multilingual) joy and love. You are my home in the world.

I dedicate this study to its participants.

In Albany, California

October 2011

Lotta Weckström

Prologue

Lotta: No käyksä esimerkiks niin kun saunassa joskus?

Lotta: Do you for example like go to the sauna sometimes?

Mika: …no tota… mulla on jääny toi hygienia puoli viime aikoina vähän tota vähemmälle…suihkussa joskus…

Mika: …well eer…I have lately kind of skipped the hygiene part…I shower sometimes…

Lotta: …aijaa

Lotta: …I see

Mika: …joo, suihkussa käyn… joskus, saunassa ei, ei

Mika: …yeah, sometimes I shower… but sauna, no, no

Lotta: …okei

Lotta: …okay

Toukokuu 2002

May 2002

What is this interview segment about? The reader might draw the conclusion that the interviewer has set out to find out about peoples’ hygiene preferences or amounts of water they consume on a regular basis. Yet, the interviewee’s answers hint that the topic might be something else. In reality, the example originates from one of my first interview attempts in Sweden where I conducted data for my dissertation about Finnishness in Sweden as experienced by young adults with Finnish background.

This example, in all its awkwardness, opens paths to several key questions of this book: how do people approach concepts such as ethnicity or migration and how do they talk about these topics in the context of an interview? Is there such a thing as Finnish identity in Sweden and what does it consist of? Who are Sweden’s Finns, and what kinds of people belong to such a group? Yet another topic that the example above hints at revolves around ethnographic fieldwork, doing research as an outsider and the process of interviewing; for example, how can one ask about identity and its impacts in someone’s life in a meaningful way? What language is one to choose in a bilingual/multilingual setting? And finally, when it is time to write about the research, how should the voices of the participants be made heard and their opinions – especially when they differ from popular beliefs and norms – be discussed? How should one present interviews in written form?

1. Introduction

This book, which is based on my dissertation, is an ethnographic interview study and an exploration of discursive creations of Finnishness by second generation Finns in Sweden. It has been my intention to create transparency concerning the research process, the analytic choices that have been made, and their underlying assumptions.

The term Sweden’s Finns refers to persons who live in Sweden and have some Finnish background. In this book, the research participants, i.e. those who participated in the study as interviewees, have at least one Finnish parent and have grown up in Sweden, which makes them per definition second generation Finns. Moreover, all parents were, at least potentially, Finnish speakers. According to the Swedish Central Office of Statistics, Sweden has about 9.3 million inhabitants. Of the approximately 12 % (1.1 million) who are immigrants or children of immigrants living in Sweden, more than half are from the neighbouring Nordic countries.1 The group of Finnish immigrants and their children is by far the largest immigrant group, regardless of how the calculations are made. Estimates of the number of persons of Finnish descent vary of between 200,000 to 600,000 people, depending on who is defining and which criteria is applied. Sweden’s Finns are no longer necessarily seen as an immigrant group, but rather as a minority. Not only did they achieve the official status of one of the five national minorities in 1999, but also, as the participants of this study describe, the images and representations of Sweden’s Finns have changed tremendously over the past decades.

There are many reasons why Sweden’s Finns, and especially their second generation, are an interesting group to study. One of the important reasons is the contrast between the magnitude of the migrations in the 1960s and 1970s, and the disproportionaly small amount of related research that has been conducted. Migration from Finland to Sweden during those two decades was by far the largest in Finnish history; yet, surprisingly little attention has been paid to it considering its size and impact on Finnish society. Finland and Sweden share a great deal of common history. Nowadays the countries are fairly equal in their socioeconomic status and live peacefully side by side as friendly neighbours. The rather pejorative image of Finns living in Sweden that dominated, for example, the media landscapes in both countries in the 1970s, has been widely discussed in the literature. Today, when Finns are no longer considered an immigrant group, but rather a national minority, and Finns are in general portrayed in a positive light in the Swedish media, research is still needed just as much as before. I argue that research is needed today for very different reasons than twenty or even ten years ago: it is intriguing and fascinating to look at one immigrant group’s social career, to reconsider their position in society and, most importantly, listen to how they think about themselves in this process. I am not aiming at a micro-history of the second generation Finns in Sweden, rather at a participant inspired account of everyday life involving identity formation, migration and languages in Sweden.

Previous studies have tended to concentrate on two main areas.2 On the one hand, studies have concentrated on labour history and the first generation’s often problematic lives in Sweden. On the other hand, substantial research has been conducted in the area of language skills and the variants of spoken Finnish in Sweden. But how is the offspring of immigrant Finns from the 1960s and 1970s doing? How does Finnishness appear to the second generation today? Does their Finnish background affect them in some way? Issues such as ethnicity, second and third generations of immigrants, the sense of belonging to a nation, integration, bilingualism, and multicultural societies have become increasingly political during the past decade.

This book describes and presents an analysis of different meanings of a Finnish background and Finnishness, based on interviews with second generation Finns living in Sweden. The analysis is based on a longitudinal study of ten particular cases; specifically, I will discuss the verbal processes in which interviewees talk about themselves in the framework of discussing Finnish identities in Sweden. This book focuses on three central questions. The first two questions concern, broadly speaking, participants’ accounts of identification as Finn, and representations of Finns. The third question is epistemologically motivated, and focuses on the created nature of concepts and history; in this case; the history of Finnish people in Sweden. In a wider context, it also examines our understanding of our relative positions in the world. More concretely, the central questions in this work are the following:

1. How do second generation immigrant Finns talk about Finnishness in contemporary Sweden? In what areas is Finnishness manifested in their lives?

2. How do second generation immigrants talk about language-related issues? What kind of roles do different languages – in this case, Finnish and Swedish – assume in their lives? Is a shared minority language a necessity for the respective minority’s well-being and, in the end, its survival?

3. What kind of people are ‘immigrants’ and who belongs to a ‘second generation’? How are these concepts and terminology defined, on the one hand in the literature and, on the other, by the participants of this study?

The focus of the first two questions is on accounts, for example, of ethnic self-identification or of language choice. The second question concerning the role of languages in the participants’ everyday lives is the most vital element of the analysis and I have dedicated the largest part of the analysis to the scrutiny of this topic. The object of investigation is not the ‘real’ identities or attitudes the participants present in the interviews, but rather the ways that they construct their identifications in the interviews. I am, of course, very interested in what the participants say; how they experience themselves with respect to their Finnish background, and whether the Finnish language is connected with their perception of Finnish identity. Nevertheless, my focus is foremost on the ways of talking, on some of the different ways the participants account for their definitions concerning, for example, ethnicity and language choice.

The last set of questions deals with epistemology and terminology by taking a look backwards and exploring how our understanding of the world – in this case, of immigrants – is created, and what kind of consequences such small things as lexical choises and definitions might have in individuals’ lives.

To answer these research questions, I have chosen to present an analysis of representation repertoires in which manifestations of the participants’ identities and ‘Finnishness’ occur. By paying attention to recurring definitions and to ways of talking we find representation repertoires through which Finnishness is constructed in the interview material. This study is an ethnographic interview study. The empirical data consists of semi-structured interviews and feedback conversations with eight women and two men, chosen out of a larger set of interviews conducted with 29 people. All participants had at least one Finnish-speaking parent, most of whom migrated from Finland to Sweden in the 1960s or 1970s – hence the term ‘second generation Finns’. The cases I am about to discuss are not representatives of ethnic organisations or associations; on the contrary, they are not people who actively strive to influence official policies; yet they are the very people who are discussed in official policies and politics, and who are affected by them. This study is an attempt to give these persons a chance to voice their opinions and concerns as part of a larger discussion.

The interview languages were both Finnish and Swedish, and I conducted the interviews between April 2002 and December 2006, during five fieldwork periods. The interviews took place in four different areas around the Mälaren Bay and each of the four areas has two to four representatives: Sandra and Maria from Köping; Katariina, Pia, Madeleine and Felix from Västerås; and from the urban area of Stockholm, Sofia, Aki-Petteri, Emma and Sanna. I refer to these 10 persons as the key participants.

TABLE 1. 10 key participants of this study.

Area and year

Group

Participants

Köping 2002

First Contacts

Sandra, Maria

Västerås 2004

Mothers and Students

Pia, Katariina, Madeleine, Felix

Stocholm 2004

Urbanites

Sofia

Stockholm 2005 & 2006

Urbanites

Aki-Petteri, Sanna, Emma

I will discuss the reasons for choosing these ten individuals out of a total of 29 interviewees, as well as the method of recruitment, in Chapter Three, where all 10 key participants and their areas are presented in more detail.

In order to describe some of the discourse used by the participants with regard to ethnic self-definitions and explanations about the (in)significance of a particular language, I have chosen to present comprehensive examples of the interviews in the original language, supplemented with translations to English. The examples are not meant to be mere illustrations but also to allow readers a glimpse of the setting and surroundings in which the interview took place, and, perhaps, give them a chance to challenge my interpretations and analyses. The excerpts originate to a high degree from ten key participants. Nevertheless, I will in some cases use examples originating from other participants as well. This is done to emphasize certain aspects of the data at large or to contrast the key participants’ views.

This research is carried out in the framework of social constructionism. In general terms, social constructionism within the social sciences refers to the understanding that different phenomena in life—our social realities and even the laws of nature – are constructed through interaction between people (Gerger 1999, 1994; Shotter 1993). This notion emphasizes social interaction, the role of language and the dialogic nature of life. Social constructionism is a rather loose framework within which different research methods can be employed, and it could be defined as a set of propositions and philosophical assumptions. We can sketch a set of key assumptions upon which it builds. These include, first, a critical stance towards knowledge that has usually been taken for granted; second, historical and cultural specificity of knowledge; third, an understanding of knowledge as a social process, and, last but not least, an emphasis on the importance of language as social action (Burr 1996: 2–9).

Historical and cultural specificity of knowledge indicates that our understanding of the world is specific to the era we live in and are surrounded by; consequently, no phenomenon can be taken out of its context for neutral scrutiny. As regards the concept of bilingualism and the changes it has undergone in the past couple of decades, we do not have to go further back than 30 years to find official reports about the severely damaging effect of two languages on a child’s development. Today, research on bi- and multilingualism in the changing world has adopted a different perspective concerning monolingualism versus bi- or multilingualism. The notion of monolingualism as the norm has been challenged and questioned; this process is ongoing (see, for example, Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003; Blommaert 2005; Dyers 2008; Pavlenko 2005; Piller 2002). The changing status of Finns in Sweden also reflects the ever-changing social environment that creates and shapes our perceptions of what is true. This implies that all knowledge is historically and culturally relative, and is sustained by, and sometimes changed through, social processes. The idea that language is a form of social action places everyday interactions between people into the centre of interest and regards these interactions as actively producing knowledge and cultural constructions.

In principle, according to social constructionism, everything ranging from personal experiences to socio-cultural phenomena is constructed in social interaction, that is to say communication. The legitimate and logical question is, of course, whether there is anything outside language: do things exist before we talk about them and create meanings? The social constructionism does not deny the existence of our physical bodies, or, say, the consequences of leaping off tall buildings. Social constructionism approach views both the material and conceptual world through different systems of creating meanings. When we claim that meanings are created, we also imply that meanings can be changed. A change of meaning is a social process: when a shift takes place it happens gradually and requires more than the efforts of one person. This brings us to the concept of power, which has a central role in social constructionism and also in discourse analysis. It is impossible to create new meanings, or change an existing fact, without having power. Power of any kind is never equally distributed; in one situation, an individual might have the power to speak and be heard, but in another s/he may not have that power. Powerful positions are seldom stable; they fluctuate depending on the situation (see, for example, Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003; Jokinen & Juhlia & Suoninen. 1999: 86–87, Foucault 1970: 27).

This book consists of seven chapters. Chapter One serves as an overview. It orientates the reader towards the object of this study, its main questions and key participants, and the academic discipline that is my starting point. Chapter Two is dedicated to methodological considerations, and to the scrutiny of the notion of reflexivity. The second chapter gives an overview of previous studies about Finns in Sweden, as well as the usage, status and future of the Finnish language in Sweden. Chapter Three describes the fieldwork periods, introduces the key participants and their surroundings, and describes my understanding of ethnography. In addition, I present and define my method of analysis: an analysis of representation repertoires inspired by discourse analysis. In the third chapter, I also discuss interviewing not only as an information-seeking process but also as a delicate interaction that is influenced by a variety of components and stimuli. Transcription choices and their possible consequences are also discussed in this chapter. Chapters Four, Five and Six are dedicated to discussing answers to the research questions. Key participants’ accounts, definitions and reflections are presented as representation repertoires of Finnishness. Chapter Four takes a look at issues connected to language, growing up in a minority language setting, going to school and linguistic socialization in Sweden in general. Chapter Five discusses difference as a significant element of the creation of Finnishness in Sweden. Chapter Six takes a look back at the representation repertoires and asks whether something as abstract as the concept of Finnishness, or any description of ethnicity, can be defined in the first place. The final chapter, Chapter Seven, sums up the main findings of the analysis. In addition, I reconsider and evaluate research practices and choices.

1 http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____25897.aspx, looked up 29.6.2011

2 Previous studies about Finns in Sweden are discussed in the research review in chapter 2.2

2. Changing Faces of Migration

Why Definitions?

When I started my research on persons with a Finnish background in Sweden – second generation immigrant Finns – I did not have any doubts about the suitability of the term ‘second generation immigrant’. However, the question of appropriate terminology has required a lot of attention in the course of the research. How should I refer to the research participants? Who, or what, are they? These three small words, second generation immigrant, manifested themselves as a core problem of my research. At least one of their parents is Finnish-speaking; most of the parents moved to Sweden during the peak years of the great labour migration in the 1960s and 1970s. These parents worked predominantly in blue-collar jobs for their entire lives, and their families stayed in Sweden for good. Thus, they were labour immigrants by definition. Following this line of argument, their offspring could be called second generation immigrants. This term was, however, criticised by several participants.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the changing meanings and the problematic nature of the terms ‘immigrant’, and ‘immigration’, as well as the concept ‘second generation’. Because this book deals with the children of Finnish labour migrants of the 1960s and 1970s in Sweden, I will first discuss the terminology and concepts within the broader framework and perspective of immigrant Finns in the world. I will look at three things: first, the periods when Finns left in larger groups; second, the characteristics of these groups; and, finally – because nothing happens in isolation – the context of the time in which the migration took place. In other words: how has the meaning of the term immigrant changed over the past 150 years, to what circumstances could this change be related, and, finally, what kind of an impact did these changes have on the individual? I will concentrate on voluntary migration and will not discuss forced migration / deportations, although they guide population flows as well. The term voluntary is, of course, also debatable. Many immigrants leave because they have no employment, and see no opportunities in their home countries. However, immigration is voluntary – in contrast to aggressive deportation.

Before I sketch the outlines of Finnish migration history, one detail is noteworthy. When one thinks about Finland, and writes about Finns in the context of immigration, it is important to bear in mind that Finland as an independent country has existed only since 1917. People who considered themselves Finns, however, have immigrated throughout time and also lived in other places than the area we know as Finland today. When I write about Finns, I am referring to people who perceived themselves as Finns and were sometimes also perceived and treated as such by others.

Finns Abroad

Immigration from Finland to Sweden is closely linked to the post-war decades, and especially to the years of colossal labour immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. During those decades the most extensive migration movement in Finnish history took place: during the post-war era, more than half a million Finns migrated to Sweden (Lainio 1996). Of these half million, approximately two thirds returned to Finland either for good or termporarily (Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000: 160–161).

When we look at the big picture of Finns migrating worldwide, we can see destinations and clear peak times when migration has taken place on a larger scale (see Table 2). Roughly speaking, there have been two major directions: at the turn of the 20th century Finns immigrated to North America and between the 1950s and 1970s to Scandinavia3. Australia, Africa, Central Europe, Latin America and Russia/the Soviet Union have also attracted Finns, but the migrations to North America and Sweden are in a league of their own. During the past 150 years, more than a million Finns altogether have left Finland.

TABLE 2. Finnish migration until 2001.

Finnish Migration up to 2001

Destination

–1860

1861–99

1900–29

1930–44

1945–60

1961–99

2000–01

Total

Russia/Soviet Union

105 000

45 000

3 000

10 000

100

2 600

100

165 800

Scandinavia

14 000

35 000

5 000

5 500

145 000

427 000

9 800

641 300

Other Europe

..

..

..

2 000

5 000

81 000

10 300

98 300

Asia

..

100

100

100

500

6 200

700

7 700

Oceania

200

1 200

1 500

500

6 000

13 900

200

23 500

Africa

..

500

1 000

100

500

2 700

100

4 900

Latin America

..

100

500

400

500

2 700

100

4 300

USA

2 500

75 000

225 000

2 200

7 000

12 000

1 600

325 300

Canada

..

5 000

57 000

3 500

15 000

6 900

200

87 600

Total

121 700

161 900

293 100

24 300

179 600

555 000

23 100

1 358 700

Source: Table by J. Korkiasaari 2005

Finns have moved from one place to another driven by different forces, and the roots of labour immigration from Finland to Sweden have a long history. Characteristic, of the migration movement between Finland and Sweden are certain power relations. These relations of power between Sweden and Finland are not usually referred to as colonialism, and Finland was never a colony of Sweden in the sense that India was a colony of Britain or Algeria of France; nevertheless, the relationship between the countries share many characteristics of a colonial master-servant constellation. Savolainen (1982) analyzes the colonial aspects of the connection between Sweden and Finland, and argues that colonialism has had a negative impact on the self esteem of the colonized are this impact it applicable also to Finns in Sweden.

As early as in the sixteenth century, when Finland was a part of Sweden, Finnish peasants moved to northern Sweden and became so-called forest Finns: people living in deep forests in Northern Sweden and preparing the forest areas for agricultural purposes. In the seventeenth century, Finns settled down mainly in Värmland, around the bay of Mälaren, in central Sweden. These immigrants from Finland were given not only heavy, manual work, but also positions as clerks or accountants for the crown, or as sailors in the royal navy. In 1809, as the result of the war between Sweden and Russia, the geographical areas east of Sweden were annexed to Russia. Finland became a Grand Duchy of Finland within Russia, and migration westward came to a halt for almost a decade. Finland declared independence in December 1917. As a consequence of World War II, migration from Finland to Sweden was very different than before, as Finland depended on Sweden in a very humane sense: in the 1940s, some 70,000 children were sent to be safe in Sweden (see Virkamäki 2005).

European Post-War Migration

During the post-war era, when the most extensive migration from Finland to Sweden took place, the whole of Europe was an arena of massive migration. This movement was based upon the interaction between labour shortage in Northern Europe and unemployment in the south: wealthy industrialized countries, such as Germany and Sweden, needed workers to fill the demands of their booming industries, whereas many countries, such as Italy and former Yugoslavia, were battling with unemployment. After World War II, Finland was paying war debts to Russia, and human effort was concentrated on fulfilling this task. Sweden, instead, started developing the welfare state, reaching the point of labour shortage already in the beginning of the 1960s. Partially based on the different post-war conditions of the neighbouring countries, Sweden became industrialised earlier than Finland and the gap between the socioeconomic situations of the two countries was wide. The Swedish economic expansion required a more rapidly growing labour force than the country could provide, and Swedish industry actively recruited workers, turning first to the neighbouring Nordic countries whose citizens did not need working permits or other arrangements in order to start working. Swedish companies also started to recruit from Yugoslavia, Italy and Turkey (Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000).

When Swedish industry started to recruit labour from Finland very soon after the war, the Swedish-speaking coastal municipalities were the most migration-sensitive areas in Finland. In the 1960s, when migration from Finland to Sweden increased rapidly, the most migration-sensitive areas were to be found in Ostrobothnia and Northern Finland, just as in the centuries before. These areas were, to a large extent, dependent on forestry and agriculture; when machines replaced saws and horses, many lumberjacks and farmers faced unemployment in a short period of time.

In the beginning of the extensive migration of the 1960s and 1970s, more men than women migrated to Sweden, but the gender imbalance was quickly corrected when girlfriends, wives, and families joined the men. However, some young girls and women migrated alone to Sweden; some worked as babysitters helping family members, others found employment in the booming industry (Snellman 2003). According to Lainio (1996), the absolute peak of migration was reached in 1969–1970, when the net immigration amounted to 100,000 people; after this, Sweden stopped the active recruitment of foreign workers.

Research Review

In this sub-chapter, previous studies about Finns in Sweden will be presented. I will start with an overview of research concerning Finns in Sweden, dividing it into two categories. First, I will give an overview of Finns as an ethnic minority in Sweden, including political and linguistic rights, education, history, and identity. Second, I examine research concerning Finnish language in Sweden: variations, vocabulary, dialect research, and literature. I consider the publications in the former category to be closer and more relevant to my research, but the latter group is also interesting in the sense that puts focus is on the generation born in Sweden to Finnish parents, whereas research in the first category has shown interest in the second generation only in recent years.

Previous Studies about Finns in Sweden

The first doctoral dissertation about Finns in Sweden was written by Koiranen (1966) and published at the Department of Sociology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. It was a study of the assimilation of Finnish immigrants in Sweden. Koiranen based his study Suomalaisten siirtolaisten sulautuminen Ruotsissa (Assimilation of Finnish migrants in Sweden) on interview material with Finnish labour immigrants in the South of Sweden, analysed his interviewees’ attitudes towards their new home country, and discussed the degree of their assimilation into the cultural and linguistic aspects of Swedish society.

Although the first dissertation about Finns in Sweden came from the field of sociology, the majority of all subsequent research published in Sweden centers around the issue of language. Linguistic aspects, such as bilingualism, multilingualism, and so-called half-lingualism, as well as the political significance of a shared language for a minority, have dominated the research from the 1960s to the present. It is no coincidence that language became a central issue in the research concerned with the Finnish minority. Hansegård paved the way for academic debate concerning education in the child’s mother tongue in 1968 with his book Tvåspråkighet eller Halvspråkighet? (Bilingualism or Half-Lingualism?). He questioned the usefulness of educating children of immigrants in Swedish only and suggested that the learning of Swedish and other subjects in the curriculum would be easier and more efficient if children were taught in their strongest language. Usually this meant the language the child spoke at home.

Skutnabb-Kangas has published several articles and studies about ethnic aspects of the Finnish minority in Sweden and the right to a mother tongue over the past three decades. In her dissertation in 1986, Tvåspråkighet/Bilingualism or not – The Education of Minorities, she sums up her work against the colonisation of Finnish by Swedish and advocates for the importance of education in a minority’s native tongue, which she considers a human right. (See, for example, Skutnabb-Kangas: 2000, 1995, 1987.)

Hujanen’s dissertation Kotimaa ja kultamaa (Home Country and the Golden Country, 1986) is about the identities and the life styles of immigrant Finns in Sweden, and was published at the University of Tampere, Finland. Hujanen argues that double identities that include both Finnishness and Swedishness are impossible because the majority of the population in Sweden does not acknowledge Finns as a new minority. He concludes that a Finnish identity in Sweden is a marginalized one, and that a marginalized identity is something immigrants want to leave behind.

Lainio’s dissertation in 1989, Spoken Finnish in Urban Sweden, concentrates on the creativity and strength of a linguistic minority. Lainio has written and edited numerous anthologies and published dozens of articles about the history of Finns in Sweden, sociolinguistic aspects of Finns in Sweden, language politics, and the minority language status of Finnish. In addition, Lainio is the author of the last of the three volumes in a handbook series called Finnarnas Historia i Sverige (History of Finns in Sweden, 1996).

Huss’s dissertation Simultan tvåspråkighet i svensk-finsk kontext, (Simultaneous Bilingualism in a Swedish-Finnish Context, 1991) was followed by a wide range of publications and reports to the European Commission about Swedish policymaking concerning minority languages. These reports are largely directed at governmental authorities, and have the political objective of strengthening the position of Finnish in Sweden and keeping the dialogue going with national authorities.

In the past ten years, the focus of dissertations and other academic research about Finns in Sweden has increasingly been directed towards identity questions and diverse manifestations of Finnish minority identities. Kuosmanen studied the lives and social careers of 30 Finnish men in Gothenburg, Sweden, for his dissertation Finnkampen. En studie av finska mäns liv och sociala karriärer i Sverige,4 (2001). Kuosmanen, who worked as a social worker with Finnish men in the area before starting an academic career, writes about very different types of men who all identify themselves as Finns in Sweden. Central to his study are concepts of masculinity and manhood from and around which his interviewees act. Kuosmanen writes also about success, wealth and happiness, changing the discourse of depicting Finnish men as alcoholics and social underachievers.

All of the researchers mentioned so far live in Sweden, and whether they identified with being Sweden’s Finns5, they have conducted research within their own group. A Finnish musicologist, Suutari, moved to Sweden for a year to study dance music as a significant element of Finnish identities for his dissertation, Götajoen Jenkka (The Jenkka of the Göta-river, 2000).

Ågren’s dissertation ‘Du är finsk, eller…?’ En etnologisk studie om att växa upp och leva med finsk bakgrund i Sverige (‘You are Finnish, aren’t you…?’ An Ethnological Study on Lives with a Finnish Background, 2006) is an analysis of the life stories of individuals with Finnish backgrounds, and, according to the author, attempts to construct a version of the Finnish history in Sweden as well. She draws two storylines, a private one and a collective one, that reflect and shed light on each other. She presents the collective line above all as a contextual complement to the personal narratives.

Lukkarinen Kvist’s dissertation Tiden har haft sin gång. Hem och tillhörighet bland sverigefinnar i Mälardalen (Time has passed. Home and Belonging among Sweden’s Finns in Mälaren, 2006) is based on extensive fieldwork consisting of participant observation and interviews with members of the Haapajärviset club. Haapajärviset are Finns who came to Sweden from the Finnish municipality of Haapajärvi and the club was conducting a survey among haapajärviset in order to write their own local history at the time of Lukkarinen Kvist’s research. Lukkarinen Kvist analyses aging in the diaspora and the concept of home.

Publications by governmental institutions such as Swedish ministries, the Centre for Research in International Migration and Ethnic Relations (CEIFO) associated with Stockholm University, and the Centre for Multi-ethnic Research at Uppsala University, have also been a significant and interesting source for my work. Publications and projects by the Rinkeby Institute of Multilingual Research, an institute associated with Stockholm University, are also a source of inspiration, although my core interest is not directly concerned with bi- and multilingual aspects of the interviewees’ lives. Studies and reports about bilingualism are relevant because they form a part of common knowledge about the significance of the mother tongue for an individual, and have paved the way for many to reflect upon language identity; thus, they work as a reflective surface for some interviewees.

The research and writing tradition concerning Finns in Sweden has taken a turn towards empowering the minority instead of listing their troubles and hardships. The titles of research reports have changed as well: we no longer read about ‘the problems of the Finnish labour migrants’. The recent turn towards viewing Finns as an ethnic minority rather than an immigrant minority is a new direction in all research about Finns in Sweden.

Research concerning Second Generations of Immigrant Finns

What are we actually interested in when we study the second generation of Finns, or of other people? Are we interested in comparing their level of observing traditions and practicing customs to those of the ‘real Finns’ in Finland? Does a real Finn prefer the sauna to taking a shower, like Isuggestively ask Mika in the very first interview excerpt, or does she or he prefer the Finnish jenkka to other dances, say a Polish polka? Or, is our interest rather in the comparisons between the minority and the dominant group of the respective country? These questions could, roughly speaking, deliver some answers to questions concerning ethnicity. In addition to the study of ethnicity and its possible implications, second generation research can, and often is, focused on socioeconomic comparisons between different immigrant groups. However, I will not discuss such research here but will rather concentrate on some studies in Social Science about Finns and their offspring around the world.

In his dissertation, Etninen identiteetti ja narratiivisuus (Ethnic Identity and Narrations, 1999), Sintonen approaches his topic from the view that the five Canadian Finnish immigrant men he interviewed constructed their ethnic identity through telling stories about their lives and the lives of others in their peer group. Österlund-Pötzsch’s dissertation American Plus. Etnisk identitet hos finlandssvenska ättlingar i Nordamerika (American Plus. Ethnic Identity of Finland Swedes in North America, 2003), is a study of the descendants of the Swedish-speaking Finns who migrated to North America in the early 20th century.

When one considers labour immigration and second generation research in the Swedish context, it is interesting to take a look at other receiving countries in the post World War era. In the European context, not only Sweden but also Germany and Great Britain received large groups of labour immigrants after the war. The population of North America and Canada is composed of a multitude of ethnicities, also partially resulting from post-war labour migration. Research concentrating on second generation immigrants focuses mainly on communities that are visibly different from the surrounding society: e.g., Stuart Hall’s ideas of ethnicity and identity echo his Jamaican heritage and the feeling of otherness that Jamaicans and people of African or South American origin have experienced in the UK (Hall 1999, 1997; Hall & Held & McGrew 1992).

In the Netherlands, the Moroccan and Moluccan population (who differ from the majority of the Dutch in their outward appearance) – and especially the youth – have been the focus of a body of research (van ‘t Land 2000; van Amersfoort 1993, 2004; Nortier & Dorleijn 2008). One example of a visibly different minority in Finland is the Somali whom Alitolppa-Niitamo discussed in her dissertation The Icebreakers. Somali-Speaking Youth in Metropolitan Helsinki with a Focus on the Context of Formal Education in 2004. Many of these studies, however, have a central theme of conflict, or potential conflict, between the respective minority and their environment – a theme that cannot be found in my own empirical data in such sharp opposition. In this respect, this ‘conflict-oriented’ body of literature is less relevant to my work, although some points of contact can be detected.

Finns in Sweden can be described as a largely invisible minority; the same applies to the Russian minority in Finland. To consider the issue of invisible minorities is a fairly new strand in migration or identity research and it has been little studied to date. Kofman, Phizacklea, Raghuram and Sales (2000) write about female migration, and in that context gendered invisibility is also discussed (see, also Kofman 1999). In Finland, Jasinskaja-Lahti (2004) has touched upon these issues in her dissertation dealing with Russians in Finland. Iskanius (2006) studied language identification among Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland and came to the conclusion that identifying with a language was linked with ethnic identity, attitudes towards language and nationality, language use in different situations, and self-assessed proficiency. All of these studies emphasize the situational nature of identification and blurriness of boundaries.

3 The vast majority migrated to Sweden.

4 The name is a word-game referring to the annual Light Athlete games between Finland and Sweden.

5 Sweden’s Finn is the equivalent term for the Swedish Sverige finländare, Sverige finne, referring to a person with Finnish background living in Sweden.

3. Research Process

In this chapter, I will present the process of the research project: shed light on the fieldwork method, discuss interviewing as a multilayered process, introduce the research participants and describe the fieldwork periods. The analysis method will be described in the next chapter. I will also look at the assumptions about human beings, knowledge and the world on which ethnographers rely. After all, I do describe this study as an ethnographic interview study.

Cornerstones of Ethnography

Like so many other interesting things, ethnography does not have one clear definition. It is difficult, if not impossible, to give a comprehensive yet short explanation of the nature of ethnographic research, just as it is technically impossible to give an all-embracing definition of ethnicity or culture. There is no universally acknowledged definition that one can appropriate because there is a multitude of ethnographic research within various disciplines (Stewart 1998: 5). On the one hand, this can be regarded as a strong point; on the other, a fundamental weakness.

Ethnography usually refers to an anthropological research method or to an analytic description of a cultural group. Burns (2000: 421) defines ethnography as research about human beings in their cultural contexts. Ethnography abandons the position of a strictly naturalist or positivist attitude towards the field because both of these attitudes fail to take into account the fact that social researchers are part of the social world they study. The dualistic distinction between ‘science’ and ‘common sense’, between the activities and knowledge of the researcher and about those whom she or he is conducting research about, form the core of both positivism and naturalism. As a consequence of this distinction, these approaches regard the researcher as someone who is neutral and able to observe without having any influence on the field and its actors. Ethnography distances itself clearly from the positivist and the naturalist positions that assume that it is possible, at least in principle, to isolate a body of data ‘uncontaminated’ by the researcher, by ‘turning him or her into an automaton or a into a neutral vessel of cultural experience’ (Hammersley & Atkinson 1995: 16).

Ethnography is often characterized as the most basic form of social research (Stewart 1998; Hammersley & Atkinson 1995; Coffey & Atkinson 1996). It involves employing a multitude of approaches in data collection, such as interviews, participant observation, background research, and so on; but the focal research instrument is the ethnographer’s own inquiring experiences with the actors on the field (Stewart 1998: 6; Pöyhönen 2004: 43–44). In the case of my research, however, participant observation does not play a substantial role. Only the interviews with the group of mothers took place as part of participant observation and were conducted during family club meetings. The focus of the research lies on people’s thoughts concerning their Finnish background, and these thoughts were captured in the form of recorded interviews and feedback conversations. However, during the first field trip I stayed with a key participant’s family, and during other trips with Finns who had raised children in Sweden; thus, I participated, to some extent, in some private aspects of second generation Finns’ lives.

Reflexive ethnographies are, at their best, multilayered texts offering the reader a broad understanding of the research and its problems (van Maanen 1988: 92–93; Ehn & Klein 1994: 11). Reflexivity also implies that the orientations of researchers will be shaped by their socio-historical locations, including the values and interests that these locations confer upon them. This attitude rejects the idea that social research can be carried out in some autonomous realm insulated from the wider society and from particular biography of the researcher, in such a way that its findings could be unaffected by social processes and personal characteristics. I am aware that too strong a self-involvement and too much reflexivity can not only make the reading tedious, but also can have a biasing effect on the research and the analysis. During this research process and, especially, in the writing of the dissertation and this book, I have done my best to create transparency in my analysis and the process as a whole. The transparency is perhaps best illustrated by my effort to encourage the participants to get involved in the analysis, and my attempt to present the data in the setting of social constructionism.

Ethnography as a way of doing research can be understood as both a process and a product simultaneously. Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) conclude that the very goal of ethnographic research is the production of knowledge. The participants in the research should have an active role in the outcome, that is, in the creation of this new knowledge (Pöyhönen 2004: 43). Production of knowledge can also be understood as reporting, documenting and going public with the research. The presentation of knowledge has consequences; these might be political, in the sense of influencing political decision-making, or they may have direct consequences for the researcher (see, for example, Blommaert 2005). It can sometimes be challenging to balance on the edge of politeness and political correctness, and still remain faithful to the research participants. I am aware of the political position my research could be perceived as filling, or failing to fill.

Reflexive ethnographies make use of all kinds of material, not just interviews, participant observations, and written academic sources. These information sources surely form the core of my research, but in addition, I have made use of a multitude of other sources. During the period I worked with this research, between 2002 and 2008, a few feature films, television documentaries and novels about Finns in Sweden or the language situation came out. Director Härö’s Mother of Mine (2005) is a film about a Finnish war child, and had the first screening in Stockholm in December 2006, during my last period of fieldwork. For many Finns in Finland and, especially, in Sweden, the film symbolised a first step toward dealing with a national trauma. The film received a lot of media attention and was widely discussed in the context of Finnish identity in Sweden; nevertheless, none of the participants mentioned the film in an interview situation. In 2007 Susanne Alakoski received the esteemed August book price in Sweden for her novel Svinalängorna that tells the story of a Finnish family, struggling, among other things, with alcoholism in Sweden through the eyes of a young child. Svinalängorna, pig stall in English, and refers to the area where immigrant families lived. The novel was praised for its unadorned depictation of the living conditions for children of alcoholics and of immigrant childhood in Sweden. Alakoski’s novel received broad media coverage both in Finland and in Sweden and she is the first person of Finnish descent to receive such a prize in Sweden. A feature film based on the novel was released as a Swedish production in late 2010. When the novel was published I had already finished my fieldwork; thus we did not have the chance to discuss the book or the film based on it with any of the participants. Instead, those from the Stockholm area talked frequently about Jonas Hassan Kehmiri’s novel Ett öga rött, (One Red Eye 2004) and found similarities between the conflicts and joys of their own living environments and those in the setting of Khemiri’s novel. Hassan Kehmiri’s book is a funny, coming of age story about a young boy, Halim, who gets slightly lost in a fundamentalist world of ideas. He feels that his father has started to lose his faith, and Halim dreams of becoming a kind of super immigrant – a sultan of thought – a revolutionary who will bring renewed pride to his community. The novel was praised in the Swedish media for its unique take on a growing boy’s inner life and multiculturalism in Swedish society. In addition to the engaging story, the language in which Khemiri wrote his novel (he deliberately writes in unconventional broken Swedish) inspired many interesting conversations with the participants about language use as a tool for establishing status and expressing belonging to a group or geographical area that is associated with certain kind of people.

Although my main sources are academic, I have read and watched several feature films, documentaries, and even got screenings of home super8-movies documenting their early years after immigrating to Sweden. In addition to the visual material, I have read novels, poems and unpublished biographies and journals written by immigrant Finns. All these secondhand sources have been vital for this research and serve as background material that has helped me to set the mental scene on which Finnishness is displayed in the interviews.

Methods and Considerations

I would like the reader to imagine holding a kaleidoscope in his or her hand. The kaleidoscope is a cylinder that creates ever changing pictures by means of light, pieces of glass and mirrors. The etymology of the word kaleidoscope lies in the Greek words kalos, eidos, and skopios, meaning beautiful, form, and view, respectively. Since the glass pieces move inside the cylinder, every look into a kaleidoscope gives us a unique picture. The interview data can be imagined as the small colorful pieces put inside the cylinder of analysis. The analyst (me) decides the angle of the mirrors and is, in fact, to some extent the designer of the magic pictures regardless of how the pieces fall. Ethnic identities have often been described as a mosaic: many variations creating a picture (Porter 1965; Blackshire-Belay 1996). Instead of using the metaphor of mosaics of cultures and ethnicities, I suggest that the metaphor of a kaleidoscope better reflects the plurality that the participants present. A mosaic is made of many small pieces that create a picture when glued together. However, a mosaic suggests that the picture is static, and once it has been glued it cannot be changed. A kaleidoscope, in contrast, reveals an ever-changing picture, endless compositions of the colorful pieces.

When we think of the analyst as the person who designs the outcome, we do not mean that she or he would be making things up. Instead, we agree with the precondition that all knowledge is a product of somebody’s perception of things. My research cylinder is built of principles that present a social constructionist approach, and the method I employ has its roots in discourse analysis.

Discourse Analysis

The main question that gave the impetus for the present research project had to do with something that I phrased as the ‘Finnish identity of second generation Finns’. I was interested in how second generation Finns experienced Finnishness and how the Finnish language was connected to their perception of Finnish identity. In this chapter, I will first present the analysis method, discourse analysis and representation repertoires, and then the analysis of the empirical data itself. A discourse can be defined in simple terms as a system of talk practices (Wetherell & Taylor & Yales 2001; Mills 1997). We use language in different social and institutional settings in accordance with the situation, the participants, our aims and the aims we suspect others to have. Thus, we can talk about classroom discourse, supervision discourse, or the discourse of cosmetic surgery. They all have their specific rules and assumptions about behaviour and their own power dynamics. Foucault (1970) defines discourse as a form of social practice. Thus, discourse is a form of social action through which social realities are articulated and shaped. Discourses have a fundamental impact on how an individual thinks and acts; in fact a discourse sets the limits of what we can think and how we act; Foucault calls these conditions the conditions of possibility (Foucault 1970: xxiv).

Dichotomies are essential for a coherent reality: it is not possible both to perceive a person’s identity as a result of her or his genes and, simultaneously, to claim that identities are ever-changing social structures. We tend to make sense of our world by finding differences and organizing people, phenomena, even emotions, by contrasting them to something that appears to be in opposition. In the context of identities and ethnicities, the construction of ‘us versus them’ often serves as a tool for creating boundaries between groups. The making of boundaries always has a social dimension; we can create boundaries and uniqueness only by reflecting upon and comparing to others. Here is a clear parallel to the understanding that our social realities are created in interaction and dialogue with others.

Discourses can be analysed in several ways. I have decided to analyse representation repertoires of Finnishness. When we talk about things, whether ‘real’ or not, we are in the world of representations (Potter 1996; Burr 1996). Sintonen (1999) points out in his study about immigrant Finnish men narrating their life stories in Canada that it is not significant how much, or if at all, the narrators eat mämmi (a traditional Finnish Easter dish made of barley). The significance of mämmi lies in the fact that it is a part of the narration; it is a relevant building block in the process of creating an account of Finnishness in Canada. The representation repertoires I present in the analysis are my interpretations of the communication in the interview situations with the participants. I have selected productive domains in which the participants discuss Finnishness and the impact of their Finnish background. By productive I refer to aspects, or clusters of aspects, that were frequently discussed in the interviews and feedback conversations and recurred throughout the data. A domain is a representation repertoire in which aspects are linked together and create a coherent theme. I reason that when the participants choose to discuss something in more detail it is an indication of interest: the significance of, or an interest in a topic (for example, the definition of mother tongue) or domain (Finnish-speaking education in Sweden). The representation repertoires I have chosen are as follows:

TABLE 3. Representation repertoires of Finnishness.

Language and Communities

Using Finnish/Swedish, growing up in a family speaking a minority language, going to school in Finnish/Swedish etc. Communities connected to Finnish, such as the family, sport clubs, school classes, a Finnish congregation in the Church of Sweden, etc.

Being Different, Us vs. Them

Discursive constructions of differences and boundaries between groups. Ways of talking: stereotyping, humour, imitations, etc.

Many of the representation repertoires are interconnected; borders between domains are often overlapping, which in my interpretation speaks for the situational nature of identities, the flexible and sometimes voluntary nature of identities. The creation of boundaries and representation repertoires is, indeed, artificial, but the human mind seems to need boundaries and categories to grasp, arrange and, in the end, understand the world.

The representation repertoires I have selected are twofold: some of them are discussed by all key participants, whereas others are specific to a geographical location or group. An example of a common topic is language and the command of language, which were discussed in all interviews. In Köping, for instance, we talked frequently about different sports: ice hockey, indoor hockey, and pesäpallo (Finnish baseball) as important aspects of Finnishness or as ‘things that Finns do’. In Stockholm, the interviewees talked more about immigration, marginalization and being different. With the group of mothers in Västerås, we spoke a lot about bringing up children in a family with two languages, but also about employment and studies. It is obvious that the surroundings and the setting of the interview situation govern the topics and interaction to a great extent, but since the domains that were discussed in more detail varied across the field I have reason to believe that different participants found different domains specifically important for Finnishness. The important thing about the selected topics is that they recurred frequently throughout the data. I claim that these representation repertoires are important to the participants, and emphasize that these are the ways of talking that are available for the process of defining Finnishness, Finnish identities and the participants themselves. For example, when the participants disagree with the idea of mutually exclusive polarization of ‘Finns versus Swedes’, they still have to make use of these terms. This is because the discourse functions in terms of contrasting us to them and perceiving dual memberships as impossible.

The interesting thing is, however, that when those mutually exclusive definitions, this or the other, are bent in the process of talking about them, they finally give way to new definitions of both this and that. This observation can also be seen as a critique of the assumption that a strong mainstream culture identification would cancel out a strong identification with one’s ethnic group (See also Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003; Verkyuten & de Wolf 2002).

The choice of an analytic method is closely connected with the larger theoretical framework that determines what kind of a method is possible. In my case, social constructionism and the nature of this data would also allow the use of other methods besides the one I have chosen. Other methods that could be employed for the analysis of my data include, for example, Conversation Analysis (CA), Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and Content Analysis. I will briefly explain why I have chosen the analysis of representation repertoires over these other possibilities.

In Conversation Analysis, the focus is on talk and more specifically the kind of talk that is thoroughly interactive, as opposed to monologue sequences, such as narrations. Turn-taking is central in the CA approach, and is considered above all to describe sequential patterns (this means simply what kind of a talk contribution follows another) that are observed in the data. (Cameron 2001: 87–88.) Transcription is very close and detailed. CA is data centred since the analyst is not supposed to appeal to any evidence that comes from outside of the talk itself. Thus, the approach is quite opposite to the ethnographic approach, according to which verbal behaviour is related to the setting where it occurs, who the participants are, etc. (See also Cameron 2001: 89.) Since I am interested in the different ways the participants talk about certain things, CA does not offer the tools for finding answers to those questions.

Critical Discourse Analysis in the style of Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999), Fairclough & Wodak (1998), Fairclough (1992), and van Dijk (1991, 1998a; 1998b) concentrates on power dynamics (for example, the subtle discourses of racism and discrimination on an institutional level), and on how discourses reproduce and maintain hegemony and discriminatory social relations that often lead to the marginalization of certain groups. CDA has an explicit agenda, i.e., the explication of these processes in an attempt to make visible the aspects of discourse that contribute to, for instance, the dominance of one group over another (Fairclough & Wodak 1998). The data sets of CDA are often written, official statements, or guidelines, such as curricula, policy statements or newspaper texts. Nevertheless, de Cilla et al. (1999) have used CDA in their studies on xenophobia and nationalism, and have mapped patterns and discourses of speech practices using interview material. The reason for not employing CDA is mainly the focus of attention: I do not look for patterns of discrimination or inequality in the interviews, nor is it my foremost aim to point out structural power relations. If I had chosen to make use of CDA, my research interests could be focusing on questions such as through which mechanisms Finnish is presented as less worthy than Swedish or English, or why the language is spoken mainly in the private domain. These are both questions that will be discussed in the analysis and, inevitably, are connected to questions of power positions in the society. However, once again, my interest is in the different ways the participants talk about Finnishness and themselves, and I do not wish to emphasize political wrongdoings or find answers to the questions above.

The difference between Content Analysis and the analysis of representation repertoires is a matter of definition; both are, broadly speaking, interested in content. In the case of my study the content is found in the interviews. The analysis of representation repertoires could be understood as qualitative analysis of the interviews. Yet, there are crucial differences in the emphasis and choices the researcher makes. In content analysis we ask what people are saying about a phenomenon, while in discourse analysis we ask how they express themselves. Content analysis consists of two dimensions, a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of a dataset. Consequently, the researcher does not only discuss the content of the given data, but also pays attention to its quantitative aspects. In my case this could result in counting how many times certain phrases occur, or what kind of quantitative differences there are between different fieldwork areas. It goes without saying that I am very much interested in what the participants say. However, my focus is foremost on the ways of talking. How do the participants create accounts concerning ethnicity or language choice, and how can we view these accounts against the invisible framework of the surrounding society, belief and value systems? Participants argue, acknowledge counterarguments, use humour, tell jokes, imitate accents, and much more. By spotting reoccurring definitions and ways of talking I can, first, distinguish presentation repertoires through which Finnishness is constructed in the interviews and feedback conversations, and second, illuminate how the representation repertoires reflect the surroundings. Hymes’ guideline (1972) for ethnographers to keep both feet on the ground and eyes on the horizon has been a good guideline and is a good metaphor for the dimensions coming together in a successful ethnographically informed interview study.

I have vast amounts of interview data and there are roughly speaking some hundred pages of script. To identify productive domains, meaning representation repertoires, is a matter of close listening and reading. The participants mark aspects in their narrations, for instance, by imitating accents or prosody, by joking or exaggerating. Especially identity talk, self definitions and reflection about definitions by others, is often presented in a negotiation between positions. Ways of talking also function as marking of repertoires.

In this section, I have presented my methodological choices and discussed some of their implications. To return to the kaleidoscope metaphor: equipped with these methodological assumptions I will take all the pieces of glass, let them fall into the cylinder and begin to describe them and the patterns they create in my kaleidoscope.

Fieldwork

During the years of my research I have spent, in total, about 30 weeks in Sweden, conducting interviews and participating in local activities arranged by Finns or other minorities and visiting conferences and local history project meetings. During the first field trip in 2002, I spent in total about five weeks in Köping. In 2004, I spent some ten weeks in Västerås and Eskilstuna; in 2005, ten weeks in Stockholm; and finally in 2006, four weeks again based in Stockholm. In addition to these longer periods, I have made several short trips to Sweden to attend workshops and meetings, and to work at the Sweden’s Finns’ archive.

Fieldwork Periods and Participants

I have interviewed in total 29 individuals of the second generation – 20 women and 9 men. The oldest participant was born in 1968 and the youngest in 1984. Although the age range is wide, the participants’ parents had, with two exceptions, arrived as labour immigrants in Sweden around the years of the large, labour motivated migration of 1960–1970 or directly thereafter. I have made one exception by including Felix although his father is not a labour immigrant, but came to Sweden already as a child in the 1940s. I have done this for two reasons. Firstly, because Felix identified himself strongly as a Finn, and secondly, because his father is from Ingria (Russian Federation), an area that no longer belongs to Finland, thus, his Finnishness can seem disputable for some readers. Moreover, with this choice I want to emphasize the many possibilities for identifying with Finnishness and to raise the question of what Finnishness ultimately is.

I chose to concentrate on 10 key people instead of all of the people I interviewed. Below is a table with the pseudonyms given by the key participants themselves and some information about these persons.

TABLE 4. The key participants of the study.

Pseudonyme

Born

Parents arrived in Sweden

Family, occupation

1st interview, language and type of interview

Feedback conversation, language and type of interview

First contacts in Köping, April–June 2002

Sandra

1974, Köping

1963

Dating a Finn from Finland, medical personnel

April 2002, Finnish, individual

June 2002, Finnish, individual

Maria

1972, Köping

Mother born in Sweden, father arrived in 1969

Swedish-speaking partner, youth worker

April 2002, Swedish, individual

June 2002, Finnish, individual

Mothers in Västerås, December 2004

Pia

1980, Finland

1983

Finnish-speaking partner, 2 children, Staying at home

November 2004, Finnish, group interview

December 2004, Finnish, group interview

Katarii-na

1974, Finland

Mother 1974, father earlier

Swedish-speaking partner, 2 children, Staying at home

November 2004, Finnish, group interview

December 2004, Finnish, group interview

Students from Västerås, December 2004

Felix

1969, Västerås

Father in the 1940’s, mother Swedish

Dating a Swedish speaker, student

December 2004, Swedish, group interview

Not done

Madeleine

1980, Västerås

Mother in 1969, father in the 1970s

Single, student

December 2004, Swedish, group interview

Not done

Urbanites from Stockholm Area December 2004, September–December 2005, December 2006

Sofia

1983, Nacka

late 1960s

Single, student in Uppsala

December 2004 Swedish, individual

December 2006, Swedish, individual

Aki-Petteri

1983 Stockholm

late 1970s

Single, student

December 2004, Finnish, individual

September 2005 Finnish, individual

Emma

1980, Stockholm

early 1970s

Single, student

October 2005 Finnish, individual

December 2006 Finnish, individual

Sanna

1978, Finland

late 1970s

Swedish-speaking partner, media worker

September 2005, Finnish, individual

December 2006, Finnish, individual

All of the participants had at least one Finnish-speaking parent and, with the exception of three who were infants when they arrived in Sweden, all were born and raised in Sweden. All of them identified themselves, for one reason or another, with my research interest: what does Finnishness look like in Sweden for second generation Finns. The key participants came from various educational and vocational backgrounds: some of them were students at the time of the interview while others had already been working for years; some still lived on the street where they were born, while others had travelled the world; some had children, others did not; some had a Swedish partner, others a Finnish one; others had no partner at all. With the participants’ consent I have included a general description of their educational background, occupational situation, and life situation in terms of family and children.

I asked the participants to give themselves a pseudonym to be used in the dissertation, and all of them renamed themselves. 8 of 10 came up with a pseudonym and some also explained in a detailed way why they had chosen exactly that name. The choice of the name was much more than just a pseudonym behind which they were granted anonymity. Some explained their choice of the international or Swedish-sounding pseudonym by referring to their real names which did not give away their ethnic background either. In the following three examples, key participants talk about their chosen names. Transcription choices for the examples are discussed in the following section, and a transcription key is to be found right after the index page of this book.

Example 1

Lotta: Du har valt att heta Sofia [joo] varför, tror //du

Lotta: You have chosen to be called Sofia [yeah], why do you// think

Sofia: //jag tycker att Sofia är ett bra namn…jag har ju ett rätt svenskt namn liksom på riktigt, jag. XX är ju inget typiskt finskt namn, så Sofia passar bra eftersom då kan man int’ direkt veta.

Sofia://I think that Sofia is a good name…I have a very Swedish name like in reality, me. XX isn’t a typical Finnish name, so Sofia suits me well because then you can’t immediately know.

(Feedback konversation, december 2006)

(Feedback conversation, December 2006)

Others put a lot of emphasis on the unmistakable Finnishness of the name. In the following two examples, Aki-Petteri was coming up with a name for himself, and Sanna accounts for her choice.

Example 2

Aki-Petteri: Joku tosi kunnollinen suomalainen tuplanimi sen pitää olla, Erkki-Pekka (naurua)[naurua] siitä pitää heti kuulla että täältä tulee Erkki-Pekka suomalainen! [yhteistä naurua]

Aki-Petteri: It has to be a really proper Finnish double name, Erkki-Pekka (laughs) [laughs] it should be immediately clear that here comes Erkki-Pekka the Finn! [simultaneous laughter]

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, September 2005)

Example 3

Lotta: Sanna on hyvä, miksi Sanna? [nauraa]

Lotta: Sanna is good, why Sanna?[laughs]

Sanna: Mä olen ajatellu sillee, että Sanna on tosi tavallinen nimi 70-luvulla syntyneillä tytöillä, niinkun mun oikee nimikin on, että se sillee sopisi. Toinen vois olla Tiina, mutta tykkään tästä Sannasta enemmän (nauraa)

Sanna: I have thought like, that Sanna is a really common name for a girl born in the 70s, just like my real name as well, it would suit well. Another name could be Tiina, but I like this Sanna better (laughs)

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2006)

(Feedback conversation, December 2006)

Names tell a great deal about us, and all of the participants who gave themselves names had obviously given it a lot of thought. Some wanted to underline the connection to Finland and emphasize their Finnishness by adopting a clearly Finnish, or as some phrased it, a non-Swedish name, such as Katariina and Aki-Petteri. Others opted for international and more common Swedish names, for example, Sandra, Maria, Emma and Sofia. I was interested in the name question also for personal reasons; my own typically Swedish name has not always reflected the identification I have, and since names often are associated with something, the name-giving proved to be a fruitful topic for reflection in the research process. These reflections surfaced later during the interviews as well. In the following, Maria talks about her Finnish name and the unpleasantness connected with it. She took her husband’s Swedish family name when they got married.

Example 4

Lotta: Skämdes du, då, att vara finsk?

Lotta: Were you embarrassed, then, to be a Finn?

Maria: Ja det gjorde man ju, det var ju ingenting man talade om, sådär, men alla såg ju det på namnet. Man ville ju hellst byta till något vanligt, Svensson eller någonting

Maria: Yes, one was, it was nothing that would have been talked about, like that, but everyone saw it in the name. It would have been nice to change it to something common, like Svensson or something.

Lotta: Det är nästan som jag med mitt svenska efternamn. Och jag har tänkt sådana hemska saker att min svenska är så dålig att jag vill inte heta så här. Att jag skulle hellre heta Pirjo Jokinen eller något (skrattar)[skrattar]

Lotta: It is almost like me and my Swedish family name. And I thought terrible things like that my Swedish is so bad that I would not like to be called this way. Rather something like Pirjo Jokinen (a Finnish name) or something (laughs) [laughs]

Maria: Jaa. Nej, jag ville gärna ta bort det, för jag ville inte att det skulle märkas. Och så var jag ju mobbad i skolan. Jag har alltid varit stor, liksom och sådär. Jag var mobbad för det och sen just för det här finska språket, så det var ingenting man var stolt över, det var det absolut inte.

Maria: Yes. No, I would have happily taken it away, I did not want others would notice it. And then, I have been bullied at school. I have always been big. Like that. So I was bullied because of that and because of the Finnish language, so it was nothing one would be proud of, absolutely not.

(Första intervjun, April 2002)

(First interview, April 2002)

Madeleine and Felix are pseudonyms I have invented myself since neither of them responded to the request for a feedback conversation and a pseudonym. In the rare cases where the examples do not originate from the key participants, the pseudonyms have been created by me. I have tried to find a name that reflects the age groups’ typical names.

It is disputable how much a research report should reveal about the respondents. As regards questions of anonymity, I rely on the guidelines agreed upon by the Council of the American Anthropological Association (CAAA) from 1971. According to these principles, the researcher should do everything within her/his power to protect the informants’ physical, social, and psychological welfare and honour their dignity, interests, and sensitivities (Spradley 1980: 20–25).

How to Conduct a Good Interview?

Deciding to interview people and to use spoken data as the empirical material is sometimes easier said than done. Once a researcher decides on the focus and the main questions of the interview, the next problem is how to find the people who would be interested in participating. Of the different ways I used to find participants, word-of-mouth and snowballing proved to be the most productive methods. As for my first fieldwork period, the reality was much kinder than any fieldwork-related guidebook or more experienced colleagues had made me expect: I found all interviewees easily via snowball sampling among the friends, neighbours, and old classmates of a couple of key contact people. Sandra, the daughter of the family with whom I stayed, was my first interviewee and became one of the key participants as well. She introduced me to some of her childhood playmates in the area, who agreed to be interviewed. Usually the interviewees themselves took the initiative to call a friend who might be interested in talking to me.

Once participants are successfully recruited, how does the researcher ensure that the questions are the right ones? To my great relief it quickly dawned on me that there are, by default, no right ways of asking a question. Comparison of the recordings and scripts of the first interviews in 2002 and the feedback conversations in 2006 imply that changes have take place in my speech and interview behaviour. In the first interviews, I was very careful to ask all the respondents exactly the same questions, but soon I realised that every interview situation was unique and it would be illusory to expect communication to follow a uniform pattern. It soon became obvious how differently people perceive questions and react to them: questions that led into a long conversation with one person were responded to with a shrug of a shoulder by another. Consider the following examples, 5 and 6, originating from two non-key participants, Rami and Riikka (both pseudonyms are given by me).

Example 5

Lotta: Oletsä suomalainen?…

Lotta: Are you a Finn?…

Rami: Emmä tiiä.

Rami: I don’t know

Lotta: Kutsuuko sun ystävät sua suomalaiseksi vai ruotsalaiseksi?

Lotta: Do your friends call you a Finn or a Swede?

Rami: …se vähän riippuu.

Rami: …it depends a bit.

Lotta: Mistä?

Lotta: On what?

Rami: …emmä tiiä.

Rami: …I don’t know

(Rami, syntynyt 1973, ensimmäinen haastattelu huhtikuussa 2002)

(Rami, born 1973, first interview, April 2002)

Example 6

Lotta: Är du finsk?

Lotta: Are you a Finn?

Riikka: Jaa jaa minsann, 110 % [110 %?] joo, alltid. Och det är lite diskussion, en del av mina svenska kompisar dom kan inte förstå att jag kallar mej själv finsk [mm] jag är svensk därför att jag är född här, tycker dom [joo] men håller inte med, jag känner mej, det beror på, varje människa känner sej var ens rötter kommer ifrån [joo] som utlänningar, även om en turk har bott här i trettio år, han kommer aldrig att bli svensk i svensk jargong men bara att jag är ljus och har blåa ögon så då tänker dom:‘ahaaa’

Riikka: Yes, absolutely, 110 %. [110 %?] yes, always. And there always is this little debate going on, some of my Swedish friends cannot understand why I call myself a Finn [mm] they reckon that because I was born here I’m a Swede [yeah] they do not understand how I can call myself a Finn, but I can’t agree with that, I feel myself, it depends, but every human being knows where one’s roots come from [yeah] like foreigners, if a Turk lives here for 30 years he will never be a Swede in Swedish terms, but me with my blue eyes and pale skin, they think like:‘yeees’

Lotta: men du känner dej inte svensk?

Lotta: But you don’t feel like a Swede?

Riikka: nej, jag skulle aldrig vilja vara svensk! (skrattar) [skrattar] [varför?] nää, jag gillar faktiskt finnar bättre i regel. dom är raka, ärliga, dom är lite, speciella, antingen älskar man dom eller hatar dom. Så är det [mm] men dom flesta, jag bodde ju i Rinkeby förut [mm] och där bor ju mycke’ utlänningar och dom tyckte bättre om finnar än svenskar. Finnarna var så raka och ärliga dom sade vad de tyckte och that’s it. Och det var liksom bra.

Riikka: No, I would never want to be a Swede! (laughs) [laughs][why?] noo, I really like Finns better, they are honest, straightforward, they are a bit, special, you love them or you hate them. That is the way it is [mm] but for the most, I lived in Rinkeby before [mm] and there are many foreigners living there and they liked Finns better than Swedes. Finns are so straightforward and honest they said they said what they felt and that’s it. It was like good that way.

(Riikka, född 1976, första intervjun, april 2002)

(Riikka, born 1976, first interview, April 2002)

These examples are characteristic of the different effects of the same question. Labov (1972: 221) concludes that it would be ‘absurd to believe that identical stimuli are obtained by asking everyone the same questions’. Hammersley (1990: 20) also points out that the approach to data collection within ethnography is unstructured in the sense that it does not involve a detailed plan set up in the beginning, nor are there any fixed categories that are used for interviewing people. This does not mean that the research is unsystematic, but simply that initially the data is collected as raw and wide as possible.

In the course of my research, I interviewed 29 individuals and had feedback conversations with most of them; however, I decided to focus on the data of ten of these individuals. When I decided to use interview material from ten key participants, 19 other individuals and their initial interviews plus the feedback conversations were left out. The reasons for this choice are manifold, but the weightiest of them was the aim for clarity and focus. Could I say more about 29 participants than 10? Would my findings be more trustworthy if the narrations by all of the participants were included? I do not think so. Since my aim was not to make generalizations or to compare the fieldwork areas with one another, the method of concentrating on a handful of key people serve the purpose.

There is a noticeable majority of female participants in the whole data set, which is reflected in the gender distribution of the key participants: eight of ten key participants are women. This is explained by the simple fact that it was much easier to find interested women than men to participate. The age group is maybe on the younger side as many of the participants were born in the 1980s when the extensive labour migration had already came to a halt. However, the families of these participants migrated to Sweden for work, and some families had already lived in Sweden for several years before the children were born.

About Ethics in Ethnography

At this stage it is important to look back and reflect upon the implications and effects the research method had and has on the participants and the field after the researcher has left. I have discussed topics related to research ethics, for example, in the section about privacy of the participants; thus the politics and ethics of ethnography are clearly not separate issues. (Blommaert 2005; Murphy & Dingwall 2001: 339.) The criticisms of practices in ethnographic work are often ethical considerations and it is of great importance to discuss the choices one has made. There are different approaches to ethical reflection: we can, for example, assess whether participants have been harmed in any way, or whether they were granted privacy. These concerns are often translated into a set of ethical principles to guide research practices. I reflect my research method against the principles set forth by Murphy and Dingwall in the Handbook of Ethnography (2001):

TABLE 5. Ethics of ethnographic work.

Non-maleficence

Researchers should avoid harming participants.

Beneficence

Research on human subjects should produce some positive and

identifiable benefits rather than be carried out for its own sake.

Autonomy or

self-determination

Values and decisions of research participants should be respected.

Justice

People who are equal in relevant respects should be treated equally.

Murphy and Dingwall emphasize that these principles, just as most of research ethics, exist in the context of Western societies and strongly value autonomy and self-determination, and note that these values are not valued always and everywhere (Murphy & Dingwall 2001: 340). When research is carried out with people there is always the risk that the researcher’s and the research subjects’ perceptions of what is best for the subjects are in conflict. Especially when research is carried out with members of a minority, these conflicts can pose moral and ethical dilemmas. Research reports of all kinds can have political implications for participants’ lives (see, Blommaert 2005: 68–70). When research is carried out in the domain of minorities and minority languages, the researcher also faces questions about whose agenda to follow. Should she or he encourage the minority to, for example, take political action, or simply report about their thoughts even if they are not in line with the agendas of the minority’s official representatives?

Non-maleficence and beneficence usually refer to testing a new drug or surgical treatment, and implies that the potential benefits are larger than the harm caused to the subjects. Non-maleficence, however, applies to ethnographic work as well. Ethnographers can harm the individuals or groups they study, for instance, by insulting or by causing stress or anxiety. It is obvious that negative effects and harm involved in ethnographic work are more subtle and indirect than the harm caused to, say, a laboratory rat. During the research process I asked myself several times whether it was possible to keep my own value systems and ideals in the background of the interview situation. My reactions to answers guide elaborations that follow; thus, if an answer is ‘wrong’ in my value system, am I capable of not devaluing it? How were my reactions evaluated by the participants during and after the interviews? These conflicting situations are not over when the interviews are done; on the contrary, they might arise when the outcome is published. Research participants might be hurt not only because of what is written but also because of what has been left out (Murphy & Dingwall 2001: 341).

As for justice, all research participants should be treated equally. Is it just to select 10 representatives out of 29 as I have done? The de-selection can cause disappointment, maybe even anger. The representations I chose to discuss might have been perceived as the wrong ones by the participants; my emphasis might not be the emphasis they had ultimately meant or would have preferred as the outcome of my analysis. Once a dissertation has been defended or an article published, the media might pick up aspects or quotations that seem arbitrary or irrelevant to the researcher and/or the participants. Justice is a broad concept and, as we can observe in the world, it is exercised sometimes in ways we do not agree with. I have tried my best to do justice to the participants and their communities; yet, if the participants have spoken out against their community’s mainstream opinions, it has been up to me to decide whether to discuss it in the analysis or not. It is not the aim of my research to create frontlines, or groups whose interests are presented as clashing. However, my alliance is with the participants and when, for example, the delicate topic of alcoholism was addressed by them time after time, I decided to discuss it in the analysis although it certainly does not polish the image of Finns. I had in fact decided not to discuss alcoholism as a ‘Finnish problem’ because it such a default issue in this context, but since the participants talked about it openly and often, I changed my mind.

I have approached the issue of the right to self-determination by including the participants in the process as much as possible. First, the interview method included two sets of interviews, between which the participants received the script of the first interview and had the chance to comment on, correct, and challenge it. Secondly, I asked them to give themselves a pseudonym to be used in the publication. The participants have also received the descriptions I use when introducing them to the readers. Some commented on the description and I made the suggested changes.

About Entering and Leaving the Field(s)

In connection with fieldwork and interviews, it is also sound to give some thought on one’s right to get involved in people’s lives, ask questions, make observations, and then leave and publish about their thoughts. How can I justify myself being on the field? Snellman (2003) discusses doing research on a minority and not being a member of the respective minority group. She notes that nowadays the tendency is to welcome members of a minority to conduct research on their own minority; this tendency is found especially in research with native groups. Snellman did her research with Finnish immigrants who had emigrated to Gothenburg, Sweden from the Salla area in Northern Finland. Having been born in Salla herself, Snellman shared geographical origin with her respondents, making her ‘one of us’ (Snellman 2003: 27). Also Lukkarinen Kvist came from almost the same geographical location in Finland as her respondents and experienced that she was treated as someone from the neighbouring village (2006: 51–53). Both Snellman and Lukkarinen Kvist note that the shared geographical origins connected them and the interviewees by giving them some common ground to share memories, and in a sense, to understand one another.

My experiences with the second generation respondents were overwhelmingly positive in terms of being granted approval to peer into their lives. However, some did not want to be interviewed, and some who agreed to be interviewed did not say much, or cancelled the interview at the last minute. In the beginning of the research process I could not escape the impression that the Finnish media in Sweden and some representatives of the first generation had a stronger interest in my work than the people I was interviewing. Nevertheless, problems of this kind surfaced only in the beginning. The majority of the second generation individuals who had something to do with the project wanted to contribute to it, legitimating the research.

There have been some attempts, along the way, to control my choice of interviewees, and topics as well. In the beginning I was advised by some first generation individuals not to interview ‘Too many of those who don’t speak Finnish’, and questions related to language policy, especially those concerning the local Finnish-speaking school classes in the 1980s, were mentioned as topics I should avoid in order to ‘stay out of conflicts’. I was very interested in both of the forbidden domains and there was no way I could have followed the advice given. During the later years, I was often encouraged by private persons to try to get in contact with those who were politically active and ‘successful’, in order ‘to give a more active picture of the second generation’. I did not follow this advice since for me, the group of participants was diverse enough. (For this aspect of being on the field, see, Adams 1999; Coffey & Atkinson 1996.)

In addition to private persons suggesting certain domains or individuals I should pay special attention to, there is always the powerful academic community that sometimes seemed to expect and accept only certain kinds of knowledge to be produced and presented about the minority. I will return to the role and responsibilities of a researcher in the concluding chapter where my research practices will be evaluated.

When research is carried out within the framework of ethnography it is important to give some thought also to the process of leaving the field, not only to the challenges and ethical dilemmas linked with entering the field and dwelling there. Ethnography, at its best, involves the participants deeply in the research process and all its steps, from planning the questions, to participating, to the analysis and outcome. Participants have let a stranger take part in some aspects of their thought, and some maybe even in their private lives; when the researcher has got what she needs she leaves. Because I made several fieldtrips there were also many farewells, some fonder than others. When I think back on the experiences of leaving, from the first farewells to the very last, it is clear how the nature of leaving changed over the years. Exhaustion after the first field trip was quickly forgotten, and Sweden and the encounters I had there, quickly became dear to me. Since I lived in the Netherlands for most of the years my research was ongoing, to return to Scandinavia in the autumn became a routine that structured my life. The fragmented research periods scattered over several years allowed, and imposed, time for intense reflection on the process, writing and social contact with the participants, but also created distance to the fieldwork and the whole research process.

Ethical elements in research are connected with leaving; leaving often indicates that one part, the fieldwork period with its interviews, is over and a new phase, usually writing, begins. For me, however, these phases have been intertwined throughout the years since writing and publishing have happened gradually all of the time. Thanks to the long, and sometimes trying, research process I had time to see how my interview techniques evolved. I also learned that sometimes the most private interviews allow the greatest distance to the field, and that the way in which questions are asked really make a difference. I have done my best to respect the participants’ privacy and their thoughts in all publications and public presentations. Even more importantly, I have done my utmost to deliver a truthful account of their thoughts, even and especially when their ideas and emphases have been in contradiction to mine.

Interviews: Places, Questions and Methods

The interviews were conducted in four different towns and cities around the Mälaren Bay: Köping, Västerås, and Stockholm and the greater Stockholm suburban area of Rinkeby. Some interviews were conducted in cafes or other public places, others in the privacy of the interviewee’s home. When an interview is recorded in the family home, a certain intimacy enters into the interview situation. At home the participant might feel more in control of the situation since I, the interviewer, was their guest. Several interviews were recorded in Stockholm at Sweden’s Finns’ Central Organization, RSKL, building.

To gather this interview data I have used a method combining a semi-structured thematic interview with a feedback conversation. Optimally this method means meeting each participant twice for an interview situation. The first session was, with some exceptions, more formal than the latter; questions were asked and answered politely and overlapping talk, in the sense of completing the other speaker’s sentences or interrupting, did not happen much. When we met for the second time, we had already established some common ground during the first interview and it was easier to talk. If I had only conducted the first interviews and drawn conclusions from them, my analysis would rest on a very different basis than it does now after talking to people twice. I met everyone except Madeleine and Felix more than once. First, we met for a semi-structured thematic interview and then, after the interviews had been transcribed, the participants got the script to read and we met for a feedback conversation. The mothers, however, were interviewed during an interval of two weeks and I had no time to transcribe the first interview before returning for the second one. The thematic semi-structured interview was based on a list of open-ended questions that were grouped under four themes, all under the umbrella of ‘Finnishness in Sweden thorough the eyes of second generation Finns’. The topics were:

1. Family background, the history of coming to Sweden, childhood, early years at school, Finnish/Swedish classes, languages and socializing with classmates, neighbour(s) and friend(s), hobbies. Education, working life, the present family, future plans etc.

2. Finnishness in Sweden.

3. Language and minority identity.

4. Immigrants in and immigration to Sweden.

In the feedback conversation we discussed topics from the first interview, checked the contents of the interview and talked about issues the interviewees found interesting or troubling. The interviews lasted between 45 minutes and two and a half hours. The feedback conversations were in general longer, sometimes double the time of the first recording, up to three hours. The time between the first meeting and the feedback conversation varied from two weeks (Katariina and Pia) to two years (Sofia). I met many of them several times over the years and also discussed topics relevant to my research; those conversations were informal and are not a part of this study. All the excerpts originate from either the first interview or the feedback conversation. During the period of 2002–2006, I recorded in total about 65 hours of interviews and feedback conversations with second generation Finns. The interview data and transcripts will be stored at the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. When the book went to press, digitalization of recordings and editing of transcripts were still in process.

Three of the ten participants, Sofia, Madeleine and Felix, preferred to have all communication in Swedish. The rest, seven key participants, used Finnish. All used one and the same language in both of the interview situations with the exception of Maria, who spoke Swedish in the first meeting and then Finnish at the feedback conversation. When I asked the reason for this choice she answered that the language does not make a difference, and that she simply preferred Finnish for the feedback conversation. Finnish was also spoken in the off the record encounters I had with some of the interviewees.

One legitimate question is, of course, why there is more data in Finnish than in Swedish? The answer is simple: because I reached these persons and they wanted to use Finnish. These were the persons who engaged with me in this project. The question I can ask, however, is why they wanted to speak Finnish to me even if all of them said Swedish was their strongest language and they knew that I speak Swedish as well. I found the interviews in Finnish easier and more associative, which to some extent speaks to the nature of my language skills. Nevertheless, interviews were conducted in both languages without major problems. Clarifying questions were sometimes asked from both sides to make sure that information was received correctly, but this did not create a disturbing effect; on the contrary it gave a familiar feeling to the interview.

Because I am neither interested in, nor focusing on the participants’ language skills per se I also do not want to draw conclusions about the impact of language skills in the interviews. However, I want to emphasise that the interview language can have a determining impact on the whole situation, including the answers. It would not be unexpected to find a correlation between the interview language and the answers to questions concerning national belonging and feelings of Finnishness or Swedishness. Van ‘t Land (2000) analyses in her dissertation Similar Questions; Different meanings the effect of situational variables, such as the language of the interview and the ethnicity of the interviewer, on the answers Moroccan immigrant respondents gave to survey questions. Her data were collected in the Netherlands, and she observed significant ethnicity-of-interviewer effects for questions referring to ethnic-related issues that left room for interpretation, such as ‘Do you consider yourself Moroccan or Dutch?’ or ‘Do you have Dutch friends?’ Van ‘t Land notes that the respondents who were interviewed by a Dutch interviewer reported having significantly fewer Moroccan friends and more Dutch friends than those interviewed in Dutch by a Dutch-Moroccan interviewer. Also the question ‘Do you go to the Mosques now and then?’ showed a significant language effect: the respondents who were interviewed in the Arab-Moroccan language by a Moroccan interviewer reported that they went significantly more often to the Mosques than those who were interviewed in Dutch by a Dutch-Moroccan interviewer. Other questions that she calls non-ethnic-related did not show any significant correlation between the interviewer’s ethnicity and the interview language. She concludes that future research should reveal why, for some questions referring to ethnic-related issues, only ethnicity-of-interviewer effects were found, whereas for some others only significant language effects were found. It seems reasonable to conclude that the power relations between the interviewer and the respondent and the respondent’s assumptions about the interviewer’s goals and expectations play a determining role. If the same questions that I asked had been addressed by a Swedish-speaking Swede, it could have been possible, according to van ‘t Land’s observations, that the answers, for example, to the question about defining oneself as a Finn or a Swede would have been biased towards feeling more Swedish than Finnish.

Transcription of Vernacular and Dialects, Imitations and Accents

My method, to interview and have feedback conversations, required a lot of transcribing in part because I wanted to give the participants an opportunity to read the script of the first interview before meeting me again. To transcribe recorded interviews can be a surprisingly time consuming activity, yet it is a necessary and crucial stage of an interview study (Eskola 2001: 136). But what is transcribing, exactly? Is it a written account of what was said, an account of how things were expressed, or something else?

When research such as mine has been carried out with reflexivity in mind, the transcription is also subject to reflexivity, requiring awareness and acknowledgment of the limitations and consequences of one’s transcriptional choices. Reflexivity in this matter also implies awareness that the textual products, such as a transcription and its analysis, are not transparent or unproblematic records of objective scientific research, but are creative and also politicized documents, in which the researcher as the author of the text should be visible (Bucholtz 2000: 1440; Hammersley & Atkinson 1995). Reflexivity also implies that nothing arises from our data but that we, through our choices and throughout the process, select and put emphasis on some details whereas we leave others without attention (Eskola 2001). Thus, transcription is certainly something that needs closer scrutiny. In the following, I will discuss some transcription practices and their possible implications.

According to Bucholtz (2000: 1440), the transcription process consists of at least two different domains of choices which are connected to the actions of the researcher: the process of interpretation and the process of representation. To make an interpretation of a recording means making sense of what is said and by whom. Representation refers to the manner in which we decide to give the speech a written form. Interpretation can appear difficult as a result of many aspects: the quality of the recording might be poor, instruments faulty, background noise too loud, the interviewee or the interviewer speak too soft or unclearly, or other imaginable aspects. Yet, however clear and easy to interpret a recording appears to the listener, Bucholtz remarks that no interpretation (listening and making sense) of a recording can be neutral; instead, it always has a point of view (Bucholtz 2000: 1441). Although most interpretations used for research purposes could pass quite unnoticed and have little significance on the speaker’s life, others can, in the most extreme cases, have life-changing consequences, such as a verdict resulting in conviction or deportation (Bucholtz 2000; Blommaert 2005).

The interpretation process of my data was quite simple, with the exception of a few poor quality recordings made on cassettes during the first fieldwork period. Sometimes, however, overlapping speech made understanding difficult; especially in the group interviews with the mothers, overlapping speech posed problems as there were three to four female voices mingling and sometimes the background sounds of children dominated the sound landscape. The feedback conversations also functioned as clarification sessions where the participants had the possibility to make comments and corrections to the script.

When a researcher has made the interpretative choices about what is said by whom in the recording, she or he has also (maybe unconsciously) decided how to present the speaker in a written form. By making this choice, the researcher has decided as what kind of a person the speaker will come across. As for representation, I want to draw the readers’ attention to some main problems of representation that are relevant for this specific research, namely, vernacular and nonstandard language use.

We can illustrate representation practices with the example of having conducted interviews with people who speak a vernacular or dialect, or do not master well the interview language, or who stutter or have a deviant way of pronouncing sounds (for example, an uvular or velar [R] instead of alveolar [r] in Finnish). How should one transcribe nonstandard language use, and is it important to transcribe it at all? There are no correct answers to these questions, only answers that are motivated by different theoretical backgrounds and political agendas, and each of these can be justified in their domain.

One approach to representing nonstandard language is to standardize, which is usually done by adding missing forms, omitting nonstandard words and even entire expressions, and replacing them with standard ones. Also stuttering or repetitious use of ‘you know’, ‘like’, and similar fillers may be omitted. On the one hand, the motivation behind this cleanup action could be, for example, the desire to present the speaker in a better light, not as someone with a speech impediment or a person speaking a vernacular, because vernacular usage is often linked with being uneducated (Bucholtz 2000; Wardhaugh 1999). On the other hand, a standardized transcription could be aimed at improving the economy of reading, or emphasizing the content of what is said and not its exact form. A legitimate question is whether it is important to transcribe, for example, stuttering. Does it tell the reader something important about the speaker, or will it just make reading difficult? Vernacular and accents are often stigmatized and so is stuttering or the repetitious use of fillers, and readers, just like listeners, make quick associations between vernacular usage and a surprising variety of other factors, ranging from education to character.

If we, then, think of transcribing in the setting of an ethnographic study, standardizing and cleaning up appear to be out of place. To standardize interview data is a political act because such a revision implies that the original is in some way inadequate (Bucholtz 2000: 1453). When a researcher decides to clean up the transcription and transforms the interviewees’ contributions into standardized accounts, much of the content might disappear. If fillers, false starts and repetitions are omitted and dialects and vernacular standardized, then, as Blommaert points out, the interviewee’s voice is lost (Blommaert 2005: 68). It is debatable, however, how raw a transcription can be and still be understood by the reader. Should there, for example, be punctuation? Should nonstandard pronunciation be transcribed, and how should this be done?

I myself have transcribed all the interviews and feedback conversations that I use for the analysis. Many interviews have been transcribed more than once because they have served different purposes at different times. The first transcription was for the participants to read and I tried to transcribe as clearly and legibly as possible. I used conventional sentence structures, but kept the transcript as close to the original as possible. This means that I transcribed Finnish the way the participants spoke it in the recording. Many commented on the difficulty of reading such ‘messy’ and ‘vernacular’ speech, and it was the first time for all of the participants to see what their speech looked like in a written form. Thus, my aim was to make a simple and legible record of our encounter for the participants and to add a personal touch by including some aspects from the sound surrounding.

Transcription is a long process; I have spent hours listening to the interviews with and without transcripts, and made some corrections, even alternative transcripts at times. For the academic purpose of texts appearing in this book, I used the basic content transcription of the interviews, i.e., speech contributions were transcribed the way I heard them from the recordings, with the addition of laughter, sighs, possible interference by a third party and so on. This transcription is much less detailed than, for instance, conversation analysis would require. I did not measure the pauses with a stop watch accuracy or the duration of overlapping speech in a very detailed way; instead, I decided to mark a short pause, less than approximately one second, with a comma (,) and a longer pause, longer than a second, with a period (.). The period does not necessarily indicate the end of a sentence, nor are commas necessarily between clauses, they simply indicate brief pauses. Longer pauses in the flow of speech are marked with a dotted line (…). Overlapping speech is marked with (//) where the overlap begins. A question mark (?) marks a question with a rising pitch, and an exclamation mark (!) indicates an increase in loudness. Sometimes a rising pitch does not mark a question, although it often is the case. Some speakers simply used rising pitch when they were coming close to ending their turn, or at the end of a grammatical unit. Bold in a regular font marks stress on a word or syllables uttered much louder than the surrounding syllables.

Code switching is an interesting phenomenon to focus on when linguistic identities are at stake. The key participants, however, chose one language and seldom switched over to another. Code switching, in the rare cases it took place, is indicated with a different font inside the text. Sometimes the names of Finnish dishes that lack an equivalent word in Swedish were given in the Finnish form, such as ‘Jag lagar aldrig lanttulaatikko eller rosolli för julen’, (I never make rutabaga stew or a dish with boiled root vegetables and herring for Christmas; traditional Finnish Christmas dishes). I also added some Swedish names of offices or social services that the interviewee did not know in Finnish such as ‘Ja se socialstyrelse jatkoi sitä kokousta’, (and then the social board continued the meeting). Apart from replacing a word in the other language, code switching did not take place. Most of the interviews were in Finnish and none of the interviewees spoke ‘standard Finnish’ but rather dialects of Finnish. In fact, I believe that no one speaks a standard of any given language; rather, we make use of different registers of language(s) (see also Hidalgo 1998). In respect to representation, Finnish allows a flexible usage of spelling and structure without making the deciphering difficult.

Vernacular and style are highly interesting for the context of this research and deserve close attention. Many participants made use of different registers by imitating others or underlining a point by changing their dialect, accent or tone of voice. When the participants imitated accents, a change in tone alone, specific intonation or a stress on a word conveyed a whole range of meanings. Changes in prosody or a good laugh do not show in the written form if interviews are transcribed only for their content. Because I regard tones and imitations as important I had to find a way to present them to the reader as well. I will illustrate this problem with the following example in which Emma and I are talking about researchers and about what, according to her, people would associate with a researcher. She explains that the association links the research profession with someone who is male, old, maybe even intimidating. Consider the example below:

Example 7

Emma: Mut mä luulen, taas mä meen pois aiheesta (nauraa) et siis mä luulen, että joku voi ajatella, että, ‘hmm. tutkija, että ei mun pidä sanoo mitään’, että se riippuu niinku että minkälainen, ku sä oot kuitenkin, että jos sä oisit joku viiskymppinen mies et ‘joo mulla on tässä tällänen tutkimus näistä//’(puhuu matalalla, monotonisella äänelle, nauraa päätteeksi omalla äänellään) [//nauraa] niin mä saattasin kanssa olla että, ‘okei, joo, ei, ymm… ihan kiva…’(puhuu kimeällä, ujolla äänellä, nauraa päätteeksi), että jos joku siis vaan tuntuu sellaselta…siis mä en oikeesti haluu verrata sua viiskymppiseen //mieheen (nauraa)

Emma: but I think, I am drifting off the topic again (laughs) but I think, that someone could think like: ‘hmmm, a researcher, maybe I shouldn’t say anything’, it like depends on what kind of a person, like you are in any case, I mean if you were some fifty year old man going like: ‘well, I have this kind of a research here about these//’(speaking in a low, monotone voice, laughs in the end in her own voice) [//laughs] I could also think like: ‘ok, right, yes, ymmm, all is fine’… (talks in a high, shy voice, laughs in the end in her own voice), so if some one just feels like, well, I really don’t want to compare you with a fifty year old// man (laughs)

Lotta: //(nauraa) ei se haittaa (puhuu matalalla, monotonisella matalalla äänellä, nauraa päätteeksi omalla äänellään).

Lotta: //(laughs) oh, it does not matter (talks in a low monotone voice, laughs in the end in her own voice)

Emma: (nauraa) [nauraa]

Emma: (laughs) [laughs]

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, lokakuu 2005)

(First interview, October 2005)

Consider the example without any of the explanations in the brackets or the bold marking emphasis on the words. If I had standardized everything or given no explanatory information, these crucial things – the laughter and the imitations, the social interaction between Emma and me – would have been lost. I consider changes in tone, dialect and vernacular as creative choices in talking about things and want the transcriptions to reflect them as much as possible.

The data in Swedish proved more problematic and offered fewer possibilities to represent nonstandard varieties of pronunciation or syntax without resulting in a confusing script. I decided to transcribe the interviews in Swedish as closely to the source as possible, but stick to the common spelling. As the key participants who spoke Swedish (Maria, Sofia, Madeleine and Felix) did not use any strong vernacular, transcribing did not pose many difficulties.

I have chosen to present all of the examples in the original language on the left side of the page and accompany them with an English translation on the right. In everyday language, to translate means, more or less, the following: it is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language (the so-called source text), and the production, in another language, of an equivalent text (the target text, or translation) that communicates the same message. In this book, the languages are Finnish/Swedish and English respectively. To translate anything poses, at least, as many potential problems as the process of transcription. To translate data that consists of vernacular speech and, in many cases, proceeds from one topic to another with few clear transitions is a great challenge. The readers can see in their mind’s eye an attempt to translate a novel or film that makes use of dialects and prototype characteristics of people coming from certain regions in a given country. For those who share social knowledge of the dialect or the characteristics connected with the Frisian of the northern parts of the Netherlands or the people from Finnish Savolax, the scenes open up in a fundamentally different way than for those who do not have this knowledge. To translate social status and content of dialects or the associations linked with them, or to describe the behavior of the characters, is difficult.

I decided to provide the reader with additional information in side brackets in places where this seemed necessary. For example, when participants are imitating a Finnish accent in Swedish I have marked this inside brackets. By providing this information, I hope to make the written form of the interviews somewhat easier for the readers to understand and to enable their access to the richness of varieties in which the participants talk.

Research Steps

I would like to visualize the fieldwork experiences and the descriptions, especially of the very first entry to the field, as the Google Earth program6 on the Internet. Google Earth makes use of satellite pictures of the globe by daylight (so it is possible to view the whole globe at any time), and by typing in coordinates we can see, for example, the street we grew up in, or take a look at the Amazon rainforest from above. If you do not know the exact width and length coordinates you can try to spot some landmarks, such as mountains, big roads, or lakes by manually clicking in the direction you assume the spot you are looking for is located. The idea of zooming down to the world from some satellite hovering in space might create the impression of a top-bottom approach. I would like to stress that this is absolutely not what my metaphor is intended to stand for – on the contrary, for me the idea of Google Earth serves as a way of locating something from far away and then approaching it step by step, seeing more clearly and in detail, and, finally, describing it. It includes, on the one hand, the idea of awareness and the decision to zoom to the left or to the right. On the other hand, the satellite metaphor includes also the idea of zooming back and scrutinizing the findings in their larger context.

I will now present the steps I have taken, starting from the initiation of my project, and ending with the final period of writing the dissertation and this book. For the sake of clarity, and wishing to keep some of the authenticity of the process, I have made a table where the different stages of the project are specified. Since my research followed the ethnographic tradition, not only the fieldwork but also the pre-stages of the fieldwork are considered to be an essential part of the research and are also included in the story. (See also, van Maanen 1988: 22; Geertz 1973; Coffey & Atkinson 1996.)

The Google Earth metaphor inspired table of the research steps

1. Starting the search engine

Preparing for and going to the first fieldwork period in Köping in Spring of 2002

2. Learning to use the tool

Theoretical studies, testing methods, first analysis, University of Amsterdam 2002–2004.

3. Locating main landmarks, finding paths and orientation

Fieldwork in Västerås 9–12/2004. Writing a chapter about second generation Finns in the area of Mälaren for a research publication by the Justice Ministry of Sweden, being active on the field. Further elaboration of the research questions; publications, conferences.

4. Zooming down, dwelling in

Fieldwork in Stockholm 10–12/2005. Contextualization, clarification of the diverse field.

5. Zooming out: writing the dissertation

Returning to finish the dissertation in Finland, last fieldwork in Stockholm 12/2006. Licentiate Thesis Invisible Opponent. Focusing, narrowing down, specifying. Writing the manuscript. Defending the thesis, June 2008.

Starting the Search Engine

Location: Köping , Sweden 59° 31’ 0” N / 16° 0’ 0” E

Participants:

First contacts: Sandra, Maria

Although the first fieldwork took place in the early summer of 2002, the search engine of this research was started already in 2000 at the Finnish Migration Institute where I worked at the time. The Institute was planning a research project with Stockholm University and Mälardalens Högskola in Eskilstuna. The Mälardalen Project was aimed at mapping the lives of second generation Finnish-speaking Finns in the area of Mälaren, and my role in the project was to undertake independent research for a dissertation. The Mälaren project was unfortunately never funded, but I was fortunate to receive individual grants to embark on the journey of undertaking Ph.D. research.

Before my first fieldwork period I had never considered Sweden very different from Finland. I grew up with a Finnish-speaking mother and Swedish-speaking father; the two languages have always been a part of our family. Sweden as a country never seemed like something out of the ordinary either. Colleagues joked about my ‘dull choice of study’. The first fieldwork-related experience came, to my surprise, when I was still in Turku and went to a supermarket to buy some food items my host family had wanted from Finland. Below a fieldwork note:

Field note 1

‘Ensimmäinen kenttätöihin liittyvä uusi tunne ilmaantui keskiviikkona kun mä kävin kaupassa ostamassa tuliaisia perheelle, jonka luona olen ensimmäisen viikon Köpingissä. Mulle kerrottiin suomalaisten toivovan tuliaisiksi Juhla Mokkaa ja lenkkimakkaraa. Siispä marssin kauppaan ja mätin koriin em. tarvikkeita. Yhtäkkiä huomasin olevani kamalan kiusaantunut. En koskaan koske lenkkimakkaraan enkä Juhlamokkaan, ne ei vaan yksinkertaisesti kuulu ruokavaliooni. Ehkä myös mielessäni liitän niihin tuotteisiin tietyn elämäntavan ja ryhmän, jonka kanssa minulla ei ole moniakaan yhtymäkohtia arkielämässäni.’

‘The first new fieldwork related experience occurred on Wednesday when I went to the super market to get some gifts for the family with whom I will stay for the first week in Köping. I had been told that Finns wish to get Juhla Mokka coffee and sausages. So I marched to the shop and stuffed my basket with the above-mentioned items. Suddenly I realised that I was terribly uncomfortable. I never even touch sausages or Juhla Mokka, they simply do not belong to my diet. Maybe I also associate with these things a certain group of people and a lifestyle I have very little in common with in my daily coming and going.’

Ensimmäinen matkapäivä 18.4.2002, Viking Amorella Turusta Tukholmaan

The first day of travel 18.4.2002, Viking Amorella from Turku to Stockholm

I remember standing in the queue and feeling somehow embarrassed with light roasted filter coffee and pink sausages in my basket. Although I was leaving the next day and needed absolutely nothing, I bought some vegetables and asked the cashier for two separate receipts, as if I had wanted to signal that some of the items did not belong to me but to someone else I was shopping for. It was a strong feeling of standing in someone else’s shoes, or on somebody’s private area with which I could not connect. Food, cooking and eating habits of families pop up in my fieldwork notes quite often also later on, so maybe it is not surprising, after all, that the first experience happened in the supermarket and was connected to food. I will return to this later, but want to remark here already that this sausage experience captures two (of many) essential things I learned during my fieldwork periods. This experience made me question my and our collective understandings and concepts of what ethnicity, or belonging to a group, consists of. These constructions can differ greatly from person to person, although we might believe that we belong to the community called the Finns. Finnishness, for one person, really was captured in those sausages and the light roasted coffee; for others, like me, these items had a completely different message. Second, the sausage experience indicated, before I had even thought about ethnic markers, how family traditions become ethnic markers.

I began the first fieldwork journey to Sweden on the morning of April 4th, 2002 by boarding a red-and-white Viking Line vessel in Turku to cross the gulf like so many Finns before me. The journey lasts about 11 hours, and I had plenty of time to imagine how it might have felt to be on the journey to a new country, a new life. I also had time to realise what I was about to do: I was on my way to enter peoples’ lives without being concretely invited by more than one single family! From the Stockholm harbour I took a bus to Köping. Having arrived at my destination I was picked up by the vicar of the local Finnish congregation, and he drove me to the family who had offered me a room for the fieldwork period. I want to note here that the Church of Sweden has Finnish speaking congregations in many cities, and these congregations have a strong social function for many Finnish speakers. They are often an important part of everyday life for many first generation Finns in Sweden, and the Finnish vicars have an equally important role for the community. It was my impression that religion or Sunday service, per se, did not play any great role in many Finnish speakers’ lives, but the congregation had a significant social function for the communities. In many fieldwork areas the Church of Sweden’s facilities had clubrooms for activities in Finnish, even preschools and after hours care for older children.

The family that had invited me to their home consisted of a mother and a father and four adult children, three of whom lived in other towns in Sweden. The parents were both in their sixties and had already retired. They had come to Sweden from the Finnish West coast in the late 1960s to ‘make some money, and then to return’, as the father several times stressed in our conversations later on. He had found work at a yeast factory where he worked for some months before getting a better position at the Volvo plant in Köping where he worked for about thirty years until his disability retirement. The mother stayed at home for the first years taking care of their children and some other children of Finnish-speaking families in the neighbourhood. Later she started working as a caretaker at the kindergarten.

My gifts, the sausages and the coffee, were received with pleased laughter. We had iltakahvit, evening coffee, with sandwiches, and talked until late. As a result of the openheartedness of my host family I was granted access to some of my respondents’ lives before knowing the town where I was about to start my fieldwork. To some extent the process of becoming familiar with the field began from inside and expanded slowly outwards.

Sandra, my first key contact in Köping, was born there in 1974, as the youngest child of my host family. As a child she had Finnish-speaking day care, but had received her whole education in Swedish, with the exception of 3 months of student exchange in Helsinki during her studies. At the time of the interview she was dating a Finnish man who lived in Finland and both of them travelled frequently between the countries. Given her situation, Sandra had thought intensively about identities and bilingualism, and also reflected on these a lot in the interview and feedback conversation. She had medical training and when we met she worked as a lab technician.

The second key participant in the area, Maria, was born to Finnish-speaking parents in 1972 in Köping. Her mother was born in Sweden to a large Finnish family and her father had come to Sweden in the 1960s; she had many cousins and relatives in Sweden as well as a younger sister. Maria had her whole education in Swedish, and after high school she studied to become a youth worker and, at the time of our encounters, she worked as a youth counselor in Köping. She was married to a Swede and was pregnant with her first child when we met in 2002.

Köping has about 20,000 inhabitants7 and is structured like many small Swedish towns: the town centre is built around a market square around which many of its services are located. Banks, a post office and the city hall are all at the edge of the square; a pedestrian zone with small shops, bakeries and office buildings stretching for some blocks from the square. Local bus lines have their stops at the square, but the railway station and long distance bus station are located outside the town centre. Outside this inner circle the public space merges with residential areas. First low apartment buildings, and after a few minutes’ walk the properties grow bigger, the houses more spacious. My host family lived a couple of kilometres from the city centre in a green residential area with one-family houses standing on large properties. Below, there are some thoughts about Köping and the general image of the city as I experienced it and wrote down in the field notes on my first visit:

Field note 2

‘Olen huomannut käyttäneeni sanaa sievä huomattavasti enemmän kuin koskaan aikaisemmin Suomessa. Jostain syystä ‘SIEVÄ’ tuntuu tällä hetkellä kuvaavan kokemustani Köpingin kaupungista. Eilen illalla XX näytti minulle kaupunkia, kävelimme 10 kilometriä Köpingin ympäri, pari tuntia pitkin ja poikin. Kaupunki on yksinkertaisesti sievä, siistejä kauniiksi maalattuja kuutionmuotoisia taloja, siistejä aidattuja pikku pihoja, kadut ovat puhtaita ja liikennettä oli ällistyttävän vähän. Kaupunki on todella hiljainen. Tänne ei kuulu minkään isomman moottoritien häly, lentomelua ei ole lainkaan, enkä ole nähnyt yhden yhtä junaa, vaikka kaupungissa onkin asema.’ Köping 21.4.2002

‘I have noticed that I am using the word neat much more than ever before in Finland. For some reason ‘NEAT’ seems at the moment to describe my impressions of Köping. Last night XX showed me the town and we walked around for a couple of hours, maybe 10 kilometers. The town is simply very neat, clean, neatly painted square houses, tidy fenced little gardens, streets are clean and there is amazingly little traffic. The town is very quiet. There is no sound of a bigger highway, no noise of planes. I also haven’t seen a single train although there is a railway station in this town.’ Köping 21.4.2002

My attention was constantly drawn to the neatness of everything: no brown leaves from the year before on the well-groomed grass, no weeds under the black currant bushes, no children’s toys scattered around the driveways in front of the houses. The gardens were so clean and the houses so well taken care of that it gave the area an air of an exhibition that was made to model a ‘perfect world’. Both key participants – and the rest of the people I interviewed in Köping–mentioned that the town had specific areas where ‘foreigners’ lived. These areas were described as places ‘where only those who have to’ live. It was apparent that the neatness of Köping was very much dependent on the location, and because I happened to stay in a well groomed area I did not see much of the less perfect Köping during the first two weeks. Later that spring when I biked around I spotted two small areas that looked like suburban housing projects consisting of concrete apartment buildings at the edge of the town. Apart from these small areas, the town had a middle class, one-family-house appearance.

Also in Västerås the participants were quick to tell me the location of where ‘foreigners’ lived. In Stockholm, on the other hand, the key participants all lived in areas with a high percentage of ‘foreigners’. Some key participants from the Stockholm area argued that the locations where they grew up and lived had a more significant impact on their lives and identities than anything else. I will return to the geography of identities in Chapter Six.

Learning to Use the Tool, Detours on the Way

Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands 52°22´23´´N 4°53´32´´E

The second step describes detours in the research process; it took me on a winding path through the landscape of normative thoughts, argumentation structures, schemes, and exhilarating debates. This step took place largely in Amsterdam at the Graduate School for Humanities, where I studied two terms in a program called Logic, Language and Argumentation, and in the years thereafter during which I worked on my research project at the department as a visiting scholar and taught introductory courses in argumentation and debating at the Utrecht University College. My incentive to come specifically to Amsterdam was founded in my search for a method to analyse the interview data I had already collected in Sweden earlier that year. I was interested in argumentation, but did not, how to analyse it, however. I wrote a research thesis, The Invisible Opponent, about argumentation in sequences where interviewees talked about immigration, Finnishness, Swedishness and feelings of national belonging. My idea was inspired by the pragma-dialectic approach to argumentation (van Eemeren & Grotendorst 2004), and I suggested that a speaker who advances argumentation defends her standpoint to a listener who doubts its acceptability or has a different point of view on the same issue. In my data, however, there was no antagonist towards the interviewer. The interviewees seemed to argue with themselves, or with the prevailing discourse, something I called the Invisible Opponent. I proposed that the interviewees argued, on the one hand, against the discourse of society about what is proper Finnishness in Sweden. On the other hand, they seemed to react to anticipated criticism (that was never uttered) from my side. I tried to combine normative theory with ethnography and to explain the data outside strict normativity. However, in retrospect not unsurprisingly, this attempt was not successful and I did not find what I was looking for in the normative school of argumentation.

The metaphor of taking steps can imply that a process such as research proceeds from the first initial step to the last, going through the steps in consecutive order. I want to emphasize that these steps are overlapping. For example, the second step did not come to a halt after I had finished the program in Amsterdam: it started the process of finding my own way of doing research, and, in many ways, this search is an on-going process, hopefully a lifelong journey.

Locating Landmarks, Finding Paths, and Orientation

Location: Västerås, Sweden 59° 37´ N, 16° 32´ E

Participants:

Students: Madeleine, Felix

Mothers: Pia, Katariina

I returned to Sweden in 2004, this time to Västerås. The city is located in the northwest corner of the Mälaren Bay and has a population of 132,000 inhabitants. It is one of Sweden’s oldest towns, and brochures about Västerås describe the town as a ‘large city with the benefits of a small town’.8 The city lives on industry (ASEA, ABB) and several big companies are located there. The journey between Västerås and Stockholm takes about an hour by train, the distance being some 140 km. The centre of Västerås has tree-lined streets and even an old part of town with red log houses at the waterfront, narrow cobble-stone alleys winding through it. Suburban areas lie at the outskirts of the town. Mälardalens Högskola, the University of Mälaren, is located within walking distance from the town’s centre and consists of several modern buildings.

I found participants through the University of Mälaren where I asked, after having lectured there, whether anyone knew someone who would be interested in participating. Five students had already written down their email addresses and phone numbers, and I met all of them for an interview. Two of them, Madeleine and Felix, give the voice for the group I call students.

Madeleine was born in 1980 to a Finnish-German family and grew up, as she described, in ‘an upper middle class environment’ in Västerås. Her mother is Finnish and came to Sweden in 1969 with a girlfriend; she did not know when exactly her father arrived in Sweden, but she thought it probably was around the same time. Madeline did not speak or understand Finnish. She approached me after the lecture I gave at the seminar she attended and volunteered for an interview. At the time of the interview, she was participating in a teacher education program with an emphasis on multiculturalism and was writing a master’s thesis. At her request the interview with her was conducted with her fellow student Felix.

Felix was born in 1969 as the only child to a Swedish mother and a Finnish father. His father had come to Sweden as a refugee from Ingria (Russian Federation) as a child. Felix had lived his whole life in the area of Västerås and had worked, among other jobs, for the local newspaper before his studies. At the time of the interview, he was studying in the same teacher education program as Madeline and wanted to work as a junior high school teacher. Felix did not speak or understand any Finnish. He approached me with Madeline. He was interviewed together with her in a library study room at the University of Mälaren.

To interview more than one person at the same time has its pros and cons. In Madeleine’s and Felix’s case pros weighed out the cons. As they had studied in the same program and decided to write their Master’s thesis together they knew each other well. The orientation of their study program indicated sensitivity towards identities and questions about ethnicity in the context of immigration, and it was clear that they had reflected on related topics not only on a personal level but also in the larger society framework and were happy to share these reflections. The cons of a group interview often lie in the imbalance of speakers’ vocalisations and dominance. There is always the risk that one participant dominates the situation by choice of topics, interrupting and determining the course of the interview situation. In the interview with Madeleine and Felix, such dominance or imbalance is not relevant. Both of them talked approximately the same amount of time, asked one another questions inviting to a dialogue, and reflected on each other’s opinions, challenging the other to elaborate. Felix received plenty of encouraging feedback from Madeleine and me, we laughed at his jokes more than he laughed at ours, or we laughed at our jokes, for that matter, and in that sense he might have been, from some point of view, dominating the situation. However, the interview proceeded freely and Madeleine and Felix discussed topics they considered to be relevant to the cluster of themes I introduced in the beginning of the situation. They also compared their experiences during the recording.

Both of the mothers, Pia and Katariina, were active members of the family club that was organized by the Church of Sweden, the Finnish congregation in Västerås. The meeting took place at the clubhouse of the church. Both had two similar aged children, and had become friends through the family club. Both women described the club as a place to which they looked forward to coming, and to meet other Finnish-speaking parents, mainly mothers, who had become important friends. Bi-weekly the club meetings offered them and their children Finnish-speaking company and activities. The mothers sat, drank coffee and conversed while the children were taken care of by a Finnish-speaking child and youth worker. At the end of the 2–3 hour club meetings the mothers and their children sang Finnish children’s songs and played games together. The playing language of the children was mainly Swedish, as far as I could follow them, but the mothers told me that the children always started to play in Swedish with one another but switched to Finnish after half an hour or so. All the mothers present described the club as something crucial for their children’s language development and were grateful for the social network the club created for them.

Pia was born in Finland in 1983 to a Finnish-speaking family that migrated to Sweden when she was 3 years old. Thus, her parents moved to Sweden after the busy migration years. She grew up in Eskilstuna, in a Finnish-speaking environment, including Finnish-speaking day care, primary, secondary and junior high school. At the time of the interviews Pia was at home taking care of her two small children. Before the children were born, she worked for customer service in a store and in health care. She had a Finnish-speaking partner and, in her own words, they lived a ‘Finnish-speaking life’. I met her for the first time in December 2004 at a family club meeting taking place at the Finnish congregation’s club room. A group of 3 mothers, 5 children and one youth worker were present during my first visit, and, during the second, 5 mothers, 10 children, one youth worker and the vicar were present. The interviews were group interviews and took place two weeks apart.

Katariina was born in 1974 to a Finnish-speaking family and migrated to Sweden with her mother as a 3-month-old baby. Her father had already been working in Sweden for some time. She grew up in Västerås. Katariina went to a Finnish class for the first 6 years and then continued in Swedish. She was a mother of two and had a Swedish-speaking partner. The family functioned in two languages: she spoke Finnish to the children and her husband spoke Swedish. To one another they spoke Swedish and her husband did not really understand Finnish. Katariina pointed out that her husband had been very supportive and often expressed his admiration of their son’s ability to communicate in two languages. At the time of the interviews she was staying at home with the children, but was planning to return to her job as a clerk at a petrol station.

The interviews with the mothers were done in a group setting and the format worked well; they were friends and talked freely together, discussing, comparing experiences and even arguing at times.

Zooming Down, Dwelling in: 2004, 2005, 2006

Location: Stockholm, Sweden 59°21′ N 18°4′ E

Participants:

Urbanites: Sofia, Aki-Petteri, Sanna, Emma

In addition to the years 2005 and 2006, during which I did fieldwork in Stockholm, I stayed a couple of weeks in Stockholm in 2003 and 2004. I got in touch with Sofia in 2004 through a friend who worked as a Finnish language instructor at the Uppsala University and happened to be Sofia’s teacher.

Sofia was born in 1983 in Nacka, just outside Stockholm, and was studying political science and gender studies in Uppsala at the time of our first encounter in 2004. She had a Finnish-speaking mother who came to Sweden in the 1960s and raised Sofia alone. Sofia’s mother had spoken mainly Finnish to her in the first few years, but their home language had slowly become Swedish when she started kindergarten. She had started to study Finnish at the university a year before with the aim ‘of getting over her shyness to speak’, as she formulated her reason to take the course. Alongside her studies she participated in Finnish language courses in Uppsala and described her skills as fair in reading, writing and understanding. After my friend had asked in class whether anyone would be interested in talking to me, Sofia e-mailed me and we met for the interview in Stockholm, in my hotel, and had the interview in Swedish. The feedback conversation took place at the Central Organization for Sweden’s Finns in Stockholm two years later, in 2006.

In 2005 I stayed with friends in the suburb of Rinkeby, in the nothwest of Stockholm. The construction work of Rinkeby started in 1968 and was completed in 1972 as part of the so-called miljonprogrammet. The project’s aim was to produce a million new homes in Sweden between 1965–1975.9 Simultaneously, similar suburbs were built in Malmö, Gothenburg, Västerås and Eskilstuna. Many of the suburbs quickly became areas where the inhabitants had diverse foreign backgrounds, as was the case also in Rinkeby (see also Jaakkola 1989; Weckström 2007). Even today, the demography of Rinkeby differs from the demography of other areas in Stockholm, and the whole of the Mälaren area for that matter, in several ways: according to statistics, a fifth of the population in Stockholm is of a foreign background, but in Rinkeby the percentage is 65 %. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Finns formed the largest minority group in Rinkeby; there were several Finnish-speaking preschool groups and the opportunity to have the entire primary and secondary education in Finnish (Weckström 2007). Today the largest groups are Somalis, Turks and Iraqis.

I found some participants in Rinkeby through the neighbours and friends of my friends I stayed with. Others I found through the RSNL, Central Organization for Young Sweden’s Finns. The RSNL has their office in the same facility as the RSKL, Central Organization for Finns in Sweden, where I had an office at the Sweden’s Finn’s archive for the fieldwork period. I call the group of participants from the year 2005 the group of urbanites.

Aki-Petteri was the first of my Rinkeby contacts. He was born in 1983 and raised in Rinkeby, his parents being Finnish-speaking Finns who came to Sweden at the end of 1970s. He had an older sister and, at the time of our first encounter, he studied at Stockholm University and worked part time in health care. I interviewed him for the first time in 2004, and again a year later, in 2005. The first interview and the feedback conversation took place at his parents’ home.

Emma was born in 1982 and grew up in a Finnish-speaking family in Väsby in Uppland. Emma’s parents came to Sweden for the first time in the early 1970s and the family lived for a period of 4 years on the Swedish-speaking west coast of Finland when Emma started to go to school. They returned because her mother ‘got so homesick’. Emma had one younger sister and at the time of the first interview she was studying anthropology at Stockholm University and was saving money for a trip around the world. She had travelled a lot and studied in London for a while as well. I made contact with Emma through the RSN, the organization for Young Sweden’s Finns, and we met at the facilities of the Sweden’s Finns’ central organisation in Stockholm where the RSN has their main office. We had the feedback conversation at the same location a year later.

Sanna was born in 1978 and grew up in the same courtyard as Aki-Petteri. Her parents came to Sweden in the late 1970s. Before settling in Rinkeby her father worked for a short while in Gothenburg and Västerås. It was characteristic of labour immigrants to move around seeking work and agreeable living conditions (Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000). I met Sanna for the first time during my field trip in 2005 and she invited me to her home for a dinner-interview. At the time of the interview, she lived with her Swedish partner in downtown Stockholm and worked in the media. The feedback conversation took place in my hotel room a year later, in December 2006.

6 It is probably unnecessary to add that the company Google has nothing to do with my research, nor have I received financial or any other kind of aid from the company.

7 http://www.koping.se looked up 30.6.2011

8 http://www.vasteras.se, looked up 30.6.2011

9 All statistical information about Rinkeby is based on a leaflet called ‘Rinkeby din stadsdel i korthet, 2005’ published and distributed by the Rinkeby stadsdelnämnd.

4. Language and Communities in the Construction of Finnishness

Language and communities were central in the representations of Finnishness that the key participants created in the interviews. In fact, Finnishness often seemed to be synonymous to Finnish language. However, in the course of interviews and feedback conversation the symbiotic nature of language and identity was contested and discussed from several angles. This chapter takes a look at language and communities in the construction of Finnishness. Before presenting the participants’ thoughts about languages in their everyday life, I will briefly survey some of the different viewpoints about the connection between language and identity.

Questions concerning the connection between language and identity are complex and the answers sometimes contain more value-loaded rhetoric than calm considerations (Extra & Yagmur 2004: 14; Pavlenko 2005). There is no consensus concerning this connection, rather a wide range of different points of view based on a diversity of starting points and methods (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey 1990). Yet it is widely agreed upon that the link between language and identity is unassailable (for example, Appel & Myusken 1987; Fishman 1996). Often, however, these questions arise and become crucial when issues such as national states, minorities and diaspora are discussed (Heller 1999). Those are settings in which language might suddenly become much more than a means of communication; it becomes value loaded and can also open up as a debating ground for identities (see, Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003; Piller 2002; Koven 2007).

Although language is nowadays considered a very important part of us as human beings, it has not always had this self-evident status as a central symbol of identity. In social psychological research concerning identity, the role of language was basically ignored until the early 1980s (Giles & Robinson 1990). After the so-called linguistic turn, the understanding of language has turned from ignorance to an emphasis on its role. Research suggests that language has a strong symbolic value for members of a linguistic group; Fishman (1977) considered language to be the most characteristic marker of ethnic identity, and Skutnabb-Kangas (1995) suggests that there should not even be a need to debate the right to maintain and develop one’s mother tongue. In her words it is a self-evident, fundamental, and basic linguistic human right. These connections are of special importance when our focus is on linguistic minorities, such Finnish speakers in Sweden.

The recognition and protection of minorities and their respective languages is also an issue in international law. The UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights from 1966 is the most significant international law provision for the protection of minorities. In 1999, Sweden signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Conventions for Protection of National Minorities, and recognized five national minorities: the Sami, the Swedish Finns, the Tornedalers, the Roma and the Jews. Two interesting details in the case of Sweden are that until the year 2000 the country had no common laws whatsoever concerning languages, and that to this day Swedish lacks the status of being the official language of the state (Huss 2006: 581, Huss 2001).

The significant role of language for identities is also to be found on the grassroots level, not only in the idea of a national state: there is a variety of proverbs and sayings in different languages reflecting the importance of language to people. Even more everyday notions of the importance of language for one’s national identity appear in newspapers and tabloids; on January 15, 2007, the readers of the Finnish tabloid Iltasanomat were discussing online a Lithuanian contestant who, according to the paper, did not speak more than ‘a few phrases’ of Finnish and participated in the Finnish Idols singing competition. One of the judges had told the Lithuanian in the program that ‘(you) … cannot be a Finnish Idol, because you do not speak Finnish’. The sentence provoked a vivid discussion about the connection between language and national identification, and most of the contributors shared the opinion that a Finnish idol must speak and sing in ‘proper Finnish’.

The concept of a linguistic minority is based on the ideological framework of nationalism in which language is considered central to the construction of a nation (Anderson 1991; Heller 1999; Extra & Yagmur 2004). Finnish speakers do not aim at any separation from the state of Sweden, yet the arguments in the minority language debate concerning Finnish in Sweden are created along the lines of linguistic state nationalism. Think, for instance, of the role of the French language in Quebec, or the role of Dutch in Belgium. The association of a language with a nation has a long history, and the most important parts of that history are connected with the ways in which language has been perceived as a central aspect in nation building. The notion that a shared language is the main characteristic of an ethnic group is also based on the national romantic idea of the superiority of certain languages and a denial of the co-existence of majority and minority languages within any nation-state’s borders. For example, in the ideology of the French Revolution and German Romanticism, the essential role of a shared language for the nation was strongly emphasised. In the late 18th century Herder published Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, a Francophobic text about the nobility of the pure language, German. Herder’s often quoted sentence ‘Has a nation anything more precious than the language of the fathers?’ crystallizes the idea of the essence of a shared language. Another important character of the time was Wilhelm von Humboldt, who believed in a strong interconnection between language and the development of ‘intellectual peculiarity’, i.e., that a language influences – even Barker & Galasinski, 2001determines – the intellect of a people (Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003: 15;: 222; Wardhaugh 1999: 44–49; for detailed historical overviews see Fishman 1977).

These attitudes are still a part of debates about the status of different languages and attitudes towards bilingualism. Some participants brought up the pejorative image of the Finnish language in Sweden through statements such as: ‘Finnish is the language of cleaners’ or that Finnish is ‘spoken only in two word sentences’ (see also Lainio 1996: 271–272). I will return to the images attached to Finnish and the unmistakably Finnish accent in Swedish in the next part of the analysis when differences are discussed.

Even if we might not fully agree with Fishman (1996) about the determining position of language in the process of identity formation, language carries manifold symbolic meanings; one central meaning is its signification as the carrier of national and cultural identity, which can be used as a political tool as well. The case of Quebec is a good example of politicized cultural and linguistic identities.

The significance of language is often characterized as growing important when a country or a community is threatened with extinction or has been territorially dispossessed (Burck 2004: 28; Kramsch 1998: 66). As examples of threatened communities or territorial dispossession we can consider the situation of Estonian speakers during the Soviet era and speakers of the dialects of the Sami languages in the Scandinavian North. Both are examples of people or members of a group who have been restricted from speaking their native language. In many cases the speakers of prohibited languages have not been in a position to protest against such measures and, as a result, language shift has taken place. In some cases, however, speakers have rebelled against these actions and managed to maintain their languages. I agree with Burck and Kramsch that a threat can trigger a fight for survival and lift languages on a pedestal. Yet, based on the data, I argue that the explanation for the increased emphasis on language as a result of a threat is too narrow, and claim that language can become accentuated in an individual’s life for other reasons, such as childbirth, migration, or other changes in the social environment. Childbirth was, for example, something that all of the participants who were parents emphasized. Language can, in any case, be used to enact both collective and individual identity and be stronger or less prominent depending on the situation.

The representation repertoire of language is by far the most productive element of Finnishness in Sweden and it was debated from several angles. While some respondents dismissed language issues by claiming that it was not necessary to master Finnish to be a proper Finn, others were convinced that the Finnish language was the essence and core of Finnishness and therefore most fundamental for the survival of any Finnish identity in Sweden. Either way, language grew to be one of the core concepts. This is no big surprise, for several reasons: language is often considered to be one of the strongest features in distinguishing one group from another group; the participants knew me as ‘someone doing research about language’; and finally and importantly, language is the default aspect marking Finns in Sweden. Finns are by definition a national minority in Sweden, and the status of belonging to this group is, to a large extent, explained by language. Thus, Finnish speakers do not only belong to the national minority of Sweden’s Finns but also make up a linguistic minority in Sweden. (For a detailed study about national minorities and their rights in Sweden, see SOU 2005.) But how do the participants of this study talk about languages? Is it important for them to know and speak Finnish? Does Finnish manifest something we could call an ethnic identity, or are the building blocks of Finnish identities found elsewhere? And, even more interestingly, how do people create accounts about these matters?

Growing up in a Family Speaking a Minority Language

In this sub-chapter, I will discuss the role of language in the construction of Finnishness by examining accounts of bicultural, and in some cases multilingual, childhoods in the context of growing up in a family speaking a minority language, and being formally educated in Finnish, Swedish or both. Languages, usually the combination of and the balancing between Finnish and Swedish, have played a crucial role throughout the participants’ lives, which is also reflected in the interviews. All of the participants grew up in an environment with more than one language: everyone had at least one Finnish-speaking parent, and even if Finnish had not been spoken at home on a daily basis it was still present in the form of the ‘language of the relatives’ or the language ‘mum spoke on the phone’. For those who grew up in a mainly Finnish-speaking environment, the more intense encounters with Swedish might have happened only when they went to kindergarten. Many were taken care of by a Finnish-speaking caregiver, and for those children the encounters took place when they started school at the age of six or seven.

All ten key people grew up in a family with at least one Finnish-speaking parent who, at least at times, spoke, or had spoken, Finnish to their children. Madeleine grew up in a family with a German father and a Finnish mother who conversed in Swedish with one another and the children.10 In all the areas where the interviews were conducted the majority of the Finnish families lived close to other Finnish-speaking families and had a strong social network operating in Finnish when the participants were growing up. Most of the families functioned in Finnish inside the four walls of the home; Swedish was seldom or not at all spoken among the family members. Some participants remembered sometimes answering in Swedish when their parents spoke Finnish. In the following example, I asked Maria about her schooling and expressed my astonishment at the fact that many children learned Swedish only at school. Maria answered me by telling about her childhood and the languages that were involved. For her, the Finnish-speaking family formed a large network of people with whom the family socialized. I have chosen this example for three reasons. First, it captures in a few sentences some central aspects of growing up in a Finnish-speaking family. Secondly, it shows some interesting things about interviewing, such as reactions to and dynamics of questions and answers. Thirdly, it reflects the nature of my questions during the very first fieldwork.

Let us look at the content first. My initial question was connected with the possibility of choosing between Finnish or Swedish for primary and secondary education when Maria was at that age in the late 1970s. Maria answers my questions by explaining her mother’s opinion about the importance of schooling the children in the language of the country one lives in. She continues by clarifying why she grew up in a Finnish context without many Swedish contacts: both of her parents were Finnish speakers and the whole family had frequent contact with their large Finnish-speaking family in Köping. Her grandmother on her mother’s side has several siblings who had all, one after another, moved to the Köping area and settled there.

Finnish was Maria’s first language and, as for many other participants, it was also her only language up to the age of going to kindergarten. She could not really answer the question of when she learned Swedish and how the process took place. To the question whether she always knew enough, she answers: ‘yes, obviously’. Thus, my astonishment concerning their ‘isolation’ does not find an echo in her answer. She assumes that learning Swedish gradually took place on the street, while playing with the Swedish-speaking neighbors’ children, which seems to be the way that the majority of the participants learned Swedish. The largest step for her was in kindergarten, which she started at the age of six, and she was all of a sudden surrounded by only Swedish speakers. She tells how her mother was worried in the beginning and called the kindergarten several times a day to check how she was doing, only to hear that she ‘was having a great time’.

When we take a closer look at this example from a discourse analysis point of view, we find the explanations that Maria gives for her Finnish childhood. For instance, they had a lot of relatives in the area and because of that the families socialized a lot in their free time. If we think of Maria’s contribution as an argument, it consists of a standpoint ‘my Finnish relatives form our social network’ and one supporting argument: ‘we socialized a lot with my relatives’. Maria is accounting for her standpoint by providing an argument that has social relevance (see also, Verkuyten & de Wolf 2002).

If we then look at the interview dynamics, especially paying attention to my questions and to Maria’s reactions, another dimension opens up. My rather suggestive questions concerning how astonishing I found the isolation of the Finns do not find any echo in her answers. She merely corrects me and proves me wrong by saying, for example, that ‘There are differences’ and emphasizing ‘Mum and dad socialized’ showing that others might have behaved differently.

Also Pia, a mother interviewed in Västerås, grew up in a Finnish-speaking family where both parents spoke only Finnish at home. She was born in Finland but the family migrated to Eskilstuna when she was 3 years old. Eskilstuna is a city with one of the largest percentages of Finnish-speaking inhabitants in Sweden. When Pia was small the city offered nurseries, kindergarten groups, and primary and secondary schools in Finnish. Already in the 1970s and 1980s when she was growing up, it was possible to lead mainly a Finnish-speaking life for the first 12 years of one’s life. Pia’s parents spoke only Finnish at home and she had a Finnish-speaking nanny as well, and did not, as far as she could remember, speak any Swedish before going to school at the age of six. She recalled traumatic experiences from her early childhood when she had to stay in a Swedish daycare for some weeks in the summer because her Finnish nanny was on vacation.

Example 8

Lotta: Pratade ni, kommer du ihåg, när du var sju år gammal, att om du skulle gå, det fanns ju finsk klass där//också

Lotta: Did you speak, do you remember, when you were seven, whether you should go to, there was //also a Finnish class

Maria: //men mamma tyckte, jag pratade ju finska från början jag, det var det ända språket jag hade fram tills jag skulle börja lekskolan, då är man ju sex år. Och då så mamma tyckte, att vi bor i Sverige, man går i svensk skola, för det blir enklare så [joo]. Och dom satte in mej på lekskolan jag kunde ju inte alls mycket svenska då, utan det var ju mera det här som man hade varit ute på gatan och lekt med andra barn och så, så att [mm], men mamma satte in mej i lekskolan och så var hon lite orolig och ringde och frågade hur det går, [mm] och de sade att det går jättebra. Och jag kommer själv inte ihåg att jag någonsin skulle ha haft problem

Maria: //but my mother wanted, I spoke Finnish from the beginning, I, it was the only language I spoke up to the time I should start going to kindergarten, you are like six years old then. And my mum thought that since we live in Sweden one goes to a Swedish school, because it is easier that way [yes]. And they put me in a kindergarten and I didn’t speak much Swedish, it was more that I had played outdoors, on the street with other children so, so [mm]when my mum put me into kindergarten and she was anxious and called to ask how I was doing, [mm] they told her that things were just fine. And I don’t remember even having problems.

Lotta: Att du har alltid pratat tillräckligt bra svenska sedan

Lotta: So you have always spoken Swedish well enough?

Maria: Ja, tydligen

Maria: Yes, obviously

Lotta: Jag tycker att det är otroligt, många har berättat att de inte pratade ett ord svenska innan de kom in i skolan sedan [ja precis] att har ni, eller var det på sjuttiotalet då, så att finnarna höll ihop så starkt, liksom fritid, och allt var sedan // finskspråkigt.

Lotta: I think it is quite unbelievable, many have told me that they didn’t speak a word of Swedish before going to school [yes, exactly] like have you, or was it in the seventies that way, that Finns were sticking together, like in their free time, that everything was //in Finnish?

Maria: //ja, jag tror det. För min del är det ju mycket släkt då, jag vet inte N, kanske känner du [ja (…)] och hon var dagmamma till mej när jag var liten [ai jaa] så att Ns yngste och jag är ju uppvuxna tillsammans, kan man säga.

Maria: //yes, I think so. For me it is a lot the relatives, N, maybe you [yeah (…)]and she was my nanny when I was small [I see] so N’s youngest and I grew up together, you could say.

Lotta: Jå, ni har ju bara 2 års skillnad [precis] jag har liksom, (…) jag kom nu på första gången nu på torsdagen och liksom, förra veckan, och det har nog överraskat mej ganska mycket att hur isolerade ni också var här.

Lotta: Yes, you have only 2 years between the two of you [exactly] I have like (…) like it has been like, I came for the first time now, the previous Thursday, and it has taken me a bit by surprise how isolated you were here.

Maria: Det är lite olika, mamma och pappa umgicks ju mycket tillsammans just med dom, eftersom jag var dagbarn där och så, så att, det var ju mycket kvällar som man åkte hem till dom och så. Och så har vi ju ett ganska stort släkt.

Maria: There are differences, mum and dad socialized a lot especially with them because I was in day care at theirs, so it was often the case that we drove there in the evenings as well. In addition, we have also quite a large family here

(Första intervjun, april 2002)

(First interview, April 2002)

Example 9

Lotta: No entäs sulla? (ymmärtääkö miehesi suomea)

Lotta: How about you? (does your husband understand Finnish)

Pia: No meillä on ihan suomalaista kotona

Pia: We have it all in Finnish at home

Lotta: Ei tuu tämmöstä konfliktii, [ei], [nauraa] että ymmärtääks toinen mitä sanoo. Mut entäs sitte jos sä oot käyny suomalaiset koulun ja on tosi vahvana ollu tuo suomen kieli mukana nii [nii] oliks, muistaks sä semmosta aikaa, että sä tajusit että ulkona puhutaan muuta kieltä kun kotona? Vai onks se ruotsin kieli tullu automaattisesti vaa?

Lotta: You don’t have these conflicts then [no], [laughs], that the other doesn’t understand. But how about if you have gone to a Finnish school and Finnish has been strongly present so was it [yes], do you remember realizing that another language was spoken outside your home? Or has Swedish just happened automatically?

Pia: Mä muistan et se oli jotenki hirveetäki kun mä olin tottunu olee suomalaisella päivä-äitillä mut aina kesälomien aikana kun päivä-äiti oli lomalla ja mää jouin ruotsalaiseen tarhaan ja siellä ei varmaan ollu ku yks henkilökunnasta joka osas vähän suomee niin se oli aivan hirveetä. Ei sitä ei oikeestaan itte ymmärtäny mittää sitte, mä olin sillon niin pieni, mutta ne on jääny mieleen että ei ollu kivaa olla, kun ei puhunu ruotsia.

Pia: I remember that it was somehow terrible as well because I was used to being with a Finnish-speaking nanny, but always for the summer holidays when my nanny was on vacation I had to go to Swedish-speaking day care, there was maybe one person who spoke a little Finnish, it was awful. You didn’t really understand a thing, I was so young back then, but I remember that it wasn’t nice to be there because I didn’t speak Swedish.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, marraskuu 2004)

(First interview, November 2004)

At Pia’s childhood home, just like at Maria’s and many other participants’ homes, it was forbidden to speak Swedish and she considered the strictness of her parents a good way of ensuring that the child would have good language skills. Many participants told amusing stories about the different methods that their parents employed to keep Finnish as the only language at home. Some cancelled the children’s treats or weekly allowances if they spoke Swedish; others took the other way to secure the maintenance of the Finnish language and bribed their children with sweets and treats to speak Finnish. At the time of the interviews Pia had two small children with whom she was not that categorical about speaking Finnish, although they both were in Finnish-speaking day care and their home language was Finnish. She did not, for example, insist on a Finnish-speaking education for the children. Katariina said that she tries to answer in Finnish using the same words her son utters in Swedish.

Example 10

Katariina: Mä yritän aina vastata X:lle suomeksi, että jos se esimerkiksi kysyy että ‘mamma, får jag en smörgås?’ niin mä sanon, että ‘tottakai sä saat voileivän!’ silleen se menee meillä, ja musta tuntuu että se toimii ihan hyvin.

Katariina: I always try to answer to X in Finnish, like if he asks:‘mum can I have a sandwich?’ I reply ‘of course you can have a sandwich’ that’s how it works with us and I think it works quite well.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, marraskuu 2004)

(First interview, November 2004)

A couple of minutes after Katariina had explained how she maneuvered at home with Finnish and Swedish, her son appeared among us and asked in Finnish for a sandwich. All the mothers acknowledged and praised his Finnish sentence and stressed how important it was for their children’s language development to have other Finnish-speaking children to play with.

The other mothers explicitly asked their children to ‘speak mum’s language’ or vehemently answered in Finnish although the children would answer in Swedish. Like all the other parents I interviewed, Pia and Katariina emphasized the importance of a good command of Swedish: ‘We live in Sweden and Swedish is the language of this country.’ Finnish seems to be strictly a ‘family business’. Burck remarks that families who speak more than one language have often been negatively labelled and come under an intense pressure to acculturate. Bicultural competence or bilingualism has not always been something to strive for; rather the opposite has been true (Burck 2004: 26–27). This could also lie behind the reality of the distinction between the Finnish-speaking private sphere and the Swedish-speaking public sphere. Families were described as carrying the responsibility to pass on the language, and most participants wanted to keep it that way.

The family’s responsibility was discussed a lot, especially in the interviews in 2004, when a large survey concerning a Finnish governing area in the bay of Mälaren was undertaken by the Swedish Ministry of Justice. Many of the key persons had filled in the questionnaire on the Internet, or even been interviewed by the researchers on the basis of their answers. When we talked about the questionnaire and the interviews, some participants expressed their disapproval and did not like ‘the idea that Finns were demanding special treatment from the state’. The idea of the separation of the Swedish-speaking public sphere and the Finnish (or any other language, for that matter) speaking private sphere was clearly underlying the conversations. The division into public and private and the choice of language is a phenomenon that not only I have observed; studies of immigrants in the United States indicate that English is spoken in public, formal settings while the native language is used at home and in other non-formal settings (see Gudykunst 2001; Piller 2002).

Also Österlund-Pötzch (2003) writes about the home as the last fortress of ethnic heritage, including language. This seems also to apply to the majority of the participants. Everyone I interviewed during the different fieldwork periods saw parents as the most important figures in preserving Finnish and, indeed, considered it their responsibility to maintain the language. Lainio and Leppänen (2005: 557–559) remark that the ever-shrinking Finnish-speaking domains will, in the end, lead to language change; both the quantity, the opportunities to use the language, and the quality, the variety of occasions in which the language is spoken, will suffer. When the continuity of Finnish is entirely up to parents, a language shift will eventually happen. The authors claim that language loses its capability to act as ‘a carrier for culture’ (Swedish: kulturbärare) if it is not used in other contexts except in families. In this view, culture and language seem to be one and the same thing, which is, in my view, a disputable claim. For example, are the Moroccans in the Netherlands or the Turks in Germany not ‘carrying their culture’ even though the passing-on might take place in Dutch or German? This claim raises many questions but I will not dwell deeper on them at this point and will return to them later.

In many cases family and relatives provided a solid network creating a Finnish-speaking incubator for many respondents, but friends and neighbors also created Finnish social worlds for many of the participants from the Stockholm suburbs. Traditionally, like many other migrant groups, the Finns often settled in areas where Finnish networks already existed. Chain migration from Finland to Sweden has been studied by many researchers who have shown how essential social networks were and that they took care of small but significant details of everyday life (Snellman 2003; Kuosmanen 2001; Laakkonen 1996). For example, the suburb of Rinkeby had a very large group of Finnish inhabitants in the 1980s. According to the statistics, in 1980, two-thirds of the 14,000 inhabitants of Rinkeby were non-Swedish and of those non-Swedes, Finns formed the largest group. In the 1980s, when the participants were growing up and went to school, the area was very diverse and three-quarters of children in the local kindergartens spoke some other language than Swedish as their first language. Aki-Petteri was born in 1982 in Rinkeby and recalls his ‘Finnish-speaking’ childhood as something natural and nothing out of the ordinary. In his circle of friends were many Finnish and Spanish speaking families (as a result of the military coup in Chile in the 1970s, Rinkeby received a large number of refugees from Chile) and he mentions that some his best friends spoke Persian (Farsi) and Finnish at home. It was normal in his environment to grow up multilingual; to speak two or even three languages was not exceptional. He spoke Finnish at home and kindergarten, and learned bits and pieces of Spanish in the yard before he learned Swedish at the age of seven when he entered the first grade.

Aki-Petteri recalls in this example his embarrassment about not being fluent enough in Swedish to join Swedish-speaking children in playing football. The inhabitants of Rinkeby had several different native languages and many homes functioned mainly in their respective native tongues; however, it was not out of the ordinary that parents spoke their version of Swedish to their children and the children, indeed, spoke Swedish as their first language. The social climate in the 1970s and 1980s was not always encouraging towards bilingualism, and many parents simply assumed that Swedish should be spoken as ‘it is the language of the country.’ I have put the sentence in quotes because it was mentioned in every single interview, as we will see later on.

According to Aki-Petteri’s memories, in the yard where he grew up more or less everyone spoke at least some Finnish and even his daycare center was Finnish. His social world was Finnish-speaking. During the feedback conversation, Aki-Petteri brought up the situation of a friend of his who grew up in a family where the mother spoke Finnish to the children and the father Farsi, the family languages being thus Swedish, Finnish and Farsi. Now this friend is married to a Spanish-speaking woman and raises their child in Finnish and Spanish, in a Swedish-speaking environment. Aki-Petteri said: ‘It is such a pity, really, a loss. Who will teach the child Persian? No one! A language just disappears, he will never learn it.’ Aki-Petteri spoke about his own multilingual situation and the situation of his friend simply as a state of normality in which people per default speak several languages. His story elucidates the crucial role of environment for our perception of normality. For him, a family speaking three languages was the norm, and a monolingual family was a rare exception. At another location in the very same country a multilingual family would be a disaster and their situation could only be pitied. Pavlenko and Blackledge (2003) rightly remark that monolingualism is often treated as the rule rather than the exception, although in reality most pople in the world speak more than one language.

Example 11

Lotta: Miten paljon sä puhut suomee päivittäin?

Lotta: How much Finnish do you speak on a daily basis?

Aki-Petteri: Mä puhun ihan joka päivä, mä puhun mun vanhempien kaa ja ehkä puolet mun kavereista on suomalaisia.

Aki-Petteri: I speak every single day, I talk to my parents and maybe half of my friends are Finns.

Lotta: Puhutsä suomee niitten suomalaisten frendejen kanssa?

Lotta: Do you speak Finnish with the Finnish friends?

Aki-Petteri: Suurimman osan, sit mul on joitain jotka ei oo, et ne on puhunu pienenä puhunu mut sitte jättäneet sen suomen kielen, mut suurimman osan kanssa. Mun kaverit on kaikki suurin osa Rinkebyystä ja ne on käyny suomenkielisii // luokkia ja

Aki-Petteri: With most of them, and then I have some who aren’t, like, they have spoken as kids but then abandoned the Finnish language, but with the majority. My friends are to a great extent from Rinkeby and they went to the Finnish // classes and

Lotta: //ai oliks teil suomalainen koulu siel Rinkebyyssä vai pitiks teidän mennä jonnekki?

Lotta:// oh so you have a Finnish school there in Rinkeby, or did you have to go somewhere else?

Aki-Petteri: Ei siis suomalainen koulu vaan suomalaiset luokat//

Aki-Petteri: Not a Finnish school but Finnish classes//

Lotta: //oliks ne ihan Rinkebyssä?

Lotta: //and they were in Rinkeby?

Aki-Petteri: Joo siis suomalainen ala-aste siis eka ja kutos luokkaan oli Rinkebyssä ja sitte piti mennä Tenstaan yläasteelle, se on ihan Rinkebyn vieressä

Aki-Petteri: Yes, well a Finnish secondary school like the first to sixth grade were in Rinkeby and then you had to go to Tensta for junior high, it is really close to Rinkeby

Lotta: Mut ootsä käyny sit ihan ekasta ysiin suomeks?

Lotta: But you have had all from the first to the ninth in Finnish?

Aki-Petteri: Joo, ja päiväkodin (nauraa) [nauraa]

Aki-Petteri: Yes, and day care (laughs) [laughs]

Lotta: Ooo, sitte sulla on ihan totaalinen kielikylpy sitte![niin on][nauraa]vau! Oliks sulla sellasta aikaa koskaan että oisit tajunnut, että mitä tää nyt on, että kotona puhutaan tällästä ja sit kadulla puhutaan, no Rinkebyssä puhutaan kadulla varmaan paljon muutakin kun ruotsia. Millon sä opit ruotsia?

Lotta: Well, then you had really a language bath (laughs) [yes!] [laughs] wow! Did you ever have a time when you had thought like, what is this now, that at home we speak like this and on the street, well in Rinkeby probably also many other languages than Swedish are spoken. When did you learn Swedish?

Aki-Petteri: Mä opin ruotsia vasta kun mä aloin koulun, päiväkodissa mä en puhunu sanaakaan ruotsia. Aika uskomatonta! (nauraa) [nauraa]

Aki-Petteri: I learned Swedish only when I went to school, in kindergarten I didn’t speak a word of Swedish. Quite unbelievable! (laughs) [laughs]

Lotta: Yymm, mitä sä puhuit sitte sun kavereitten kaa jos sä et puhunu ollenkaan ruotsia?

Lotta: Yymm, what did you speak then with your friends if you didn’t speak any Swedish?

Aki-Petteri: No mul oli sit vaan suurimmaks osaks suomalaisia frendejä ja pihalla sitä kait puhu jollain viittomakielellä (nauraa) mut se pitää sanoo et yks negatiivinen puoli siitä on.

Aki-Petteri: The majority of my friends were Finns and in the yard I guess one spoke in sign language (laughter) but it must be said that it has one negative effect.

Lotta: No kerro ihmeessä!

Lotta: Tell me!

Aki-Petteri: Pienenä mua kyllä häiritsi hirveesti se, että kun kaikki oli leikkimässä pihalla nii (…) olihan mulla suomalaisia kavereita, mutta olis halunnu mennä pelaamaan futista mutta ujostutti kun puhu kuitenkin niin huonosti suomee, eiku siis ruotsii.

Aki-Petteri: When I was small I found it really disturbing that when everyone was playing outdoors (…) sure I had Finnish friends, but if one had wanted to go and play football but it was embarrassing because one spoke nevertheless such bad Finnish, I mean Swedish.

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2004)

(Feedback conversation, September 2004)

Sanna also grew up in Rinkeby and shares Aki-Petteri’s experiences of growing up in a Finnish-speaking environment. Her parents spoke exclusively Finnish at home, and the circle of their closest friends was Finnish-speaking; she went first to Finnish daycare followed by a Finnish class at school and had, in her own words, led a Finnish life for the first six years of her life. The family spent their holidays in Finland visting family and in the Stockholm archipelago where she got in contact with some Swedish-speaking children.

Example 12

Lotta: Onk sulla mitään muistikuvaa siitä että millon sä opit ruotsia?

Lotta: Do you have any recollection about when you learned Swedish?

Sanna: Mä luulen että mä oikeesti opin ruotsia siis kunnolla vasta koulussa, et sillo ku mä alotin koulun. Et mä tiedän, että joskus pienenä et kyl mä osasin jotain mut et ihan pienenä ku me oltiin saaristossa, nii emmä osannu muuta ku jotain plocka blåbär, et kyl mä siellä leikin, jossain Tukholman saaristossa, joittenkin ruotsinkielisten lasten kanssa, joita siellä sattu olemaan, mut kunnolla mä opin ruotsia vasta koulussa, että sillai.

Sanna: I think that I really learned proper Swedish only at school, when I started school. I don’t know, sometimes when I was small I spoke some but when I was really young and we were in the archipelago, I didn’t know more than picking blueberries, so I played on the islands with some Swedish-speaking children who happened to be there, but real learning happened only at school, it was like that.

Lotta: Se on mielenkiintoista sillai että on mahdollista kasvaa [kasvaa] yhteen kieleen niin voimakkaasti vaikka on ruotsinkielisessä ympäristössä [mm] vaikka Rinkeby nyt ei ehkä ookkaa ihan sellanen tyypillinen //ruotsalaisympäristö.

Lotta: I think it is interesting that it is possible to grow [grow] up in one language so intensively although one is in Swedish-speaking surroundings [mm] but I guess Rinkeby is not really quite typical //Swedish surroundings.

Sanna: //ei, ei siinä mielessä, et siellä oli sellanen vahva suomalaisyhteisö, että se oli ihan sellanen tietonen päätös mun vanhemmilta, että mun äiti vasta ihan nyt pari vuotta sitten vasta kerto, että hän ajatteli, että kun hän on yksi kielielisessä ympäristössä kasvanut, että se oli ajatellu et nyt kun muutan Ruotsiin nii nyt varmaan pitää alkaa puhumaan lapselle ruotsia, mutta se kaatu siihen, onneksi! (nauraa)

Sanna: //no, not in that respect that there was a strong Finnish community, it was a very conscious decision of my parents, my mum told me a couple of years ago that she thought, when we moved here, that as she had grown up in a monolingual home herself, that she thought that she should speak Swedish to me now that we move to Sweden, but luckily it never happened! (laughter)

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2006)

(Feedback conversation December 2006)

Sanna migrated with her parents to Sweden at the age of two and mentions at the end of the excerpt that her mother had considered switching the home language to Swedish when the family moved to Sweden. Both of Sanna’s parents came from a monolingual Finnish-speaking environment and one thing probably seemed to follow another: if we live in Sweden and Swedish is the language of this country, we should speak Swedish because in Finland we also spoke the language of the country. All the key participants’ parents came from monolingual settings in Finland and as bilingualism was not an issue discussed in the society, and minority languages did not get much support until the mid 1970s, the change was easy to make. (For research about language shift, see Fishman 1989; 1996; Rampton 1995; Hyltenstam 1999.)

We can read from the examples that school plays a key role in the stories about languages. Most of the participants learned Finnish as their first language, regardless of the language of the day care. Of the key participants, only Madeleine had never had any command of Finnish. Sofia’s mother spoke Finnish to her for the first couple of years but changed to Swedish already before Sofia started going to kindergarten. Kindergarten and school embodied important arenas for contacts with Swedish-speaking peers; for many, the beginning of school also marked the beginning of contacts with ‘Sweden Swedes’ and Swedish traditions. Many refer to Swedes with this term in order to distinguish between those who are ‘pure Swedes’ and those who are ‘mixtures’. The same logic also applies to Finns: Finnish-speaking Finns living in Finland are referred to as ‘Finland’s Finns’ and those living in Sweden are simply ‘Finns’ or ‘Sweden’s Finns’.

Going to School

Monica Heller (1999: 19) writes in the context of the francophone Quebec and describes schools as key sites for the production of the nation. Also in the context of Finns in Sweden in the 1980s, I see schools, as concepts and real places with real people, as social arenas where the interplay of the rules and values of society are learned. This includes, of course, also language. The arena of education has a special role for Finnish speakers in Sweden and schools have functioned as battlegrounds for the political rights of Finns in Sweden as well. The key persons have different educational histories; some have had their entire primary and secondary education in Finnish, some had a few years in Finnish and a few in Swedish, and some had their whole school career in Swedish.

Sanna and Pia spent all nine years of their obligatory education in a Finnish class integrated into a Swedish school. Katariina and Aki-Petteri had their first six years in a Finnish class integrated into a Swedish school. All of them went for the last three years of obligatory education (junior high) to a Swedish class in a Swedish school. Emma had four of her nine years of mandatory education in a Finnish free school. Sandra, Maria, Madeleine, Felix and Sofia had their entire school history in Swedish. Below, I will briefly present the Swedish policies about immigrants and their effects on the education system to enable the reader to see the quotations and understand their undertones in a historical context. Migration policies have an immediate effect on the education of immigrants and their children as well. The table below presents key participants’ school histories including the language in which instruction took place.

TABLE 6. Participants’ school history.

Name

Before school, day care etc.

School 1–9 + high school

Vocational training/Studies

Maria

5 years Finnish

1 year Swedish

Swedish

Swedish

Sandra

Finnish

Swedish

Swedish, exchange in Finland

Madeleine

Swedish

Swedish

Swedish

Sofia

Swedish

Swedish

Swedish, courses in Finnish

Pia

Finnish

Finnish

Swedish

Katariina

Finnish

Classes 1–6 Finnish, rest Swedish

Swedish

Emma

Finnish

1–4 Swedish, 5–9 Finnish, high school Swedish

Swedish

Sanna

Finnish

1–9 Finnish, high school Swedish

Swedish, courses in Finnish literature and writing

Aki-Petteri

Finnish

1–9 Finnish, high school Swedish

Swedish

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sweden practiced a liberal migration policy and labour migration was not regulated. In the 1960s, European migration research considered the assimilation and acculturation of immigrants as something inevitable and positive, and Sweden practiced a migrant policy aimed at assimilation up to the mid 1970s. During these years no further attention was paid to the children of immigrants in respect to their education. In some municipalities the number of Finnish-speaking children increased already in the 1950s but few schools had a Finnish-speaking assistant in the classroom to help Finnish-speaking children. The aim of this policy was not bilingualism or the coexistence of two languages but simply to guarantee some learning also for those children who did not speak Swedish until they had learned Swedish well enough to manage on their own. As late as in 1964, the headmasters of schools received a letter from the National Board of Education suggesting that Finnish-speaking children be separated from one another. The reason why this measure should be taken was to ‘avoid isolation’ (Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000: 265). Children were still commonly punished for speaking their first language in the 1960s, in some places even in the 1970s (Lainio 1996: 324).

As early as in the 1950s, Sweden had started the so-called basic school program, with the core idea of guaranteeing each and every child the same basic education regardless of their financial situation. The inspiration for such a program came from research results in the United States, according to which basic education, democracy and wealth stand in direct correlation to one another (Weckström 2006; Pelkonen & Vuonokari 1993). With the basic education for all program, Sweden also introduced compulsory education for everyone between the ages of 6 and 16, regardless of their nationality, religion, or language. Although Sweden was witnessing rapidly growing labour migration at the very same time, the children of immigrants who did not speak any Swedish were not acknowledged in the plan. Migrant children were simply put in Swedish-speaking classes and expected to learn. But within less than ten years from the decision, the suburban areas of bigger cities, especially Stockholm and Gothenburg, were struggling with the ever growing problem of immigrant children who did not speak a word of Swedish when they started the first grade (Weckström 2006; Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000: 275–277).

As stated in the research review, the first academic milestone regarding education in the child’s mother tongue was set by Niels Erik Hansegård in 1968, in his book Tvåspråkighet eller Halvspråkighet (Bilingualism or Half-lingualism). Hansegård opened a discussion concerning the method of teaching in Swedish only. He argued that immigrants, children and adults, were deprived of their own languages, and that the deprivation of the first language (he referred to the first language as ‘mother tongue’) caused mental problems and slowed down all development. One of his leading ideas was that children would learn Swedish quicker and better if they had a good command of their first languages and could study in their first language. Although his book stirred public debate, it took years before the authorities reacted in any concrete ways (Weckström 2006). Partially due to the growing awareness of different cultures and languages the Swedish Parliament decided in 1975 to start a program called Jämlikhet, Valfrihet, Samarbete (Equality, Freedom of Choice, Co-operation). The program included support for Finnish-speaking communities in the form of establishing Finnish school classes as part of Swedish primary education, cultural support for Finnish-speaking activities and, in addition, the right to vote in local elections for immigrant Finns who resided in Sweden. School classes in which the main language of instruction was Finnish started to became part of the daily routine in many Swedish schools. Between the years 1974—1979, the number of children having Finnish as their home language increased from 28,000 to 40,000, and, according to statistics, every fifth Finnish-speaking child received education in a Finnish class in the 1980s. The majority, however, were in Swedish-speaking classes, although some got a couple of hours of hemspråksundervisning (home language lessons) a week (Jaakkola 1989). (See, also Roderigo Blomqvist 2002.)

As of the late 1970s, all lower educational institutions had to offer their students the possibility to participate in home language lessons. Home language lessons took place after school or during art, sport or music lessons, and thus children had to work extra hours or drop a creative hour in order to learn Finnish. The amount of home language education has decreased in the past two decades, and in some places it is not possible to receive home language lessons at all (for a thorough report on home language statistics, see Nygren-Junkin 2004: 139). There were no official guidelines for home language teachers and technically anyone who spoke Finnish could offer his or her services to the community. Some of these people had teaching experience and qualifications, whereas others had no pedagogical background at all. This resulted in very different levels of home language lessons depending on the teacher’s abilities.

Sofia, for example, attended for some years the home language lessons offered by her school but cannot remember learning much during those hours. The classes she attended were very heterogeneous: some children spoke Finnish fluently whereas others hardly understood a word. The discrepancies between the pupils’ skills posed, of course, big problems for the teachers as well. Sofia participated in Finnish lessons for few years before dropping out in her early teens.

Example 13

Lotta: Vad gjorde ni då på de här hemspråksundervisningstimmarna?

Lotta: What did you do in the home language lessons?

Sofia: Finsk historia kunde det vara, och om samhället, och hur man firar olika högtider och såna saker. Men vi va ändå så små att grammatik och så, just att de andra kunde, dom pratade finska hemma, och sen’ kanske två tre till, elever. Och dom va då oftast bättre, men jag tyckte att det var lite (laughter) tråkigt att jag var alltid sämst (…) det var inte kul, jag lärde mej ingenting.

Sofia: It could be Finnish history and about the society, and how to celebrate holidays and that kind of things. But we were still so small that grammar and such, because the others spoke Finnish at home, and then two, three others. And they were usually better than me, and I think it was quite boring always to be the worst (…) it was not nice, I didn’t learn anything.

(Första intervjun, december 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

Katariina remembers her home language lessons in a completely different light. She attended a Finnish class until the age of twelve, after which she joined a Swedish class and continued to a Swedish-speaking vocational school. She received home language lessons one hour every week throughout her education, also in the vocational school.

Example 14

Katariina: Meilläkin ammattikoulussa jalka meni poikki siltä opettajalta, nii me oltii sitte pari kuukautta sen kotona käytii (nauraa) siellä oli kahvia ja pullaa (nauraa) se oli kiva käydä senkin luona, [niin] ettei se ollu vaan sitä että lähettii suomen kieltä, vaan sitä mentii sinne kahvittelee ja juttelemaan.

Katariina: In the vocational school our teacher broke her leg and we went to her place for the next couple of months (laughter) there was coffee and sweet buns (laughter) it was nice to visit her, [yes] it wasn’t just that we did Finnish language but also that we had coffee and chatted.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, marraskuu 2004)

(First interview, November 2004)

Some participants attended school in classes in which education was mainly provided in Finnish. These Finnish classes had co-existed with Swedish ones in schools ever since there had been larger numbers of Finnish-speaking children entering the primary school. The Finnish classes were initially planned to be temporary springboards for children who did not yet speak Swedish well enough to follow the instruction, and were never regarded as a permanent solution. The Finnish classes followed the Swedish guidelines and curricula but often used Swedish books that were translated, and, due to the lack of books and material in Finnish, teachers designed their own materials. With increasing numbers of Finnish-speaking children entering schools the shortage of qualified teachers also started to be a problem. In the following example I’m asking Aki-Petteri about the languages in which he received his elementary education.

Example 15

Lotta: Opetettiinks teille ruotsiksi muuta kun sitä kieltä? Et oliks teillä vaik matikkaa ruotsiks?

Lotta: Were you taught in Swedish anything else but the language itself? Like, did you have, say, maths in Swedish?

Aki-Petteri: Ei ala- ja keskiasteella, et yläasteella tuli sitte. Kirjat oli suurin osa et vaikka meillä oli opetusta suomeksi niin monet kirjat oli ruotsiksi ja silleen niin, se toimi muuten ihan tosi hyvin vaikka saattaa kuullostaa (…) se kävi vaan jotenkin niin naturligt, luonnollisesti, että emmä tiiä. se on vaan niin kun se että mä voin vaihtaa kieltä vaan näin (napsauttaa sormia) niin emmä tiiä, sä luit ja sitten vaan puhuttiin suomeks, ehkä se oli välillä vähän sekakieltäkin mutta ei se ollu niinku mitään, ei se häirinny.

Aki-Petteri: No, not in the primary or secondary school, it started in the junior high then. The books were mostly in Swedish, so although the teaching was in Finnish the books were in Swedish, like that, it worked out really very well although that might sound weird (…) it just happened naturally, naturally I don’t know, it’s just that I can switch languages just like that (snaps his fingers) so I don’t know, you just read and then you talked in Finnish, maybe there was a bit of mixing at times but it wasn’t anything that would have disturbed.

(Palautekeskustelu, lokakuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, October 2005)

The program of ‘equality, freedom of choice, co-operation’ and its implications were embraced by many Finns, although there were also those who did not consider primary education (or any other form of education, for that matter) in Finnish either important or desirable. Although this dissertation is about the offspring of migrant Finns in Sweden and the whole research is based on interviews with them, I also conducted a couple of interviews with some parents and will give one example from a recorded discussion with ‘Aune’, the mother of one of the participants. In the next excerpt, we were discussing the choice of sending all their children to a Swedish-speaking school instead of choosing the Finnish track, although this was possible at the time. Aune and her husband decided against the mainstream and wanted to give their children an education in Swedish.

Example 16, a mother, interviewed April 2002

Lotta: Minkä kielisessä koulussa teidän lapset on käynyt?

Lotta: In what language did your children have their school education?

Aune: Ruotsinkielises.

Aune: Swedish.

Lotta: Kaikki?

Lotta: All of them?

Aune: Kaikki.

Aune: All.

Lotta: Mut täällä X:ssä ois ollut mahdollisuus silloin myös suomen kieliseen luokkaan, //eikö oiskin?

Lotta: But here in X, there was a Finnish-speaking class as well//, I am not correct?

Aune: //joo, nuorimman kohdalla ois ollut.

Aune: //yes for the youngest there would have been.

Lotta: Mitkä siinä oli ne kaikista isoimmat tai painavimmat syyt laittaa lapset tai A sitten varsinkin ruotsinkieliselle luokalle, vaikka ois ollut se suomenkielinenkin luokka?

Lotta: What where then the most important or strongest reasons to put A in a Swedish-speaking class especially when there would have been a Finnish class as well?

Aune: Koska vanhemmat lapset oli selviytynyt koulusta ihan suht hyvin ruotsin kielellä. Ni emmä uskaltanut laittaa sitä suomenkieliseen sen takia, [nii] et mä pelkäsin sitä [niin joo], että siinä tulee jonkunlainen kielellinen törmäys sitten siirtyä ruotsinkieliseen kouluun, [joo] ruotsinkieliseen luokkaan. Koska ei ois ollut mahdollisuutta käydä peruskoulua läpi suomen kielellä, puhumattakaan lukiosta [just] niin niin mähän sanoin, että että kun vanhemmat lapset oli käyny ja selvinny hyvin ruotsinkielellä. Että ne oppi siis kielen eikä niil ollu mitään hankaluuksia siel. [aivan] Kielellisesti.

Aune: Because the older children had done pretty well in a Swedish class. So that’s why I didn’t have the courage to send her to a Finnish class, [yeah] I was afraid of it [yeah] that some kind of a language clash would happen when they had to move to the Swedish school [yes] and a Swedish-speaking class. Because there was no possibility to get the whole secondary education in the Finnish language, not to mention high school [right] so so and as I said, my older children went and managed well in Swedish-speaking. So they learned the language never no problems there. [right] Languagewise.

Lotta: Ne oppi vasta koulussa sitä ruotsia sitten?

Lotta: They learned this Swedish only at school?

Aune: Joo. Että mä kerran kysyin, kysyin ainakin kerran opettajalta ku silloin oli kauhee kohu siitä, että suomalaisten lapset on papukaijoja ja apinoita [kauhee], että ne, ko ne ei ossaa suomea eikä ruotsia, että me ei pystytä niinkun jatkamaan koulua [ni] ja semmosta. [mm] Mä kysyin sitten kerran koulun opettajalta että miten sen huomaa koulussa että meidän pojalla on kotikielenä suomi. [joo] Se opettaja meni ihan punaseksi ja kysy että mitä varten sä tota kysyt. Mää sitten sanoin, että kun just oli lehdessä taas kirjotusta, että joilla on kotikielenä suomi, niin ne ei tule pärjäämään, ne eivät pärjää koulussa. Niin se opettaja kysy siihen heti, että no puhutaanks teillä kotona sitten suomea? No totta kai puhutaan. Sano, että hän ei ole ikinä kuullut pojan puheesta eikä olis, olis ikinä voinut ajatellakaan että sillä on kotikielenä niinku suomi [niin] se tuntu hirveen hyvältä, että se niinkö romutti sitten sitä, niitä lehtikirjotuksia.

Aune: Yes. I once asked, asked, at least once the teacher because at that time was this terrible fuss about that that Finnish children were parrots and monkeys [terrible], that they, that they can’t speak Finnish or Swedish, that we can’t like continue education [yeah] and that kind of things. [mm] I asked once the teacher at school that how do you notice at school that our son’s home language is Finnish. [yeah] That teacher went all red and asked why I am asking such a question. I then said that it was again written in the newspaper that those who speak Finnish at home won’t make it in life, they don’t make it at school. So the teacher then asked immediately that do we speak Finnish at home? Well of course we do. She said, that she had never heard from my boy’s language anything to show that his home language could be like Finnish [yeah] it felt really good, it like wrecked the nasty articles in the newspapers.

This long excerpt captures the conflict concerning education and language in a painfully clear way and, even more importantly, includes all the argumentative elements that the participants also used in their reflections about the status of minority languages some 20 years after Aune’s children went to school. Back in the 1960s and 1970s many parents feared stigmatisation and were reluctant to sign up their children for Finnish classes (Pelkonen & Vuonokari 1993: 16). To be Finnish in Sweden has until recent years been described as something stigmatized and marginalized. Barth explains the concept of stigma with the example of Finnishness in Sweden (1969). According to him, all characteristics connected with Finnishness were stigmatized and these stigmatized characteristics can be attached to anyone who can be considered a Finn. That is why, Barth explains, Sweden’s Finns rather hide their origin in order to avoid a conflicting self-image (see, also Savolainen 1982). However, Aune is talking about core problems that also reflect the atmosphere of quick assimilation in the 1970s in Sweden, while the participants in the research are talking in the context of contemporary multicultural Sweden (see also Snellman 2005).

Several studies have paid attention to this stigmatization and to the fact that when children started their school careers in a completely Swedish-speaking environment they very quickly stopped speaking Finnish to their siblings and parents, which resulted in a poor self-image (Toukomaa 1975). The linguistic situation of second generation immigrants throughout the world is often problematic. The second generation has to learn at an early age how to balance between the parents’ preferences, customs, and language brought from the old country and the new country’s majority culture outside the home. Österlund-Pötzsch (2003) remarks that immigrant children who are mocked or humiliated in front of their fellow pupils because of their being ethnically different usually adapt and assimilate to the majority culture very quickly. Only a few participants recalled any harassment during the school years; for the most part, mocking was just part of a child’s life. In some schools with many Finnish children, harassment and mocking even produced countereffects: Finnish-speaking children bonded even more after being the target of such mocking.

To return to the Swedish education history: after the introduction of the equality – freedom of choice – co-operation plan, the growing number of different immigrant groups, with their respective languages and cultures, made the promising start of a multicultural future difficult to maintain in the longer run. Throughout the latter half of the 1980s, less and less money was allocated for other than Swedish-speaking education. Today, partially because of the diminishing influx of Finnish immigrants, there are no Finnish classes left. Instead, private Finnish schools have been established. In 1990, it became possible to start private schools, and the first Finnish school was opened in downtown Stockholm, and soon thereafter also in the Mälaren area, for example, in Upplands Väsby, Rinkeby and Eskilstuna. Schools were also established in other areas with larger Finnish-speaking populations, such as Gothenburg and Malmö in the southwest and Motala in the high north.

Four of the ten key participants, Pia, Sanna, Aki-Petteri and Emma, attended a Finnish class at some stage of their education. Aki-Petteri has described his school days earlier in this chapter, and Pia’s and Sanna’s recollections of their school years in a Finnish class were happy as well. They felt that education mainly in Finnish provided all of them with two strong languages. Sanna and Pia emphasized the fact that the pupils of the Finnish classes formed a group with strong self-esteem. If there were some harassment attempts from other children, the Finnish class as a unit acted as protection. Those participants who were in Swedish classes mentioned the strong ‘we-feeling’ of the Finnish classes they had observed at school.

Apart from the challenge of catching up with vocabulary in the seventh grade, the year when most of the Finnish classes were integrated into Swedish ones, none of those who had been educated in Finnish had anything negative to say about the language arrangements at school, rather the contrary. Nevertheless, all the participants had observed their peers having trouble with Swedish and some spoke of a faint uncertain feeling connected with languages. In the following example Pia and Katariina recall classmates who had trouble with both Swedish and Finnish, and discuss a feeling they both recognize of not being quite 100 % sure of either language.

Example 17

Lotta: No entäs sitte koulussa kun te ootte osa käyny suomeks, et oliks siinä oikeesti jotain ongelmaa sitte kun se opetus muuttu ruotsiksi, et esimerkiks kirjottaa tai jotain?

Lotta: How about school then, some of you went to school in Finnish, like were there really some problems when the instruction language changed to Swedish, for example writing or something?

Pia: Mulla ei kyllä ikinä oo ollu mitään ongelmaa, mutta kyllä niitäkin oli. Meillä oli meiän luokassa kun me käytii kuitenkin ysille asti, niin varmaan yli puolet joutu käymää sellasta eri ruotsin kieltä.

Pia: I have never had any trouble, but there were also those who had. We had in the class, the class that was in Finnish all the way up to the ninth grade, so more than half had to take special Swedish classes.

Katariina: Ekstra tukea vai?

Katariina: Like extra help or what?

Pia: Nii, ja että oli vaikeempi just sen kielen suhteen kanssa, että kun alko sitten tuohon ammatti-kouluun nii tuli niin iso se ero, kun oli kuitenkin nii vanha jo.

Pia: Yes, and it was more difficult because of the language, and then when we started vocational school so the difference was big, we were already so old already.

Lotta: Niin ja se termistö on niin eri et eihän sitä opi missään niiku kavereitten kanssa leikkiessään (…)

Lotta: Yes, and the vocabulary is so different, you don’t learn it like with friends or when playing (…)

Pia: Kaikki nuo ihan vaikeimmat sanat niin joskus tuntuu ettei niitä tiiä mitä ruotsiksi eikä sitten ihan varmasti että mitä ne suomeksikaan sitte, nii ei tiiä osaako sitten.

Pia: All those most difficult words, they feel sometimes like I don’t know them in Swedish but I am not absolutely sure about what they are in Finnish either, so one doesn’t know whether one knows or not.

Katariina: Joskus tuntuu sillee että ei oo ruotsi eikä suomi sillee sata prosenttista, silleen.

Katariina: Sometimes it feels like neither Finnish nor Swedish comes really 100 %, kind of.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, marraskuu 2004)

(First interview, November 2004)

Emma attended a Finnish school starting from her 6th grade in Upplands Väsby. She was born and grew up in Sweden but the family spent the first four school years in Finland where she attended a Swedish-speaking school. When her family returned to Sweden she started in a Finnish class. In the following example she recalls her years in school in a rather negative light.

Example 18

Lotta: Oliks se hyvä koulu, tykkäsik sä käydä sitä?

Lotta: Was it a good school, did you like going there?

Emma: Mä en tykänny käydä sitä. Ne meidän ikäset jotka oli siellä niin oli kauheita, sellasia extreme suomalaisia ja jossei kuulunut niihin niin oli vähän et oho. (…) Se oli kauheen sulkeutunut se maailma, enkä mä tuntenu että mä oon semmonen.

Emma: No I did not. The people of our age who were there were terrible, like that kind of extreme Finns and if you didn’t belong to them it was a bit like oh. (…) It was a really closed world, I didn’t feel like I was like that.

(Ensimmäinen haastatttelu, lokakuu 2005)

(First interview, October 2005)

Emma felt very different from her classmates and never found her place in the setting she describes as ‘extreme Finnish’. She recalls some of her peers having problems with Swedish and receiving extra help with the language, and still today having a ‘limited knowledge’ of Swedish. She adds that the peculiar accent and the way of speaking Swedish that she describes as ‘limited knowledge’ could also be a conscious way to express belonging to a group of people who prefer to use language that way. With this consideration Emma is touching upon a very interesting pool of language use, namely the usage of ‘non-standard’ variants of the official/dominant language of the respective country. She has observed a difference between having limited knowledge of a language and conscious choosing of a particular register that is non-standard. These kinds of language variants can be referred to as sociolects, dialects, ethnolects, or multiethnolects; opinions concerning definitions vary among linguists (Kotsinas 1982; Loentz 2006). Quist (2005) makes the distinction between ethnolect and multiethnolect as follows: the linguistically deviant form from standard language should be treated as a variety in its own right, a so-called multiethnolect. Whereas ethnolects might be conceived of as ‘varieties of a language that mark speakers of ethnic groups who originally used another language or distinctive variety’ it is characteristic for multiethnolects that they are used by several minority groups ‘collectively to express their minority status’ (Clyne 2000: 86–87). When majority speakers come to share a multiethnolect with minorities, we see an expression of a new form of group identity. Non-standard variants have been studied especially in the UK and Germany (Auer 2002; Loentz 2006; Rampton 1995). In Scandinavia, ethnolects have been studied in the capital city areas of Sweden, Norway and Danmark (Kotsinas 1982, 1988, 1990; Svendsen & Røneland 2008; Quist 2005; 2008). In the German context, the focus has mainly been language use of the 1960s’ labour migrants’ offspring. Auer (2002: 257–260) points out that the contemporary ethnolect associated with this group, referred to as Kanaksprak or Turkendeutch, is mainly spoken by migrant youth, especially with Turkish background, and should not be confused with the Guestworker German of the first generation. The crucial difference between Guestworker German and Turkendeutsch or, in the case of my study, Finnish labour immigrants’ Swedish and Rinkebysvenska is exactly what Emma had noticed: speaking ‘wrong’ because of not knowing better versus making use of the possibility of marking one’s talk as something different, associated with a specific, ‘non-standard’ background. Ethnolectal and multiethnolectal uses of languge can be seen as acts of identity.

Unlike their parents, the speakers of multi-ethnolects, be they second and third generation of Finns in Sweden or Turks in Germany, are very likely to have full command of German / Swedish, as well as other varieties, such as regional dialects. Thus, German / Swedish may be classified as their dominant language (i.e., a competence based definition, see Lanza 2004). The use of multi-ethnolect is one part of a larger linguistic repertoire (see also, Svendsen & Røneland 2008). A particular language choice can be relevant to identity constructions in situations where the participants choose to use certain languages, words, or phrases when they had the option to choose differently; situations where the choice is motivated by its symbolic value (Auer 2007).

The best-selling Swedish novel Ett Öga Rött (One Red Eye 2004) by Jonas Hassan Khemeri is written in non-standard Swedish, and lifted the issue into the spotlight in 2002 when the book was published. Emma assumes that her old classmates might actually be making use of their own version of Swedish pronunciation in order to mark their uniqueness or belonging to the Finns of Upplands Väsby, just like Hassan in the novel chooses to speak an ethnolect. How people sound and what we associate with different accents is a fascinating topic, and I will elaborate on the aspects of vernacular use and accents in the next part of the analysis, Differences, where imitation and accents will be discussed in more detail.

Sport Communities

So far I have discussed the representation repertoires of Finnishness in the context of communities closely tied to language, such as growing up in a Finnish-speaking family, attending Finnish education, or taking home language classes as a part of Swedish education. There are, however, also other communities, maybe less explicit, where language and ethnicity play crucial roles. Sports clubs and sport as a phenomenon enjoyed and watched together with others were brought up frequently in the interviews as something important for Finnishness in Sweden.

The connection between sports and national identities has been studied mainly within sociology (Bourdieu 1990; MacClancy 1996). Football hooliganism and media coverage of big events, such as the Olympic Games or Euro Cup in football, have offered fruitful data. The focus has often been on media language use: references to national clichés in sport talk, representation of gender, or ethnicity (Burgos 2005; Poulton 2004; Delgado 2004; Bishop & Jaworski 2003; van der Lippe 2002) According to Horak & Spitaler (2003: 1515), the involvement of sports in the building of national identities is at least twofold; on the one hand, it takes place on an everyday level: the existence of national leagues, the use of national symbols on sport outfits of teams and supporters, participation in international sport events, etc., and, on the other, through extraordinary moments of victory or failure. In this section, I will discuss these two types of connections between sports and ‘feeling like a Finn’.

In my data, being an active member of a sports club, playing a certain game, or being a fan of a sport quickly emerged as being one productive way to express feelings towards Finland and Finnishness. Some participants even found the essence of Finnishness in sport. Sometimes sport also was discussed as something other people brought up in connection with ethnic identity (getting remarks at work after a lost game etc.). For several participants watching hockey was one of the clearest reminders of their Finnish background; their national identity and affection for the Finnish team overruled everything else. Usually sport came up in the context of specific moments in life when one might experience Finnishness more strongly than at other times. To Aki-Petteri, sport offered a relaxed and social way to spend time with his Finnish friends. We were talking about what it meant to be Finnish in Sweden when I asked him the following (and maybe quite suggestive and leading) question.

Example 19

Lotta: Onko sulla sellasia tilanteita, että olet joskus enemmän suomalainen kun muulloin?

Lotta: Are there moments, where you are sometimes more Finnish than at other times?

Aki-Petteri: No tota joo, jääkiekkomatseissa esimerkiks.

Aki-Petteri: Well yes, ice hockey, for example.

Lotta: Seuraaksä urheilua?

Lotta: Do you follow sport?

Aki-Petteri: Joo seuraan ja se on jännää, että semmoset lajit joissa Suomi ei oo hyvä niin silloin mä oon Ruotsin puolella [mutta pakkohan se on kun Suomi ei koskaan pääse pelaamaan] (nauraa) [nauraa] totta (nauraa), mutta taas niinkun jääkiekossa, siinä mä oon aivan eniten nationalisti, ihan pa…pa//

Aki-Petteri: Yes I do and it is funny, like sports where Finland isn’t good then I support Sweden [well, there aren’t many other options because Finland never gets to play] (laughs) [laughs] right (laughs), but like with ice hockey, I am most nationalistic, a real pat…pat//

Lotta: //patriootti (nauraa)

Lotta: //a patriot (laughs)

Aki-Petteri: Kyllä ! (nauraa)

Aki-Petteri: Exactly! (laughs)

Lotta: Onks sulla pieni suomenlippu jota heilutat?

Lotta: Do you have a small flag you are waving?

Aki-Petteri: Ai pieni!! (nauraa) valtava!! (nauraa) [nauraa] suomipaidat kaikki (nauraa) silloin me mennään barbaarisesti jengeissä, suomalaisissa jengeissä johonkin kapakkaan ja siellä on suomalaiset ryhmissä, se on naurettavaa (nauraa) [nauraa]

Aki-Petteri: A small (laughs) it is gigantic (laughs)[laughs] Finland shirt and everything (laughs) we go in gangs, barbarically, in Finnish gangs to some pub and there the Finns group with other Finns, it is ridiculous (laugh) [laughs]

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, September 2005)

For Aki-Petteri, hockey games presented leisure time spent with his friends, equipped with the Finnish national symbols: the flag and Finland-shirts. He laughs a lot during the sequence and clearly found this passion for ice hockey amusing, maybe even slightly ridiculous. Aki-Petteri refers to patriotic feelings and calls their ice hockey activities barbaric; it seems that he is ridiculing his fanatic enthusiasm connected with ice hockey. He presents the event of watching ice hockey together with other Finns in a pub as a ‘masquerade’ of Finnishness. For him and many other respondents the heated passion is connected only with ice hockey. No other game received such enthusiastic narrations, and many said, like Aki-Petteri, that they would cheer for Sweden in sports where Finland does not perform that well. Even those participants who did not identify with being Finnish remarked on the flaming feeling when Finland was playing against Sweden, especially ice hockey. Below are two examples, the first of them with Tiia, an interviewee from Köping, who expressed frustration because of not feeling Finnish although both of her parents were Finnish-speaking Finns. Finally, watching hockey revealed her as a Finn. Also Madeleine, who did not identify much with Finnishness, named ice hockey as something that makes her Finnish for a moment.

Example 20, Tiia, first interview, April 2002

Tiia: Jag är ledsen. Jag är men, (stönar), eller jag är ju finsk, de säger ju att vi är finska, fast jag känner mej svensk, eftersom jag bor i Sverige och pratar svenska och det blir ju så och sedan när Sverige och Finland matchar hockey då är man helt finne! (skrattar) [skrattar]

Tiia: I am sad. I am but, (sighs) like I am Finnish, this is what others say, that we are Finns, although I feel Swedish because I live here and speak Swedish, but when Finland and Sweden play hockey, then one becomes really a Finn! (laughter) [laughter]

(Tiia, ensimmäinen haastattelu, huhtikuu 2002)

Example 21

Madeleine: Oo, jag håller på Finland. Det är det precis, det är det precis, jag måste! Då är jag en riktig finne! (skrattar)[ skrattar]

Madeleine: Oo, I cheer for Finland. That’s the way it is, precisely, I have to! Then I am a real Finn! (laughter) [laughter]

(Första intervjun, december 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

Ice hockey was not the only signifier for Finnishness and the national feelings evoked through sports.

It appears clearly from these examples that sport is watched and done together mainly with others. Sanna celebrated with the Finnish masses the victory in 1995. Aki-Petteri goes with his friends for their ‘barbaric’ tours equipped with national symbols such as flags and shirts. Sandra and others remembered pesäpallo (Finnish baseball) team as a group of friends doing something Finnish and enjoyable together. It is not the purpose of this section to study sport as such, and therefore I will only observe that sport, be it watching it or actually participating in it, and the feeling of belonging to the community of Finns go hand in hand. Sport has a symbolic value as something connecting people to a larger entity of the Finns. Anderson (1991) calls these entities (they could be nations or other reference groups) imagined communities. An imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be) based on face-to-face interaction between all of its members. Instead, members keep in their mind a mental image of their affinity. Nations and ethnic groups are constructed and represented symbolically in social interaction. The feeling of belonging to a larger entity, such as a nation or a kin, is a representation repertoire in the creation of identities, and sport is available for airing, manifesting, and celebrating feelings of national belonging. To play a game or watch one offers opportunities to participate in a bigger collective that shares something symbolically valuable to the participants.

Historically speaking, sport and sport associations were an important part of Finnish life in Sweden in the time of the mass migration. Finnish associations were blooming everywhere where Finns settled down in larger numbers. The existence of the associations had and still has a vital meaning for many members of the first generation, but eight out of ten of the participants in this study did not participate in the activities of any association related to Finland or Finnishness. Still, almost everyone had participated in some kind of Finnish association life as a child, or at least remembered events organized by Finnish clubs.

In Köping, pesäpallo was in the foreground in all the interviews and it clearly was something very Finnish in the area. Pesäpallo is the national sport of Finland, and it is part of physical education in schools. It is a popular game in Finland and the leagues are screened on national television like baseball, basketball or soccer tournaments in other countries. The tradition of playing pesäpallo in Köping started in the 1970s when larger numbers of Finnish immigrants settled in the area and brought their favorite game with them. The tradition grew strong during the 1980s when the second generation was grown-up enough to start to swing the bat. In Köping, regular pesäpallo training was organized, and playing pesäpallo became the Finnish thing to do. Many factories had their own teams and tournaments were held. Pesäpallo carried, and for many still carries, a strong performative character of doing something Finnish, being part of a game that no Swedes or other immigrant groups would have known how to play.

In the late 1980s, the Köping boys’ team participated in the World Cup for pesäpallo held in Helsinki. The boys’ team did not consist only of boys, but was a mixed team and it is unclear to me why it was called the boys’ team. Sandra was a member of the team and told a story about a crisis connected to the colors they were supposed to play in. The organizers of the cup requested the teams to play in the colors of their country’s flag, which would have been yellow and blue for the Köping team. The team had, however, always played in the blue and white colors of Finland and the players were very upset but had to play in Swedish colors. Next time the World Cup took place they were allowed to play in blue and white like a ‘real’ Finnish team.

Example 22

Sandra: Mut sillon ko ne oli, niillä oli MM-kisat pesäpallo tuolla Suomessa, niin me tultiin niinko Ruotsista. Se tuntu vähän oudolta, et ne oli ruotsalaiset niinkö, et ne Ruotsin ristit11 oli näin, niinkö et ne oli Ruotsista vaikka ne pelas pesäpalloa. Et se tuntu aika oudolta.

Sandra: when the World Cup in pesäpallo took place in Finland, so we, like, we, came from Sweden. it felt quite weird. we were like the Swedes, with the Swedish crosses and all. We were like Swedes although we played pesäpallo. It was a strange feeling.

Lotta: Kuka sen päätti, et niitten pitää olla Ruotsin väreissä?

Lotta: Who decided that they had to be in Swedish colors?

Sandra: Kyllähän se oli päätetty, et ne pitää olla. Et silloin ensimmäisen kerran oli Ruotsin värit, mut nyt viimeks niillä oli siniset ja valkoset vaatteet. Mut ne oli kummiski Ruotsista. Mut ei täällä enää montaa paikkaa, missä pelataan pesäpalloa. Se on niinkö ihan menny pois [mm] sehän on niinku Suomen, pesäpallo kuuluu Suomeen.

Sandra: Well, that was decided already, that they must be that way. The first time they played in Swedish colors but the previous time they had played in blue and white outfits. And yet they were from Sweden. But there aren’t many places here anymore where pesäpallo is played. It has vanished completely [mm] It is like Finland’s. pesäpallo belongs to Finland.

(Palautekeskustelu, kesäkuu 2002)

(Feedback conversation, June 2002)

These stories give evidence of the fact that pesäpallo represented strong Finnish identity for the players; it was an absolutely Finnish game to play and the confusion and anger the imposed yellow and blue outfits caused was so great that some players even refused to play in any other colors than the Finnish blue and white. The blue and white colors symbolised their national belonging to Finland and distinguished them from Swedes. Sandra explained about the awkwardness of the combination of playing pesäpallo in Swedish outfits. Pesäpallo stories were told wistfully; for many, the teammates were classmates from the Finnish classes who had become friends for life. Some old players wished to play again one fine day with a good team against another good team. The Köping pesäpallo team does not exist anymore. The active core of the team had applied for money for equipment and training from the local Finnish association but their application was turned down. They played some show games at the Finn Fest (a yearly celebration organized by Finnish associations) some years ago, but, as one of the participants put it, ‘It is no real game because there is not one team in Sweden that could really challenge us.’ Some of the players of the pesäpallo team started to play indoor hockey and also non-Finns joined the team later on.

A pesäpallo team was part of the childhood and teenage years of almost all the interviewees from Köping. Pesäpallo appeared as an essential and powerful medium for Finnishness. MacClancy (1996: 2) claims that sports can serve as a vehicle of identity providing people with a sense of difference and a way of classifying themselves and others. Sport might not just be a marker of an established social identity but a means by which to create a new social identity as well. When the offspring of Finnish immigrants played pesäpallo, it served as a strong manifestation for their ethnic identity: it was a Finnish game only played by Finns. Sports and sport events are always related to power: who attempts to control how a sport is to be organized and played, and by whom, and how it is to be presented and interpreted. The Finnish pesäpallo team was trained by a Finnish coach, and in the beginning the players were exclusively Finns and the language in which commands were given was Finnish; the whole event took place in Finnish. Later the language used in the game was increasingly Swedish and also non-Finnish children from the neighborhood and school wanted to learn the skills of the fast game and joined the team. Even though the language changed from Finnish to Swedish, pesäpallo remained a Finnish game. I do not want to draw too far-reaching conclusions but will point out that language does not always seem to be the ultimate signifier in the feelings of national belonging. Although the Finnish language use was adapted to the surroundings, the symbolic value of the game did not change. Pesäpallo still is the Finn-game, no matter in what language it is played.

In Köping, all the participants reminisced also about karamellihiihdot (candy skiing) on winter Saturdays, when families came together for cross-country skiing in the surrounding fields. It was not a competition; families just spent time together doing outdoor activities and children were rewarded with candy afterwards. Similar outdoor activities were also organized in the summer, but it was obviously an important winter event for the participants. Folkdances and traditional ballroom dancing, popular pastime activities for many of the first generation, were still practiced when the participants were small (see also Suutari 2000).

None of the participants had adopted their parents’ ‘traditionally Finnish’ hobbies. Some respondents even mentioned that coming together just because of a common national origin does not feel attractive enough. Some suggested cooking courses in Finnish, or reviving the pesäpallo club, but getting together with people with Finnish origin for the sake of a common family background was nothing they missed. During the past two decades, the Finnish associations have splintered into subgroups promoting different interests, and the Finnish community has started to diminish. Finnish associations offered a ‘natural’ arena where it was possible and easy to live out Finnishness in ways that were familiar and important to the Finns at the time. Important ethnic arenas are, however, likely to undergo changes as years go by. Thus, they can mean very different things for different generations and individuals. A clear shift has taken place from spending time with ‘genuine Finns’ and doing ‘Finnish things’ with them in the setting of a Finnish association, towards connecting with the imagined entity of Finns. The symbolic value of genuine Finns and Finnish activities has lost its ground. The imagined entity of Finns and Finnishness can find its expression in sports events, or as a feeling of belonging together, but it can also turn into an unwanted ethnic duty. When we orient ourselves towards the imagined entity of a kin and kinship, we stress aspects such as common characteristics, heritage, roots, history, and also sometimes a common future (Andersson 1991) – all of which are, of course, imaginary to a varying degree and of different value to different individuals.

Extraordinary Feelings

We have all watched sports and maybe shed a tear or two at the moment of defeat or victory, or, at least, observed others in the heat of watching a game. The spectators cry and celebrate with their team and sometimes entire nations seem to get a boost or a blow depending on their national team’s performance. I do not want to go into the psychology of sports and seek answers for the question of why sports evoke such passionate feelings; instead, I simply take them as part of the package and see the emotions as aspects of the larger picture in which sports competitions are embedded. (See, for example, Bourdieu 1990.) Horak and Spitaler (2003: 1515) write from a cultural studies perspective and note that extraordinary feelings that are produced in any given sport become a part of the collective national memory. The collective national memory of Finns includes (at least) extraordinary events of the repeated, bitter defeats in World Cup ice hockey finals, how Lasse Viren fell down during the 10,000 meter race and still set a new world record winning the gold medal in the 1972 Munich Olympics, the strong crosscountry skiers of the early 1990s and, very important for many participants of this research, the glorious victory over Sweden in Word Cup ice hockey in 1995.

There are also phrases that are connected with these extraordinary events and have become symbolic not only for the act or the respective person but also because they represent something specifically Finnish; Viren was called the sinivalkoinen raketti (blue and white rocket) who fell down and with sisu stood up and won the race. The Finnish Lions won the furious battle against the Swedish Crown in the legendary ice hockey final in 1995. As Sanna narrated, the central square in Stockholm that was prepared and decorated for the home team was taken over by Finnish fans and the Finnish national team, led by their Swedish coach. Even the anthem written for the expected Swedish victory Den glider in (it slides in) was adopted by the Finnish fans and with the final whistle Finland symbolically conquered the Swedish symbols for ice hockey victory. This ice hockey victory can be perceived also as embodying much more than the gold medal itself. In 1995, Finland was still in the throes of economic depression, unemployment figures hit rock bottom, and there were not too many things to cheer for and celebrate success and Finnishness at that point in history.

Sports commentators, the media and we ordinary language users employ clichéd national characteristics when celebrating victories or discussing defeats. National identities are constructed and reproduced through discursive practices. For instance, by using national symbols, narratives, traditions, and rituals we fuse our personal experiences with national experiences. This is the dynamic of how national identity becomes part of people’s everyday life. Billig (1995) introduced the term banal nationalism that refers to those unnoticed practices and representations that make the daily representations of nations possible:

‘The metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is a flag hanging unnoticed on the public building’ (Billig 1995: 8).

Billig suggests that banal nationalism involves the ongoing use of the national symbols, themes, rituals and stereotypes of a nation. The Finnish sisu prevails, and the Finn as a loner in long-distance skiing or running also fights his (sic!) way through fire and water if necessary. The concept of sisu is a beloved mythical concept linked with the Finnish character. Aslama and Pantti (2007: 59) describe sisu as an attitude, even a philosophy, of ‘what must be done will be done, regardless of the cost’. Sisu has elements of stubbornness and is inherently connected with other myths of Finnishness: Finnish wars, and sports. It was sisu that helped Finland in the wars against Russia, and it is used to describe the willpower needed to win gold medals in sports competitions.

During my first fieldwork period in Köping, April-May 2002, the ice hockey World Cup was played in Stockholm. (Finland and Sweden played for gold, and, eventually, Finland lost.) The Finland-Sweden ice hockey games are for many a major event of national pride or, as in 2002, a source of national shame. Because ice hockey appeared relevant for many participants, the World Cup victory of 1995 was narrated almost as many times as there were interviews. The reoccurring defeats in the final games and the comments at school and later at work on the following day were topics every one talked about. In 1995, however, the Finnish team won and the roles changed: all of a sudden it was ‘inne att vara Finne’ (in to be a Finn) in Sweden. The victory over Sweden was a major event in Finland and offered the offspring of Finnish immigrants an expression of their roots and sisu. Participants narrated passionately the celebration of the 1995 World Cup where Finland beat Sweden, winning the gold medal for the first, and so far only, time in the history of ice hockey.

Sanna remembers the day as one crazy celebration of Finnishness, but it also marked a turning point for her identity as a Finn. The main location for her narration is Sergels torg, a big square in the heart of Stockholm where big events take place. It is not only for rallies, but also for other events: for example, when foreign minister Anna Lind was murdered in September 2003 a memorial was held there.

Example 23

Sanna: Kun Suomihan voitti 95 Globenissa ja ruotsalaiset oli jo valmistatunu mm-kultavoittoon, niin se oli sellanen revanssi niitten niinku yläastevuosien kilpailuvuosien jälkeen et sen jälkeen mä unohdin koko jääkiekon ja unohdin koko jääkiekon sen jälkeen, sit se ei ollu enää merkityksellinen. Mut silloin juhlin ja olin oikeesti onnellinen ja iloinen.

Sanna: Finland won in Globen in ’95 and the Swedes were already prepared to celebrate their gold, thus that was a payback after all those years of competing at junior high, after that I haven’t been interested in ice hockey at all, so after that it has not been significant to me. But back then I celebrated and was genuinely happy and glad.

Lotta: Mut olihan se mieletön päivä!

Lotta: But it was an awesome day!

Sanna: Olihan se mieletön päivä. Sillo me oltiin tietty Sergelin torilla ja se oli mahtavaa jo kun me odotettiin yhtä kaveria joka oli töissä jossain niin me ootettiin sitä yhellä paikallisjuna-asemalla jossain ja sitte astuttiin junaan ku me nähtiin ne junat jotka meni ohi niissä vaan liehu suomen liput ja ku me astuttii siihen junaan ni siellä oli laitettu niinku sellasia isoja suomenlippuja sinne junien seinille ja sielä joku laulu oli että we are the champions ja tuntu että koko Tukholma oli suomenkielisiä ja suomalaisia täynnä. Ja sittenhän me oltiin Sergelin torilla jossahan perinteisesti Ruotsin maajoukkuetta juhlittu ja siellä oli jo kaikki valmiina sitä juhlintaa varten ja siellä sitten Kurre Lindström sitten kasto Tukholman Helsingholmiksi ja jotain tällästä ja sit ne jääkiekkojoukkueet tuli sinne. Jotain tällästä, sen jälkeen mä en ookkaan enää välittänyt //jääkiekosta

Sanna: Indeed it was. We were, of course, on the Sergel’s square and it was great already when we were waiting for a friend who was still working, we were at the commuter station somewhere and got on the train, when we saw all those trains passing with the Finnish flags waving. When we got on the train there were big Finnish flags on the walls and someone was singing we are the champions. It felt like the whole of Stockholm had been Finnish-speaking and full of Finns. And then we were at the Sergels torget, that is the place were the Swedish national team is traditionally being celebrated so everything was set and ready for the party. Kurre Lindström (the Swedish coach of the Finnish national team) then renamed Stockholm Helsingholm and something like that. And then the ice hockey teams came there. Something like that. After that I haven’t been interested in //ice hockey anymore

Lotta: // hyvä lopetus jääkiekkouralle (nauraa)

Lotta: //well, that is a nice end for the hockey career!

Sanna: Joo hyvä revanssi, se oli kuitenkin ainut mikä oli jäänyt kaivelemaa siitä niinku yläaste vuosilta, se ainainen häviäminen jääkiekossa. Nyt sekin sitte kuitattiin niin ei ollu mitään, sit voiki jo kehittyä vähän monimuotosempi identiteetti eikä tartte koko ajan puolustaa Suomee (nauraa) se mitä mä oon miettiny jälkikäteen, että ei sulla ollu mitään valinnanvaraa identiteetin suhteen, että oli se sun identiteetti että meidän tehtävä oli niinku puolustaa Suomea jääkiekossa ja sitä mä oon miettiny jälkikäteen että toivon että kehitys menee eteenpäin siinä.

Sanna: Indeed, a good payback. Yet, it was the only thing that bothered me from the junior high times, the constant losing in ice hockey. Now it was written off and nothing was left, time for progress and for a little bit more multi-faceted identity. And no need to stand up for Finland all the time (laughs) what I have been thinking about afterwards is that you had no options with your identity. It was your identity that our task was to defend Finland in ice hockey and I’ve been thinking about that afterwards and hope that there will be some progress in that respect.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, syyskuu 2005)

(First interview, September 2005)

Sanna was not the only one experiencing the available role of a child and teenager with a Finnish background as narrow and unsatisfying. She mentions twice in her narration about the Globen victory that she had no other option than to stand up for the Finnish team as an expression of Finnishness. It seems as if this was required as an act proving one’s ethnic identity. Sanna wishes that it would be possible to develop the ways of being a Finn in Sweden. Her wish has a sad undertone; maybe my interpretation is wrong, but it sounds like a hard role to play for a child to have to stick to the losing side time after time as a required part of one’s identity. Pöyhönen and Dufva (2007) refer to these less voluntary elements of ethnic identity as ethnic duties. For children who were growing up with a Finnish background that showed in one way or another, be it the Finnish class or some other prominent way, the variety of possible identifications was not always very wide. Certain characteristics were expected, and, as Sanna put it, even required.

Emma also experienced ice hockey as something that ‘Finns just do’, as an obligatory part of the manifestation of her Finnishness in Sweden. She was born in Upplands Väsby but her family moved from there to the Swedish-speaking west coast of Finland for a period of four years when she was six years old. She had the first four years of her school education in Swedish in Finland. When they returned she started the fifth grade at the brand new Finnish school in Upplands Väsby. In the following example, Emma talks about the connection between ice hockey and becoming a Finn after the return to Sweden. Before the ice hockey theme came up we were talking about her self-identification as both a Swede and a Finn, and I asked her for some elaboration on her thoughts. In her previous turn, she had considered that she did not quite have the right to be and refer to herself as being as much Swedish as anyone else, even if she sometimes wanted to.

Example 24

Lotta: Mikä vois olla sellanen mikä oikeuttais sit sanomaan sen että sä oot ruotsalainen tai kuka muu tahansa on ruotsalainen?

Lotta: What could be something that could justify you to say that you are as Swedish as anyone else is Swedish?

Emma: No mä varmaan aattelen sitä silleen biologisessa mielessä että jos isä tai äiti ois suomalainen, siis ruotsalainen

Emma: Well I guess I think about it in biological terms like that if father or mother were Finnish, I mean Swedish

Lotta: Et se tulis sieltä jotenkin niinkun veressä

Lotta: Like it would come somehow in the blood?

Emma: Niin. Ku mulla on enemmän ollu. Mun äiti halus tosi paljo muuttaa takasin Ruotsiin kun se tykkäs Ruotsista ja sillä oli kauhee ikävä. Niin silloin mä olin kauheena et Ruotsiin Ruotsiin Ruotsiin! Että me oltiin ja kun muutettiin niin mä tunsin itteni tosi ruotsalaiseksi. Ja pienenäkin mä en tuntenu itteeni suomenruotsalaiseksi mä tunsin itteni tosi erilaiseksi kun mun kaverit enkä mä ollut suomalainen kun mä puhuin tosi eri tavalla ruotsii mut öö ja sit kuitenkin samanlainen, mut niin paljon erilainen, mut sitten kun me muutettin tänne niin mä uskon että se vaikutti tosi paljon se koulu kun kaikki oli niin suomalaisia että mä rupesin siis todella katsomaan jopa jääkiekkoa joskus (nauraa)

Emma: Yes. I have had more. My mum really wanted to move back to Sweden because she liked it there and missed it terribly. So then I was like ‘to Sweden, to Sweden, to Sweden!’ so when we were and had moved I felt really Swedish. And when I was small I didn’t feel like a Swedish-speaking Finn, I felt really different from my friends and I wasn’t a Finn because I spoke Swedish so very differently, but, err, somehow still the same, and yet so different, but then when we moved back here, I believe that the school I started going to where everyone was so very Finnish had a great impact, I really started watching even ice hockey sometimes (laughs)

Lotta: Jopa jääkiekkoa!! (matkii Emman ääntä, nauraa)

Lotta: Even ice hockey!! (imitates Emma’s voice, laughs)

Emma: Mulla oli jopa jääkiekkopaita (nauraa) nyt mä en enää silleen välitä. Mutta silloin se oli sellanen juttu, että joo mä oon suomalainen kun kaikki muutkin on suomalaisia, ja tää on mitä suomalaiset tekee.

Emma: I even had an ice hockey shirt (laughs) today I don’t care anymore. But back then it was a thing like, yes I am a Finn because all the others are Finns and this is what Finns do.

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2006)

(Feedback conversation, December 2006)

Emma’s example illustrates the web of national symbols and their sometimes arbitrary importance. Small details woven into our everyday lives that create ethnic identity often go almost unnoticed. Sometimes, however, especially if they are required and experienced as a duty, they can become more of a burden than a joy.

Humour and Joking

The participants remarked frequently that the national feelings evoked by watching sports were ridiculous and their narrations were always presented with laughter. The sudden feelings of being patriotic, whether these feelings were connected with Sweden or Finland, were frequently narrated with laughter, joking and by making the clichés and irrationality of the accounts obvious. Laughter and explicit references such as ‘I am using a cliché now’ were very common ways to refer to national images. This was not only the case with telling about patriotic feelings connected with sports, but also with any kind of resorting to clichés. Condor (2000) reports on the employment of clichés in her study conducted with British people who were formulating an account of their own country in interviews. Referring to van Dijk’s (1984) work on discrimination and Wetherell and Potter’s (1993) prejudice talk, she points out that many commentators have shown how interviewees may mobilize clichés to enhance the commonsense status of their words, thereby avoiding problems of accountability. It appeared, in my data, that speakers often used clichés of national character to make their utterances ironic. By using irony they marked their accounts as deliberately funny, exaggerated or, as Condor (2000) observed in her data, as reports of common sense beliefs which the speaker did not necessarily endorse. When a speaker makes fun of her own utterances, it can be difficult to tell whether she means what she says or is making reference to the cliché character of the utterance.

Humour and joking are interesting elements in the interview material and much more could be said about those sequences. Most of the time laughter did not appear inappropriate or out of place, and it was seldom difficult to know whether the interviewees were joking or not. However, some confusing situations also took place. The following example is an excerpt from the first interview with a male interviewee; he was characterising the differences between Swedish and Finnish men, and I had problems assessing the nature of his speech:

Example 25. Olli, born 1973, first interview, April 2002

Lotta: Ootteko te siellä jonkunnäkönen oma ryhmänne, kun te ootte kaikki yhdessä te suomalaiset, vaikkette suomea keskenänne puhuiskaan?

Lotta: Are you like your own group somehow, as you are all together you Finns, even though you didn’t speak Finnish with each other?

Olli: Noo, ollaan me vähäsen, et me ollaan vähäsen enemmän yhdessä… vaikee sanoo. Me tunnnetaan että ollaan kuitenkin, et me ollaan enempi erilaisia kun ruotsalaiset. Et miettii asiat erilailla kun nämä ruotsalaiset miettii.

Olli: Yeees, yes we are a bit, we are together more… it is difficult to explain. We feel that we are different from the Swedes, we think differently about things than these Swedes think.

Lotta: Milleen erilailla, koita selittää.

Lotta: In what way different, try to explain.

Olli: Ruotsalaiset on enempi tälleen akkamaisia (nauraa) miehet, ihan tosi, ne on niinkun vähän akkamaisia. Niitä voi niinku smöra. Osta niille vaikka pulla ja ovat ihan mielissään että hyvä jätkä! ihan tosi. Suomalainen kun se niinkun on, sanoo vaan että kiitos vaan ei siinä mitään muuta. Ruotsalainen on niin erilainen, sitä voi niinku smöra.

Olli: Swedes are more like sissies (laughs) men, honestly, they are like women you can like bribe them. Buy them a bun and they are happy as anything, what a good guy you are they’ll say. Honestly. A Finn would be like thanks but nothing more. Swedes are really different, they can like be bribed.

Lotta: Pullaa ostamalla? (nauraa)

Lotta: With a bun? (laughs)

Olli: On se ihan tosi! Ne saattaa töissä niinku, ne on ihan erilaisia. Ostaa ruotsalaisen, ostat niille pullaa ja ne tekee vaikka ihan mitä vaan sulle.

Olli: It is really true! At work for example, they are really different. Buy a Swede, buy a Swede a bun and they’ll do anything for you.

Lotta: Ihan tosi?

Lotta: Really?

Olli: Ihan totta, ne on akkamaisia, ne ruotsalaiset.

Olli: Believe me, that is how it goes, they are real sissies. These Swedes.

Lotta: No ihanko kaikki?

Lotta: All of them?

Olli: Noo, ei kai…

Olli: Well, I guess not…

Lotta: Eli siinä on joku, hmm, (puhuu hitaasti ja epävarman kuuloisesti) tämmönen ero, siinä on siis tämmönen ero suomalaisen ja //ruotsalaisen välillä

Lotta: So there is some, mm, (talking slowly with a hesitant voice) like a difference, there is this difference between Finns and //Swedes

Olli: //joo on on! Suomalainen on niiko enempi mies, niinkun miesmäinen. Se on niinkun enemmän jävlä anamma.

Olli: //yes there is!! a Finn is more like a man, more like masculine devilish they are.

Lotta: Nii

Lotta: I see

As can be read in the script, I have had problems in assessing the nature of Olli’s story. My first interpretation was to understand it as a joke, but as all of the following utterances contained the traditional clichés about Swedish men and he was laughing, but with no reference to the clichéd nature of the story, I was no longer certain. He smiled, but I remember his gaze not being constantly directed at me, which would have been more or less the case in a joke-telling situation because the storyteller gazes directly at the listener to see his/her facial expressions. This sequence also reveals my unfamiliarity with the jargon he uses when talking about Swedish men. He was not the only man with a Finnish background in my data who associated clichéd feminine characteristics with Swedish men (see also Ågren 2006: 138–139; Rosenberg & Toukomaa 1994: 152; Laine-Sveiby 1991). These associations often occur embedded in irony but this particular man seemed to be convinced about the sissiness of Swedish men. The repetition of Swedes being so easy to bribe took almost hilarious dimensions, because I had to replace my perception of a joke with a serious opinion.

The above example is, however, unique in the interview data and for most of the time references to specific characteristics were spiced up with laughter adding obvious irony. There is joking and laughter in every single recording, not only in those with the key participants. What does laughter tell about the situation? We might think that the function of a laugh is to express that people think something is funny. Provine (2000) argues, however, that most laughter is not in response to jokes or humour. Provine’s research group recorded naturally occurring speech outside shopping malls in North America, and in a survey of 1,200 laugh episodes he found that only 10 %–20 % of them were generated by anything resembling a joke. He claims that the primary function of laughter is to trigger positive feelings in other people. When we laugh, the people around us might start laughing in response. His findings can, of course, be criticised for their narrow scope. It is most certainly not possible to generalize from the speech and laughter patterns occurring in North American malls; yet his observations appear to be applicable to my interview data.

When there is a lot of laughter in the interviews, this could be an attempt to seek positive feedback and to establish common ground. Sometimes we laugh because we are nervous and do not know how to react in a situation, but we also laugh when we are amused. Looking back at the interviews, I consider that our encounters were mixtures of seeking positive feedback and also simply laughing because something was hilarious. In addition to the social aspect of laughing for reassurance or finding something hilarious, speakers can also indicate other things by laughing when they talk. One clear function of laughter in the interviews was the connection between cliché employment and laughter.

When the participants used clichés as part of their characterisation of Finns or Swedes or other people, they might have indicated awareness of the clichéd content of their utterance, and laughter could have been a way of distancing themselves from these clichés. (See, for example, Billig 2005.) When they used clichés attached to certain nationalities – Swedes, Finns or others – it was rare for them not to laugh and point out the absurd nature of the cliché. Aki-Petteri’s example illustrates how respondents often pointed out the cliché nature of their statements. We were talking about what Finland was like, and he was not happy to make any statements about Finland as such because he had been there only on holiday, and thus could not know what the country or its people really were like. I asked him to describe Finland as a holiday destination instead.

Example 26

Lotta: Mitä sä aattelet jos pitää sanoo viis adjektiivii et millanen Suomi on lomamaana?

Lotta: What do you think if you had to name five adjectives describing Finland as a holiday country?

Aki-Petteri: Öö, no se on niinku (nauraa) viis adjektiivia, vai? (nauraa)

Aki-Petteri: Öö, well it is like (laughs) five adjectives, right? (laughs)

Lotta: Tai voi olla myös sanoja, vaikka et vaan talo tai aurinko tai mitä vaan

Lotta: Or they can also be whatever words, like just a house or the sun or whatever

Aki-Petteri: Öö, öö, se on mulle loma, öö, öö, mm, mm, mm, mul tulee vaan tosi kornia sanoja mieleen kun juuret ja [ei se mitään] mutta mä en voi sanoo niitä näin yhessä, mun täytyy saada selostaa

Aki-Petter: Öö, öö, it is a holiday country for me, öö, öö, mm, mm, mm, only really corny words come to my mind, like roots and [it doesn’t matter] but I can’t say them like this, I’d have to elaborate

Lotta: Saat selostaa (nauraa)

Lotta: Be my guest (laughs)

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, September 2005)

Aki-Petter elaborated about the corny roots by referring to a feeling of belonging to something that was different from what his Swedish friends had. Clichés can also be employed with no visible connection to humour. But as Olli’s example shows, cliché national characteristics were mentioned many times in a straightforward way without laughter or smiling. This is exactly what makes the assessment of clichés difficult.

Functional and Emotional Values of Language(s)

Language as a marker of Finnishness was clearly a very productive element in the interviews and feedback conversations. When I asked the participants to tell me what Finnishness was about in the context of living in Sweden, language was usually mentioned among the first few things. The majority had the opinion that the Finnish language was the most important aspect of Finnish identity and Finnishness in Sweden. Language and language use is a very emotionally and also politically loaded topic, and the participants gave languages different roles in their lives and assigned different values and meanings to Finnishness as well.

In this section, I will discuss the awareness the participants presented of language, that is, their perceptions of language and manners/ways in which they spoke about language, as well as the kinds of ‘values’ they assigned to it. To be aware of a language can mean many things, but in this context I am referring to the roles and values the Finnish language was given by the participants. Harri Mantila (2002) describes language awareness as something that gradually increases. He distinguishes four levels of language awareness; on the lowest level language is perceived as something concrete that can be judged on a scale of good or bad, just like any other item, a chair or a car, could be characterized. On the second level, languages are seen primarily as a tool for transporting meanings; by this Mantila refers to the communicative aspects of a language. Mantila describes the third level as a multi-dimensional way of distinguishing the mother tongue from a foreign (sic) language. On this level, the knowledge of language is crucial, and emotions connected with the respective languages are weighed out and the mother tongue is presented as being superior for talking about emotional things. On the fourth level, language is viewed in its most multiple nature as a signifier for one’s identity and personality. The fourth level includes the idea that language shapes our perception of the world and determines our ways of thinking (Mantila 2002: 5–9).

I can find all the elements mentioned above in the interview material and agree with Mantila that there are different ways to perceive and talk about language. However, I do not think that the different ways of describing language or its meaning in one’s life are levels where one level is more sophisticated or developed than another. The different meanings the participants gave to language in the interviews offer us a glimpse into the multiple images and roles language can have in one’s life.

When the participants talked about languages and about Finnish in particular, they found it, for example, to carry both functional and emotional values. When language was described as functional it was often considered as something useful or serving a certain purpose. The participants often referred to language, just as Mantila suggests, as a working tool. In this view, language is seen primarily as something transporting meanings and enabling contact. The usefulness and necessity of Finnish came into the picture mostly in the context of the family. The knowledge of Finnish, to be able to understand and to speak it, had its functional value in the practical sense of being able to communicate with Finnish-speaking relatives in Finland. Everyone who spoke Finnish emphasized its importance in communicating with Finnish relatives. Some even claimed that if they were unable to talk in Finnish with their Finnish relatives, the feeling of a family bond or kinship would not be possible or would, at least, be very weak. Only one participant of the 29 who were interviewed had Swedish-speaking relatives from his wife’s side in Finland and indeed communicated with them in Swedish. For all the others, knowing Finnish was an essential skill in conversing with family members in Finland. For those who did not speak any Finnish, communication with family in Finland proved difficult. Madeleine talks about her muteness in Finnish:

Example 27

Lotta: Har finskan varit en del av ditt liv, på något sätt?

Lotta: Has Finnish ever been a part of your life, somehow?

Madeleine: Aldrig någonsin, och jag är ju som sagt född i början… ee… 1980, då var ju rådande språkforskningen ju, att man varnade för att, ee. att, eller man avrådde från att lära barnen flera olika språk för att barnen skulle då tappa känslan för att vad då var sitt modersmål och dom skulle blanda och bli förvirrade i bollen så där (skrattar)[skrattar, Lotta & Felix]. Så då det var, både tyskan och finskan har ju gått förlorade [mm, Lotta] och där känner jag att jag har ganska mycket släkt kvar i Finland, eller hade i alla fall när jag var liten, jag har ju aldrig kunnat kommunicera med dom mer att jag har kunnat räkna till tio [mm, Lotta] och sagt tack för pengarna, (skratt) [skratt, Lotta & Felix] sådana här eller tack…och sådana här, väldigt väsentliga (skratt i rösten ) små fraser, så att, det har ju känts…jag har ju aldrig haft kontakt, jag har ju aldrig egentligen känt mina finska, som mina morfar, min morbror, min kusin [mm, Lotta] jag har ju aldrig kunnat sitta med dom och ha ett samtal… ehm… ehm… men sedan var ju min morfar var ju också med i kriget eller både finska vinterkriget och andra världskriget så dom… ee… han kunde ju tyska ett tag. Och det får man, det läste vi i skolan [joo Lotta] att så att på de viset kunde vi ju prata lite, men finska språket har aldrig varit något större del av mitt liv [ää, Lotta]

Madeleine: Never, ever and I was born in the beginning of… eer… the 1980s and then it was the prevailing view that one was warned about, one was told not to speak several languages to a child because children would lose the sense for the mother tongue and mix and become silly in their heads (laughter) [laughter, Lotta & Felix ] so that it was how both German and Finnish were lost [mm, Lotta] I feel I still have quite a lot of family in Finland, or at least I had when I was little, but I have never been able to communicate with them more than by counting to ten [mm, Lotta] and say thanks for the money (laughter) [laughter Lotta & Felix] like that or thanks…and that kind of things here, really essential (laughter in her voice) little phrases, like, …it has felt… I have never had contact, I have never known my like my grandad, my uncle, my cousins. [emm, Lotta] I have never been in the position to sit down and have a conversation with them… ehm… ehm… but then again my grandfather was in the wars, both the Finnish Winter War and the Second World War, so… ee… he could speak some German. And we got that, we studied it at school [yeah, Lotta] so like in that way we could talk a little, but the Finnish language has never been in any bigger role in my life [ee, Lotta]

(Första intervjun, december 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

Madeleine’s parents followed, consciously or unconsciously, the guidelines of not confusing the children with a second, in her case even a third, language. The home language was always Swedish, and thus neither of the parents spoke their own native language. She talked on several occasions about having lost two languages, and with those languages also ‘a natural contact’ to her parents’ backgrounds and family histories. The uneasy feeling of not being able to sit down and talk is clear in this example. She reasoned, however, that a language course in Finnish or German would never give her enough knowledge about the family history because ‘It would be nothing I learned from my parents’.

Also Sofia acknowledges language as a barrier between herself and her family in Finland. In her case, however, there has always been contact in spite of the somewhat complicated language situation:

Example 28

Lotta: Hur går det egentligen när du är i Finland och träffar dina släktingar pratar du finska med dom, eller kan dom svenska?

Lotta: How is it, actually, when you are in Finland and meet your relatives? Do you speak Finnish with them or do they speak Swedish?

Sofia: Nej, dom kan ingen svenska, så att det är finska som pratas, men oftast blir det ju så att när ja åker med mamma så låter jag henne prata (skrattar) dumt lite (skrattar) jag borde åka ensam så måste jag också prata (skrattar)[skrattar]

Sofia: No, they don’t speak any Swedish, so Finnish is spoken, but for the most it is so that I travel with my mum and let her talk (laughter) a bit silly (laughter) I should travel alone so I would have to talk myself (laughter) [laughter]

(Feedback konversationen, december 2006)

(Feedback conversation, December 2006)

According to Sofia, the longing to be able to speak with her relatives in Finland gave her the boost to start the language course. She did not continue the course for more than two semesters. When we met in December 2006, she claimed that she had forgotten a lot of what she had learned in the course and that her noble decision to speak Finnish with her mother had faded as well. Still, she said that she had a solid understanding of both written and spoken Finnish, and thus for her, in her own words, it would be just a matter of practice to start speaking. Her statements about reclaiming a language that she had almost lost are accompanied with a pleased smile. We discussed the meaning of Finnish for a minority and I asked her whether she felt more Finnish now that she had a better understanding of the language than before. Sofia denied any deepening feelings towards her background, or Finland as a country, and described the experience simply as something she did because it felt like a good thing to do. Sofia’s experience undermines the idea that Finnish identity is necessarily tied to the Finnish language.

Finnish in the Family

At the time of the interviews, three of the nine key participants, Pia, Katariina and Maria, had children. Katariina and Maria had a family with a Swedish-speaking partner, and the families functioned somewhat bilingually; the partners spoke Swedish to one another, and their own language to the children. The children were still very young and the issue of two-way bilingualism was actually only beginning to emerge in both families. Pia’s home language was Finnish. Both partners spoke Finnish as their first language, and had already before the first child was born decided to have Finnish as their home language. Also most of those without children reflected on potential generation-specific language problems. The parents stressed that even though Finnish did not fill any other purpose in their lives, the contact with Finnish-speaking relatives provided reason enough for maintaining Finnish. The choice of language was described as an emotional and private issue in some families. Katariina said that her mother was so happy when she heard of Katariina’s decision to speak Finnish to her firstborn: ‘She said ‘thank you, thank you for that I can now tell him in Finnish how much granny loves him’. She was all in tears, so happy’. In the other families, not much attention was paid to language, and those who did not speak Finnish to their children hoped that their children would ‘At least understand Finnish’. They had not, however, undertaken any measures towards equipping their offspring with Finnish. The most common explanation for not doing anything was the lack of time.

Example 29. Mika, born 1973, first interview May 2002

Lotta: Puhuksä, puhuksä suomee lapselles?

Lotta: Do you speak, speak Finnish to your child?

Mika: Kun ei siis vaan ehdi. Emmä kerkee. Mut kylhän mun vanhemmat puhuu suomee tuolle ja kait se vähän ymmärtää

Mika: There simply is no time. I just don’t have the time. But my parents speak Finnish to her and she understands a little, I guess

The family home and Finnish-speaking relatives in Finland are fairly unsurprising domains in the discussion about Finnish language because all the participants had some Finnish background, and the language was often used only in the domestic setting. Another domain that is maybe a bit more unlikely to be relevant for Finnish is the outside world, the public sphere. Some had, however, experienced their skills in Finnish to be very useful in a work setting. In the following example, Sandra talks about ther work and the moments when her knowledge of Finnish makes a difference.

Example 30

Lotta: Onko sulle ollu hyötyy niiku töissä tai, tai, tosta suomen kielen taidosta?

Lotta: Have you had some advantages like at work, or, or, of your Finnish skills?

Sandra: Esimerkiksi, no töissä, joo, kun mä oon ollu nii tota potilaitten kanssa tekemisissä, niinku mun entisessä työpaikassa, [niin] et mä oon kumminki suomalainen ihminen, ja jos niinku huomaa, et joku ei nyt osaa ruotsii, et mä nään sen niinku syntymäajasta ja nimestä, ja, eee, ja sit mä oon kääntäny kaiken suomenkielelle. Sen huomaa heti, jos otetan näytteitä ja tällasia juttuja, nii sen huomaa, nii alkaa kauheesti tulla juttuja, kun ne muuten vaan makaa sängyssä ihan hiljaa eikä uskalla sanoa päivääkään [joo] ja tolleen. Ja sit ku niinku vaihtaa suomenkielelle, ja sanoo et mä osaan suomeeki, nii sit alkaa kieli käymään (nauraa)[nauraa]

Sandra: For example, like at work, yes, when I have been in contact with patients, like at my old work place, [yes] I am still a Finnish person, and if I notice that someone can’t speak Swedish, I can see it from the date of birth and the name, and, eee, so I have translated everything into Finnish. You see it immediately, if you take samples and such, they start to talk a lot, otherwise they are just really quiet in their beds not daring to say even hello [yes] and like that. And when you change into the Finnish language, and tell them that you know Finnish too they start to chat away (laughter) [laughter]

(Palautekeskustelu, kesäkuu 2002)

(Feedback conversation, June 2002)

The example above shows that Finnish is often spoken mainly with the elderly generation, with those who would otherwise lay ‘quiet in their beds not even daring to say hello’. None of the key participants, or the total of 29 interviewees, had chosen a profession based on, or motivated by, their Finnish skills. Although the majority also claimed that they had never, or rarely in a professional sense, had any use for Finnish, they mentioned having had some small jobs, for example, while they were studying, for which the knowledge of Finnish was an advantage. Such jobs were often related to health or customer care, gastronomy, or working in a team of Finnish-speaking cleaners. Some employers viewed an additional language skill as a bonus, but, according to the participants, Finnish had never been the trigger for their choice of employment, nor had they received any salary bonus for knowing it. Pavlenko (2005: 147) remarks, that language choice can be motivated, for example, by the perceived language prestige and power relations of available languages. Thus, the expression of Finnish being, more or less, useless outside the domestic setting can be explained with the significantly stronger position of Swedish, since none of the participants had trouble with proficiency.

Sometimes knowledge of Finnish has unfortunately produced negative reactions. Both Sanna and Katariina told a distressing story about an opposite effect of Finnish skills in their jobs. Katariina worked at a petrol station, and her employer claimed that customers had complained about the fact that she spoke Finnish. He explained that it ‘bothers other customers and is impolite because others won’t understand what was said’. The argument concerning the impolite effect of speaking in a language other than Swedish was used frequently when the participants talked about why they, according to other people, should not speak Finnish in public. Many of them joked about it and explained that it was rooted in the Swedish paranoia about always imagining oneself to be at the centre of all attention: ‘if someone speaks a language you don’t understand it automatically means that, a, it is gossip and terrible things are being said, and b, that you are the topic of the gossip!’. Katariina told me that she had been angry and hurt but continued using Finnish with Finnish-speaking customers, although she made sure to whisper if the employer was around. The employer’s attitude changed suddenly when the Power Meet, an annual truck cruise, was held in the town and his petrol station could also service the Finnish trucks, provided that the service could be offered in Finnish. Suddenly Katariina’s language skills were highly appreciated and she recalls the Power Meet weekend as being the turning point after which she spoke Finnish whenever she wanted and as loudly as she wanted.

Sanna also had experienced harsh and unexpected reactions to her using Finnish. During the years of her university studies, Sanna had worked as a personal assistant and one of her weekly duties was to accompany a Finnish-speaking lady to physiotherapy. She was in a taxi taking the lady to her physiotherapy appointment when the following incident took place.

Example 31

Sanna: Niin se näki sen kuljettajan niin se meni et ihan et apua toi on se kuljettaja joka on rasisti ja sit mä ajattelin, et katotaan. Nii sit se sanoo, siis me puhuttii suomee ja noi, ja oli vähän jännittyny tunnelma ja noin nii se sit vaan sano et ykski sana suomea vielä se kuljettaja et mä jätän teiät tähän niinkun tähän paikkaa. Ja mä ajattelin, et sellasessa tilanteessa ollu jotenkin jotenkin vähän tietoinen tai jotain, enkä ois ottanu sitä…se oli ihan hirvee tunne, se oli niinku sellanen tunne, et hei sä inhoot mua jostain syystä mihin mä en itte voi vaikuttaa, en mä voi sille mitään että mulla on tällänen tausta. Et se oli mulle sellanen oikeesti herätyskello, et tältä ihmiseltä tuntuu jos joku inhoo ja se oli oikeesti sellanen inhon tunne. Ja sit me oltiin ihan hiljaa koko se matka.

Sanna: When she saw him, she went like oh no, it is the racist driver, and I thought, well let’s see and wait. We spoke then Finnish in the car and the atmosphere was a bit tense, so he said then one more word of Finnish and I’ll drop you off you right here. And I was thinking, somehow, that if a situation like that occurred that I would be somehow aware and wouldn’t have taken it…it was a horrible feeling, like hey, you hate me because of something I have no influence on, I can’t do anything about the fact that this is my background. It was like a wake-up call for me, like, this is how it feels when someone despises you; it really was a feeling of being despised. We remained all quiet for the rest of the journey.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, syyskuu 2005)

(First interview, September 2005)

In this example, knowledge of Finnish in the context of interaction resulted in a humiliating event. Sanna said that the driver despised her and the lady because of something they were and ‘couldn’t do anything about’. In terms of language awareness, we are here hovering close to Mantila’s idea of the fourth level where language is seen as something that makes one’s identity (Mantila 2002: 9). Sanna continued the narration by questioning whether she would have appeared more acceptable in the driver’s eyes if she had spoken Swedish. Our conversation turned into a discussion about visible differences and the fact that unlike a color of one’s skin, a Finnish background does not show. The representation repertoire of appearing different and appearing the same was very productive and I will discuss it in the next section of the analysis.

The functional nature of Finnish was expressed in two different domains. The first and more frequent was the domain of family relations and the maintenance of those relationships. Many acknowledged that if there were no language to communicate in, their contacts with the Finnish-speaking family would slowly but surely diminish and finally disappear. The second and much less frequent domain was the workplace, where most had never made use of Finnish. We can see in these examples how the ideology of the national state also penetrates these domains: minority languages are spoken at home in the domestic setting, the private sphere, whereas communication in the public sphere is conducted mainly in the majority language.

The Problem of ‘I love you’

Just as languages were given functional values in the interviews and feedback conversations, emotional aspects were also discussed. The emotional values and meanings of language are to be found mainly in aspects which are based on a subjective feeling, for example, feeling comfortable with the language, or missing the language. In the following example, Sanna talks about different roles the two languages, Finnish and Swedish, have had in her life.

Example 32

Sanna: Et kyl mä luulen, et se ruotsi on kuitenkin vähän vahvempi kieli, mutta kauan aikaa siis oli suomi kuitenkin niin vahvasti mun tunnekieli että oli vaikeeta jos jossain suhteissa niinkun ilmaista sellasia läheisiä, herkkiä asioita ruotsiks että se tuntu teennäiseltä, mutta nyt mä oon niinkun senkin joutunu oppimaan (nauraa) että sillai, kyllä sillä suomella oli niinku sellanen asema niinku, että se oli läheisempi kieli eri tilanteissa, mutta silti jos kattoo sanavarastoo ja luontevuutta ja tollasta nii kyl mä luule että ruotsi sillai varmaan on mun vahvempi kieli.

Sanna: Like, I think that my Swedish still is a bit stronger, but Finnish was for such a long time so strongly my emotional language that it was difficult to express intimate and affectionate things in Swedish, it felt artificial, but now I have had to learn also those things now (laughter) like that. Finnish has like a position of being the more affectionate language in many situations, but still if you look at vocabulary and the ease and such then I reckon that Swedish probably is my stronger language.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, syyskuu 2005)

(First interview, September 2005)

Sanna is making a difference between a language that is a strong language, and a language that is an emotional one. Although she stressed on several occasions that Swedish was her stronger language - the language with a larger vocabulary, easier to talk in, and with a wider range of possibilities to express different things – she emphasized the element of affection and intimacy that were easier to express in Finnish. She even used the expression that it had felt artificial to talk sweet-talk in Swedish. We can phrase Sanna’s characterization of the languages as Swedish being the functional language and Finnish carrying the emotional value. I would not like to present this as a bipolarising example, nor would I like to set it into the framework of public versus private as opposite to each other on a scale of values, because this is not how Sanna talked about the two languages. For her and all the rest, the languages were not in opposition to each other but complementary. Sanna definitely has the tools for talking sweet-talk in Swedish as well, and was mainly reminiscing about the artificial feeling connected with her first attempts. She works in the media and makes frequent use of her Finnish skills, and thus the line separating the two languages is very thin. For those who were fluent in both languages, it was no problem to switch between them. Language could be used in accordance with the need and the situation; just like Aki-Petteri put it earlier: ‘Maybe it sounds weird (…) It just is that I can switch languages just like that’ and snapped his fingers.

During the feedback conversation with Sandra, we talked about emotions and languages, and also about what the expression ‘mother tongue’ meant for her. After having read the script of the interview, she noticed that we had used the term mother tongue in the first interview and she took this topic up in the feedback conversation. She found the word intriguing and wanted to deconstruct its meaning. In the following example, she challenges my suggestion for what a mother tongue could mean, and reflects on the terminology we had employed for labeling different languages and the domains they might belong to. Exactly these kinds of reflections would not have been possible if I had met the participants only for the interview.

Example 33

Lotta: Minkä sä koet äidinkieleksi?

Lotta: What language do you consider as your mother tongue?

Sandra: Miten sen definioi? Kuka sen niinkun päättää mikä se on?

Sandra: How to define a mother tongue? Who like decides what that is?

Lotta: Jotkuthan sanoo, että se äidinkieli on se tunnekieli, se kieli jonka on oppinut ensin

Lotta: Some people consider the mother tongue to be the emotional language, the one you learn first.

Sandra: Ei sen tartte olla se mä oon ihan eri mieltä. Opinhan mäkin ensin suomea ja sitten vasta ruotsia ja nyt mä ajattelen ruotsiksi ja tunnekieli… mutta mä en edes tiedä tilanteita milloin mä suomeksi ajattelisin (…) enkä mä osaa sanoa mikä on mun äidinkieli, vaikka opin sen suomen kielen ensin, ajattele, ekat viis vuotta puhuin vaan suomea ja koulussa opin ruotsia. Ja koulut oon käyny kaikki ruotsiksi ja aikuistumisasiat kaikki ruotsiksi. Tilanteesta se riippuu. Jos niinku vertaa suomen ja ruotsin kieltä niin aattele, kun sanoo että jag älskar dej ja minä rakastan sinua niin se on tosi rumasti sanottu suomeksi!

Sandra: It doesn’t have to be, I completely disagree. I learned Finnish first and only then Swedish and I think in Swedish and my emotional language… I don’t even know any situation where I would be thinking in Finnish (…) I can’t tell what my mother tongue is, even if I learned Finnish first, just think about it, for the first five years I spoke only Finnish and then at school I learned Swedish. I’ve had my whole education in Swedish and grew up to be an adult in Swedish. It depends really on the situation, and if you, like, compare Finnish and Swedish, imagine; when you say jag älskar dej and I love you, it sounds terrible in Finnish!

(Palautekeskustelu, kesäkuu 2002)

(Feedback conversation, June 2002)

Based on these two examples, and other similar examples in my data, I conclude that a high proficiency level of a language does not necessarily make it our preferred language. Pavlenko (2005) and Piller (2002) have made similar conclusions in their studies on multilinguliasm and emotions. Sanna described her Swedish as stronger, both in terms of vocabulary and variety of expression, than her Finnish, but she still preferred Finnish as the emotional language in which tenderness and intimacy was more easily expressed. She reasoned that this followed from the fact that Finnish was the first language she learned and grew up with. In contrast, her thoughts about emotional attachment to languages run counter to the idea of the mother tongue automatically becoming one’s emotional language. For her, becoming an adult in Swedish seems to have played a more important role in the connection between language and emotions. Even though she had, at the time of the recording, a long-term Finnish-speaking partner, she still regarded the Finnish minä rakastan sinua, I love you, as sounding ugly in her ears. She was not the only participant who perceived the sound of minä rakastan sinua as something less beautiful.

Sandra’s example is interesting on several levels. I want to draw the reader’s attention to the way the previous example is constructed, to how Sandra manoeuvres with the arguments. She is making use of a rhetoric technique that, instead of mentioning and refuting a counter-argument, acknowledges counter-arguments and then leaves them as they appear. Why does she construct her account in this way? What happens in the sequence is the following: she acknowledges the argument of the first language being the emotional language, and subsequently, the mother tongue (‘some people claim, that your mother tongue is the language you speak as the emotional language, the one you learn first’) and then introduces her counter-arguments against such a view. First of all, she herself spoke only Finnish for the first five years of her life and only at school was exposed to Swedish. Secondly, she still thinks in Swedish in every situation, emotional or not. This type of counter-argument can be analyzed as consideration by the interviewees about the disputable nature of their standpoint. Sandra negotiates between the definition of the mother tongue being the first language a person learns and her experiences that speak for a different definition. Although she shows some understanding, maybe even acceptance, of the arguments she is attacking, as long as she maintains her standpoint the acceptance of the counter-argument can only be limited; the speaker would obviously not mention it if she thought the counter-argument was stronger or made more sense than her own. These counter-arguments are not a real challenge to the speaker’s standpoint. The acknowledgement of a counter-argument can be seen as a supporting act to the pro-standpoint that is put forward by the speaker. If the counter-argument were perceived by the speaker to be stronger than the initial pro-argument, it would consequently lead to the withdrawal of the standpoint and there would be no rhetorical or rational reason for using them in the defence (Snoeck Henkemans 1997: 147). In the example, the respondent maybe uses the acknowledging of the counter-argument rhetorically in terms of showing awareness and knowledge of different definitions of the mother tongue and willingness to reflect upon one of the definitions by considering her own experiences.

She expresses some acceptance, maybe even some appreciation, of the counter-arguments, and does not try to refute them as such. I read her contributions as an account of her opinion. Her argumentative moves can be interpreted in two ways. First, they can serve a rhetorical purpose: by acknowledging an opposing argument or a point of view, the speaker can try to convince the audience about the sincerity of her opinions and arguments as she also shows awareness of opposing arguments. Secondly, it can be taken as a sign that the speaker believes her own arguments to be stronger and more important than the counter-argument and acknowledging a counter-argument serves mainly a rhetorical purpose. Acknowledgement of an opposing opinion means, in simple terms, that the speaker has some acceptance of the opposing opinion she mentions; otherwise it would not be worth expressing. Or at least it would not serve the rhetorical purpose of showing superiority and objectivity if the counter-arguments did not make sense or were not reasonable objections to the arguments the speaker is putting forward.

The sentence minä rakastan sinua / jag älskar dej, I love you, came up in many interviews when the topic of bilingualism was discussed in the context of families and partnerships. Katariina said that although the Finnish version of that sentence is the most natural one, and in fact, the only possible way for her to express her feelings of love to her children, she could not use that sentence in Finnish to her husband. According to her, minä rakastan sinua directed at her husband would not mean the same as jag älskar dej. Katariina’s husband does not speak Finnish but, according to her, has learned to understand quite a bit, and thus would grasp the words and understand their meaning, but for her the language makes a difference. Ågren, as well, observed the same phenomenon with her interviewees who referred to Finnish as the language of the heart even though they spoke more Swedish than Finnish in their daily lives (Ågren 2006: 168).

The scholarly study of emotions and bi- or multilingualism has often been neglected because of the difficulty of collecting so-called naturally occurring intimate talk between bilingual couples or families. Furthermore, studies on couple talk or love talk have been dismissed as motivated by voyeuristic intention (Piller 2002: 6–10). Piller argues that bilingual and bi-cultural couples whose communication is cross-cultural are not a negligible minority but an ever growing group, and indeed deserve to be studied. Bi- or multilingual speech practices raise many questions ranging from questions concerning language learning, to proficiency, psychopathology and attitudes, to name a few. From the point of view of my study, the connection between emotions and language choice is the most interesting. Pavlenko (2005) discusses emotions and multilingualism through a web questionnaire study about bi-and multilingual individuals’ perceptions of the connection between their languages and emotions. She concludes that an overwhelming majority of the participants in her study experienced their first language as their strongest and most emotional, yet she concludes, that this emotionality steers the speakers to different directions; some favour the most emotional language when talking to children, or make use of it when fighting. On the one hand, she found that many participants used exactly the same phrase as many participants of my study, when describing it as fake or artificial to talk sweet in a language that has been learned later in life. On the other hand, some described how they favoured a language learned later in life to create distance and detachment. (Pavlenko 2005: 147; Koven 2007; Dewaele 2008.)

I mentioned earlier that big changes in life such as giving birth to a child can change an individual’s views about and need to function in a language. Pia described the mothering of her second child as being much easier than the mothering of the first. She did not, for example, talk to or soothe the baby in public in Finnish, but instead in Swedish, because she was ‘maybe a bit ashamed’. With the second child, the circle of Finnish-speaking mothers around her was growing and nowadays she talks to the children only in Finnish in a clear and loud voice. Pia described Finnish as the only possible language to speak to her children, because ‘it comes from the heart’.

Is Language Essential for an Ethnic Identity?

Language is clearly a topic that is discussed a lot in the interviews in connection with Finnishness. But how necessary is language, in the end, for something we can identify as an ethnic identity? In the framework of social constructionism, we assume a phenomenon to be constructed in social interaction with the people around us, and this is also applicable to identity. Language is something we use together with others for communication. In the previous sub-chapter, I discussed functional and emotional aspects of language(s), and how the language choice can have a major impact on how speakers feel about themselves. Language is something social, as Tajfel (1978: 63) writes: ‘Social identity is the part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his (sic.) knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with the values and emotional significance attached to that membership’.

Gumperz (1992) studied language and identity from a sociolinguistic point of view and claimed that language and ethnic identity were reciprocally related. Thus, language use influences the formation of ethnic identity and ethnic identity influences language attitudes and language use.

I began this research with questions about the meaning of language in the creation of Finnishness in Sweden in mind. The question whether language is essential for one’s ethnic identity was fundamental for all of the questions and topics that were discussed in the interviews and during feedback conversations. But, since no one apart from myself used the term ethnic identity, the question was usually phrased along the lines of :‘If one considers oneself a Finn here in Sweden, should one then speak Finnish?’ or ‘Is Finnish culture here in Sweden the same as the Finnish language?’ We were talking about identifications and the role of language in those identifications. In the following example, a respondent from Stockholm, Suvi, talks about the role of Finnish for Finnish identity.

Example 34. Suvi, born 1982, first interview, October 2005

Lotta: (…) mut onks se silleen, että suomalaisuus on sitä kieltä sulle sitten?

Lotta: (…) but it is, like, that Finnishness means the language to you?

Suvi: Mutku ei sen tarvii edes olla, meillä on RSN:ssä paljon jäseniä jotka ei välttämättä osaa edes kunnolla suomee, tai ei nyt paljoo, mutta muutama, että ei se voi olla siitä kielestä kiinni. Mä luulen että se on enemmän että sitä on mikskä olonsa tuntee enemmän. Jos mä tunnen itteni jostain ihmeen syystä kanadalaiseksi nii kai mä sitten voin olla kanadalainen (nauraa) ei nyt ihan tietty älyttömyyksiin voi mennä, mutta että…jos molemmat vanhemmat on suomalaisia, mutta puhuu vaan ruotsia mutta kuitenkin tuntee ittensa suomalaiseks niin kai ne sitten on suomalaisia, ei se pelkästään siitä kielestä voi riippua, et en mä ihan niinkään sanois.

Suvi: But it doesn’t have to be. we have many members in the RSN who don’t necessarily speak Finnish, well maybe not really many but still some, so it can’t be dependent on language. I think it’s more about the feeling, that you are what you feel you are. If I would feel Canadian for some strange reason, I guess I could be Canadian then (laughter) well, one shouldn’t be totally silly though, but… if your both parents are Finns but you speak only Swedish but feel yourself to be a Finn, so I guess you are a Finn, it cannot be only dependent on language. I wouldn’t really say that.

Lotta: Elikkä sitten sä et liity ihan siihenkään leiriin jotka sanoo että suomalaisuus Ruotsissa kuolee jos se kieli häviää?

Lotta: So you would not join a group who claims that Finnishness in Sweden will die if the language disappears?

Suvi: No itse asiassa liityn vähän kuitenkin, kyl mä luulen et se…ee…kyl mä luulen et se aika paljon kuolee siihen koska mitä muuta on sit jäljellä. ku ei meil oo mitään sellasia ihme ei meil oo mitään…no kansantanssia (nauraa) ei oo mitään traditioita… tai siis erilaisia traditioita ku ruotsalaisilla.

Suvi: Well, in fact I do, a bit. I think that…ee…I think that it sort of dies there because what else is there then left? As we don’t have anything else special we don’t have…well, folk dancing (laughter) there are no traditions… or different traditions from the Swedes.

What happens in this example is that Suvi first describes Finnishness as something else than language, and mentions the parental background, that is, the blood line that is a frequent element in the reflections about belonging to a group. She states that language cannot be that important; instead, a subjective feeling of oneself as a member of a group is more important. When I rephrase her thoughts in different words, and suggest that she apparently would not join the front of those who treat language and culture as the one and the same thing, she counters her first argument. She argues that since the Finns have nothing that is different from the Swedes apart from the language, it must actually be the language that signifies the group of Finns in Sweden. This example is important because it captures the dilemma that many people with a Finnish background confront. The language is such a distinct marker of a group and individuals that it is very difficult to come up with anything as fundamental as language. Emma also talks about similarity to Swedes as an obstacle for Finnishness having any manifestation without the Finnish language. Consider the example below.

Example 35

Lotta: Miten isossa roolissa susta suomenkieli on tässä suomalaisessa olemisessa täällä?

Lotta: How big of a role do you give the Finnish language in this being a Finn here?

Emma: Tosi iso. Koska se on niin erilainen jos vertaa johonkin norjaan tai tanskaa, niin se on niin paljon helpompi ulkonäöllisesti ja kielellisesti sulautua yhteen muun maalaiset, taas tulee tää muunmaalaiset (nauraa) tummaihoiset, jotka ei siis oo alkuperäisinä jos kattoo prototyyppinä ruotsalaisten näkösiä, niin ehkä se on se ulkonäkö joka sitten yhdistää, että helpommin sitten näkee heti ja meillä on sitten se kieli. Mä luulen että se on sen takia niin iso.

Emma: Really big. Because it is so different, if you compare it with Norwegian or Danish, it is so much easier because of the appearance to assimilate in with your looks and your language than, again the foreigners enter here (laughter) dark-skinned people who do not, if you look at their origin, look like Swedes, so for them it probably is the appearance that unites them, it can be easily spotted and for us it is the language. I think that is why it [the role of Finnish] is so big.

Lotta: Voisko tämmönen visio niinkun tapahtua että jonkun näkönen suomalaisuus täällä säilyy vaikkei sitä suomee enää puhuttais?

Lotta: Could it be that some kind of Finnishness could be preserved even if the language wasn’t spoken anymore?

Emma: Mä en usko. Mä oon miettiny tota aika paljon, että säilyiskö, mutta siitä tulis enmmän sitten niinkun joku Amerikka, että mä tuun Italiasta ja mä en puhu yhtään italiaa, että mun isä tuli sieltä joskus… mä en tiedä… mä tiedän että kaikki on silleen tosi ylpeitä siitä, mutta musta tuntuu, että suomalaisten ylpeys on tosi erilasta kun ruotsalaisten, silleen historian takia. Ruotsissahan on rumaa olla ruotsinlippu silloin oot nasisti12, ja Suomessahan se on hieno juttu kun Suomi on itsenäistynyt ja tollee.

Emma: I doubt it. I have been thinking about this quite a lot, that would it survive, but I think it would then become like America where people go like: ’I come from Italy and I don’t speak a word of Italian but my dad came from there at some point’… I don’t know… I know everyone is like really proud about it, but I think that Finnish pride is very different from Swedish pride, because of the history. In Sweden it is ugly to fly the flag, it makes you a nationalist and in Finland it is a great thing with independence and stuff.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, lokakuu 2005)

(First interview, October 2005)

According to Emma, there are no visible differences between the appearance of Finns and Swedes; therefore, there is nothing but language that signifies the difference between Finns as a group and Swedes as a group. When bringing up the comparison between Finns, Norwegians, Danes and ‘darker people’, as she puts it, Emma observed with laughter that we were moving close to stereotyping and the creation of significant others. As a student of anthropology, she was well aware of how we, according to postmodern understanding, often construct ourselves in the process of seeking differences and labeling these differences with certain values. The importance of differences and the search for them in the creation of Finns as a group is a very productive element of the interview data, and I will next move on to scrutinize different kinds of differences as discussed by the participants.

Dual Identities Linked to Languages?

As stated earlier, all the key participants in this study were fluent (to my ears) both in Finnish and Swedish, with the exception of three persons, of whom two did not have any command of Finnish, and one had a good receptive knowledge of Finnish but preferred to have the interviews in Swedish. When a person feels fluent and confident in different languages it could be anticipated that those languages serve different purposes in their lives, signify different domains, or that the speaker would experience different self-images depending on the language they use. I must admit that this was also my assumption in the beginning. Charlotte Burck (2004) discusses growing up in a bilingual environment and describes different language identities as narrated by her interviewees who grew up in different multilingual and cultural settings. She concludes that those who grew up speaking a minority language talked about a double world: the home and the outside world, differentiated through languages. According to Burck, to speak a minority language was signified as a marker of difference and was often experienced as problematic in the context where an individual’s claim to an identity as a dominant speaker had been refused (2004: 74–75).

The participants of this study, however, rarely mentioned a double feeling of the world nor a dual identity according to the language they identified with at a specific moment. My explicit questions regarding a different identity in Finnish and in Swedish were mainly passed over with a shrug. The Finnish-speaking home and the Swedish-speaking outside world were not problematized to any further extent, except for a few sad accounts about kindergarten where one did not understand anyone. The scant interest in problematizing the topic can, of course, have many reasons beyond it not being significant in the participant’s life. It is possible that my interview technique was not tuned to phrase the questions in manner inviting discussion. Burck, who reports on the dual identities of her bilingual interviewees, is a psychotherapist and an experienced interviewer. She describes her interview method as interventive. She uses reflexive and circular questions which, according to her, provoke individuals to make connections and to construct things in new ways (2004: 33–35).

I consider myself a reasonable and empathetic interviewer, but have no professional experience apart from conducting the interviews for this particular research. I assume that my interviewees could also have narrated more about, for example, double identities if interviewed by Ms. Burck or someone else using probing and circular questions. The question is, however, if such interventive methods with reflexive and circular questions do justice to the interviewees. How do such attempts fit the idea of listening to what the interviewee wants to tell? Does it not, actually, suggest a solid interest agenda on the part of the interviewer to probe for certain answers? The western world still seems to view bilingualism as a problem, rather than a joy or even a normal state for an individual. I am not questioning the truthfulness of Burck’s interviewees’ experiences of split identities or negative encounters connected with languages and identities in connection to those languages, but I do question the method by which the author got to these answers and emphasized them.

Not even those of the key people who lived with a non-Finnish-speaking partner and raised their children in a bilingual family considered the two languages as a problem or a root of two different identities. Rather than perceiving bilingualism as a problem or something identity-splitting, it was treated as an option that the participants made use of and wanted to include in their lives to the extent that they felt comfortable with. In these conclusions, I read a shift away from the bipolarization of Swedes vs. non-Swedes towards so-called hybrid identifications, or multiple possibilities in assembling identities. The participants did not feel (or, at least, did not express their feelings in the interviews) the need to be either Swedish speakers or Finnish speakers, but considered themselves free to choose any option from speaking both languages – plus maybe an additional language – in their everyday lives and to have certain registers for certain languages, to not speaking Finnish at all.

If a participant elaborated on the theme of different identities dependent on language, it was mainly in connection with the ability to perform in that language. One participant, who had spoken Finnish as a child but since the age of seven or eight had spoken only Swedish, described herself as a different person when trying to keep up in a social circle where Finnish was spoken. She experienced herself as ‘slow and stupid’ in Finnish, not being able to tell jokes or react to others the way she could react in Swedish. Everyone who has stayed a little longer in an environment that does not operate in a language one feels confident with can recall the feelings of not being quite oneself, or feeling limited in the range of expressing thoughts or emotions. But to draw the conclusion that knowledge of a language alone creates an identity is not supported by my data.

When the participants talked about their language proficiency in Swedish and Finnish, they mainly commented on insignificant lexical aspects rather than dual identities. In the example below, Emma recalls an activity, going fishing, which is something she only does in Finland. She reasons, that since fishing is a part of her world only in a Finnish context, therefore she knows the terminology only in Finnish.

Example 36

Emma: Mä huomaan että kanssa tietyt sanat, mä en koskaan käy kalassa Ruotsissa vaan Suomessa [mm] niin mä mietin sitten että mikäs se siima tai kuva tai uistin nyt sit onkaan ruotsiksi tai uistin tai kuva ja rupeen selittää // kauheesti

Emma: I have noticed that also certain words, like I never fish in Sweden, only in Finland, [mm] and then I have to look for the words for the fishing line or lure, or what ever it is called in Swedish, and have to explain myself a // lot

Lotta: // se pieni pala (nauraa)

Lotta: //the little piece (laughs)

Emma: Ja se tulee tosi noloksi kun ei tiedäkkään tietyt sanavarastot, juttuja täytyy miettiä että vad är det nu igen. Tai toisin päin sitten ku kirjotan koulujuttuja vaan ruotsiksi [niin] tai jotain. Tai yhteiskunnan, mitä kuulee uutisissa, just mutta ei ite välttämättä käytä hirveesti, nii ne taas on sitte ruotsiksi, huomaa että osaa kaikki nää termit.

Emma: And it is really embarrassing when I don’t know certain vocabulary, and have to think about like what was it again. Or the other way around, when I am writing stuff for my studies only in Swedish [yes] or something. Or in the society, what you hear in the news, but wouldn’t necessarily use that much yourself, so that kind of terms are in Swedish, I notice that I know all of them.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, lokakuu 2005)

(First interview, October 2005)

Emma describes above some typical aspects of a bilingual everyday life. Some words belong to a specific register, in this example fishing with a rod and fly, which is connected only with one of the languages: Emma goes fishing only in Finland and does not even know the words in Swedish. Different registers of language use, which we can also call the phenomena of truncated bilingualism, were, throughout the interviews, the only aspects the participants referred to when command of a language was discussed.

Blommaert et al. (2005) talk about truncated multilingualism, and refer to a situation – everyday life for the majority of the world’s population – where language users make use of several different languages in the course of their everyday life. These different languages are often used only in specific situations, or with a certain group of people. Dyers (2008) describes in her study a situation in South Africa, more specifically in Wesbank, a periphery of Cape Town. She gives an illuminating example of Sofie, who is a 15-year old colored (mixed race) teenager who lives in Wesbank. Her mother tongue is Afrikaans, but in addition she uses English and Xhosa. She reported to Dyers that she prays in Afrikaans, dreams in English and Afrikaans, and, when she talks to herself, she uses a mixture of Afrikaans and English. In her free time, she mixes Xhosa, Afrikaans and English. Dyers’ article reveals a strong vitality of mother tongues in the intimate sphere of multilingual language users and she suggests that multilingualism is becoming the norm in places where different languages meet. Dyers shows that Wesbank is a site for truncated multilingualism despite the powerful position of English. All languages fill a crucial function in their domains in the language user’s life. None of them is less important than the other, and the different skills are developed in the respective domains (Dyers 2008).

It is possible to view the role of Finnish in Sweden from the point of view of truncated multilingualism. Truncating is an agricultural term, and when I came across it for the first time in a linguistic context I wondered whether it was a suitable term for describing multilingualism. It sounded to me like a value statement of sorts, as if languages were cut off before they reached full bloom. However, I have grown to like the term and hear it now in a much more positive sound surrounding; trees and bushes are pruned – they are truncated to bear the optimal amount of fruit, or to be beautiful to the eye. Truncated multilingualism can be imagined to do the same: maximizing language users’ access and practices with languages. If we can shift our views from the restricting monolingual bias to a more realistic frame, the study of multilingual speakers as language users who make active decisions and are in charge, we could maybe slowly free ourselves from comparing the language skills of multilingual speakers, and concentrate instead on a different view of the world of languages. This view does not devalue the importance of languages to the speakers. It simply views the world of languages and language practices from a different perspective. Since it does not assume 100 % all-over perfection of languages (whatever that would in the end mean), the term truncated multilingualism concentrates on the functionality of languages in language users’ lives.

Those who referred to their childhood as a Finnish-speaking childhood mainly recalled it as something quite natural, and only a few talked about anxiety in situations in which one did not speak Swedish and was aware of this. A slightly different story about their children’s language skills was told by the few parents I interviewed. Below, there is an example of a rather typical situation described by a mother whose daughter was seven years old and had started a Swedish-speaking secondary school a few months before the incident took place. It was the beginning of December, thus time for Santa Lucia, and the children had learned a well-known Lucia carol at school. The song ‘Staffan var en stalledräng’ is a song that is sung in kindergartens, schools, and Lucia events and played as background music in supermarkets; thus, it is a song one cannot avoid at least having heard when growing up in Sweden.

Example 37, mother, interviewed in Västerås in December 2004

Lotta: Miten sun tytöillä muuten meni, ruotsinkielen oppiminen?

Lotta: How did it go for your girls, learning Swedish?

Äiti: Olihan niitä, vaikeitakin, hassujakin tilanteita tyttöjen kanssa sen ruotsin kielen kanssa. Mä muista kerran kun X tuli koulusta intoa täynnä, että, että äiti hei mä oon oppinut tälläsen uuden laulun (nauraa) [nauraa], et (laulaa) Staffan satt på tallens gren nu tackar vi så gärna (nauraa) [nauraa]. Mulla ei ollut sydäntä sanoa sille, että ei se niin mene (nauraa) vaan että (laulaa) Staffan var en stalledräng vi tackom nu så gärna (nauraa). En mä tiedä, että koska se oppi, ei mulla ollut sydäntä sanoa.

Mother: There were some, also difficult, and funny situations too with the girls and the Swedish language. I remember once when X came from school all excited, that, that, hi mum I have learned a new song (laughs) [laughs], like (sings) Staffan sat on a pine tree’s branch now we say happily thank you (laughs) [laughs] I didn’t have the heart to tell her that that is not the way the song really goes (laughs) but like (sings) Staffan was a stable hand we now give willing thanks to Lord (laughs). I don’t know, when she learned, I didn’t have the heart to tell.

(Äiti, haastateltu Västeråsissa joulukuu 2004)

The daughter in the example enthusiastically sung along with the Lucia carol and participated in the celebrations. For her, there did not seem to be anything strange singing about a man who sits on a pine tree branch and whom we thank happily, the sounds of the words being close enough to what she had heard others singing. The mother, who obviously knew the lyrics, did not have the heart to tell her that the man in the song was not sitting in a pine tree but was a stable hand, and that the song was about how he saw the star indicating the birth of Jesus. None of the other participants narrated similar situations in their recollections of learning Swedish. It might be, of course, that the kind of incidents described by the mother in the example appear funny to adults who will remember them as a part of their children’s growing up story; the child her- or himself might not even recall that such an incident ever took place. Nevertheless, I assume that learning Swedish after having grown up in a monolingual environment might not always have been as straightforward as the participants remembered. Most of the parents I interviewed talked about troublesome times experienced by others, not themselves when the monolingual environment started to change into a bilingual one. Language-related problems did not seem to dominate anyone’s memories. Feelings of insecurity were connected only with different registers of language use: because many spoke Finnish only at home they expressed some uncertainty with the vocabulary concerning aspects of life that they referred to as ‘important things’, such as taking care of banking or dealing with the personnel of the health insurance office.

Example 38

Pia: Kyllä siinä mä haluan, että lapset oppii hoitamaan kaikki tärkeät asiat ruotsiksi, että siinä mulla tullee ittellä vähän väärin suomalaisia vastaan, että kerta me Ruotsissa ollaan, niin kyllä tuollaset asiat pitäs ruotsiksi //hoitaa

Pia: Well, I do want the children to learn to take care of all important things in Swedish, like, in that respect I actually have a thing against the Finns, as we are in Sweden things like that, I reckon, should be taken care of // in Swedish.

Katariina: //ja just siis nää pankkiasiat ja sairaskassat ja nehän asiat osaa melkee vaan ruotsin kielellä.

Katariina: //exactly and things like banking and health care, those are things one actually knows only in Swedish.

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2004)

(Feedback conversation, December 2004)

Example 39

Lotta: Miten sun vanhemmat muuten puhuu ruotsii?

Lotta: How do your parents speak Swedish by the way?

Katariina: Kyllä ne ihan siis pärjää sillee, mut jos esimerkiks tulee jotain tärkeempiä papereita kotiin tai pitää jotain vakuutusyhtiölle soittaa tai pankkii, vähän tämmöset tärkeemmät asiat nii sillo ne mielellään ottaa mut mukaan

Katariina: They get by, but if there are some more important papers coming with the mail or there is a need to call the insurance company or the bank, like more important things, then they usually like having me with them.

Lotta: Joo, sä oot ollut tulkkina niille sitte siellä.

Lotta: Yes, so you have then been like an interpreter there.

Katariina: Mutta kyllä ne niiku ihan niiku sillee pärjää, mutta senkin äiti ja isä on sanonu, että on ihanaa että puhut suomee lapsille. Koska tämä on tunnekieli, ja jos lapset ei osaa suomee nii äitin ja isän ois pitänyt jotenki ruotsin kielellä selostaa niille et kuinka paljon ne rakastaa ja tykkää ja ei se, ei sillo tuu sydämestä.

Katariina: But they do get by, but my parents have also said that it is wonderful that I speak Finnish to the children. Because this is the emotional language, and if my children don’t understand Finnish my mother and father would have to somehow explain them in Swedish that they love them and care for them, it doesn’t come from the heart then.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, marraskuu 2004)

(First interview, November 2004)

In the examples above, the women talk about important things such as insurance companies and banks, and Katariina tells that her parents appreciate having her with them when taking care of those important things. Pia stresses the importance of being able to function in Swedish since ‘we live in Sweden’. Although neither of them explicitly refers to Finnish as being less valuable this seems to be implied in the discussion. Katariina’s response to my remark that she has functioned as an interpreter shakes the balance of rating languages as important vs. less important. She breaks the construction we all seemed to imply and infer from the discussion by talking about her parents’ joy and appreciation of her choice to speak Finnish to her children: ‘This is the emotional language’. Banking, dealing with insurance companies or interpreting for the parents are left far behind when she praises the worthiness of Finnish. To be able to express affection and love overrides the so-called important things and makes these appear as something that cannot even be compared with the power of the emotional language. Here, again, we could argue that the powerful position of Swedish could be causing the perception that Finnish is not sufficient as a language to take care of important things. However, since the participants have lived their whole life in Sweden and, at least at time of the interviews, had no plans to migrate to Finland, I see these statements as a realistic view of everyday life in Sweden, not necessarily as dismissing Finnish.

Responsibility to Maintain a Language

On an individual level, the command of two (or more) languages was perceived mainly as something natural, as an asset and a pleasure. Most of the key people led bilingual lives and were conscious of the investments the maintenance of Finnish had required of their parents, and still requires from themselves as parents and members of a Finnish family, and of some even as members of the Finnish-speaking minority in Sweden. For the majority, Finnish was strictly a family affair and had little, or nothing, to do with the public sphere. The private nature of Finnish was evident especially in the conversations concerning the Finnish-speaking governing area in Mälaren (this would, for example, include services in Finnish in legal matters, health care, and the ombudsman, etc.). We were talking about suggestions concerning the governing area and I asked how the mothers felt about the possibility of using Finnish for services provided by the state or the municipality. In the next example Katariina and Pia express views about the role of the Finnish speaking home as the main source for keeping the language alive. Both wome seem to oppose the idea that social services should be available in Finnish.

Example 40

Lotta: Miten se on teiän mielestä, onko se kodin vastuu enemmän vai yhteiskunnan vastuu, että tarjottas// suomenkieltä

Lotta: What do you think, is it more the home’s responsibility or the responsibility of the society to offer// Finnish

Pia: //kyllä mä tykkään että se on kodin vastuu oikeestaan kaikista niikö jotenkin tuon kielihomman kanssa. Että siinä mulle tulee itelle niikö se, että pitääkö kaikki sitten olla suomeksi vaan koska me ollaan suomalaisia täällä kun täällä on niin paljon muunkin maalaisia, vaikka meitä on eniten [?: niin].

Pia: //I think it is the home’s responsibility, somehow, with this language thing. For me it is like, I do wonder why everything should be available in Finnish only because we are Finns here? Although we are the largest group, here are so many people from other countries as well [?: yes]

Katariina: Niinku X:ssa lukee pankin ovessa avoinna se on sellanen esimerkki. Seki alkaa menemään vähän liian pitkäälle kun kuitenkin Ruotsissa ollaan [Lotta: niin] sehän, että mun mies, se ärsyttää sitä hirveesti, että miks suomen kielellä on X:ssa.

Katariina: Like in X on the bank door it says in Finnish ‘open’, that is like an example of it. It is a bit over the top as we are anyway in Sweden [Lotta: yes] it annoys my husband really, like why it is in the Finnish language in X.

Lotta: Ai siis pankin ovessa suomeksi?

Lotta: Oh, at the bank door in Finnish?

Katariina: Eikö siis ruotsiksi ja suomeksi ne niiku ajat, mutta sillonhan pitäs olla englanniksiki [Pia: mm].

Katariina: No, it is in Swedish and Finnish, like the opening hours, in Finnish, but then they should also be in English, don’t you think [Pia: mm].

Lotta: No ketä varten se vois olla hyvä se, että vois suomenkielellä esim pankissa asioida tai?

Lotta: Well, for whom could it be helpful to be able to visit the bank in Finnish, or?

Pia: Vanhemmalle polevelle.

Pia: For the elderly generation.

Katariina: Mutta sekin, kuinka kauan on sitä polvee? Parikymmentä vuotta eteenpäin? Sitten kyllä on poistunu, vai?

Katariina: But also them, how long will they still be here? 20 years from now? Then they won’t exist anymore, or?

Pia: Niin varmaan, oikeestaan.

Pia: Yes, that is probably true.

Katariina: Jotenkin tuntuu että antaa nyt näitten vuosien mennä, että ne kupsahtaa ja ihan oikeesti, että miks? Ollaanhan me tähänki asti niitä autettu nii eikö me voida auttaa se loppuki?

Katariina: Somehow it feels, like, why not let the years pass, they will kick the bucket anyway and really, why? We have helped them so far, so why couldn’t we do it to the end?

Pia: Nii kymmene, kakskyt vuotta //eteenpäin

Pia: Yes, ten years, maybe twenty years// more

Katariina: //nii, siitähän se lähtee pyörimään, kerran mehän ollaan kaksikielisiä, jotenkinhan se siitä. Se englantihan ois enemmänkin (lapsen itkua, lause keskeytyy ja aihe vaihtuu lapsen lohduttelun jälkeen)

Katariina: //yes, it would work like that since we are bilingual, it would work somehow. English would be more (a child cries, the conversation is interrupted and after the child has been comforted the topic changes)

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2004)

(Feedback conversation, December 2004)

It appears, from the example above, that some even considered it rude when Finns pursued more rights to use their language. To see the opening hours of the local bank written in Finnish angers Katariina’s husband; and both women considered it over the top to ask for special treatment. Both Pia and Katariina spoke Finnish to their children and were very much in favor of Finnish daycare and elementary education. Thus, the elements connected with caring and teaching seem close enough to the private sphere of the home where Finnish seems to belong. Banks and insurance offices, in contrast, appear to represent official authority that belongs to the public sphere where only Swedish should be used. The general argument went along the following lines: we live in Sweden and, therefore, should speak Swedish. Both Pia and Katariina stressed the fact that they had never learned those domains in Finnish in the first place and it would be difficult for them to deal with official business in any other language but Swedish.

Ågren’s interviewees, too, stressed the importance of being integrated, and the perfect command of Swedish was described as doubtless the most important thing (Ågren 2006: 212). Some of Ågren’s interviewees even considered education that was offered mainly in Finnish (such as the Finnish free schools) as holding back integration, but could, at the same time, when asked by the interviewer, imagine encouraging their children to have their education in English. A contradictory attitude towards education in foreign languages is obvious. It reflects the general value statuses of different languages and shows that Finnish and English, both foreign languages, have a very different status. In the comparison of Finnish to English, the latter appears to have lost its foreign quality. English is often perceived as no longer a foreign language, the hegemony of English in many domains being so strong that it enjoys almost a domesticated status (for domestication of English, see for example Phillipson 2003). The applicability of Finnish compared to English is on a different scale, but the focus of the argument is to show how easily Finnish seems to be treated as an obstacle for integration while English, when put in the same position, is something worth striving for.

‘To Get a Language for Free’

To speak two languages was always described as something positive. The experienced and complimentary nature of Finnish was often rephrased as ‘getting a language for free’. Most of the participants used this formulation, adding quickly that it was their responsibility to take care of the language and to pass it on to the next generation, as they had received it for free. In the following excerpt, Sandra talks about her bilingualism and the free nature of Finnish.

Example 41

Lotta: Joo, miten tosta suomalaisuudesta, mitä se merkitsee, tai mistä se suomalaisuus koostuu. Pystytkö erittele//mään

Lotta: Yes, how about Finnishness then, what does it mean to you, or like, of what kind of things is Finnishness put together. can you spe//cify.

Sandra: //että mitä se on? [niin] Mä en, niin, no iän myötä se tulee, että se on niinkuin rikkautena, että mä huomasin, että mulla on kaksi kotimaata. Mä hei, mulla on Suomi ja Ruotsi, monilla ihmisillä niillä on vain se yksi maa, mut mulla on kaksi. [mm] Jotka mä niinku koen mun omaksi [ja kaks kieltä, siis onhan sekin] niin niin. Niin et mä olen saanut sen ilman edestä. Kaks kieltä ihan ilman eestä, siis enimmäkseen ihmisillä on siis vaan yks kieli [niin] et tää on niinku bonusta, aivan taatusti (…)

Sandra: //what it is? [yes] I don’t, well, as I grow older, like, it feels like richness, that I noticed, that I have two home countries. Hey, I have Finland and Sweden, many people they have only that one country, but I have two. [mm] Which I, sort of feel to be mine [and two languages, that’s also something] yes, yes. Yes, I have gotten it for free. Really for free, two languages for free, most people only have one [indeed] thus this is an asset, like a bonus, definitely (…)

Lotta: Jos sä oisit Ruotsissa kun sulla on lapsia, jos sulla joskus on lapsia [lapsia]joo, niin aiotko huolehtia ne suomenkieliseen kouluun// tai

Lotta: If you were in Sweden when you had children, if you’ll have children one day children [children] yeah, so will you take care that they go to a Finnish school// or

Sandra: //en, ei , siis se on siis nykyaikana täällä liian vaikeeta [mm] et mä luulen et täällä ei paljoo oo suomalaisia kouluja ollenkaan. Et niinku 70-luvulla, sillon oli ja 80-luvun alussa ja puolessa välissä, sillon oli vielä suomalaisia kouluja. Mut nyt ei enää oo että. [mm] Että kumminkin jos täällä alkaa elämään ja tolleen niin niin tota kyllä täytyy ruotsinkieltä osata, kumminkin ruotsinkielisessä yhteiskunnassa elää, se tulee liian vaikeeks sitten jos pitäis miettiä omaa ruotsinkieltään, oppia sitä ruotsinkieltä. Tulee liian vaikeeks.[niin] Kyllä mulle riittää se, et ne tota ymmärtää ja ja puhuukin vähän. Et riippuu tietysti minkä tota, näitten, tulevien, ehkä toivottavasti lasten isä, minkä kielinen hän on. Et se riippuu paljon siitä.

Sadra: //I won’t, no, it is too difficult here nowadays [mm] and I think that here aren’t many Finnish schools at all. Like in the 70s, then there were and in the beginning and middle of the 80s there were Finnish schools. But not anymore. [mm] So after all if one wants to start living here and such, so, so it is necessary to know Swedish, after all one lives in a Swedish-speaking society, it gets too difficult if you have to start thinking about your Swedish skills, learn Swedish. It becomes too difficult. [yes] For me it is enough if they understand and and speak some too. It depends of course on what their, future, maybe hopefully their father, whatever language he happens to speak. It depends a lot on that.

Lotta: Tietty. mut jos sä menisit ihan ruotsinkielisen ihmisen kanssa yhteen, niin silti puhuisit myös suomee.

Lotta: Sure. But if you were to get together with a Swedish-speaking person, would you still also speak Finnish.

Sandra: Joo joo, kaikki niinku se sais ilman eestä sen kielen. Tietysti se tuottaa mulle kauheeta siis työtä, että siinä on työ, pystyä pitämään se yllä et mä puhun sille suomee.

Sandra: Yes, yes, everyone would get it for free, the language. Of course it means an awful lot of work for me, like it is a lot of work, to be able to keep it up that I will speak Finnish to the kid.

(Palautekeskustelu, kesäkuu 2002)

(Feedback conversation, June 2002)

Sandra talks at length about how she has got the two languages, Swedish and Finnish, for free. She connects the feeling of having two home countries with the two languages; thus, for her the knowledge of a language is accompanied by a feeling of belonging to the area where the language is spoken. To my question whether she would make sure that her future children got a Finnish education she replies quickly ‘No, I won’t’. After this brief answer, she gives an explanation about why she would not take care of providing them with a Finnish education. It is worth pointing out that she no longer uses the first person singular, as she did in the beginning, but switches over to using the zero-person form (third person singular without a subject):‘If one wants to start living here and such, so, so it is necessary to know Swedish. After all, one lives in a Swedish-speaking society, it gets too difficult if you have to start thinking about your Swedish skills, learn Swedish“. She seems to assume that a Finnish-speaking education would be an obstacle on the way to learning Swedish fully. As for the switch from the first person singular to the zero-person, it creates distance between her as a speaker and the content she is talking about. I argue that it works along the same lines as the dynamics of talking about oneself as a Finn in one sentence and then, in the next, referring to Finns as them, instead of us. This is most likely not the emphasis Sandra was aiming at in this sequence, but rather an everyday rhetorical way of accounting for one’s opinions. Both the switching from the first person to passive, or third person singular, and the mixed use of us and them are frequently present in the interviews.

Sandra acknowledges the hard work connected with the everyday life of a bilingual family, but does not elaborate on its burdens. It seems that she is aware of the possible problems but not afraid to face them. A bilingual future appears to be something she is committed to, with its pros and cons. All the participants used the phrase of having received a language for free. A minority, however, criticized or challenged the phrase ‘to receive a language for free’. In the following interview example, Sanna questioned the image of the free nature of learning and keeping Finnish as a functioning language by mentioning the persistence one must have and the sacrifices one must make to maintain the language.

Example 42

Sanna: Mutta sen huomaa, että kyllä se vaatii hirveesti aktiivisuutta, että jonkun suomenkielen täällä pitää yllä, että ei se niinkun ilmaseks tuu. Mä oon vaan nähny sen niinkun käytännössä, et mä ajattelen, et jos ne jotka on käyny suomenkielistä luokkaa, puhunu kavereiden kanssa suomea ja jopa molemmat vanhemmat on suomenkieleisiä, (…) et jos ne on siis menettämässä, tai niitten suomenkieli on heikko tai heikompi, niin miten sitte ne jotka ei oo saanu sitä apua että ne ois koulussa kuullu suomea, opiskellu suomea ja sitten vielä saanu kavereita ja sitä kautta puhua. Et mun mielestä ei oo ihme et jos ihmiset täällä menettää suomenkielensä (naurahtaa)

Sanna: But you do notice how active one must be to maintain a language like Finnish here, it really doesn’t come for free. I’ve seen it in practice, like when I think, that if those who studied in a Finnish class and spoke Finnish with their friends and even both parents are Finnish-speaking (…) so if they are losing their language or their Finnish is weak or getting weaker, so how are those people doing who didn’t have the help of the school in hearing Finnish, studying Finnish and then even got Finnish-speaking friends and speak with them. So in my opinion it is not surprising that if people here are losing their Finnish (laughs a little)

Lotta: Kylhän se vaatii vaivaa ja hyvin monet sanoo, et täällä saa ilmaseks sen suomen kielen //mutta sehän ei kutenkaan oo ihan sillee

Lotta: Right, it takes a lot of effort, and many say that here you get the Finnish language for free// but that isn’t exactly the case

Sanna: //ei ilmaseks, mutta kyllä mä sinänsä ku sitten taas tapaa, ku mä olin yliopistolla viimevuonna niin mä kävin selasta ryhmää tietty missä oli suomea suomenkielisille, mutta mä tapasin sitte niitä jotka kävi sitä alkeiskurssia, niin sillon vähän tuntu että on saanu ilmaseks kuitenkin, ku että että toiset joilla oli suomalainen tausta mutta ei sit eri syistä ollu puhunu suomea sitte tai puhunu vaan ihan ensimmäsisnä vuosina eikä sitte enää. Nii sillo tuntu että oho, oon mä aika paljon saanu ilmaseks [mm] mutta kyllä se kielen ylläpitäminen sellasessa yhteiskunnassa missä se ei oo valtakieli niin kyllähän se vaatii aktiivisuutta.

Sanna: //no, not for free, but when I met people at the university last year when I participated in a course of Finnish for Finnish speakers, I met also those who took the basic course so then it felt a little like having received the language for free, when you meet people who also have a Finnish background but haven’t for different reasons spoken Finnish or spoken it only in the first years and then no more. So then it felt like oh, I have received quite a lot for free [mm] but it does take a lot of effort to maintain a language in a society in which it isn’t the main language, it really takes a lot of active effort.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, syyskuu 2005)

(First interview, September 2005)

10 Although I have selected 10 key participants, there is extensive data with a total of 29 individuals. People with home language combinations such as Spanish-Finnish and Romanian-Finnish were interviewed as well; they are not, however, key persons and therefore I am not discussing these kinds of families in detail.

11 She is referring to the symbol a crown with the word ‘cross’. The meaning of the national symbols becomes clear from the context.

12 Emma is using the Swedish word nazist. In Finnish, however, such term does not exist and, technically speaking, the correct Finnish term woud be natsi.

5. Being Different

This chapter concentrates on the representation repertoire of Being Different and on the dynamics of why being different appears as such an important signifier in the creation of Finnishness in Sweden. To perceive and define oneself as different or to be identified by others as such presupposes, of course, that there is something that is considered the norm. When the focus is on migration and identities, being different and being unique are at times underlined, by emphasizing the features that distinguish a group from the norm (or from other non-normative groups), be it the way of talking and dressing, social code, blood line, or whatever. At other times, however, humans tend to like to be perceived and treated like everybody else, not as something deviant from the norm. In this section, I will discuss different ways of being different as they are presented and problematized by the participants, when they talk about the core question of why difference is such a crucial element in the creation of identities.

When the participants talked about themselves and their everyday life in Sweden (in the context of having a Finnish background), it seemed inevitable to define oneself, or others for that matter, by making comparisons and employing the concepts of difference and uniqueness. I will discuss differences with reference to three cases in which key persons Madeleine and Emma, and Taina, an interviewee from year 2005, are talking about being different. I have selected these cases because they are representative of the data at large. The participants are discussing the phenomenon from the following angles:

• sounding different

• looking different

• feeling different vs. feeling the same

To sound different has to do with accents and the associations that different accents of a language have. To look different concerns the visual appearance of a person, their complexion, shape of the eyes, even ways of moving. To look different is connected with the paradox of being perceived as different when one does not feel different, and to be referred to as being the same, or similar when one does feel different. Accounts such as the three examples below are common throughout the interviews, and all of the narrations fall into the domains of being different: sounding different, looking different, and having conflicting perceptions of the self and the environment.

Sounding Different

When we meet someone for the first time, we usually have a visual image as a starting point for creating a picture of what kind of a person we are dealing with. We can start creating a picture of who this person is and what kind of communication is likely to follow. The appearance of a person can often tell us a great deal: the gender, something about the age, maybe the religion or even occupation, and sometimes the appearance also reveals ancestry. All these small details have a different importance in different situations. Those that seem significant during one encounter can be fully unimportant during another. Sometimes we might think that we will be able to tell where this person comes from, what kind of a background he or she has and, more importantly, what kind of implications we associate with the background. It goes without saying that most of our observations are based on and guided by prejudice, lacking any reasonable foundation. We also associate certain things with accents. In the following example, Madeleine narrates a memory from her school years when she realized that there was something odd in her family background, and this oddness was connected with the language her mother spoke. Just before her narration, her fellow student had told a story from his childhood where bullying based on his small size and his Finnishness was sometimes part of his daily life.

Example 43

Lotta: Hur var det för dig, blev du också retad att du är finsk?

Lotta: How was it for you, were you teased for being Finnish?

Madeleine: Nej, jag har ju aldrig blivit, alltså det var min mamma, som har alltid fått skott. Att min tant, som kom med hit då, hon är också sjukgymnast och arbetade för skolorna, så hon kom med ett benrangel som hon döpte till Sven eller något sådant, och sedan skulle Sven lära sig att sitta rätt på stolen, och hon gick runt och pratade med alla elever så där. Och då var det jätte roligt när (börjar pratar finlandssvenska, artikulerar tydligt och överdrivet) Sven och Anneli skulle komma och började ju alla prata så där. Och det här blev ju på något vis sådär smågrymt att här sitter jag i mittemellan, jag började ju inte prata så, och de andra gjorde det för att vara roliga. Och, så åt för mej, jag märkte ju att folk runt kring mej särskilde Anneli och mamma av andra mammor och började prata så här (igen finlandssvenska) och härja. Sen’ vet jag inte om det var just finska, eller om dom hade gjort det även om dom hade brutit på tyska eller något sådär. Pappa fick aldrig höra något, han har alltid varit i fred på något vis. Det var lite hånskratt… men inte riktad mot mej.

Madeleine: No, never, it was my mother who got the full load. Like my aunt, who also came here, also she is a physiotherapist too and worked for schools, so she came with this skeleton she had baptized Sven or something like that, and then Sven should learn to sit properly on his chair, and she walked around in the classroom talking to everyone and stuff like that. And then it was always terribly funny when (starts to talk in the rhythm of Finland Swedish accent, articulates and pronounces words with exaggerated clarity) Sven and Anneli were coming and everyone started to talk like that. It became somehow grim, here I am sitting in the middle, I didn’t start talking like that and the others did it for fun. So for me, I realized that people around me distinguished between Anneli and my mother and other mums, and started to talk like this (again the Finland Swedish accent) and to make fun of them. What I don’t know is that whether they would have made fun if they had had, say, a German accent, or something. Dad never got remarks, he was always left in peace. It was mocking… but never directed at me.

(Första intervjun, decemebr 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

Madeleine recalled a childhood memory of realizing that she was different in an invisible way; since her appearance resembled the looks of her (all white) classmates she could literally hide amongst them, and the mocking laughter was not directed at her. She understood, however, that there was something undesirable in being and sounding like her mother and Anneli. The women apparently spoke Swedish with an unmistakable Finnish accent, which made them a laughing stock. Madeleine herself said that no one ever commented on her Finnish background, or her German background for that matter, in any context, that she was a ‘perfect Swede’ and did not even consider herself as anything else. She remarked later in the interview that probably no one knew of her origin since both her family and first name sounded Swedish, Swedish was her first and only language at that point, and, she concluded ‘And, yes, I look like all the rest’. As she mentioned earlier, she grew up in a villa område, a suburban area with single family houses, just outside of the city, where her mother and Anneli were the only exceptions to the norm.

Example 44

Madeleine: Jag tror att det skall tillläggas att både Felix och jag är uppväxt i ett typiskt, medelklass, svenskt samhälle, att det var inte, vi båda uppväxte i villor, eller villaområden där ju majoriteten av barnen är svenska och har ingenting annat, än svenskatalande föräldrar. Jag kommer inte ens minna mej på att jag hade någon annan i klassen, det fanns inte ens mycket finnar över huvud taget på den tiden. För det var nära ASEA fabrik att alla som, dom fick köpa bostäder där i närheten, och det var alla ingenjörer och sådana som hade råd att utbilda //sej

Madeleine: I think that it should be added that both Felix and I grew up in a typical middle class, Swedish society, like, there was no, we both grew up in a one family house, a villa, and the majority of the children living in those areas are Swedish and have nothing but Swedish-speaking parents. I cannot even remember if there was any another in the class, there weren’t even so many Finns back in those days. It was close to the ASEA factory where the Finns could buy apartments, and they were all engineers and such who had the money to educate them //selves

Felix: //inte arbetare

Felix: //not workers.

Madeleine: Inte arbetare, just, men tjänstemännen, så på det viset kan jag faktiskt, när vi pratar om Finska Föreningen, eller finska kompisar eller hemspråksundervisning, så kan jag inte påminna mej att det hade varit aktuellt. Att mamma och Anneli då hon som hon kom hit med, dom var ju finska käringar, finska tanterna, det fanns ju liksom inget annat som stack ut.

Madeleine: No workers, right, but white collar employees, so in that respect I really can’t remember anything when we talk about Finnish associations, or Finnish friends or home language classes, it wasn’t anything important. Mum and Anneli were like the ones who had come here, they were Finnish mammas, Finnish aunties, there was like nothing else that could have stood out.

(Första intervjun, decemeber 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

Madeleine’s impression that there were ‘not that many Finns back in those days’ is inherently wrong, and as a statement it elucidates the significance of class. Madeleine was born in the beginning of the 1980s, and although the massive migration from Finland to Sweden had already ebbed, the area of Västerås had a large Finnish population. Her neighborhood was ‘all Swedish’; no other immigrants except her family lived there. She remarks that Finns inhabited an area close to the ASEA factory where they could afford to buy an apartment. Also Ågren’s (2006) interviewees stressed the connection between class and the experience of growing up with a Finnish background. For many of her interviewees, the area where they grew up, a working class area of Gothenburg, was experienced as more influential than their ethnic background. Thus, a Finnish accent seems to be connected with a certain position in society.

The Finnish accent in Swedish is often clearly identifiable. Many participants described the differences between themselves and their parents by making reference to the accent in which they speak Swedish. Unlike their parents, they themselves ‘Sound like a Swede.’ Many commented on their parents’ language skills as being grammatically very good but lacking the prosody of rikssvenska.

Example 45

Sanna: Joo kielioppi on tosi hyvä ja äitihän on ihmisten kanssa töissä koko ajan eikä sillä ole mitään vaikeuksia, on ruotsalaisia ystäviä ja kaikkee. Mutta kyllähän siitä kuulee, että se on suomalainen.

Sanna: Yes, mum’s Swedish is grammatically excellent and she works with people all of the time and has absolutely no problems, has Swedish friends and everything. But of course you can hear that she is a Finn.

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2006)

(Feedback conversation, December 2006)

Example 46

Lotta: Pratar din mamma bra svenska?

Lotta: Does your mother speak Swedish well?

Sofia: Jo, hon pratar rätt bra, man hör ju att hon är finsk, alltid lite grammatiskt, fastän hon har bott här nästan, vad är det, 20 år.

Sofia: Yeah, she speaks really well, but it is clear that she is Finnish, always a bit with the grammar, although she has lived here almost, how long, 20 years.

(Feedback konversation, december 2006)

(Feedback conversation, December 2006)

Example 47

Madeleine: (…) jag vet inte hur mycket hon har kunnat använda finskan i sitt jobb [mm] men det jag vet hon har blivit väldigt uppskattad för är att hon har en, att hon skriver bättre en svenskar gör (skrattar) för att, ni har ju ändå väldigt grundlig grammatik, alltså ni jobbar ju väldigt grundligt med grammatik vad jag förstår, så hon har lärt sig skriva på ett sätt som få svenska faktiskt behärskar. (skratt i rösten börjar) På det viset skriver hon bättre (skratt i rösten slutar) än de flesta svenskar, men hon fortfarande bryter, och ganska kraftigt så får hon ju, så (otydligt) men inte att hon skulle ha haft användning för finskan så mycket, [joo] mera att hon är bra på att skriva svenska faktiskt (skrattar)

Madeleine: I don’t know how much she has been able to use Finnish for her job [mm] but I know that she’s been very appreciated for her, that she writes better than Swedes do (laughs) because, you have such good foundation in grammar, you work properly with grammar as far as I have understood, so she has learned to write in a way that few Swedes master. (laughter in voice begins) So in that way she writes better (laughter in voice finishes) than most of the Swedes, but she still has the accent, pretty strong in fact, (unclear) but it is not that she had had used Finnish that much, [joo] it is more that she writes Swedish so well, really (laughs)

(Första intervjun, decemeber 2004)

(First interview, December 200

All the women give their mothers credit for their skills in Swedish, but they refer to the fact that it can be heard that they are not natives. Sanna says ‘you can hear that she is Finnish’, and Madeleine and Sofia use the term bryta. To speak Swedish differently than the ‘average Swedes’ speak rikssvenska is called bryta in Swedish, meaning ‘to break off’. Thus, to have an accent is, on a semantic level, referred to as breaking something, breaking the norm of standard Swedish. Breaking something is hardly associated with anything positive; instead, we break our promises, the favorite china tea pot, even a friendship.

Why did the children in Madeleine’s class laugh when Anneli and her mum came along? Madeleine supposes that they just wanted to have fun, which probably was true. I assume that the children would not have known any other reason for their laughter than the ‘funny way the women spoke’. The laughter surely was at the way Anneli and Madeleine’s mother spoke, but the interesting question in this example is why some accents are considered funny and others are not. Madeleine remarks that her German-speaking father never met with similar experiences, nor had anyone ever commented on his Swedish. Literature about accents and dialects reveals, among other things, attitudes towards languages and the dynamics behind laughing at different accents. Ronald Wardhaugh, a professor in linguistics interested in dialects and vernacular, explains that the idea that there is a close, possibly a determining, relationship between a language and the people who speak it is widespread (Wardhaugh 1999; see also Hidalgo 1998). In this view a language, or an accent, expresses the character of the people who use it, and this idea can be found in writers such as Herder (who also emphasized the significance of a shared language for a people), Fichte, Humboldt and Vossler, who all formulated their thoughts about languages in the 18th century. According to Vossler, for example, in his Spirit of Language in Civilization of 1932, each language has ‘something akin to a soul and an individual’ or something that Vossler calls ‘psychic aspects’ of an individual. Thus, language both fashions people and becomes them (Wardhaugh 1999: 46). This line of thought brings us very quickly to beliefs about some languages being sophisticated and better developed, whereas others are less developed.

On an everyday level, however, people probably do not think about some languages as being less valuable than others because they lack the concept of time or the DNA; rather, we hear accents that have various associations attached to them. French sounds adorably romantic and passionate; there is something suspicious about English spoken with a Russian accent, German is the proper language for giving commands, etc. The list of prejudiced and gut-feeling associations about accents can be continued endlessly. Peoples’ attitudes towards a speaker can differ greatly depending on the accent the speaker adopts. Think of the musical My Fair Lady and its heroine, the beautiful, Cockney-speaking Eliza Doolittle and her problems in getting an ‘appropriate pronunciation’, or the BBC TV show Little Britain’s character Vicky Pollard, a bullying teenager speaking in a heavy Bristol accent. Both Eliza Doolittle’s and Vicky Pollard’s characters are presented as individuals whose accents make them sound ridiculous in social interaction and make them appear simple minded.13 Eliza Doolittle could charm anyone after learning how to speak properly; after acquiring a proper manner of speech, no trace was left of her ‘simple mindedness’.

According to the participants, the Finnish accent is often associated with different, usually less flattering, characteristics connected with the working class, such as being taciturn in communication and being poorly educated (see also Ågren 2006: 167–169). Sometimes an accent or a slightly deviant pronunciation can cause unexpected reactions. In the previous section, Sanna narrated an extreme situation where a conversation in Finnish resulted in verbal abuse from a third person, the taxi driver. Others had not experienced such obvious negative attitudes towards their language; however, everyone was familiar with comments about the ‘aggressive sound’ and ‘hardness’ of Finnish. One of the people I interviewed, a father of three, told about an acquaintance who commented on his choice to speak Finnish to his children as follows: ‘Why on earth would you speak the language of cleaners to your children? A language in which you can’t even form proper sentences!’ Thus, the image of Finnish as a simple language of less educated people seems to prevail. Yet, some participants talked about elderly people or people with non-Swedish backgrounds who described Finnish as exotic and friendly sounding. Both Emma and Sofia considered that those people must be unaware of the stereotyping connected with Finns and Finnish or have Finnish-speaking friends, and therefore associate a Finnish accent with something familiar and friendly. All the participants spoke, as far as I could judge, perfect Swedish. Some of them, however, said that they had a faint but recognizable accent. Accent or not, none of them described the comments about their accent as pejorative, simply interested.

In the previous section, Emma commented on her former classmates’ language use and mentioned the empowering aspects of talking in a non-standard way. She reasoned that their way of speaking ‘bad’ Swedish might signal borders between in- and out-groups to others. Because we tend to need to know to which group people around us belong, vernacular and accents are important aspects in this process, especially in the context of being white when the skin color does not tell anything about descent. Kotsinas (1982) argues that the varieties of Rinkeby Swedish are mainly spoken by teenagers from suburbs where immigrants and immigrant descendants are concentrated, and can be interpreted as expressions of youth culture: the language is a marker of belonging to a certain subculture and, at the same time, in opposition to a perceived mainstream non-immigrant culture that does not seem to value the descendants of immigrants. To speak Rinkebysvenska signals a certain social status when it is spoken in an environment that shares the code, so to speak. In another setting the vernacular could have completely different connotations. In this respect dialects and shifting between a ‘standard’ variant and an ethnolect are part of an ongoing process of negotiating identities and positions in the society.

Looking Different

To have an appearance that differs from the looks of the majority works easily as a reference point in the process of defining oneself as different or as someone unique. Of course, looking different also works the other way around: an appearance that is perceived as different is an indicator for others that the person does not belong to their group. In the first Chapter, where terminology was discussed, several participants used visual differences in defining the term ‘immigrant’. Immigrants were most frequently people who looked different and sounded different. Few participants ever referred to themselves as immigrants, that is, as different enough to stand out. In the following example, Emma is talking about the first time she realized that she was ‘as much an immigrant as someone with brown eyes’.

Example 48

Emma: Niin, siis mä oon paljon miettiny, lukiossa mä tajusin ekan kerran, että yhtä paljonhan mä oon invandrare kun joku ruskeehiuksinen ruskeesilmänen joka puhuu niin sanotusti rinkebynsvenskaa tai jotain ja mä en ikinä ajatellut sitä ennen koska me ollaan samannäkösiä (…) suomalaiset sulautuu niin hyvin ruotsalaiseen ympäristöön erilailla. Ja sitten jos on joku, niinkun mun kaveri joka on kreikkalainen niin se ei ees puhu niin kunnolla kreikkaa, mutta siis ruotsi on sen äidinkieli, sillä on vaan, se näyttää (naurahtaa) se näyttää kreikkalaiselta. Niin se ei tykkää yhtään jos joku kysyy siltä että mistä päin sä oot, niin se sanoo vaan että eihän sillä oo väliä, mä oon aina asunu Ruotsissa. Sillai, että mä oon kanssa ajatellut aika paljon siis vieläkin kunnes mä intellektuellisti tajusin että (nauraa) siis, mutta, siis ensimmäinen kun mä impulsiivisesti ajattelen niin se on ruskeehiuksinen, ruskeesilmäinen, siis sellanen prototyyppinen ja nimeltään suurinpiirtein Muhammed. Ja puhuu sököttäen (nauraa).

Emma: I’ve been thinking about this a lot, I realized for the first time in high school that I am as much an immigrant as someone with brown eyes and who speaks so-called Rinkeby Swedish, or something and before that I had never thought about it, because we look the same (…) Finns blend in so well in the Swedish environment so differently. And then if someone, like a friend of mine who is Greek and doesn’t even speak that good Greek, but Swedish is her mother tongue, she has, but she just looks (laughter) like a Greek. She doesn’t like it at all when people ask her where do you come from?, she just replies like what does it matter? I have always lived in Sweden. Like that, so I have still been thinking about it, until I intellectually realized (laughter) but, still, the first impulsive thought is that it is brown haired, brown eyed, like a kind of a prototype and the name is something like Mohammed. And speaks with a broken accent (laughter).

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2006)

(Feedback conversation, December 2006)

Emma described her ethnic awakening by telling about the moment in high school when she realized she was as much an immigrant as someone who: ‘[has] brown eyes and who speaks so called Rinkeby Swedish, (…) and the name is something like Mohammed.’ Before realizing this, she had considered herself the same as the others (i.e. ‘Swedes’). She did not look different from her peers, nor did she sound different; the possibility of being different seemed to be ruled out for her. Emma brought up two essential aspects of being different: first, looking different from the majority in the surroundings, and, secondly, based on one’s appearance, being linked with a set of characteristics one does not want to be associated with. She refers to a friend of hers who, in Emma’s description, ‘looks like a Greek’ and gets irritated when she is asked about her origin. This girl was born and bred in Sweden and apparently regarded herself as a Swede, not as a Greek. To question her Swedishness because of her darker complexion and dark hair speaks of the image of Swedes as a homogeneous group consisting of blond and blue-eyed people. Emma thinks that she herself passes as a Swede, whether she wants to or not.

For many participants, the visual and cultural similarity between Finns and Swedes was portrayed at times as something making the non-Swedish identity difficult. Some even claimed that it would be easier to be different if one had a darker complexion or something else significantly different from the average blond and blue-eyed Swede. On the interview level, being Swedish seemed, to some extent, to exclude variation of any kind, as if the construction of being Swedish would exclude variations. The same dynamics of clear cut limits also applied to the concept of being a Finn in Sweden. The participants attacked the idea of rigid boundaries and the bipolarity where people must choose from two extremes, and favored, instead, flexibility and hybridity.

Ethnicity and Ethnic Identity

I mentioned in the previous section that I was very much the only one using the word ‘ethnicity’ during the interviews and feedback conversations, although we were discussing the elements of being Finnish or being Swedish, or the elements making someone a Finn or a Swede. Although we did not exactly use the word, I think that what we were talking about can be summed up as ethnicity. When we were discussing what Finnishness in Sweden consisted of, we were defining ethnicity. In the course of the research, even the content of ethnicity was called into question, both by the participants and me. Above all, the most troubling question was, in fact, what ethnicity is. Is it something we are born with, or is it rather something we choose to have or not to have? Are you automatically a Finn if you were born to Finnish parents but grew up in Sweden? Do you have to do something in order to be a Finn? Although the participants did not use the term ethnicity, they talked about Finnishness, Swedishness, of being different and being the same. I see the interviews and feedback conversations as accounts of constructing ethnicity in everyday talk. When the participants talked about Finnishness and Swedishness, they were engaged in a process of manifesting ethnic identities.

Because the term ethnicity is as difficult to define as culture I will not even try to present an all embracing definition of it, but rather explain briefly how I define and use the concept. Scholars have deconstructed and reconstructed ethnicity, and some have even suggested that we should abandon ethnicity because of its uselessness as a concept (Chapman et al. 1989: 17–18). The etymology of ethnicity lies in the Greek word ethnos, meaning someone who is a stranger, and the meaning of being distinguishable by one’s background is still to be found in the contemporary use of the word. A detailed discussion of the term ethnicity starting from its etymology can be found, for example, in the introduction to History and Ethnicity (Chapman et al. 1989: 11–17). Anttonen (1999: 214–230) provides a thorough discussion of the term in the northern European context.

In the social sciences, ethnicity and theories about it were developed in the 1960s and 1970s. During those two decades, so-called ethnic revivals started to gain ground both in the United States and in Europe. In the context of my research, the political awakening of Finns in Sweden that started in the late 1970s was an ethnic mobilization of a minority. Assimilation and acculturation theories were criticized, and the political struggle around education in the minority languages and school strikes also derived their arguments and political motivations mostly from this criticism. (See also, Peura & Skutnabb-Kangas 1994.) The everyday notion of ethnicity, in the interviews as well, seems to find its definition through the process of listing differences between those who are of a certain ethnic background and those who are not. In this sense, the notion of ethnicity approaches the idea of different races. Both ethnicity and race are often linked with determinism. Race suggests that there are certain qualities which a group of people share and these signifiers can be traced back to biology. In ethnicity, these signifiers are religious and cultural (Hall 1995; Lehtonen & Löytty 2003: 250–255). If the participants at all mentioned differences that could be called racial, these aspects were usually treated as a joke, or disputed.

Example 49

Lotta: No mikä nyt on sitten suomalaista?

Lotta: Well, what is then so Finnish?

Aki-Petteri: Kato ne on ne vinot mongoolien silmät (nauraa)

Aki-Petteri: See, it is about the slanted Mongolian eyes (laughs)

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, September 2005)

Example 50

Sandra: Mä en usko, että jos tähän laitettas 10 ruotsalaista riviin ja 10 suomalaista, että kukaan pystyis sanomaan ne toisistaan. Ei nyt eikä 50 vuotta sitten. Niistä vaan tuntui erilaiselta koska ne ei osannut sitä ruotsia ja kaikki oli muutenkin niin outoa.

Sandra: I don’t believe that if someone lined up 10 Swedes and 10 Finns that anyone could tell them apart. It wouldn’t be the case now and it wouldn’t have been the case 50 years ago. They just felt so different because they did not speak the language and everything was so strange to them.

(Palautekeskustelu, kesäkuu 2002)

(Feedback conversation, June 2002)

I briefly discussed the notion of race in the introductory chapter and referred to Perelman and Waldinger (1997: 902), who note that race as a variable in an analysis never explains anything; on the contrary, it is something that needs to be explained. To illustrate the social construction of race, the authors give an example of the changing perception of race. Racial classifications often employed visible physical features, including differences in skin color. In the 19th century, the Irish were labelled as a race of their own, and characterized as ‘savage’ and ‘low-browed’. African-Americans were referred to as ‘smoked Irishmen’ suggesting that the two groups were somehow the same and were looked upon through a similar lens. There was an association between skin color, on the one hand, and slavery and its legitimation, on the other.

The social character of race becomes very clear when we look at the social careers of the not-quite-white immigrants who moved ahead in society and engaged in deliberate strategies that distinguished them from the not-quite-white which yielded to whitening. Consequently, in the United States, racial perceptions changed as the Irish, Poles, Italians and Jews moved ahead, and the same dynamics applies to the group of Finns and their social status in Sweden: after immigrants who were perceived as more different than the Finns arrived, the status of Finns evolved and they climbed upwards on the social ladder. As Felix suggested in the interview excerpt in the previous chapter: when a new and even more unfamiliar group of foreigners than the one already living in the country arrived, the ‘domesticated foreigners’ were pushed up on the social ladder. This is the dynamic the participants often employed when describing the change in the image of Finns, from hard-working, heavy drinking immigrants to their present status as almost Swedes. In this sense, both for the descendants of European immigrants in the United States and for the Finns in Sweden, race can be seen as an achieved status. The upward mobility of Finns in Sweden was discussed in all the interviews, and the following excerpt includes a common explanation for this. Katariina and Pia were talking about the social status of Finns in Sweden.

Example 51

Katariina: Suomalaisethan on paljon, paljon arvostetummassa asemassa kun on tullu muita siirtolaisia, muun näkösiä, et ne on tuolta noi, et suomalaisten asema on noussu [Pia:onhan se siihen noussu]ja elintaso Suomessa on noussu.

Katariina: Finns are in a much, much more appreciated position now when other kinds of immigrants have arrived, different looking, from elsewhere, the status of Finns is really better [Pia:that is true] and the standard of living has risen in Finland.

Pia: Eee se asema on niinku noussu.

Pia: Eeer like their status is better.

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2004)

(Feedback conversation, December 2004)

The women also referred to the higher standard of living in Finland, economic achievements, and successful sportsmen and women who had polished the image of Finland in recent years. Big Finnish companies such as Nokia, Stora Enso and Outokumpu that were conducting successful business in Sweden and had Finns in high management posts were mentioned on several occasions. Also the PISA study of 2005 that praised the Finnish education system served as an example for the better image of Finland and something having a positive impact on the Finns living in Sweden as well. It is interesting that definitions are made and pride in Finnishness takes place in national terms. Although their own children go to school in Sweden, Finns in Sweden feel proud when the Finnish education system gets credit. Some participants pointed this out but questioned the reasons for joy and pride: ‘Shouldn’t they be worried about our own system here, rather than take pride in the neighbour’s success?’ asked one participant.

The image of the Finnish immigrant has changed considerably since the 1970s, when immigration from Finland to Sweden took place on a large scale. Roughly speaking, in the first twenty years after the massive immigration the image was rather disparaging. In the Scandinavian context, the image of the Finn involved hard work, heavy drinking and outbursts of violence as well as, on the one hand, deep silence and introversion and, on the other, too loud voices in a harsh and aggressive sounding language (Lainio 1996: 271–272, see also Sajavaara & Lehtonen 1997). There were also positive qualities attached to the Finn: he was characterised as reliable and straightforward (Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000: 434).

Swedish authorities ask every six years which immigrant groups are the most similar to the Swedes and Swedish culture and which the least similar.14 Finns were ranked at the very bottom of the list in the 1970s but climbed slowly but surely towards the leading position, being the second after Norwegians in 1986. The image lift had been tremendous. The position of many other immigrant groups, such as Greeks and Ethiopians, who shared the bottom position with Finns twenty years ago, has not changed (Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000). In some statistics of Swedish immigration, Finns no longer appear as an immigrant group; this could be understood in terms of being accepted and recognized as a national minority, instead of being an immigrant group. Finnish achieved the status of one of the five national minority languages in 2001, hence the group’s immigrant status was removed.

Who is an Immigrant?

When I asked the participants what they associated with the term ‘immigrant’, answers were surprisingly coherent: most of them knew immediately what kind of people were immigrants. In most cases, an immigrant was described as a stranger; someone away from home, someone who does not know the social code – someone who has problems. Only a few introduced themselves as immigrants. Below are three excerpts in which the key participants talk about immigrants. The first originates from an interview with Madeleine and Felix from Västerås. The second and third excerpts originate from two separate interviews with Sandra and Maria from Köping.

Example 52

Lotta: Sista frågan då, vi har några minuter kvar. Vad tänker du, bara spontant, vad tänker du på när du läser ordet invandrare?

Lotta: Last question then, we have a couple of minutes left. What do you think about, just spontaneously, what do you think about when you read the word immigrant?

Felix: Muslim. Mmm, det är alltså… det här är ju vårt specialarbete, examen, och vårt seminarie arbete. Och vi går ju också i en kurs som handlar om migration och etniska relationer, så, så, så vi är lite inkörda på det här (skrattar lite) [Madeleine skrattar lite] men när man pratar om invandring i dag generellt sett så är det ofta muslimer, ee…ee… eftersom de är de senaste som kom hit.[mm]

Felix: Muslim. Mmm, it is like… it is our special research work, our exam, and our seminar paper. And we take also a course about migration and ethnic relations, so, so, so we are a little sensitive to this topic (laughs a little) [some laughter by Madeleine] but when one speaks about migration in general terms today it concerns often Muslims, ee…ee…because they are the most recent group who have arrived.[mm]

Just som en som vi intervjuade, hon var så klok när hon berättade att först var det italienare som kom på femtiotalet, [mm] de var dom som var svartskallar och nu är dom integrerade i det svenska samhället, sen kom finnarna, dom var finjävel, och så vidare. Nu är det muslimer, och inom tio år kan det vara en helt annan grupp. Det vet man inte. Men just nu så tror jag, när man talar om invandrare så tänker jag spåntant på är det oftast muslimer. Och sådana som kommer från Mellanöstern, det behöver ju inte vara muslimer, syrianer och kristna också… vad tänker du då? Jag är helt ute och cyklar.

just like, like the one we interviewed, she was so smart when she told how the Italians were the first to come, that was in the 50s, [mm] then it was the blackheads and now also they are integrated in the Swedish society, then the Finns came, they were the Finn devils, and so forth. Now it is the Muslims and in ten years it could be a whole different group. You never know. But right now I think, when migrants are talked about it concerns, I think spontaneously, they are often Muslims and that kind of people who come from the Middle East, they don’t have to be Muslims per se, Syrians and Christians as well… what do you think? I am just going about here.

Madeleine: Jag tänker på mej själv.

Madeleine: I think about myself.

(Förstan intervjun, december 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

Example 53

Lotta: Mitä sulle tulee mieleen kun sä kuulet tän temin siirtolainen? niin [mm] kuulutko sä mielestäs, kuulutko siihen ryhmään?

Lotta: What do you think of when you hear the term, the term immigrant? so [mm] do you belong, in your opinion, belong to that group?

Sandra: No ei, en. En. [joo] Mä en kuulu siihen ryhmään. [niin] Mun vanhemmat ehkä, mutta minä en. [mm] Enhän mä ole siirtolainen, mä olen syntynyt täällä, mä en ole muuttunut mistään. Tää on milleen mä näen tän asian. Ne muutti toisesta maasta tänne, mutta mä en, mä en ole siirtolainen. (…)

Sandra: Well, no, I don’t. I don’t. [yeah] I don’t belong to that group. [yeah] Maybe my parents belong, but myself, I don’t. [mm] I’m not an immigrant, I was born here after all, I didn’t move here from anywhere. This is how I see this matter. They moved here from a different country, but I didn’t, I am not an immigrant. (…)

Lotta: Entäs ihan sitten se itse sana, siirtolainen, invandrare, mitä sulle siitä tulee mieleen?

Lotta: And how about the word itself, immigrant, immigrant, what does it make you think of?

Sandra: Ee…jostain syytä mulle tulee mieleen lika, likaisuus. [mm] Mutta jos mä näen sen termin siirtolainen niin se ei ole sama kun immigrant, mulle, tietysti se on se sama sana, mutta se ei tuo mulle sitä samaa negatiivista tunnetta. Ei suomalaiset ole siirtolaisia Ruotsissa. Mä en tiedä mitä ne on, mutta ei ne siirtolaisia ole. [nii] Siirtolaisia on nää tummat [tummat] ihmiset jotka on tulleet tänne viime vuosina.[mm] Kun mun vanhemmat tuli tänne oli he siirtolaisia mutta nyt siirtolaisia on tummat. Ja niihin liitetään aina täällä Ruotsissa tosi negativisia juttuja, paljon enemmän mitä liitettiin suomalaisiin kun ne tuli. Sanotaan niinku rikollisuus ja väkivalta liittyy siihen termiin, se on negatiivinen. [joo] Se on niinkun diskriminaatiosana.

Sandra: Ee…for some reason it brings dirt into my mind, dirty. [mm] But if I see the term immigrant it is not the same as immigrant, but of course it is the same word, but it doesn’t bring the same negative feeling. Finns are not immigrants in Sweden. I don’t know what they are, but they are not immigrants. [yeah] Immigrants are these dark people [dark] who have come here in the past years.[mm] When my parents came here they were immigrants but now dark people are immigrants. And with them all sorts of really negative things are associated here in Sweden, much more than was associated with Finns when they came. Say, like criminality and violence is linked with that term, it is a negative term. [yeah] It is like a discrimination word.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, huhtikuu 2002)

(First interview, April 2002)

Example 54

Lotta: Okej, mm. Vad tänker du på om du läser någonstans ordet invandrare?

Lotta: Okay, mm. What do you think if you read the word invandrare somewhere?

Maria: …invandrare. Jodå, då tycker man…de är sådana som har kommit från Kosovo, Albanien eller… [mm]oftast är de mörkhyade när man ser framför sej, faktiskt. Men det behöver ju inte vara det (skratt) men det är det man se framför sej. Mörkhyade.

Maria: …invandrare. Well yes, one thinks of…they are people who have come from Kosovo or Albania or… [mm] most often they are people with a dark complexion one sees in one’s mind really. But it doesn’t have to be like that, of course (laughs) but that is really what one sees in one’s mind, really. Dark-skinned people

Lotta: Aha. Och tänker du att finnarna är också invandrare?

Lotta: Aha. And do you think that also Finns are immigrants?

Maria: Man tänker inte så, men de är ju. [jo] Fast så tänker man inte, nej.

Maria: That is not how one would think of it, but that‘s what they are. [yes] However that it is not how one would think of it, no.

Lotta: Att, du är inte invandrare, fast dina föräldrar kom// hit

Lotta: Like, you are not an immigrant, although your parents came// here

Maria: //nej, så känner jag inte mej, så tänker jag inte. Men det är vi ju.

Maria: // no, I don’t feel like that, I don’t think that way. But that is what we are.

(Första intervjun, april 2002)

(First interview, April 2002)

These excerpts capture a great deal of both academic and grass-root discussions about immigrants that I consider important for the scrutiny of the terminology at hand and the analysis. First, they clearly illustrate the changing face of migration: labour immigrants of the 1960s were, two decades later, making space for immigrants; at times, these people were actually refugees from war battered areas, such as ‘Kosovo and Albania’, referring apparently to former Yugoslavia. Second, the examples talk about the stigmatization of immigration: immigrants are Finnjävel (Finn devils); Muslims are svartskallar (derogatory, referring to a dark hue), with whom dirt, problems, violence and criminality are associated. The term is also associated with discrimination practices. Third, when Madeleine answers to Felix’s question about what she associates with the word immigrant, she answers:‘myself’. Sandra, like most of the participants, does not have the slightest feeling of belonging to that group. All these fragments create a repetitious pattern in the interviews, and form the cornerstones of my analysis.

There are two small but noteworthy details in the excerpt of Maria’s interview: she refers to Finns first as them, excluding herself from the group; but later the reference changes to us, including herself. To be not quite sure whether one belongs to the group of Finns was a common element in the interviews, and the slips between the inclusion and exclusion of oneself with regard to the Finns recurs throughout the data. The other detail concerns the manner of using the first person singular when presenting an opinion: Maria uses an impersonal form throughout her sequence that can be translated as: ‘Well yes, one thinks of… they are people who have come from Kosovo or Albania or…’. Only at the end she switches to the first person singular: ‘No, I don’t feel like that, I don’t think that way. But that is what we are.’ Choosing the impersonal voice creates distance to what is said and can be interpreted as a conscious move, but it is also an everyday way of talking about things, conscious or not.

It is evident in these excerpts that the term immigrant is nothing the participants feel connected to. The generic terms immigrant and immigration can be perceived as putting a lot of emphasis on never ending migration and highlighting the dichotomy of Swedes and non-Swedes – or immigrants (Ågren 2006: 18—19). In Sweden, different authorities and officials give a variety of guidelines and suggestions about how to refer to people who are not ‘fully’ Swedish. The official recommendation by the state is to use the term invandrare (immigrant) only of a person who has, in fact, arrived in Sweden as an immigrant, and to refer to their offspring as personer med utländsk bakgrund (persons with a foreign background) – not, for example, invandrar bakgrund (migrant background) (Roderigo Blomqist 2002: 12). Ågren (2006) addresses the same, often problematic usage of the terminology, and remarks that, for example, Johan Hassen Khemiri – the author of the polemic book Ett öga rött – is a Swede by definition, but his work is considered as ‘immigrant literature’ and he himself is being referred to as an ‘immigrant author’. His mother, however, is a Swede, and thus he is, according to the Swedish governmental integration office, a Swede. One cannot help wondering if this is not exactly what it boils down to – some people are full-blooded Swedes and some are not, regardless of the terminology? Legally speaking, nonetheless, a child born in Sweden to parents with a foreign background is a Swede.

To discuss definitions might at times seem like splitting hairs, but definitions are extremely powerful; they define what people are, and can potentially have strong impact on groups and individuals. For example, the estimated number of Finns in Sweden shrinks from 460,000 to less than 200,000 when the criterion of two Finland-born parents is applied. (See also Ågren 2006: 243.) A group of half a million not only appears quite different from a group of 200,000, but they can make claims of a different magnitude. Moreover, the size of the group affects individuals’ sentiments as well.

Second Generation of Immigrants?

A generation can be defined as consisting of those people who have lived their youth in the same historical context and in the same social surroundings (for example, Hoikkala 1999: 401; Snellman 2003: 29; Purhonen 2007; Virtanen 2001). Furthermore, these people share and/or recognize certain core experiences specific to the members of the group. In the research literature, these core experiences are called key experiences and are viewed as a map of the important experiences of a group of people, thus, a generation. In everyday language use, a generation is perceived as a cycle of some 30 years, and generations are counted in terms of parents and their offspring. In practice, however, there is no cycle of 30 years; chains of families do not grow at the same pace nor do they start or end simultaneously.

Within immigration research, it is a common practice to count the generations starting with the generation that actually underwent the process of immigration, i.e., moved from one country to another (Perelmann & Waldinger 1997). Thus, those Finns who left Finland and arrived in Sweden are called the first generation also in this study. The children of these Finns belong to the second generation, and the third generation consists of the grandchildren of the first generation, and so on. Those key participants who were born in Finland and migrated to Sweden with their parents as toddlers also share the key experience of growing up in a Finnish immigrant family in Sweden, and therefore belong, in my view, to the second generation. Two participants had one parent who was born in Sweden to Finnish parents, making them, strictly speaking, members of the third generation. I base my notion of a generation on the idea of key experiences.

One way to approach the question of immigrant groups and, especially, second generation individuals, is to scrutinize ethnic minority identity within two categories, namely assimilation and biculturalism (see, for example Verkuyten & de Wolf 2002; Liebkind 1989). In the first approach, identity is considered a unidimensional or bipolar phenomenon, and identifications are regarded as opposite to each other. Assimilation refers to adaptation to the dominant culture without preserving one’s own culture. The opposite of assimilation is separation, referring to the focus on one’s own culture, without engaging in the dominant culture. In the case of the second generation, the bipolar identification would be along the lines of ethnic minority identity versus national identity. Strong mainstream or national identification is understood to go hand in hand with weaker ethnic group identification. Thus, if one identifies strongly as a Swede, she or he cannot possible identify as a Finn at the same time. The bicultural or two-dimensional approach argues that culture maintenance and cultural adaptation are not mutually exclusive. Instead, the two are understood as relatively independent processes that may result in bicultural positions (Verkuyten & de Wolf 2002: 371–372). In my interview data this dichotomy positioning of ethnic minority identity versus national identity is often at the centre of discussion, and will be explored in the analysis. I want already at this point draw the readers’ attention to the often rigid rules which model our perception of the world. When does an immigrant become a member of the host nation? At which generation does immigrant background lose its significance? The participants of this study challenge, among other things, the notion of mutually exclusive categories by suggesting that in the process of searching for and formulating identifications and identities, they combine elements of many different categories, not just those of national, ethnic and/or minority identities. The resistance that new forms of identities are confronted with echoes the rigidity of our perception of categories, identities and their connections.

All of my key participants referred to their parents as ‘immigrants’ and describe their parents’ emigration in similar terms. Madeleine says her mother wanted to ‘travel the world, but fell in love already in Västerås and stayed for good’. Sofia’s mother ‘left Finland to see a bit more than her home town’. Although the majority talked about their parents’ migration in positive terms, some participants described intolerable social condition or other hardships that motivated their parents’ choice to emigrate. In Finland of the 1960s it was, for example, not unheard of for a young couple to live with their in-laws because of unemployment; for some, emigration to Sweden offered the possibility of starting an independent life. The living conditions in many parts of rural Finland in the 1960s and 1970s were substandard compared with Sweden: many encountered the first indoor toilet and running water in their house in Sweden. For many Finnish immigrants, Sweden offered a significant leap forward, economically speaking.

For many Finns, Sweden appeared very close and the stay there temporary; several research participants said their parents actually wanted to stay only for a short period of time. Katariina’s example below is a representative story about how her family came to Sweden. She herself was only 3 months old when they arrived in Sweden. As was the case in many other families, Katariina’s father had already worked in Sweden before his wife and child joined him. He had brothers who worked in Sweden, and they got a job in a factory for him.

Example 55

Lotta: Tiiäksä tai muistaks sä mihin sun isä tuli töihin täällä, et oliks sillä työpaikka täällä odottamassa?

Lotta: Do you know, or remember where your father came to work here, like was there a job waiting for him here?

Katariina: No se on aikasemmin ollu ennenkin se äitin löysi, nin se on ollu vähä eri hommissa, mettätöissä ja ICAn rekka-autoja ajanu ja Eskilstunassa, että vähän siellä ja täällä ja sitte tuli ABB ja se meni sinne töihin ja myös hankki silleen, että sillä on kolme veljee nii se vaan soitti että, mun veli tulis, ja maanantaina alkaa sitte työt, se oli sillee, että niin paljon oli töitä! (…) isä lupas äidille että lähetään viideks vuodeks, äiti ei ois halunnu lähteä mutta isä sano viideks vuodeks ja nyt ollaan oltu koht kolkyt vuotta (nauraa) [yhteistä naurua]

Katariina: Well he had been here before he found my mother, so he had done different things, did some forest work and drove ICA’s lorries and in Eskilstuna, like a bit here and there and then came the ABB ad and he got work there and he got the job through his brothers, he has three brothers and they just called that my brother would like to come and work and on Monday thereafter the job started, it was like that, there was so much work to be done! (…) my father promised my mother that they’ll go for five years, my mother didn’t want to leave but since my father said five years and here we have been now, for almost thirty years! (laughs) [joint laughter]

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, marraskuu 2004)

(First interview, November 2004)

Employment was also the triggering force behind the decision of Emma’s parents to migrate. Her parents met in Sweden – her mother had made the decision to migrate alone and travelled by herself to start her new life.

Example 56

Lotta: Miks ne tuli tänne tiedätsä?

Lotta: Why did they come here, do you know?

Emma: Töihin ne kai tuli, isä tuli töihin. Äitiltä mä kyselin enemmän eilen illalla (nauraa) äiti kerto että se oli Sonkajärvellä Ikiasulla töissä (nauraa) ja sit se sano että siellä tienas tosi vähen ja se oli kuullu että Elannossa Helsingissä tienaa enemmän ja kukaan ei ollu uskonu että se tienas 500 markkaa tai mitä lie enemmän siellä Elannossa. Mut siis puolet enemmän. Se lähti sinne sitte. Ja sitten sen veli lähti Göteborgiin ja se kuuli että siellä tienaa vielä enemmän ja silleen se lähti. Eli töiden perässä.

Emma: They came to work, I guess, dad came for work. I asked my mum a bit more last night (laughs) and she said she was working in Sonkajärvi for Ikiasu (laughs) and that the earnings there were really small and she had heard that Elanto in Helsinki paid more and no one believed here that she made 500 marks more or whatever it was more at Elanto. But it was double anyway. So she left for that. Then her brother went to Gothenburg and she heard that there you can make even more money and that’s how she left. That is, after work.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, lokakuu 2004)

(First interview, October 2004)

Sofia’s mother arrived in Sweden in the early seventies as well, finding employment as a nanny in a Finnish-Italian family. Snellman (2003) points out that many young Finnish women followed their older siblings to Sweden when the families grew and help was needed. It was a ‘natural chain reaction’ to travel to Sweden to babysit one’s nieces and nephews. Sofia’s mother did not know the family she would work for before meeting them, but got the job through a friend of hers who knew that the family needed a nanny.

Example 57

Lotta: Kom din mamma allena, när hon kom?

Lotta: Did your mother come here alone?

Sofia: Jo, hon kom ensam.

Sofia: Yes, she came by herself.

Lotta: Vet du vad hon gjorde då?

Lotta: Do you know what she was doing here?

Sofia: Hon, barnflicka, lastenvahti.

Sofia: She was a nanny, nanny.

Lotta: Åt vem?

Lotta: For whom?

Sofia: En finsk familj, en finsk-italjensk familj

Sofia: It was a Finnish family, Finnish-Italian family

Lotta: Har du ingen, har du någon aning hur det blev så att hon kom hit? Såg hon liksom i en tidning eller någon slags vänner eller släcktingar?

Lotta: Do you have any, do you have any idea why she came here? Did she see a job ad in the paper or did se have friends here or family?

Sofia: Det var nog nån vän, att hon kände inte den familjen, men vännen kände dom, tror jag.

Sofia: It was a friend of hers, she didn’t know the family, but her friend did, I think.

(Första intervjun, december 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

In recent research, elements of adventure, excitement and the voluntary nature of migration have also been presented. These alternative stories challenge the traditional migration story that focuses mainly on the hardships of life (Lukkarinen Kvist 2006; Snellman 2003). For example, Lukkarinen Kvist’s interviewees describe their emigration decision as being largely motivated by the opportunity to migrate. Emigrating from their small home village in rural Finland, Haapajärvi, to Sweden was an available, and in fact common, rite of passage into adulthood and independence, not a desperate journey to a better life. Many of Lukkarinen Kvist’s interviewees emphasized that there was no desperate need to emigrate; rather, it was curiosity and love of adventure that drove them to leave (Lukkarinen Kvist 2006). Many of the women Snellman interviewed in Gothenburg had left Finland for similar reasons; some said that the only reason for their emigration was to be free from parental supervision, to ‘date boys and to smoke cigarettes’ (Snellman 2003). Madeleine described her mother’s reasons for migrating as ‘wanderlust’: she left Finland in order to travel around the world. She had only gotten as far as Sweden when she met her husband and Madeleine’s father to be and stayed in Sweden.

Reasons for migrating are manifold. For example, contemporary economy views the phenomenon from the point of view of lifetime earnings. According to this approach, individuals weigh the earnings in their home country against those in another country; if the other country seems to be more attractive, individuals are likely to migrate (Hutton & Williamson 1994: 35). Although money certainly plays a crucial role in migration, the dynamics are more complex than a level-headed calculation of earnings. All of the key participants mentioned unemployment in Finland and better wages in Sweden, among other things, as reasons for their parents’ migration. Decisions to migrate have as many reasons as there are migrants in this world, but striving for better living conditions and better socioeconomic standards are very likely reasons to leave one country for another.

As we can read from the excerpts above, all key participants could be referred to as second generation immigrants. Yet, this clearly isn’t a term they prefer or identify with. What are they, then?

Sweden’s Finns?

The vast majority of the respondents had ambivalent feelings about the applicability of the term ‘second generation Finn’, but only a few knew how they would like to be referred to. According to the participants, how they introduce themselves to strangers depends on the situation. Ways of referring to and talking about the Finns were discussed a lot, and terminology certainly proved to be one of the core issues in the process of defining oneself. If the Finnish immigrants’ offspring do not associate themselves with the term immigrant, nor feel that they are of a second generation, who are they? What would, in the end, be the preferred name or definition for the participants?

According to the participants, there was no simple answer to the questions. The Finnish term ruotsinsuomalainen (literally: Sweden’s Finn), or ruosu (a short form of the same term combining the first syllables of both words, used widely in everyday speech as well as by the Finnish-speaking media in Sweden) refers to the group of (Finnish-speaking) Finns and their offspring living in Sweden. The group of Swedish-speaking Finns living in Sweden may also call themselves by this name, but in my study the term only refers to the Finnish-speaking Finns and their (perhaps non-Finnish-speaking) offspring.

For many, it was difficult, sometimes even impossible, to decide ‘what they were’, or how they would have liked others to refer to them. There was great confusion with these terms; many respondents and other people I spoke to in the course of the field research confused the term frequently with suomenruotsalainen (literally: Finland’s Swede, a term referring to the Swedish-speaking population of Finland). Some of my respondents had reservations about the use of this term; they rather labelled themselves as Finns or Swedes and only a few used the term ruotsinsuomalainen. Aki-Petteri was one who clearly identified with the term, as seen in the example below.

Example 58

Lotta: Sulta on kysytty tätä varmaan aikasemmminkin [öö], mutta mitä mieltä sä oot tästä ruotsinsuomalainen termistä? Onks se sellanen ihan käyttökelpoinen? Puhutsä itsestäs sillä termillä?

Lotta: You have surely been asked this before [eer], but what do you think about this term Sweden’s Finn? Is it useful? Do you use it when you talk about yourself?

Aki-Petteri: Joo, mul-mulle, mun identiteetille se sopii.

Aki-Petteri: Yes, it suits my, my identity.

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, September 2005)

For others, ruotsinsuomalainen sounded alien. Sofia, who grew up with a Finnish-speaking mother, did not like to refer to herself as ruotsinsuomalainen, and had, in the end, no real name for what she actually felt herself to be.

Example 59

Lotta: Dom använder ju här, hur säjer man det på svenska, ruotsinsuomalainen, sverigefinne eller sverige //finländare.

Lotta: They use here, how you put it in Swedish, Sweden’s Finn, Swedish Finn or Sweden// Finn

Sofia: //det måst ju vara sverigefinne.

Sofia: //it must be Sweden’s Finn.

Lotta: Men tycker du att är sverigefinne, finländare eh…

Lotta: But do you think of yourself as a Sweden’s Finn, Finn, ee…

Sofia: Jag är inte helt svensk, jag är ändå just det som jag… på många sätt… jag är ju svensk på många sätt [mm]… jag har ju bott här [mm]…och…men bara med min mamma som är finsk. [joo] Jag har inte haft en pappa som är svensk (…) sådana…[mm] hurudana. Finska sätt. Hur man firar julen och sådant.[mm]Det har jag mer, det är ju sådant som mamma har tagit med sej från Finland. Så att jag är inte helt av någonting jag är en blandning.

Sofia: I am not fully Swedish, I am really just what I…in many ways [mm]…I am Swedish in many ways…I have lived here [mm]…and…but only with my mum who is Finnish. I never had a father who is Swedish…but just like things…what kinds of things…Finnish things…how to celebrate Christmas and things like that. [mm] That is more what I feel having, those are things my mother has taken with her from Finland. So, I am not completely anything, I am a mixture.

Lotta: Blandning…finns det många särdrag i dej, vad tror du, att folk kan säja att det är ju jätte finskt i dej?

Lotta: A mixture…are there some special features in you, what do you reckon, that people can say like, that’s so Finnish about you?

Sofia: Det vet jag inte. Om det skulle synas mera? Men finskar och svenskar är så jätte lika, om det skulle vara något annat att nationalitet skulle synas.

Sofia: I don’t know. What if it would show more? But Finns and Swedes are so very similar, if it were something else, so that a nationality could be visible.

(Första intervjun, decemer 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

Example 60

Lotta: Tycker du att du är liksom ruotsinsuomalainen?

Lotta: Do you think you are a Sweden’s Finn?

Maria: Jaaaa…

Maria: yeeeah.…

Lotta: Vad säger ni här, säger ni Sveriges finländare eller eller finns det //något

Lotta: What do you say here, do you say Sweden’s Finns or is there something // else

Maria: //Sverigefinsk, kanske [sverigefinsk] ja det beror ju på. Det tycker jag. Att jag känner det mera och mera, vad när tiden går, att man har rötter från Finland. [mm] Jag är stolt över det också. Jag tycker att det är en viktig del utav mej.

Maria: //Sweden’s Finns, maybe [Sweden’s Finns] yes it depends. that is what I think. like I feel it stronger now, when time has passed, that one has roots in Finland. [mm] I am proud about it too. I think it is an important part of me.

Lotta: Okej. Hur var det när du var yngre?

Lotta: Okay. How about when you were younger?

Maria: Då ville man ju att bort allting sådant där, det ville man inte ha (skrattar) [skrattar]

Maria: It was nothing one would have wanted to be (laughs) [laughs]

(Första intervjun, april 2002)

(First interview, April 2002)

I interpret this preference on the terminological level as a response to the degree of identification with respective groups: those who choose to call themselves Finns see themselves as proper Finns, rather than mixtures of Swedes and Finns, as the term ruotsinsuomalainen suggests. Suutari (2000: 40) suggests that this ambiguity could be due to the term’s optional character; identities can be seen as fuzzy and, to some extent, free from established meanings. It seemed, however, that it was important to the participants to find a name they could be happy with and identify with. Naming, and the search for a suitable name, is a search for identifications. For the participants, this search took place in the context of ethnicity.

A social constructionist framework involves some assumptions concerning ethnicity and ethnic identity. Based on those assumptions and the interview data, I define ethnic identities as:

changing, discursive constructions, forms of social identities, which are produced, reproduced and shaped in dialogues between the members of the group themselves, dialogues with their surroundings and in internal dialogues the individuals have with themselves.

This definition of identity is based on a discursive and, to some extent, also on a dialogical approach. The discursive approach underlines new forms, hybridity, fragmented nature and ever-changing nature (Hall 1999: 248; Berger & Luckmann 1994; Potter & Wetherell 1994; Pöyhönen 2004: 141). The dialogical approach emphasizes the polyphony of identities, multiple meanings and competing interpretations of an identity (Pöyhönen 2004: 149–154). Both approaches emphasize the social character of identities and their creation processes; the existence of the other is a prime condition for any identity formation. Pöyhönen draws upon Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue and notes that dialogue does not only refer to an exchange of opinions, but also to the endless stream of impulses and experiences humans live among. Thus, the impulses shape and change identities as humans go through different phases and experiences in their lives (Pöyhönen 2004: 142).

When an identity, be it ethnic or some other kind, is considered to be a result of social interaction, it becomes evident that there is no such thing as ethnic identity in any essential sense. The social constructionist approach abandons the idea of ethnicity as a solid set of characteristics that individuals are born with, but assumes that identities emerge in interaction with others. When we spoke of identities, aspects about Finnishness and Swedishness in the participants’ lives, many mentioned concepts such as bloodline as an argument for their Finnishness. This might at first sight seem contradictory to the social constructionist approach, but in fact it only confirms the social constructionist idea of power relations and underlines the fact that speakers have only certain terms and sets of concepts available for use, even when new forms are created and manifested.

In addition to their constructed nature, ethnic identities are highly likely to be situational and vary according to the surroundings, the language that is spoken, and the life span of the person who is experiencing, describing, or memorizing an identity (Hall 1996; Anderson 1991; Barth 1969). An ethnic identity can be experienced in a variety of ways: alone, or together with the members of a group; the possibilities are endless. This view of identities and their creation does not perceive identity as something that people are born with or reach at some point in their lives. Instead, it views identities as dynamic and constantly changing.

Also Bauman (1990) considers the social dimension of life crucial and writes that identities can be imagined as a continuum with us on the one end and them on the other. The extremes us and them are understood as opposite of one another, interdependent, and unable to exist without the other. Bauman elaborates on the idea of us and them by introducing something he calls the grey zone (1990: 40–41). Bauman’s grey zone, as I understand it, is a flexible space where individuals are not necessarily part of us or them, but somewhere in between. Maybe the nature of quicksilver that can change its appearance but remains the same substance could best illustrate this grey zone.

Based on the interviews, I would like to suggest that the participants of this study are active in the grey zone. They break the dichotomy of us and them by suggesting that they belong simultaneously to both extremes. I analyze the expressions of being uncomfortable with the obvious options one is offered as a Swede or as a Finn, and the negotiations of identities, as the bipolarization and the options for identification it allows are not enough.

Eriksen suggests: ‘det finns mer både och – än antingen eller – i världen’ (2004: 13) (There is more this and that than this or the other in this world). The participants confirm this notion; there really is much more variety than ‘this or the other’. Some participants’ frustration when confronted with the question ‘what are you?’ and their reactions such as ‘Why can’t I just be what I am?’ speaks clearly of living in a grey zone rather than being connected with one or the other of the extremes.

The concept of hybridity has its origin in Latin, hybridia referring to the mixture of a tame and a wild animal, and its’ most common contemporary usage still refers to mixing and creating something new. Hybridity commonly refers to ‘the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonisation’ (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 2003: 118). Migration and living in diaspora are closely connected to the concept of hybridity. Stuart Hall (Hall 2000 in Lehtonen & Löytty 2003: 260–261) writes in the context of the United Kingdom and refers to a study conducted by Modood and others that revealed a picture of hybrid minorities. Two thirds of his respondents considered themselves as ‘Britons’ and, at the same time, for example, in the case of Pakistanis, without any inner struggle or much questioning about whether such an identification could be possible. Hall pictures the image of a Muslim student who wears street credible clothes but never skips the Friday prayers and concludes that he is living evidence of hybridity and the fading borders between us and them. (See also, Eriksen 2004: 12.)

The participants in this research do not offer such black and white combinations of their descent and their everyday lives in diaspora, but the idea of hybridity is strongly present in the ongoing dialogues of defining or describing oneself. Below is an example from the feedback conversation with Aki-Petteri, who, after a long discussion, found a suitable and satisfactory name for himself:

Example 61

Lotta: No mikä sä sitten oisit, jos noin määrittelisit itses?

Lotta: Well, what would you be then, if you would define yourself?

Aki-Petteri: No, mä olen ruotsinsuomalainen jonka kotikaupunki on Tukholma, siis Rinkeby ja mä puhun suomee ja silti ole lähes ruotsalainen. Käviskö? (nauraa)

Aki-Petteri: Well, I am a Sweden’s Finn whose hometown is Stockholm, I mean Rinkeby and I speak Finnish yet I am almost Swedish. How about that? (laughs)

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, September 2005)

Aki-Petteri gives his definition accompanied with laughter, suggesting that there is something out of the ordinary in his definition. His identification of himself as almost a Swede, although he speaks Finnish and identifies with Rinkeby more than anything else, might not seem as potentially conflicting as Hall’s examples, but the dynamic is the same. Participants reflect hybridity on an everyday level and show that hybridity is not just another buzz word of social science, but something real people can identify with and make productive use of.

As I have defined it in the previous section, ethnicity is multifaceted and can be grasped in different ways depending on the perspective. A common point of departure is, however, that it always refers to the ways in which people define their experiences of who they are. We all have several different identities which are subject to change; thus, there is no core identity that would be more ‘true’ than any other. Our identities are the result of dialogical exchanges with our social environments and dialogues with ourselves. Ethnic identities, just as other types of identities, are often subject to contesting and questioning, as we have seen in the examples. They are not self-evident, but involve arguments for belonging to a group as well as definitions of boundaries between groups (Verkuyten & de Wolf 2002: 373.) I argue that we negotiate our identities constantly, sometimes with others, sometimes with ourselves, sometimes winning, at other times losing (see also, Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003; Piller 2002; Koven 2007). My definition of identity puts emphasis on interaction and social nature of identities. Accordingly, we create our identities through and with others, and they merge in a social context through interaction with others; an identity is a dialogue and a balancing act between sameness and otherness (see, Miettinen 2004: 38; Hall 1999: 139–160; Tajfel 1978). Also ethnic self-definitions depend on the social contextual claims that are regarded as justified and acceptable in particular circumstances. This means that also accounts that act as justifications depend on the context.

Being Different

Although the participants challenged the notion of clear-cut borders and maneuvered successfully in the grey zone, they still made use of concepts actually originating from the dichotomy of us and them. This might appear strange, as they clearly distance themselves from dichotomies that cancel each other out. However, we need to bear in mind that speakers in a particular speech community, at a particular point in history, always have a restricted range of ways of talking about particular events available to them. The process of constructing and negotiating identities is often conflict-ridden because we struggle to claim or resist the images that are available to us through discourse. When the construction of an identity takes place in the grey zone, it is very likely to cause conflict because the identity will not fit in neatly with the available images, and, even more importantly, challenges the order of things, and questions the status quo. (Burr 1996: 76.)

The core issue of being different was also strongly present in the form of not being different enough. Statements, at times frustrated, such as ‘I look so Swedish that I can easily be taken for a Swede’, were common. Many added that it would be easier to live out features of one’s minority if differences compared to the Swedish standard were bigger. The problem is rooted in the ‘fact’ that Finns in Sweden do not differ visually from the Swedes, and thus the participants found themselves lacking something that would cause them to be recognized as different. In the following example, Taina, an interviewee from Upplands Väsby, narrates an event where she was confronted with the problem of not being different enough to present herself as something other than a Swede.

Example 62. Taina, born 1981, first interview, Stockholm December 2005

Lotta: Jouduksä koskaan puolustamaan suomalaisuuttasi?

Lotta: Do you have ever to stand up for your Finnishness?

Taina: Joo joo tosi usein ja siis kaikkei ärsyttävintä on kun poikaystävän äiti heittelee tollasia kommentteja vähän silloin tälläin ja mä oon tosiaan painottanu sille perheelle, että mä oon suomalainen ja jos mun äiti soittaa kun mä oon siellä niin mä puhun suomee, totta kai. Ja eikä se eikä vaikuta olevan mikään ongelma, se äitikin vaan naureskelee, että ‘tossa se vaan vaihto kieltä hahhahha!’ mutta sitten mä muistan kun me oltiin sen mummon synttäreillä ja sit siellä oli jotain tätejä ja setiä ja tollasia, niin sittenkin sen äiti huutaa sieltä pöydän päästä, tai siis sen joku sen mummon eno, tää menee vähän vaikeeks! [nauraa] Niin nin se mun poikaystävän mummom eno kysy multa jotain ja mä vastasin, että mä oon suomalainen ja sit sen äiti huutaa sielt toiselta puolelta pöytää et ‘ei se mikään sä suomalainen oo, että kyllä se on ruotsalainen!’, niin mitä sä rupeet siin sit väittelemään? Ku koko suku kasassa. Et ‘kyllä minä olen suomalainen!’ et sitä mä saan tosi usein.

Taina: Yes, yes, very often in fact. The most annoying thing is that my boyfriend’s mum comments on me, and I have really emphasized it to that family that I am Finnish and if my mum calls when I am there I speak Finnish with her, of course. And it doesn’t seem to be a problem, also the mother just laughs and goes like ‘there she goes, switches between languages just like that, ha ha ha’ but I remember when we were at grandmother’s birthday and there were, like, aunts and uncles and such, even then his mum shouts from the other side of the table, oh well, this is getting complicated! [laughter] Yes, so my boyfriend’s grandmother’s uncle asked me something and I replied that I am a Finn, so then his mum shouts from the other side of the table, like, that ‘she is not a Finn, she is a Swede!’. How can you start to argue? The whole family was present and all. So, I do have to stand up for my right to be a Finn really often.

Lotta: No miten ne sit argumentoi sitä, et miks sä et sais olla suomalainen?

Lotta: Well, how do they argue then that you couldn’t be a Finn?

Taina: No se kun mä puhun ruotsia niin hyvin ja se kun mä oon syntyny täällä niinku eihän mulla oo mitään, mut mä heitän siihen sitte et mitäs jos sä muuttaisit Kiinan ja saisit lapsen siellä niin oisko se lapsi kiinalainen. Niinkun et, emmä tiedä mun ois ainakin kauheen vaikee kuvitella että mun lapsesta tulis kiinalainen niinkun noin vaan.

Taina: Well, because I speak Swedish so well and I was born here, so there is kind of nothing left for me. But I argue back by asking that what if you moved to China and had a child there, would it be a Chinese baby? Like, I don’t know, I would have great difficulties imagining that my child would become Chinese just like that.

In this example, Taina’s boyfriend’s mother can be understood at least in two different ways. On the one hand, she can be seen as someone who is trying to include Taina in the family as ‘one of them’, and does this by belittling her and playing down her attempts to identify herself as a Finn in the conversation. Maybe she wanted to present her potential daughter-in-law as a proper Swede and not as someone with an immigrant background. Maybe her boyfriend’s mother associated pejorative images with immigrants or assumed others did so, and did not want Taina to be regarded as one of the others. Taina lists the usual counter-arguments against her identification as a Finn; these concern the place of birth, her fluency in Swedish, and her looks. She adds, frustrated, that ‘There is kind of nothing left for me.’ The lack of something unique enough to pull out of her sleeve in order to justify her identification as a Finn dominates the situation.

On the other hand, the boyfriend’s mother could be perceived simply as being mean, undermining Taina’s definition of herself as a Finn. Why she wanted to question Taina’s self-identification is not clear, but Taina experienced the situation as embarrassing and did not know how far she could go in the attempts to defend herself, as the whole family was present. She tried, however, to confront her boyfriend’s mother with the example of moving to China and bearing children there. By asking ‘Would it be a Chinese baby?’ she challenges the logic of the argument, and the conversation continues with the argument of Chinese people having different looks than the Swedes, and therefore the baby could not be Chinese. For her boyfriend’s mother, Taina apparently looks like a Swede, talks like one and, on the top of everything else, was even born in Sweden, and therefore, she should present herself as one regardless of her family background.

If we take Emma’s example about her Greek girlfriend being annoyed by questions about her origin, Taina’s example is exactly the same, but the argument runs the other way. The girl felt like a Swede but her self-definition was questioned because of her ‘Greek’ looks. Taina feels like a Finn but her self-identification is challenged because she looks like a Swede. Not being different enough was experienced as a real problem by many participants, some of whom also expressed their frustration by questioning the need to be something fixed. Emma sighed with a laugh: ‘Could I just be what I am, please!’

Also Ågren’s interviewees expressed an awareness of knowing where others put the limits of their ethnic or national identities (Ågren 2006: 228–230). Thus, it is not only the individuals themselves who define, through internal dialogues, where the lines are drawn. Another crucial dialogue takes place between the individual and other social actors. Sometimes, as in Taina’s example, the limits for self-definition posed by others are too narrow, causing frustration and anger.

Aki-Petteri’s Swedish friends were uneasy with his identification as a Finn. We were talking about a poetry slam event in Rinkeby and the follow-up article in the Dagens Nyheter (a Swedish news paper) where one of the performers was interviewed. The performer presented himself as an Assyrian and claimed that he ‘Will never become more Swedish than Swedes will allow’. I asked Aki-Petteri whether he had ever confronted similar resistance.

Example 63

Lotta: Täs on nimittäin tosi mielenkiintonen juttu tässä poetry slammistä siis, se äijä tituleeras itseään assyyrialaiseksi ja mishän se nyt on (selaa kiivaasti lehteä) se oli…täällä…ja kato tässä ett…mmm…jag kommer aldrig bli mer svensk än Sverige tilllåter mej att vara. Onks sulla ikinä ollu semmost oloo että sä et ois niinku tieäksä kunnon svedu (nauraa) siis sillee tiiäksä, niinkun ruotsalaisten mielestä?

Lotta: Here is namely a really interesting detail, I mean in this poetry slam article, this guy presents himself as an Assyrian and wait where is it (searches feverishly in the newspaper) it was…here…yes, look here…mm…I will never be more Swedish than Swedes allow me to be. have you ever had that kind of a feeling, like, you know, that you wouldn’t be a really good Swede? (laughs) like you know, in the eyes of the Swedes.

Aki-Petteri: On joo ihan selvästi

Aki-Petteri: Yes definitely.

Lotta: Miten se tulee esille?

Lotta: How does it show?

Aki-Petteri: No emmä tiiä, siinä vaan on ero. Mut kun mä tunnenki itteni suomalaiseksi ettei mulle oo ikinä ollu sitä et miks ne ei hyväksy mua koska mua ei oo kiinnostanu (nauraa) Mut kyllä se tulee, se on sellanen undermedveten juttu, että mä en oo yhtä paljon ruotsalainen. Mutta sitten kyllä joskus ruotsalaisii häiritsee jos mä sanon et mä tunnen itseni, että mä oon suomalainen. Et välillä niitten mielestä mun pitäs olla ruotsalainen, kun mä oon asunu tääll koko elämäni, että se on niitten mielestä tosi kummallista että mä tunnen itteni enemmän suomalaiseks.

Aki-Petteri: I don’t know, there just is a difference. But since I think of myself as a Finn it has never really bothered me so when they don’t accept me because I haven’t been interested (laughs) But you feel it, it is like a subconscious thing, that I am not as Swedish as they are. But then the other way around Swedes find it sometimes disturbing when I say that I feel like a Finn, that I am a Finn. Sometimes they think that I should be a Swede because I have lived here my whole life, like for them it is really weird that I feel like a Finn.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, joulukuu 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

For Aki-Petteri, the experience of not being accepted as a Swede was something he acknowledged, but he immediately added that he did not really care since it did not interest him much. His problem, if it can be called a problem at all, was rather that some Swedes ‘find it disturbing’ that he calls himself a Finn and did not understand why he would identify with Finnishness although he was born in Sweden. He feels free to choose and chooses to define himself as a Sweden’s Finn. For the Assyrian man, it seems to be up to others to decide how Swedish he is allowed to feel. Both Aki-Petteri and the Assyrian in the article, in fact, come close to Hall’s examples of polarities blending together and forming hybridity. Hybridity, when detected, is often perceived as something disturbing the status quo (Burr 1996: 76). For Aki-Petteri, the ‘permission’ to identify with being a Swede is more easily gained than is the case for, say, the Assyrian. Aki-Petteri’s acquaintances have problems with his identification as a Finn rather than a Swede. Looks clearly play a crucial role in drawing these borders. We can see, through these examples, how the game of claiming an identity is a game of power. Sometimes the power is in the hands of the participants, as in Aki-Petteri’s capability of being both a Finn and a Swede. However, in other situations, such as in Taina’s birthday example, others have the power to deny or approve identifications.

Skin color restricts the freedom of choice to define one’s identity. A ‘white’ person who perceives him- or herself as German and British can fairly freely choose which of the identifications to present as his or her ethnic origin. As for some one who is Somali and German, the same logic does not apply. Waters (1990: 18–19) argues that if the person who is Somali and German gives ‘German’ as his or her ethnic origin, he/she is easily perceived as ‘hiding the real origin’ or he/she will not be believed in the first place. She calls this racist phenomenon the ‘one drop rule’, according to which one drop of ‘black blood’ is enough to make an individual black. Aki-Petteri can choose freely, whereas the Assyrian has fewer possibilities of defining himself. As regards my example, we need to bear in mind, however, that I was quoting an interview edited for a newspaper. It is possible that the reporter lifted the sentence out of context or gave it an emphasis the interviewee did not mean to be there. Nevertheless, there are plenty of other examples, for instance, Emma’s ‘Greek-looking friend’, and all the references to looks and the easiness of blending in, that support Water’s argument.

Many participants talked about surprising moments in which they had been signified as something different by others and, to their discomfort, labeled as members of an out-group. In those situations they had not considered themselves as members of an out-group and the labeling had taken them by surprise, making them wonder what had caused their difference in those situations. In the following example, Sanna recalls a memory from her early teens when she was at a riding camp in Finland.

Example 64

Lotta: Ootsä mielestäs suomalainen sitten?

Lotta: Do you think you are a Finn then?

Sanna: Kyl mä varmaan oon ruotsinsuomalainen, mutta kyl mä tiedän että me koettiin ittemme suomalaisiks kouluaikana. et mulle kävi esimerkiks sillai, et mä täältä yhen mun kaverin kanssa kesäsin Ylöjärvellä ratsastusleirillä. [joo] ja siellä mä muistan (…) ku me seisottiin ja tehtiin jotain ja vähän matkan päässä oli jotain ratsastusleirikavereita niin ne puhu että ‘ne kaks ruotsalaista tyttöä’. ja me mun kaverin kanssa ajateltiin, että ‘ai onks täällä ruotsalaisia tyttöjä?’ (nauraa) kunnes me oikeesti tajuttiin, se kesti oikeesti aika kauan kunnes me tajuttiin, et hei ne puhuu meistä! (nauraa) [nauraa] ei me nyt ikinä oltu nähty itteemme ruotsalaisina. et kyl mä luulen et me nähtiin ittemme suomalaisina.

Sanna: I guess I am a Sweden’s Finn, but I know that at school we experienced ourselves as Finns. I have this example, like I used to go Ylöjärvi (a place in Finland) with a friend of mine to these riding camps.[yes]and there I remember (…) that we were standing a bit away from the others, doing something, and we heard the other girls from the camp talking about ‘those Swedish girls’. and we thought like ‘are here Swedish girls as well?’ (laughs) until we really realized, it really took us quite a while to figure this out, but they were talking about us! (laughter) [laughter] we had never considered ourselves as Swedes. I think, we thought of ourselves as Finns.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, syyskuu 2005)

(First interview, September 2005)

Sanna remembers, in the excerpt above, how her and her friend’s self-identifications as Finns were so strong and self-evident that they could not even relate to ‘Swedish girls’ as themselves. In their home environment in Rinkeby they were, of course, ‘the Finns’, and for a child to change identity according to location was a new realization. Sanna explained that she did not only did she want to be just like the other girls at the riding camp, but she also considered herself one of them. To be recognized as something she did not identify with at that point in her life was a surprising experience. Here again the significant role of social interaction with the surroundings in the process of defining identity, and power structures steering the process, are clearly visible.

The situational nature of identities is not only bound to the company one is in, but also to the geographical location. Sandra and others who frequently visited Finland remarked that they often identified with being Finns or Sweden’s Finns in Sweden, but felt like Swedes in Finland. Thus, the geographical location is likely to have an impact on an individual’s understanding and feeling of identity, and sometimes the impact can be decisive.

Example 65

Lotta: Joo, oletko sinä suomalainen?

Lotta: Well, are you a Finn?

Sandra: Eem, olen minä niin kuin enemmän ja enemmän tullut suomalalaiseksi, iän myötä (nauraa)[nauraa] tullut viisaammaksi. Ei mutta tota, silloin nuorempana mä olin ihan, siis se ihan riippuu missä päin mä olen. Niin kuin nytkin, jos mä olen Suomessa, niin kyllä mä silloin olen ruotsalainen. Kyllä mulla se suomalaisuuskin on mukana siellä, että mä olen niinkuin, se vaaka niin kuin kallistuu vähän niin kuin ruotsalaisuuteen, ruotsalaisen puoleen. Sitten kun mä olen täällä, täällä mä olen suomalainen.

Sandra: Eem, I become more and more Finnish the older I get (laughter) [laughter] have become wiser. No, but seriously, when I was younger I was really, it really depends on whereabouts I am. Like right now as well, if I am in Finland I am then a Swede. I carry Finnishness with me as well but the scale is tilted a little bit towards Swedishness, towards being Swedish. And then when I’m here, here I am Finnish.

Lotta: Tuleeko se olo niin kuin itsestäsi, vai tuntuuko susta, että muut ihmiset pitää sua ruotsalaisena Suomessa ja suomalaisena Ruotsissa?

Lotta: What do you reckon, does this feeling come from you yourself or do others imply that you are a Swede in Finland and a Finn in Sweden?

Sandra: Mä en, mä en, mä en sitä oikein tiedä. Mä olen sitä miettinyt paljonkin, että miksi mä tunnen näin. Mutta mä olen vaan todennut sen, että kun mä menen kesälläkin Suomeen niin kyllä mä olen niinku, mä puolustan niinku ruotsalaisuutta siellä [mm] ja suomalaisuutta ja Suomea täällä.

Sandra: I don’t, I don’t, I don’t really know. I have thought about it a lot, like why do I feel this way. But I have just noticed that in the summer when I am in Finland I stand up for and defend Swedishness there [right] and here I defend Finland and Finnishness.

(Palautekeskustelu, kesäkuu 2002)

(Feedback conversation, June 2002)

The feeling of being a foreigner, a Swede in Finland, was described also as consisting of fragments of everyday life that differed from the Swedish practices, not only of judgments of others or a gut feeling. Even shopping for groceries or buying a stamp could signal being a non-Finn in Finland.

Example 66

Sanna: Nyt jos mä aikuisena ajattelen niin (muutamia epäselviä sanoja) et ku mä meen Suomeen niin kyl mä huomaan et emmä suomensuomalainen oo, et kyllä siellä vähän turistin elkeitä on aina. Että joka kerta ennen kun mä oon vähän aikaa ollu taas Suomessa niin mä aina oon kaupan kassalla ja se on et joo sä et oo punninnu näitä hedelmiä ja sit mä, et ai niin, mä oon Suomessa! (nauraa) ja sit mä oon aina ostamassa postimerkkejä niinku mä ottasin sellasen postimerkin Eurooppaan tai niinku Suomen sisälle, ja Suomessa on vaan se yksi ja sama postimerkki, et se koko ajan muistuu mielee.

Sanna: Now if I think as an adult (few unclear words) I have noticed that when I go to Finland I am not a Finland’s Finn. one gets a little the characteristics of a tourist there. Like, every time before I have spent some time in Finland I find myself standing at the cashier and she goes like you haven’t weighed this fruit and I realize like I am in Finland! (laughs) or then I am always buying stamps like I ‘d like to have a stamp for Europe or like inside Finland, and in Finland there is the one and only stamp, you are reminded of it all of the time.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, syyskuu 2005)

(First interview, September 2005)

Those participants who spoke Finnish differentiated between a suomensuomalainen, a Finland’s Finn, suomalainen, a Finn, and ruotsinsuomalainen, a Sweden’s Finn. Finland’s Finns were proper Finns, those to whom comparisons were made and who seemed to represent the standard of a Finn. Although many identified with being Finnish or even called themselves Finns, they were quick to remark on the differences between Finland’s Finns and Sweden’s Finns. Aki-Petteri, who expressed a strong Finnish, or Sweden’s Finnish, identity, fantasized about living in Finland for a while to find out whether he could ever learn to ‘think and feel like a real Finn’.

Example 67

Lotta: Mikä sua siellä kiinnostas eniten?

Lotta: What is the most interesting thing there?

Aki-Petteri: Siis mua vaan kiinnostais eniten se fiilis, että sais tuntea ittensä ihan Suomen suomalaiseks, se ois tosi kiinnostavaa. Tai että tulisko mulle ollenkaan se että nyt mä alan hiffaa Suomee, koska mulla on sellanen kuva, että se on vähän erilainen, tosi erilaista kaikki järjestelmät ja kaikki vaikka periaatteessa se on ihan saman tyylinen maa silleen. Mutta kuitenkin mulla on sellanen fiilis, kuitenkin, että pystysinkö mä tuntee itteni suomensuomalaiseksi.

Aki-Petteri: Well I would just find interesting the feeling, like that I could feel like a real Finland’s Finn, it would be really interesting. Or would I get it at all, the thing that now I am beginning to understand Finland, because I have the image that it is a bit different, really different with all systems and although everything in principle is in the same style. But yet I have a feeling that, like, could I ever feel like a Finland’s Finn.

Lotta: Yymm

Lotta: Yymm

Aki-Petteri: Mut en mä usko sitä (naurahtaa)

Aki-Petteri: But I don’t think I could (laughs a little)

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, September 2005)

By having said this, he implies that there are some fundamental differences between Finns who live in Finland and those abroad who identify themselves as being Finns. But then what is this Finnishness?

13 BBC reported on December 12th 2006 that ‘Britain’s teenagers risk becoming a nation of ‘Vicky Pollards’ held back by poor verbal skills.’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6173441.stm, looked up 6.7.2011

14 I have not been able to find out on what grounds these questionnaires are sent out, i.e. who is Swedish enough to answer the questions.

6. What is Finnishness?

So far I have discussed two main representation repertoires of Finnishness in Sweden as portrayed by key participants of this study. First, we took a close look at the role and impact of language in the formation of identities, and as an argument justifying the feeling of belonging to the group of Finns. Language as the defining aspect of Finnishness was the clearest, and for many the only, defining element of Finnishness in Sweden. The participants, however, emphasized that Finnishness also included other aspects, or, in fact, was something else than the language. The majority did not seem to be too worried about the future of Finnishness in Sweden even though the language would slowly disappear with passing generations. This attitude indicates that the hypothesis of the symbiotic nature of language and culture is not unanimously supported by everyone. Second, the representation repertoire of being different was examined. Participants reflect around their subjective perceptions of themselves and talk about the experiences of how they are perceived by others. Sometimes their self images and they way they are perceived by others are in stark contrast, even in conflict. One can sound different, look different, or simply feel different. Or the other way around: one can be perceived as different in all the above mentioned ways. The participants talk about the dilemma of looking like a Swede, sounding like one and yet, feeling like something different.

What is it, in the end, that participants associate with Finnishness? So far the examples have, on the one hand, presented language as the central theme, a magnet around which everything gathers. On the other hand, differences and different-making has been presented as a core element of Finnishness in Sweden. In this chapter, I will discuss Finnishness from two additional angles; angles from which the research participants themselves approached and defined it:

• Geographical place to where roots are connected

• Emotions and character traits

As for the first point, the questions centered around aspects concerning Finland as a physical country. What kind of a place is Finland for the participants? What does it mean to visit Finland? What are roots, and where do they connect one? As for the second point, the cluster of questions concerns characteristics that the participants ascribe to Finnishness. With what kind of characteristics and traits are Finns described, and to what extent do these attributes apply to the participants themselves?

A Place Called Finland

The examples in the previous sections, dealing with being different and the process of drawing borders between us and them, show that feelings of being something can be triggered and defined by the physical surroundings, not only by social interaction between people. When the participants talked about Finland as a place, it was usually described in connection with having emotional ties, even when they felt like tourists there, as Sanna realized at the cashier’s when she had forgotten to weigh the fruit; a very small but crucial element of pragmatic knowledge of everyday life. The same applies to Sandra’s description of the ambivalence about her feelings of national belonging and loyalty towards Sweden or Finland, depending on her geographical location. The place determined her feelings much more than anything else.

Finland as a concrete country with borders, cities and a countryside embodied for many an instance that, on the one hand, made them Finnish, and on the other, made it clear that they were not ‘proper Finns’ but ‘Swedes’ and endowed them with traits of a tourist. In fact, places create boundaries of cultures separating those who do not belong there from those who do.

Generally speaking, Finland was for the majority a holiday country, a place to visit with an interval of six months or a year. Typically, they travelled to Finland once a year to visit grandparents. The locations where most grandparents lived reflect the geographical distribution of the migration flows: the destinations of holiday trips were the north of Finland or the west coast, the most migration-sensitive areas in Finland (see also, Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000: 157). Trips to Finland were reminisced about as something exciting but also as tiring, long drives. Because many had relatives in northern Finland and the families often travelled by car crossing the border in Haaparanta where Finland and Sweden have a common border at the end of the Gulf of Bothnia, the journey often amounted to more than 1,000 kilometers. Snellman (2003) remarks that her interviewees (who started their journey in Gothenburg some 500 km further south in Sweden) described the long drives to Finland as heroic events that did not include stops or resting, as it was very important to get ‘home’ as soon as possible. One of her interviewees described these trips to Finland ‘As exciting and awaited as Christmas Eve for children’ (Snellman 2003: 230–231). A certain excitement is to be found in the accounts of the research participants as well, but in a much milder form than in Snellman’s observations.

The grandparents of most key participants lived in rural areas, and even if they lived in a town, the holidays in Finland were usually spent in the countryside, at summer cottages. The environment where holidays were spent tinted the images and memories. Maria, who at the time of the interviews had a great-grandmother in Finland with whom she was close and whom she visited at least once a year, talked about Finland as a ‘Place with grazing cows and endless, flat fields’. This is, of course, very different from how those who visited their relatives in the lake district, with its rolling hills, in the barren landscapes of the North or in the bigger cities in the South described Finland. Regardless of the destination, one shared characteristic of Finland was its image as a holiday destination that one looked forward to visiting, and where one stayed for a short while, and returning home satisfied and content. In the example below, Sanna sums up the aspects of Finland as a holiday destination that wraps up the most important points about what Finland as a place was perceived.

Example 68

Sanna: Monella ruotsinsuomalaisella varmaan käy niin, että ne käy vain kerran vuodessa kesäsin Suomessa, mummolassa suunnillee, no mä nyt oon käyny vähän muuallakin, mutta monet käy sukulaisia tapaamassa, ja sä oot mökillä, sä oot saunassa sä oot maalla, sulle jää sellanen kuva, myös aika ruusuinen että Suomeen on aina kiva mennä, siellä on aina ihanaa, ja siellä on aina sukulaiset haluu tavata, no suku ei kaikille oo aina niin helppo asia.

Sanna: I guess it happens to many Sweden’s Finns that they visit Finland only once a year in the summer, at the grandparents’, well, I have been to other places as well, but many visit relatives, and you stay at the summer house, go to sauna in the countryside, you are left with this rosy image of Finland as a place that is always fun to go to, it is always lovely there, and there your relatives always want to meet, well, relatives aren’t easy so easy for everyone.

Lotta: No mut, useimmille kai kuitenkin?

Lotta: Well, but for the most, though?

Sanna: Mut kuitenkin… mummille mennään ja on kesäloma ja siel on kaikkee hyvää syötävää.

Sanna: Well, anyway… we go to the granny’s and have a summer vacation, and there are all these delicious things to eat.

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2006)

(Feedback conversation, December 2006)

Sanna expresses awareness of the illusionary nature of Finland as an ever-sunny holiday country where one always enjoys staying. She is quick to add, though, that she herself has also seen other things than just the carefree summer holiday in the countryside. She brings up the aspect of uneasy relationships with relatives, and is the only one who mentions in passing that family is not always a source of joy for everyone. My (rather dismissive) reaction: ‘But for the most, though?’ cut her off in the middle of thinking about difficult relationships with close family and relatives, and she continued talking about Finland as a holiday place. She did not return to the topic later in the interview. I did not notice cutting her off during the interview, only later during the analysis my attention was drawn to this sequence. This detail deserves some more attention, because some parents whom I interviewed, Sanna’s included, talked openly about difficult family situations in Finland. For instance, rigid religious social codes caused continuous conflicts and had partially motivated the decision to migrate. Many in the parents’ generation spoke about difficult family relations, maybe not based on personal experience but as situations experienced by other people. According to statistics and studies, most Finns came to Sweden simply to make more money than they could have made in Finland, or because it was an available adventure, but others had difficulties with their families in Finland (Lainio 1996; Snellman 2003; Lukkarinen Kvist 2006).

As I did not concentrate, in the interviews, particularly on family relationships with the extended family in Finland or ask explicit questions about the nature of family ties, I am hesitant to draw conclusions about why the participants did not mention any problematic issues connected with their relatives in Finland although their parents spoke about those things. I suggest, however, that since Finnishness was presented as a very family oriented issue in the key participants’ lives, the extended family in Finland can also be understood as an important building block of Finnishness. Maybe poor relations with the family were considered a taboo subject which should rather not be discussed in an interview with a complete stranger. It could also be that the participants did not want to present themselves and their families as a continuation of the canonized image of Finns with problems, but break away from those images, suggesting whole new categories and landscapes for their ethnicity to unfold. (See also Ågren 2006: 239–241.)

Some participants characterized the relationships with their families in Finland as thin, but no one said they had poor relations with Finnish relatives. Usually the less close, or non-existing, relationships were explained as not having peers of the same age such as cousins or second cousins, or the mutual lack of interest in meeting. For those who did not speak Finnish, the language represented distance. Nevertheless, those who had contact with their relatives in Finland described their relationship with the extended family in a positive light.

For most of the key participants, visits had become somewhat less frequent over the years. This was usually explained as resulting from the summer jobs they started to do, in their teens, in their home cities, and their interest in making holiday plans of their own. Of the ten key participants, eight had been to Finland during the 6 months prior the first interview, and four out of these eight knew when the next trip would take place. All those who visited Finland regularly stressed the importance of cousins of the same age, or second cousins of the same age for those who had children. Only Emma and Aki-Petteri mentioned having Finnish friends in Finland whom they visited. Overall, the family and relatives were the reason for the visits. Only one of a total of 29 participants had never been to Finland.

Visits Beyond Family Holidays

In addition to family visits, some of the participants had been to summer camps as children, or had had summer jobs in Finland. Sandra was the only one who had spent one somewhat more extensive period in Finland. She stayed three months in Helsinki during her studies.

Example 69

Lotta: Ai että sä olet kuitenkin ollut pitempiäkin aikoja Suomesssa?

Lotta: Oh you have also been even longer periods in Finland?

Sandra: Joo, oon ollut. Että aina kesäsin oltiin kesälomalla, kaiket kesät. Sitten koulussa mä tota sain sitten stipendin ja pääsin Helsinkiin tekemään mun lopputyötä. Mä asuin Helsingissä kolme kuukautta, ja siitä on viis vuotta. Että kyll mä näin sieläkin, että Suomi oli ennen mulle sellainen kesäloma maa, siellä oli lomaa vaan. Se oli sellaista hohtoa. Sinne vaan mentiin kesällä ja oltiin [ja on ihanaa ja aurinko paistaa] nii, nii! sitä oltiin vapaana ja tolleen. Sitten mä menin Helsinkiin ja, mä asuin sen kolme kuukautta siellä. Mä aloin maaliskuussa ja tulin maalis, huhti, toukokuussa, toukokuun lopulla pois. Et siellä oli talvi ja tuisku ja kaikkea tommosta ja kyllä sielläkin piti vuokra maksaa, että, ja kyllä sielläkin tuli arki. Et se oli ihan jännää niinku kokea se [no varmasti] että kyllä sieläkin oli arki, että se ei ollut sitä saunaa ja uimista, että kyllä sielläkin satoi vettä ja tuli lunta, ja kaikkea tylsää ja harmaita päiviä.

Sandra: Yes, I have. We were here always for the summers holidays, every summer. And then at school I like got a scholarship and was able to go to Helsinki to write my thesis. I lived in Helsinki for three months, and this was five years ago. And I saw there that Finland had been a holiday country for me before, it was just about holidays there. Like glorification. You went there in the summer and were there [and it is lovely and the sun shines] yes, yes! One was off duty, kind of. Then I went to Helsinki and, I lived there for three months. I started in March and came back March, April, May, end of May. So it was winter and blizzards and such, and also there you had to pay rent, like, and also everyday life kicked in, it was exciting to experience that[ I bet] also there everyday life is a fact, and it isn’t just about the going to sauna and swimming, it rains in Finland too and snows, and there are also grey and boring days.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, huhtikuu 2002)

(First interview, April 2002)

Sandra had stayed in Helsinki for the early spring months between March and May, and describes the new experience of being in Finland living an everyday life, with an interesting emphasis on the weather: ‘So it was winter and blizzards and such’, and ‘it rains in Finland too, and snows, and there are also grey and boring days’. It is true that the climate in Helsinki is somewhat harsher than in the Mälaren Bay area where she grew up, but the memory of ‘winter and blizzards’ is most probably connected rather with the general feeling of being in Helsinki than with the local climate as such. It is highly unlikely that she had experienced actual blizzards in Helsinki during the period she stayed there, but the contrast between the lush summer months in the countryside by a big lake, where her family used to spend their summers, and Helsinki in March has all the elements to create the memory of grey and cold days. Although the months in Helsinki were sometimes hard for her, she described the period as an exciting experience that offered a completely different view of Finland than the summer cottage setting. Rent had to be paid, and, as she put it, ‘Everyday life kicked in’.

Lukkarinen Kvist (2006) observes that when her aging interviewees talked about their old home village they made references to the cold weather, especially to the fundamental darkness of the black fields before snow fall in the autumn. The darkness was nothing they missed or romanticized: on the contrary, it was described as oppressive and hard, something they were glad not to have to live with constantly. Lukkarinen Kvist assumes that the ‘coldness and darkness’ of the villages that her interviewees talked about reflects the passing time and the slowly growing distance to the area (Lukkarinen Kvist 2006: 182–185). I argue that the weather references in Sandra’s example are the same kind of expressions, signaling a growing distance from, and in her case a more realistic picture of, Finland as something else than the land of eternal sunshine. On a metaphorical level, sunshine and blizzards are in sharp contrast, as are ‘grey and boring days’ and ‘lovely and sunshine’.

At the time of the interviews in 2002, Sandra was in close contact with Finnish everyday life through her Finnish boyfriend, who at that point lived in Finland. However, the study period in Helsinki initiated her to Finnish everyday life years before she met him. Sandra also mentioned how good the period was for her Finnish language skills. She described being exhausted by eight o’clock in the evening in the beginning of her stay, but quickly getting accustomed to the quick pace, new words, and the prosody of the Finnish spoken in Helsinki. She described the language experience with a metaphor of oiling chains.

Example 70

Sandra: (…) tää meidän suomenkieli, tää meidän kotisuomenkieli, niin se harjaantui, mulla tuli sellasta Helsingin slangi sitten mukaan. Ja sitten äiti sanoi puhelimessa ett hei, älä puhu niin nopeasti että hänkin kuulee mitä sanot! (nauraa) [nauraa] että siis mulla harjantui aivan hirveesti se, että se on niinku niinku mä olen verrannut sitä pyöränkettinkiin panee öljyä, niin se sujuu paljon nätimmin. Tai siis moottoriin panee vähän öljyä lisää. Että kyllä se moottori pyörii kumminkin, mutta jos sinne panee öljyä, niin se pyörii paremmin [niin eikä kuluta niin paljoa] nii niin (nauraa) että silleen.

Sandra: (…) our Finnish, this our home-Finnish, so it got practiced I got this kind of Helsinki slang in to it. And once my mother said on the phone like hey, don’t talk so fast so that also she would get it what I say! (laughs) [laughs] so my Finnish got practice really a lot, it is like I have compared it to the bicycle chain, and putting oil on it, then it will go much neater. Or if you add a little oil to an engine. The engine rolls indeed, but if you add oil it rolls better [and doesn’t wear you out so much] yeah, yeah (laughter) like that.

(Palautekeskustelu, kesäkuu 2002)

(Feedback conversation, June 2002)

Sandra uses the word home-Finnish that points to the different registers of the language. She described her skills in Finnish as fluent, but still had to translate Finnish reading material at the university into Swedish to really make sure she understood what it was about. I was not primarily interested in the differences between Finnish spoken in Finland and Finnish spoken in Sweden, but asked some of the interviewees about the Finnish they spoke in their everyday lives and whether they had noticed any differences between their language use and that in Finland. The obvious answers concerned the old fashioned feel to their Finnish (see also, Lainio 1989). As I discussed in the beginning of the analysis, the command of Finnish was always dependent on the situations in which it was used, that is, the skills were register-dependent.

Visits to Finland were remembered with lightness and laughter, yet they grew less frequent, maybe even less important over the years. When the key participants were small, the visits took place during summer holidays, and for some families also Christmas was a ‘Finland holiday’. But, just as Snellman (2003) and Lukkarinen Kvist (2006) have observed in their studies of first generation Finns in Sweden, the longer the families stayed in Sweden, the less frequent the visits to Finland became. The reasons for visiting Finland changed over the years. Sofia describes her mixed feelings about a visit to Finland to attend a funeral. Usually her trips to Finland were connected with holidays and a feeling of being off duty; this time, however, the reason for the trip was a less pleasant one.

Example 71

Lotta: Hur känns det att fara till Finland? Har du nån’ patriotisk känsla att fara dit? (skrattar)

Lotta: How does it feel to travel to Finland? Do you have a sort of a patriotic feeling when you travel there? (laughs)

Sofia: (skrattar) Det är kul, det är också märkligt att åka till begravningen, att man skall åka till Finland, och det är lite kul att som hälsa på släktingar, och oftast är det lov, man har ledigt och så kom en konstig känsla att det var ingen rolig resa men, det är kul att åka dit.

Sofia: (laughs) It’s cool, it is also weird to travel there for a funeral, that you travel to Finland, and it is a little bit exciting and nice to visit relatives, you have time off and then this strange feeling came that it wasn’t a nice trip, but it is nice to go there.

(Första intervjun, december 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

For many of the first generation, the yearly trip to Finland was, as Snellman (2003) reports, as anticipated as Christmas for a child; for their children’s generation, however, trips to Finland were not a yearly necessity, as one participant put it. For some there was ‘enough Finland’ in taking a 24-hour cruise on the Baltic Sea, a popular pastime for Scandinavians in general. Nevertheless, the place called Finland, perceived as countryside or city, filled with sunshine or beaten by blizzards, or delicious food, or as a cruise on the Baltic was talked about with tenderness and contentment.

Roots

In addition to being sunny, or snowy and cold, Finland was the place connected to one’s roots. To have roots was a frequently employed metaphor in the descriptions of what Finland meant to the participants and what Finnishness consisted of. They described belonging to Sweden, more specifically to the cities and boroughs they lived in, but also being in some way connected to Finland. It seemed that the metaphor of roots was reserved for expressing the genetic link to Finland through one’s parents. No one claimed to have their roots in Sweden although all of them had grown up there.

Lola, a participant from the Rinkeby area who had two small children with a Spanish partner, describes her feelings of belonging in the following example. I have chosen to use this example even though Lola is not one of the key participants because her explanation of roots captures in a few sentences what almost every person I interviewed during the past six years tried to formulate.

Example 72

Lola: Mä oon ruotsinsuomalainen, siksi kun siis miten mä sen tunnen on että mun juuret on Suomessa, mut mun kotikaupunki on kuitenkin Tukholma kun täällä mä tunnen kaikki kadut ja täällä mä oon käyny koulun ja emmä Helsingissä tai Tampereella jos mä meen, niin en mä tiedä minkä nimisiä katuja siellä on tai miten siellä tehdään tai mihin siellä mennään (…) ja mä tunnen ihan lunkisti et okei se toimii, hyvä on, et jos mä haluun löytää mun juuret että jos mä oon jossain olotilassa että mä tartten löytää mun juuret niin mun tekee mieli mennä vaan Lempäälään tai Ruovedelle mummolan pihaan rappusille istumaan ja kattomaan niitä puita niin sitten mä löydän kaiken uudestaan ja voin lähtee vetää, tai siis jatkamaan mun elämää. Mutta siinä on se juuri juttu, ja aina kun tulee Suomesta niin tuntee kunnolla, että kuka mä oon.

Lola: I am a Sweden’s Finn, because like how should I put this I feel that my roots are in Finland, but Stockholm is still my home city, here I know all the streets and I went to school here, and if I go to Helsinki or Tampere I don’t know the names of streets there are or how things are done there or where people go (…) and I think it is all cool, like, right, this is how it works, if I want to find my roots, if I find myself in a state where I need to get to my roots I just want to go to Lempäälä or Ruovesi [places in about the middle of Finland] to my grandmother’s yard to sit on the steps and look at the trees, and I find everything again, then I can take a hike again, or continue my life. But that is how the root story goes, always when coming back from Finland I feel properly who I am.

(Lola, syntynyt 1973, ensimmäinen haastattelu, lokakuu 2005)

(Lola, born 1973, first interview, October 2005)

For Lola, her roots were to be found at her grandmother’s house, and were guaranteed to be waiting for her there whenever a feeling of wanting to find them came over her. To find the way back to one’s roots and to feel empowered at and by them was not as simple for everyone as Lola described. She emphasizes, in this excerpt, the fact that Stockholm is her home city where she has gone to school, and not only knows her way around because the names of streets are familiar but also understands ‘How things are done and where people go’. I argue that she refers to a shared social code she is familiar with in Sweden and has no problems interpreting, but that she does not share the Finnish code in Finland. She expresses a strong feeling of knowing who she is when she returns from her roots.

All the participants spoke of roots, but it was a topic that proved difficult to explain. It was hard for them to find words to describe what roots meant or what they stood for. Sometimes it was the lack of roots that was indicative; it appeared easier to formulate what one lacked than what one experienced having. In the example below, Emma talks about her rootlessness in Sweden and the longing for something to be hers also in Sweden.

Example 73

Emma: Mulla on Ruotsin passi ja onhan Ruotsi kuitenkin mun kotimaa, mutta samalla emmä tiedä mihin mä kuulun. Mä mietin tosi paljon pienenä että missä mä haluisin asua Suomessa vai Ruotsissa sen jälkeen kun me muutettiin Ruotsiin. Ku Ruotsissa mullei oo mitään mikä pitää mua kiinni tai jos mä muuttaisin Suomeen niin mä en tiedä mitä mä tekisin. Mun vanhemmat tietty, mutta jos nekin muuttais Suomeen, niin ei mulla ois mitään Ruotsissa. Ja mä kuitenkin haluisin että mulla ois jotain Ruotsissa… Mutta Suomessa mulla on jotenkin sellanen luonnollinen juttu, että sinne mennään, ja, mä en oikeen osaa sanoo… Mutta kyllä mul on, kyl mä oon jotenkin ruotsalainen, mutta ettei oo oikeen oikeutta sanoo sillee.

Emma: I have a Swedish passport and Sweden is my home country, but at the same time I don’t know where I belong to. I thought about it a lot when I was younger that where I would like to live in Finland or Sweden, after we moved here. Here there is nothing that is keeping me here or if I’d move to Finland so I wouldn’t know what to do. My parents of course, but if also they’d move to Finland I wouldn’t have a thing in Sweden. Yet I’d like to have something here… But in Finland I kind of naturally have something, you go there and, I cannot really explain it… But I do have, I am somehow also Swedish, but I don’t feel like having the right to call myself a Swede.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, lokakuu 2004)

(First interview, October 2004)

I have already discussed the continuation of this interesting example, where Emma elaborates on what could give her the right to call herself Swedish, in the previous section in which symbols of national belonging were discussed (see, example 48). Her account of the disconnected feeling had a sad undertone, and in my interview notes I observed her wringing her hands while talking. She could not find anything that could fill the emptiness of not having ‘anything’ in Sweden.

In these two examples, roots seem to stand for, and be equal to, a genetic trace. In Lola’s example, the roots indeed lead back to her genetic origin, her grandmother’s yard. Lola does not, of course, feel genetically connected to the trees in her grandmother’s yard that she mentions as important in experiencing her roots, but her roots are connected only remotely to certain people (her grandmother whom she, interestingly, does not even mention in her account of roots); for her, her roots are much more tied to the location. As for Emma, it seems that the lack of something seems to signify roots understood as a genetic trace for her.

A genetic trace leading to a location where the participants come from seems to weigh more than the feelings of belonging to a place. Emma announces without any further explanation: ‘Sweden is my home country’. I argue that when no further account or explanation follows a statement, it means that the speaker treats the statement as uncontroversial and does not expect criticism from the person to whom he or she is talking. (See, for example van Eemeren and Grotendorst 2004; Snoeck Henkemans 1997; Verkuyten & de Wolf 2002.) In addition to calling Sweden her home country, Emma states that she has a Swedish passport, a document that clearly symbolizes national belonging. Nevertheless, the fact that her family does not come from Sweden appears to be at the core of the emptiness and longing she describes feeling for Sweden in this context.

To argue within the discourse of ethnic belonging translating to genetics has a strong primordial undercurrent. The reference to roots and genetics leads us also to the idea of genetic differences between people, such as race, and the implications of these differences. Primordialism in its most extreme form explains the differences between ethnic groups as based on their genetic origins. The genetic origin explains why groups are different from one another, and ethnicity is explained by a bloodline connection that explains our affinity to other members of the same group (Hobsbawm 1983: 73; Anttonen 1999).

Eriksen (1996) points out that botanical metaphors are often used without critical scrutiny. Metaphors are created and sustained in a framework that is self-explanatory and self-justifying. This means that when the metaphor is tied to biology it quickly appears as something natural, real and persistent. Roots can become the sole condition for being something, and the bloodline can end up as the ultimate reason for exclusion or inclusion (see also, Ågren 2006: 176). I argue, however, that what the participants connote with the metaphor of roots is rather the idea of ethnicity as an experience they recall in themselves. When the participants talk about genetics, roots and heritage as expressions or explanations for feelings of belonging, it is an available representation, simply a possible way of talking (Eriksen 1998). They might talk about having roots in Finland, but I regard these references to roots as nothing static or binding in the botanical sense (a tree is anchored to the land by its roots) but rather as flexible possibilities for creating connections. As some experienced ‘enough Finnishness’ when taking a cruise, we can argue that roots are flexible mental constructions that can connect and be tied to any place or entity, for that matter. These root connections were created all of the time, and the participants were quick to remark that since they grew up and became adults in Sweden they felt Swedish, at least to some extent, and thus had strong self-made connections to a place that they, in their own words, ‘do not come from’. The emphasis on different connections is often up to the participants themselves, but not always, as we have seen in the examples where others challenge and/or dismiss their self-definitions.

Lukkarinen Kvist (2006: 219) observes in her study that none of her interviewees used the metaphor of roots when they described their feelings of belonging to their home town in Sweden, but that in connection with their birthplaces in Finland, roots were frequently mentioned. Yet, all of them described themselves as being at home in Eskisltuna and belonging there. It was the social relationships, the existence and contact to children and grandchildren that had replaced roots. She remarks that rootlessness is often associated with individuals residing elsewhere than the country where they were born; however, none of her interviewees used the metaphors of being rootless or homeless. Just as in my data, roots were apparently perceived primarily as genetic leads and the interviewees avoided using this word in the descriptions of their home town in Sweden.

Emma pointed out in an email she wrote to me after the interview a quotation by a young novelist, Elin Lindqvist, who was born in Tokyo to Swedish parents and has lived her whole life in different places all around the world. In the quotation below, Lindqvist (2006) redefines roots. Instead of seeing roots as something solid and anchoring, she describes them as floating and mobile, like the roots of a sea rose that can continue living and flourishing also in another source of water than where it originally started to grow.

‘Istället för att vara rotlös, blir jag rotfylld. Som en näckros får jag rörliga rötter och blir stabil i mitt eget kringfacklande. En resande rot […] som slår sig ner på vattenytan runt jorden lite varstans.’

‘Instead of being rootless, I become filled with roots. Like a water lily I get mobile roots and become stable in my fluttering around. A travelling root (…) setting roots on the water’s surface just about anywhere in the world.’ (My translation)

Maybe the participants of my study could identify with the idea of the traveling roots, and the ability to become stable in movement, or in a place that one’s parents do not come from. Based on my data, I suggest that the metaphor of roots is waiting for a change in meaning. Participants clearly needed the feeling of roots in order to define themselves, and to gain strength in their identity as Finns in Sweden. At the same time, however, in calling Sweden one’s home country and the place one knows best, I hear the same sounds of belonging somewhere that is suggested by the metaphor of roots. Just as it is possible to challenge the notion of dominant monolingualism, and suggest alternative, more realistic, points of departure, the concepts of roots as binding us by blood can also change.

I also suggest that the meaning of a place as signifying ethnic belonging is changing. Ethnic belonging is not necessarily anything solid and stable. Proverbs such as ‘being out of place’ or ‘a place to call home’ underline the perception of place as something we are familiar with and feel we belong to, and something everyone needs (Massey 1995; see also Keith & Pile 1993). If a cruise is ‘Finland enough’, it could be argued that important arenas for the manifestation of Finnishness have already been created by the second generation to meet their needs and wishes.

Finnishness as Bravery

Finnishness was also described in terms of intimacy and emotions, not only as the country of eternal sunshine or the place to which one’s mystical roots were connected. In fact, Finnishness did not seem to need a physical contact to the soil of Finland but could be, as the participants listed: a ship cruise, a character trait, a mood or, in the end, something that could not be explained. In the following example, Finland’s wars and the mentality of being prepared to defend one’s country come up as an element, on the one hand, in something Sandra would like to pass on about Finnishness, and, on the other, as an explanation for why ‘Finns are the way they are’

Example 74

Lotta: (…) mitkä ois semmosia juttuja jotka sä haluaisit ehdottomasti viedä eteen päin ja säilyttää, että nää on niinkun mun suomalaisia juttuja mitkä on mulle tärkeitä.

Lotta: (…) what could be things you’d like to pass on and preserve, like that these are my Finnish things that are precious to me?

Sandra: (…) se jonkinlainen henkinen, semmonen sisu jos voi sanoa, sisu, mikä se nyt sitten on. Suomalainen sisukkuus ja sitten se että miksi suomalaiset on sillai henkeen ja vereen on niinkun sotaa käyneet ja tollasta, mitä ruotsalaiset ei oo koskaan tehny. Että niinkun puollustaneet omaa maata ja että kertoo vähän miksi ne on silleen tehny ja miksi se on niin syvällä se suomalaisuus. Ihmisissä.

Sandra: (…) it is this some sort of a mental, this sisu if it can be called that, whatever it is in the end. Finnish sisu and then why the Finns have so through and through like gone to war and such, what the Swedes have never done. Like defended one’s own country and to tell a little about the reasons why they did what they did and why it is so deep that Finnishness. In people.

(Palautekeskustelu, kesäkuu 2002)

(Feedback conversation, June 2002)

Sandra combines sisu, the stubbornness to go on although it seems impossible to reach the goal, with the war history of Finland, and contrasts this with the lack of those elements in Swedes and Swedish history. She describes the Finns, people who stand up for their country, as clearly different from the Swedes who ‘have never’ defended theirs. It is not my aim here to start splitting hair about the wars in which Sweden has been under attack, but to shed light on the impression Sandra has about the important aspects of her Finnishness. Although references to sisu often caused bursts of laughter and ridicule at the mere existence of sisu, Sandra does not ridicule it, nor the idea of defending one’s country. She simply lists them as personally important aspects of Finnishness. I argue that even though sisu was introduced in connection to irony and jokes, it is a real building block of Finnishness for the participants. The fact that it is joked about does not undermine its existence as a crucial element in the story of Finnishness; rather, it is one of the elements available for constructing Finnishness.

Previous studies have shown that references to war are common in first generations’ accounts about Finnishness and Finland (for example, Kuosmanen 2001; Lainio 1996; Korkiasaari & Tarkianen 2000). But unlike Ågren (2006), who observed references to war as strong elements of Finnishness in her study about young adults with a Finnish background, my interview data show only a few references to war history. Nevertheless, in the example below, the horrors of war are seen as an essential element of Finnishness. We were talking about the connection between alcoholism and certain nationalities, and Madeleine started to explain why it is that Finns drink: vicinity to Russia, the war, and cold weather.

Example 75

Felix: Joo, men det är ju finnarna, det är ju Sverige, det är oss norrlänningarna samma sak att där bränner man hemma och allt //det där

Felix: Yeah, but it is the Finns in Sweden, but also us from Norrland the same thing that we make alcohol at home and all// that stuff

Madeleine: //men då skyller man ju oftast, när man pratar om finnarna och deras hårda liv att det är närheten till Ryssland, dom har ju [Felix:kalla vintrarna] oo, oo, och man sätter det tillsammans med att de har gått genom sådana saker, och skydda Sverige från stormakten och det skall vi vara tacksamma för, men ändå så blir det ju de…öö… det blir ändå sidosatt när det kommer till kriget, upplever jag. fastän jag försöker kämpa för det att fattar du inte att utan Finland skulle vi vara (otydligt) (skrattar)

Madeleine: //but when Finns are the topic of conversation then their hard life gets the blame that it is the nearness to Russia, they have [Felix: cold winters] yeah, yeah, and it adds to the stuff they have gone through, and protected Sweden from a super power, and we should be grateful for it, but in the end it is…ee… it is left aside when we talk about wars, I think. although I try to fight for it that like don’t you see that without Finland would we be (unclear) (laughs)

Felix: Finnarna, min farfarsfar dog i ryskt fångläger, på grund av att han slog sig på finnarnas sida mot Ryssen men sedan när dom förlorade så och de blev en lydstat så blev de tvungna att lämna ut dom ingermanländare som hade finska//pass

Felix: Finns, my great grandfather died at a Russian prison camp because he fought on Finland’s side against the Russians but then when they lost and it became annexed they were obliged to hand over those Ingermanlander who had a Finnish //passport

Lotta: //det är förfärlig historia

Lotta: //that is a terrible story

Felix: Eino Hanskis Bröderbataljonen heter en bok som berättar som dom låstes in i vagnar och där dog min farfarsfar.

Felix: Eino Hanski’s brothers’ battalion is a book that tells how they were locked up in wagons and that is where my grandfather’s father died.

(Första intervjun, december 2004)

(First interview, Decemeber 2004)

The discussion moved with a fast pace from explanations for why Finns drink, to the war and traumatic family histories. Madeleine brought up Finland’s role as an underappreciated protector of Sweden, and Felix told about his father’s family history as refugees from Ingria. Both of their families had experiences of war in their family histories; Felix’s great grandfather died on his way to a Russian prison camp, and his grandparents escaped over Finland to Sweden when Felix’s father was a baby. Madeleine’s mother’s family was evacuated from Viipuri and had to leave everything behind. At a later stage in the interview, Madeleine spoke about her paternal grandparents having been involved in the Nazi movement. She and the rest of the family had found it out only after the grandparents passed away and their attic was sorted out. Madeleine found a copy of Mein Kampf, Nazi arm bands, and guns that had belonged to her grandfather. For her, warfare was a crucial element in her process of defining ethnicities, weighing out options, and trying to relate to both backgrounds.

Both of them talked at length about their family histories and connections to the war. Thus Finnishness and Finland seemed to have a solid connection with struggles, defeats and even death, but it also included elements of bravery and heroic victory. Other key participants did not mention war in their accounts of Finnishness, only Felix’s and Madeleine’s accounts were closely built around war-related elements. War-related accounts by other key participants did not emphasize victorious outcomes of conflicts, but rather the fact of standing up to an enemy that could in fact be defeated as an evidence for sisu. The Finns are constructed as brave people, and for these key participants this appears as an empowering aspect of their Finnish identity. Later in the interview Felix came back to his Finnish roots and referred to himself as the last Mohican of his kind.

Example 76

Lotta: Hur är det nuförtiden, får ni liksom höra…om det kommer ut att ni är på något sätt finska?

Lotta: How is it nowadays, do you get to hear about it…if it comes up somehow that you are in a way Finnish?

Felix: Så vad jag har märkt är det lite positivt, eller att dom utgår att jag kan finska bara på efternamnet. Men XX den finns inte i Finland heller, vi är de sista, jag är den sista mohikanen [alla skrattar ]jag är! [Lotta:du måste kämpa] [simultant skratt] jag är den sista mannen kvar, det finns ingen kvar i Ingermanland heller, liksom, så att jag måste få //en son, eller

Felix: I have noticed that it is a little positive, or that people expect me to speak Finnish when they see my family name. But XX, it doesn’t exist in Finland either, we are the last ones, I am the last Mohican. [everyone laughs] I am! [Lotta:You have to fight] [simultaneous laughter] I am the last man standing. there is no one left in Ingermanland either, like I have to get a son //or

Lotta://lycka till! (alla skrattar)

Lotta: //good luck! (everyone laughs)

(Första intevjun, december 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

For Felix, his name definitely captures a great deal of his family history and his Finnishness that is connected with Ingria, and shows how flexible the borders of nation states are. He defines himself as a half Finn and emphasizes the language link through his name and his grandfather’s combat on the Finnish side against Russia as a proof for his identification. I argue that the war history of Finland is used by the participants in symbolic pluralistic ways: when they create histories concerning their ethnic background it is entirely up to them which elements they emphasize. They can choose to create a history of bravery and heroism, as we can see in the examples above. It is, however, also possible to create a history of oppression and tragedy from exactly the same elements. These histories about ethnic backgrounds are not so much about the reality of the past as they are constructions made about the past (Eriksen 1998).

Social Awkwardness?

Sociological theories of ethnic groups and motivations for why people relate to them often stress the benefits of belonging to one group instead of another (see, for example, Liebkind 1989). If we follow this line of reasoning, it would be expected that the participants who experience themselves, at least at times, as Finns would list only favorable characteristics of and associations about the group. However, the majority also talked about the less flattering characteristics that they associated with Finnishness. For example, Aki-Petteri talked about the contrast between emotional quietness, on the one hand, and drunken emotional outbursts, on the other hand.

Example 77

Aki-Petteri: Mutta ainakin mun mielestä noissa mitkä mä oon nähnyt, toi mies vailla menneisyyttä ja boheemi boheemi mikä se nyt oli, niin kuitenkin, niissä just se, se, tuo jotain enemmän se, että on niin hiljasta ja niin valitut sanat, että voi sanoa jotain sellasta että mun äiti kuoli ilman että näyttää mitään ilmettä niin se tuo niin erilaiset jutut esille kun se, että dramatisoidaan kauheesti ihan täysillä. Mä voin diggaa ihan kaiken näköstä, mutta toi on ihan oma tyylinsä.

Aki-Petteri: But at least in my opinion in those that I have seen, like the man without a past and bohemian bohemian whatever it was again, anyway, they have this, this, more, this quietness and so few chosen words, someone can say something like my mother died without any facial expression so it brings up such different things than if it would be fully dramatized. I can dig all sorts of things, but it has really its own style.

Lotta: Ehottomasti. Onko susta sitten… onko se sitten sun mielestä suomalaista?

Lotta: Definitely. Is it then, what do you reckon… is this then Finnishness in your opinion?

Aki-Petteri: No kyllä joo, mutta tietty stereotypisoitua suomalaisuutta (nauraa)

Aki-Petteri: Well, yes it is, but of course stereotypical Finnishness (laughs)

Lotta: No joo, totta, mutta löytyykö susta suomalaisista joita sä tunnet niin tollasta vakavuutta, että voi sanoo et äiti kuoli eikä mitään?

Lotta: Well, yeah, true, but do you think that Finns you know have that kind of seriousness, that you can say that your mum died and that’s about it?

Aki-Petteri: Kyllä, joo, kyll mä löydän sitä, että ihan joo, kyllä.

Aki-Petteri: Yes, yeah, I find it, yeah, I do, yes.

Lotta: Siis onko se jotain jonkun asteista tunnevähyyttä tai kylmyyttä, tai mitä //se sitte on?

Lotta: Well is it some sort of lack of emotions or coldness, or what// is it then?

Aki-Petteri: //niin…siis toi on hyvä kysymys, kyl mun mielestä suomalaisilla voi olla silleen siis että …semmosta pelkoo, näyttää tunteita varsinkin selvinpäin…[mm] ja sitten kännissähän kaikki tuee ulos, että kyl mul on, mun mielestä se on suomalaista. Kyllä mä oon niin monta kertaa ollu mukana siinä että jätkät, kaverit ihan stone faced muuten ja kännissä kaikki tulee ulos vaan, on sekin aika traagista (nauraa)

Aki-Petteri: //well…it’s a very good question, in my opinion Finns can have like…a kind of fear, to show their emotions especially when they are sober…[mm] and then when they’re drunk everything comes out, so I think, in my opinion it is Finnish. I have so many times been there when guys, friends are really stone faced otherwise and then when drunk everything comes out, it is quite tragic (laughs)

Lotta: Tottakai, on se. Sitäkö ei sitte ruotsalaisissa, tai mä sanon et muissa ulkomaalaisissa ettäkö sen tyyppistäkö ei oo?

Lotta: Of course it is. Doesn’t it then exist in Swedes, what I am saying, other foreigners they don’t have this kind of stuff?

(Palautekeskustelu, syyskuu 2005)

(Feedback conversation, September 2005)

Aki-Petteri contrasts the laconic words and minimal facial expression in Aki Kaurismäki’s films with the overwhelming outbursts of emotion of his friends when they shout out their emotions when they are drunk. He refers to his friends as being stony faced, which translates in Finnish as kivikasvo (literally, to have a face made of stone) rather than being high on marijuana. I assume that he refers to the expressionless faces of his friends who do not show their emotions, except when they are drunk and everything comes out, just as in a Kaurismäki film where someone can say without blinking that his mother has passed away. Aki-Petteri expresses his admiration for the quietness of emotions in that specific film genre in contrast to fully dramatizing emotions, and laughs when he refers to his overly emotional, drunken friends as tragic. The contrast between silence and words is sharp; both seem to be taken to extremes. I read his laugher here as having an acceptance-seeking function; he is checking with me how I relate to this type of emotionality. I did not laugh, but asked whether he thought of it as something specifically Finnish. The interview continued touching upon alcohol-related issues for some minutes and then moved on to discussing why certain nationalities, such as the Finns and Chileans, liked to spend time together whereas Finns and ‘other Latinos’, as Aki-Petteri put it, did not get along that well. I suggested the term social coldness that Aki-Petteri accepted as characteristic for what he was trying to describe, the taciturn Kaurismäki films, and also his friends.

Alcoholism is often connected with living on the margins of society (Kuosmanen 2001), and so it is also in my data. Emma described a woman living at the train station of Upplands Väsby, who unsurprisingly turned out to be Finnish. We were talking about the impact of the media on the public perception of groups of people when Emma told this story.

Example 78

Lotta: (…) millanen on suomalaisten mediastatus täällä ja ihmisten päässä, niin mitä säkin sanoit niin ei se nyt välttämättä oo mikään hittivähemmistö [naurua] vaikka se on varmasti noussu siitä mitä se oli joskus aikasemmin, että ei nyt enään mistään Slussenin miehistä puhuta, mun käsittääkseni se //ei oo

Lotta: (…) how is the media status of Finns here and in people’s heads, like what you said that it isn’t necessarily a top ten hit minority [laughter] although it has definitely gotten better than what it was earlier, like nowadays people don’t talk about the Slussen drunks , at least as far as I//know

Emma: //(naurua)mut oikeesti! joka puistonpenkillä makaa joku ja ne örähtelee suomeksi (nauraa) [mun pitää lähtee tarkkailee] (päällekkäistä naurua) meidän asemalla ei se enää, mutta muutama vuosi sitten asu sellanen nainen meidän asemalla kun sillä oli klaustrofobia eikä se voinu muutta asuntoon asumaan, niin sit se mä kävelin siitä ohi yksi päivä se on sellanen naine jolla kasvaa parta sellanen sä tiiät bag lady joita näkee filmeissä (nauraa) [joo, nauraa] ei tää oo niin kauhee paikka tää Uplands Väsbyy miltä nyt kuullostaa (nauraa) [nauraa] [partaiset naiset!] (päällekkäistä naurua) sit mä kuulen yhtenä päivänä kun se puhuu suomee (nauraa) niin mä aattelin, että ‘miks mä en oo yllättyny?’ (nauraa) oikeesti, ois voinu odottaa että se on suomalainen (nauraa) ois pitäny kysyy, et: ‘puhutsä hei suomee?’ (päällekkäistä naurua)

Emma: //(laughter) but seriously! there is someone on every park bench who mumbles something in Finnish (laughs) [I should go and observe] (simultaneous laughter) at our station, no more but some years back, lived a woman because she was claustrophobic and could not move into an apartment, so, one day I walked past her, she’s a woman who has a beard, you know like a bag-lady you see in films (laughs) [yeah][laughs] it isn’t such a bad place this Upplands Väsby as it sounds now (laughs)[laughs][bearded women!] (simultaneous laughter ) well anyway, then one day I hear her speaking Finnish (laughs) so I thought: ‘why am I not surprised?’ (laughs) frankly, I could have expected that she is Finnish (laughs) I should have asked, like:’ do you speak Finnish?’ (simultaneous laughter)

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, lokakuu 2006)

(First interview, October 2006)

Our laughter during this sequence grew almost hysterical and we giggled for a good while about the bearded lady. Maybe the over rapport of laughter speaks for our disbelief in a situation where it appears that the image of alcoholic Finns still finds some echo in Swedish society and is not quite the snow of last year.

The reference that I make to Slussen drunks in the beginning of my first turn refers to the negative image of Finnish, often unemployed, men who used to gather together for drinking in the Slussen area of downtown Stockholm. They received a lot of media attention in the 1970s, and certainly tarnished the public image of all Finns – women and men – in Sweden. When Kuosmanen (2001) studied the lives of Finnish men in Gothenburg in the late 1990s, he also looked into alcoholism as part of the social careers of the men he interviewed. He explains alcoholism with the drastic changes these men went through when they migrated to Sweden from their often agricultural settings in Finland. One of the few ways of getting social acceptance was to be a hard worker.

A tendency toward heavy drinking was not the only trait associated with Finns in Sweden. A capacity for hard work was also (and still is) a crucial element in the image of Finns in Sweden, and the topic has been widely discussed in previous studies (see, for example, Kuosmanen 2001: 107–111; Laakkonen 1996). The anthology of Finnish metal workers’ lives in Sweden (Pelkonen & Vuonokari 1989) also emphasizes the image of the Finnish man or woman as a ‘hell of a worker’ (see also Snellman 2003: 144–166; Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000: 171–198). The Finnish impact on the Swedish welfare state through heavy labour was used, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, as an argument in their efforts to gain more rights and acknowledgement as a minority. Finnish men and women did heavy physical factory work. Many of the key participants in my study mentioned that their parents had already ‘for some good years’ been retired as a result of damage to their health from factory work (see also, Ågren 2006: 191). Thus, the image of the hard working Finn seems to apply. According to the key participants, heavy drinking and alcoholism are also aspects that are still rapidly associated with Finns, as Madeleine explains in the following example, challenged by Felix.

Example 79

Madeleine: Det finns den stereotypen att de här fattiga finländare, och den stämpeln kommer bli jobbigt…den håller på att försvinna, men jag tror att den är djupt rotad, tror jag, i det svenska medvetandet.(…) Jag tror att den här alkoholistetiketten är lättare å sätta på, eller tenderar ofta att sätta på oss finländare än andra nationaliteter här i// Sverige.

Madeleine: The stereotype of the poor Finn exists, and this label is difficult to … it is on its way to disappear but I think that it is very deeply rooted, in the Swedish consciousness. (…) I think that this alcoholic label is easier put on, or the tendency is that we Finns get it easier than other nationalities here in //Sweden.

Felix: //danskar skulle jag också säga dricker också som fan hela //tiden

Felix: //also Danish people, I would say, drink like the devil himself all // the time.

Maledeine://men vi pratar ju om folk här i Sverige [ändå, ändå] i Sverige, de finns ju int’ ens danskar here, nää [men de’ här med de’ här drickande, de är ju int’ bara finnar] hursom helst…men finländare får den där etiketten i varje fall (…)

Madeleine: //but we are talking about people here in Sweden [still, still] in Sweden, there are no Danes here, no [but with this drinking, this drinking it isn’t just the Finns] whatever… but Finns get that label anyway (…)

Madeleine: Jag tror att jag mer och mer har kunnat förlika mig med mitt finska arv. Jag har, jag vet inte vad det beror på, men jag själv tyckte att det var lite jobbigt att jag har varit finsk, jag upplevde det som någonting som, jag lyfter hellre fram mitt tyska än mitt finska [det är ju också intressant] joo, och jag vet inte vad det beror på. Men det är kanske samtidigt, det har ju funnits alkoholism i min släkt och det har funnits depression, och min morfar var en patriot utan dess like (skrattar) [laughter] alla dom här grejerna, men allt det här att förlika sig med ett arv som man inte kan identifiera sig med.

Madeleine: I think that I have more and more been able to identify with my Finnish heritage. I have, I don’t know why, but I have experienced it a little hard to be Finnish, I’ve experienced it as something, I rather emphasize being German than Finnish [that is interesting] it is, and I don’t know why that’s the case. Maybe it is because there has been alcoholism in my family and there has been depression, and my mother’s father was a patriot like no other (laughter) [laughter] all those things, but these things, like to come to terms with a heritage you cannot identify with.

(Första intervjun, december 2004)

(First interview, December 2004)

In addition to its interesting content, there are two details in this example that I would like to take a closer look at. First of all, Madeleine refers to the group of Finns as ‘us’ including herself in the group. She is very ambivalent in her references, just like everybody else. There is not a single person among the key participants who would have referred to him- or herself in a coherent way when talking about groups of Finns or Swedes, us or them. Sometimes the participants even noticed this and made a point of being aware of the ambiguity. Madeleine’s family background clearly is controversial: on the one hand, there is her German background, which has, according to her, a higher social status than a Finnish one, is socio-economically more appreciated, but frowned upon because of its apparent Nazi past. On the other hand, she has the story of an annexed land, the flight as a refugee from Karelia, a lower socio-economic image and alcoholism, as she put it. How to choose what to identify with? She was quick to define herself as a half Finn who had related to her Finnish part only at later age. She mentioned a couple of times that her German identity had always been easier to relate to.

The other detail that is worth some extra attention is Felix’s line about Danish drinking habits. Madeleine is elaborating on the topic of labeling people as alcoholics, referring to Finns rather than other nationalities. Felix interrupts her and says: ‘also Danish people, I would say, drink like the devil himself all of the time.’ This line triggers off something that can be characterized as an argument between the two. I interpret this sequence as a challenge to the idea that Finns would be the only group of people with drinking related problems. The introduction of this piece of argumentation can be analyzed as an attempt to soften Madeleine’s harsh criticism. On a logical level his verdict of the Danish as heavy drinkers as well does not defeat the fact that Finns in Sweden are labeled as drinkers more easily. Madeleine reminds Felix about what we, in fact, are talking about, and when he repeatedly sticks to his claim that Finns are not the only ones who drink, she dismisses his off-the-point objections by saying: ‘whatever, Finns get that label anyway’.

This dialogical nature of speech is to be found almost solely in the group interviews with Madeleine and Felix and in the group of the mothers. This speaks for a different mode of communication when more than one person and the interviewer meet for an interview. In one-to-one interviews the participants seldom challenged or refuted my ideas or opinions. In the group interviews, challenging and refuting arguments, and arguing, was more common. I argue that this can be explained by the different setting of the situations. Firstly, the group interview situations seemed to provide more space for challenging and refuting arguments by others, as the countering voice was not mine and was spoken from an equal position. Nevertheless, I have shown some examples where the participants refuted my implicit assumptions or definitions. There is, for example, the interview excerpt 78 in which Emma dismisses my suggestion that the media image of Finns has improved over the years by bursting out laughing (making fun of me?). She says: ‘(laughter) But seriously! There is someone on every park bench who mumbles something in Finnish!’ The sequence is accompanied by loud laughter, I join in and we laugh our way out of her dismissing my suggestion about drunks in parks.

Second, although all the interviews tended to be two-way situations in which I also expressed my views to some degree, the group interviews seemed to be more active on a communicative level. I argue that this was the case because more than one person was expressing their views, which made the podium more accessible. I assume that if I had been the one to cut a speaker off by dismissing her or his definition or account of something, there would most likely have been no continuation to the account. When a co-interviewee does the same, it bears a close resemblance to an invitation to reformulate, and does not have a dismissive function in my data. This has to do with power positions and also the level of familiarity between the speakers. Madeleine and Felix were friends, and so were the mothers. Although we might have felt relaxed and friendly in an interview situation I still was not a friend. Instead, I was the interviewer who was expected to ask questions and receive answers.

The group interviews offer good examples of how group discussions offer the participants more space for fruitful reflections than one-to-one interviews. For example, the group of mothers had, on both occasions, a strong drive to look at the negative aspects of Finnishness that were mentioned or discussed also in a positive light. In the following example, I asked them about their mothers’ occupations and they concluded that most of the Finnish women worked as cleaners. The following long excerpt shows the exchange that took place:

Example 80

Lotta: (…)mikä sun äiti on hei ammatiltaan?

Lotta: (…) hey, what is your mum by occupation?

Pia: Se on vaan ollu sellasessa pesulassa töissä siitä asti kun me tultiin

Pia: She’s only been working in a laundry place ever since we arrived

Lotta: Entäs sun äiti?

Lotta: How about your mum?

X: Siivooja

X: Cleaner

Pia: Taitaa olla kaikki suomalaiset (nauraa) vanhemmat on justiin (nauraa) siel pesulassa tai siivota (nauraa) [naurua]

Pia: It looks like all Finns (laughs) like older people are (laughs) working in the laundry or cleaning (laughs) [laughter]

Lotta: (…) mä katoin just noit Ruotsin Sanomia, niin siinä on työpaikat aina nii siivoojia aina vaan haetaan eipä paljon muuta (…) onks se sellanen ammatti mihin löytyy sitte suomenkielisii?

Lotta: (…) I was just reading the Ruotsin Sanomat (a Finnish-speaking daily published in Sweden) and the vacancies there, so people are always looking just for cleaners, nothing much else (…) is that the kind of an occupation that many Finnish-speakers have?

Pia: No varmaan, kato sellaset varsinki jotka ei täysin osaa ruotsia [siis siivoojia?] ni

Pia: Well yeah, I guess, see, especially those who don’t speak Swedish really well [they are cleaners?] yeah

Katariina: Sitä mä oon kuullu että suomalaiset osaa siivoo

Katariina: I’ve heard that Finns are good cleaners

Pia: Nii, se on se että suomalaiset on nyt varmaan tunnetuimmasti parempia siivoojia ja tämmösiä kun mitä ruotsalaiset on [ihan totta?] ainakin mä oon //kuullu

Pia: Yeah, it ‘s well known that Finns are better cleaners and such than Swedes [really?] that’s at least what I have //heard

Katariina: //kun me kuus vuotta sitten ostettiin talo niin lähettii siitä vuokraasunnosta, ja sen otti mustalainen niin se kävi huoltoasemalla pari kuukautta siitä sitten, ja sano, että ootpa siivonnu hyvin asunnon, ja kun mustalainen sen sanoo, niin sen mä sain kuulla kaverilta joka on ollu mustalaisen kanssa yhessä, että mustalaiset on vissiin oikein sellasia oikein sellasii tip top siivoojia, niin se sano se mun kaveri että taidat olla (nauraa) hirmu siivooja (nauraa) [naurua] [siivooja] [naurua]

Katariina: //when we bought a house six years ago and left the rented place, a gypsy took it over and she came to the petrol station a couple of months later, and she said that you have cleaned the place really well, and when a gypsy says it, a friend told me who has been together with a gypsy, that gypsies are really tip top clean people, so my friend said to me that you seem to be (laughs) one hell of a cleaner’ (laughs) [cleaner] [laughter]

?: Mutta se käsitys mikä mulla on, että miksi suomalaiset ois niinkun siivos hirveänä, että kun suomalaiset muutti tänne kuuskyt luvulla niin ne sai kaikki nämä paskahommat joita ruotsalaiset ei halunneet tehdä ja tämmöstä näin, ne laittoivat sitten firmoja pystyyn ja silleen näin, ettei se mikään status ole. Ja sitten kun suomalaiset on aina ollu silleen, että suomalaisilla on korkeampi moraali, työmoraali [mm] kertakaikkiaan, mitä mää tiiän, kun oon ollu täällä töissä ja vertaan

?: But the impression I have, is that why would Finns have been cleaning so much, is that when Finns moved here in the 60s they were given all the shit jobs that the Swedes didn’t want to do, like that, then they started companies and such, so it isn’t really a status thing at all. And Finns have always had, like, much higher ethics, [mm] work ethics [mm] altogether, what I’ve seen, when I have been working here and compare.

Lotta: Miten se näkyy sitte?

Lotta: How does it show then?

Katariina: Suomalaiset on ahkerampia

Katariina: Finns are more hard-working

Lotta: Mä oon kanssa kuullu siitä paljon, mutta kun mä en oo täällä asunu nii en pysty vertaamaan

Lotta: I’ve also heard of it a lot but as I haven’t lived here I can’t really compare

Pia: No esimerkiksi saattaa hyvin olla että toinen tekkee töitä kun hullu ja toinen vaan kattelee ja pälä pälä pälä [mm] puhutaan kavereitten kanssa ja joka aamu myöhässä ja tämmöstä, että siinä sen ainakin huomaa.

Pia: Well for example it can be that one works like crazy and the other just looks and blah blah blah chats away with friends and is late every morning and that sort of things, so at least there you can see the differences.

(Palautekeskustelu, joulukuu 2004)

(Feedback conversation, December 2004)

Pia tells that her mother has worked at a laundry ever since the family arrived in Sweden in 1983 and adds that all of the older Finns seem to be cleaners of some sort. This is greeted with laughter by the other women participating in the interview. She explains why the job offers in Finnish-speaking newspapers mainly concern cleaners: even those who do not speak Swedish very well can become cleaners. Katariina mentions the reputation of Finns as really diligent, good cleaners. She begins polishing the picture of an occupation that is definitely not considered a dream job or anything requiring special skills. She tells a story of herself cleaning the rented apartment before moving out and of the next tenant, ‘a gypsy’, who later appeared at the petrol station where she worked and remarked how very clean she had left the place. I argue that this little story serves as an extra proof of the superior quality of Finns as very thorough people.

There were four women, plus myself, present at the feedback conversation where this sequence originates from. Pia and Katariina were mainly talking while the other two were mostly occupied by their children. I have not been able to identify the female voice who offers another explanation for Finnish-speaking cleaners. According to her, when Finns arrived and did not yet speak Swedish they were given ‘all the shit jobs’ by the Swedes: ‘(…) when they moved here in the 60s they were given all the ‘shit jobs’ the Swedes didn’t want to do, like that, then they started companies and such, so it isn’t really a status thing at all’. Thus, she does not seem to see any quality or skill related aspects in the fact that many Finnish women still work as cleaners. She also dismisses the cleaning companies many Finnish women have started as not ‘really a status thing at all’. Nevertheless, she credits Finns with higher ethics than Swedes: ‘and Finns have always had, like, much higher ethic, [mm] work ethic is [mm] really, what I have seen, when I have been working here’. Katariina and Pia do not directly object to the shit job status of cleaning, but build on the higher work ethic of Finnish people, and through this give credit to Finns also in low status jobs as skilful, and a having good character – thus qualities one can be proud of.

Are We Talking about Finnishness?

My metaphor for analysis, the kaleidoscope, suggests that the picture we see in the cylinder consists of several small pieces and is temporal in nature. When we rattle the cylinder and look again we will probably never see the same constellation twice. When I asked the participants what Finnishness represented for them and others, or what Finnishness consisted of, the answers circulated around the domains of language-related topics, home and family, and school years. The participants also associated the extraordinary emotions triggered by sport events with Finnishness, as well as alcoholism and bravery. The majority, however, remarked after talking about ice hockey, Christmas dishes or other elements that make Finns different from Swedes, that they actually were not really sure whether it was Finnishness, or family traditions, or something else that we were actually talking about. In the example below, Sanna narrates a memory about when she started to reflect on her image of Finland and call its contents into question.

Example 81

Lotta: Onko sulla jotain sellasia tilanteita tai juttuja joissa sä huomaat että sä oot enemmän suomalainen ku sitten taas toisia// tilanteita.

Lotta: Are there situations in your life or things where you notice that you’re more of a Finn than //in other situations

Sanna: //on varmaan ootas mä mietin…öö…nyt jääkiekko on jo käsitelty (nauraa) mutta eikä se enää ole mulle niin tärkeä (nauraa) (…) ku mulle kävi kerran silleen että mä näin yhen elokuvan Espanjassa joka kerto sellasesta pienestä espanjalaisesta kylästä, ja siellä yks mies joka niinku öö oli niinku jostain hirveen suuttunu tai sillä oli hirveen vaikee tilanne niin se meni sinne mökkinä taakse tai talonsa taakse ja hakkas puita, niin sillon mulle tuli sellanne olo et hei, tää on ihan ku Suomessa! Kunnes mä tajusin että se, mitä mä olin ajatellu suomalaisuudeksi olikin maaseutuun liittyviä asioita. Sen takii mä en enää osaa sanoo, että mikä on mitäkin.

Sanna: //yes sure let me think…ee…well we’ve already talked about ice hockey (laughs) but it isn’t important for me any longer (laughs) (…) once in Spain I saw a movie about a little village and in that village lived a man who was like ee really angry about something or having a really hard time so he went to there behind his shack or his behind his house and started chopping wood, and then I thought that hey, this is really like Finland! Until I realized that those things that I had thought to be Finnishness were aspects connected with the countryside. Because of that incident I cannot tell anymore what is what.

(Ensimmäinen haastattelu, syyskuu 2005)

(First interview, September 2005)

I asked whether there were situations in which she felt more Finnish than in others and she joked a little about ice hockey, referring to the story about the Finnish victory in 1995 that she had just narrated. Sanna suddenly remembered an experience that took place in Spain, where she worked for some months as an au-pair several years ago. She was watching a film that made her question the images that she had associated with Finland and Finnishness. She described a scene about a man from a small Spanish village who was ‘really upset about something or having a really hard time’ and reacted to these feelings by going behind his shack and starting to chop wood. When Sanna saw these pictures of a man in agony, fiercely chopping wood behind his hut, she realized that ‘hey, this is really like Finland!’ She realized that the things she had associated with Finnishness were, rather, elements that were actually related to living in rural areas. Because of this revelation she claimed to be unable to tell anymore ‘what is what’. I read in her example that she sees the pattern of reacting to agony or anger with fierce physical action like chopping wood as something she has associated with Finnishness. To let out anger or aggression silently through hard physical labour is a typical theme in Finnish films and literature, and not an unknown element in contemporary drama either. A scene with a man in agony chopping wood behind a house is a scene that can be found in countless Finnish films. In addition, chopping wood takes place at every single Finnish summer house, and the chopping area is usually located close to the place where fires are lit, somewhere behind the house. I am not suggesting that she necessarily remembered observing her father, or anyone she knew, letting out his in anger with an ax. Rather, the elements in the clichés about Finns, and especially Finnish males as silent and emotionally introverted and the countryside were present in the film in a Spanish setting. Just as the descriptions of Finnishness could find their content from warfare for some participants, we have here an example in which the elements of countryside equal Finnishness.

The question ‘are we talking about Finnishness?’ points in the direction of reflection and is inherently connected with the process of analysis. Chopping wood behind the house happens in Finland, but as Sanna realized, it probably happens around the world in the countryside. The man’s anger management resembles the clichéd image of the silent Finnish man. Some remarked that they did not know many other Finns apart from their relatives, and could not, therefore, make statements applicable to a wider context than the family.

7. The End

In this book, I have presented and discussed representations of Finnishness by ten key participants to whom I refer as second generation Finns in Sweden. Participants were interviewed between the years 2002–2006 in three different locations in the area of Mälaren Bay in central Sweden: Köping, Västerås and Stockholm. I call the participants from Köping the first contacts; from Västerås there are two groups, the groups of mothers and the students. The Stockholm group is referred to as the urbanites. All of the participants, with the exception of Felix, have at least one potentially Finnish-speaking parent who came to Sweden as a labour immigrant during the years of intensive labour migration in the 1960s and 1970s. Felix’s father came to Sweden as a child of refugees from Ingria (Russian Federation) and I have included him to emphasize and question what Finnishness is. According to Felix, he is a half Finn. Most of the participants were born in Sweden, although some were toddlers when they migrated. In this seventh and final chapter, I will sum up the main findings, evaluate research practices employed, and propose directions for future research.

Kaleidoscopic Identities

I have compared the process of analysis to gazing into a kaleidoscope and describing the colors and figures created by the different kinds of small pieces of glass. When the key participants described their thoughts about Finnishness it was, indeed, like gazing into the magic cylinder: several little pieces of different shapes and colors formed continuously changing images and revealed yet a different picture. Those small components rubbed against each other, changing the shapes as time went by. Some participants constructed their identifications firmly around the Finnish language, whereas others described their Finnishness in terms of bravery, roots, or something that flames up during ice-hockey game between Finland and Sweden. The overwhelming bulk of the interview data contains the same reoccurring elements of Finnishness, and the differences between the interviews lie more in the ways of talking about these elements than in the elements themselves.

The key participants emphasized freedom of choice in decision-making about their ethnic identities. Many stressed that they had the option to choose whether they wanted to be Finns, or Swedes, or both at the same time. They treated Finnishness in Sweden as an additional plus instead of their being ‘just’ Swedes or ‘just’ Finns. Many, in fact, referred to such plain categories as undesirable and boring. The participants combined elements from both cultures, and sampled elements from other settings and locations as well, in the creation of their identities. The impact of the environments where they grew up was underlined as something fundamental in the formation of character and identity; it was, in fact, described as more significant than ethnic background. The ethnic identities described by the participants were to a large extent voluntary, situational, and flexible. Yet, the ethnic self-definitions of the participants had been challenged, and are being challenged by their surroundings; some even mentioned the Swedish state as a challenger. Sometimes these challenges were impossible to successfully argue against, but most of the time the participants felt free to identify with whatever they wanted to without interference. Challenges have the potential power to spark new definitions, making the process of challenging identities and dialogues. Although these challenges were sometimes experienced as ‘awfully unpleasant’ and ‘tiring’ they are significant elements in identity formation, and evident for the social and dialogical nature of identities in general.

According to the participants, Finnish identity in Sweden can have an optional and voluntary character because there are no visible signs that make Finns different from the dominant population of the country. They acknowledged the politics of power connected with skin color in the processes of self-identification and identities that others attribute to one. Some suggested that the social career of Finns as a group in Sweden is to a great extent based on the visual similarity, a lack of differences between Swedes and Finns. It is remarkable (and contradictory) that the lack of differences was brought up as a frequent argument explaining the social upswing of Finns as a group in Sweden, when at the same time the search for differences and uniqueness was one of the strongest elements of defining Finnishness in Sweden. I will return to this conflicting nature of differences in a moment.

The idea of hybridity entered the picture already at an early stage of the research, and the participants in this study are living proof of identities that are open to negotiation and created from elements that are beyond mutually exclusive options. One can be a Finn or Swede, a Sweden’s Finn from Rinkeby or a Västeråsian who becomes a Finn only once a year when watching the ice-hockey World Cup – the options available to the participants are numerous and do not, at least in their own realities, exclude one another.

However easy these choices might sound and appear, justifications and explanations were present in the interviews. I draw the conclusion that the use of explanations and justification attempts indicate that the participants had experienced obstacles in their identification process, and that their identifications had been challenged or even heavily undermined, at times. The freedom of choice appeared sometimes closer to a wish than reality. Many had encountered devaluation, or even met aggression, based on their Finnishness, which often manifested in the act of speaking Finnish and having this commented on or frowned upon.

Changing Contents

The strong focus of this study is on the ways of talking about Finnishness in Sweden. Changing terminology, different types of ethnic self-definitions and challenges by others play central roles throughout the study, emphasizing the dialogical and social nature of constructing realities about ourselves, others, and the world around us. Let us revisit the research questions stated in the beginning of the study.

1. How do second generation immigrants talk about language-related issues? What kind of roles do different languages – in this case, Finnish and Swedish – assume in their lives? Is a shared minority language a necessity for the respective minority’s well-being and, in the end, its survival?

2. How do second generation immigrant Finns talk about Finnishness in contemporary Sweden? In what areas is Finnishness manifested in their lives?

3. What kind of people are immigrants, and who belongs to a second generation? How are these concepts and terminology defined, on the one hand in the literature and, on the other, by the participants of this study?

More questions derived from these main questions, and all of them revolve around the definitions of Finnishness in Sweden as formulated by the participants in this study. As for the first question, changes in the use and meaning of terminology concerning immigration were present in the participants’ definitions and accounts throughout the data. I interpret this as evidence of the fact that the changing world and our understanding of it has changed concepts on a semantic level. These changes are reflected in the participants’ definitions in the interview data, and not only as theoretical concepts that were often discussed in connection with identity-related topics. When the participants, for example, described who was regarded as an immigrant in Sweden, they gave accounts mapping some 100 years of evolution in the content and meanings of the term immigrant. Their accounts contained, without exception, descriptions of and references to the divisions of old and new immigrants, with an emphasis on the constructed whitening of Finns in Sweden. Consequently, we can track paradigm shifts in their descriptions. Those who argued for their identification as non-immigrants did so in accordance with the theoretical notions associated with achieved and changing statuses of immigrant groups (Perelman & Waldinger 1997: 902).

I have stated that this study deals with second generation Finns in Sweden. In migration research, the concept of generation is usually counted as starting from those persons who underwent the physical journey and entered a new country; consequently, their children who were born in the ‘new country’ are referred to as the second generation and their grandchildren as the third, and so on. Yet, as the interview excerpts show us, the concept of generation is not as simple as that. My notion of the second generation is based on the concept of key experience as a force forming a generation. Although some participants were born in the early 1970s and others more than ten years later in the 1980s, their experiences of growing up with at least one Finnish parent were comparable. The importance of shared experiences as a generation-forming force is confirmed in the participants’ descriptions of themselves; this is especially evident when they contrast their experiences with those of their parents’ generation (Snellman 2003; Hoikkala 1999; Purhonen 2007). In fact, most of the participants detested the idea of defining themselves as immigrants, second generation or not. They called themselves Sweden’s Finns, half Finns, or simply Finns or Swedes, but not immigrants.

Uncertainty about naming oneself is common in the data, and is audible in hesitant accounts marked by several short pauses, false starts, and self corrections, all of them typical of talking about difficult or delicate topics (Condor 2000; van Dijk 1984). Small details of language use, most notably inconsistent use of us and them when talking about ‘Finns’ and ‘Swedes’ and random inclusion or exclusion of oneself when discussing the group of Finns within one sequence dominated the data. This was also the case with those who had no problems in naming themselves: they too produced hesitant accounts when they talked about their self-identification. I agree that this can be interpreted as evidence of uncertain identities (see, Skutnabb-Kangas 1987); yet, I argue that these hesitant accounts might as well be flagging the artificial nature of clear-cut, mutually exclusive categories. The absence of coherent self-references can be interpreted as problematic exactly because of the uselessness of those categories in the participants’ realities. It is noteworthy that, when speakers formulate descriptions or try to find names for themselves and are struggling to find the right words, they can only use the words and terminology that are available for them at that point in time. I argue that when the participants explicitly pointed out concepts they used or references they made as clichés, or as not quite true, they paved the way for larger scale changes.

Finnishness as Language

To answer the second and the third question, I explored representations of Finnishness through productive domains in which the participants provided Finnishness in Sweden with definitions, forms, and meaning. These representation repertoires took shape within two larger categories, namely, Language and Communities, and the domain of Differences. The Finnish language was, unsurprisingly, the most productive domain in and around which Finnishness was defined. Languages, other than Swedish, have especially in the past three decades, been an increasingly political topic in Sweden. The political nature of language is clearly illustrated, for example, in the domain of primary and secondary education that was discussed in detail in the fourth chapter. Finns form the largest minority in Sweden, and achieved the status of one of the five national minorities in 1999. By ratifying the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Sweden undertook a national commitment to protect the national minorities and their respective languages and cultures (SOU 2005:40: 21–22). Language was for many the only marker signifying the group of Finns as separate from Swedes and other groups.

Growing up in a family with at least one Finnish-speaking parent resulted often, but not always, in a dominantly Finnish-speaking childhood. For eight of the ten key participants, Finnish was the first language learned, while two of the ten never learned Finnish. Five of the ten had at least four years of their secondary education in Finnish, which seems to have strengthened not only their Finnish language, but also their subjective feeling of belonging to a larger entity of Finns. Yet, those two participants, Sandra and Maria, who had had their whole education in Swedish, and Finnish only at home, identified themselves strongly as Finns in Sweden. Thus, the impact of education in Finnish does not seem to be the only guarantee for a good command of Finnish, or a strong subjective feeling of being a Finn. Although Finnish had only been spoken within the private sphere, it had been enough for these women to equip them with a high self-esteem in whatever they chose to identify with: Finnish, Swedish, or both at the same time.

As for Madeleine and Felix, who did not have any command of Finnish, the language had a somewhat mystical character. Both assumed that their identification as Finns would be very different, and stronger, if they had learned Finnish while growing up; both explained their low identification as Finns as a result of not speaking the language. Madeleine described how the absence of a common language, Finnish, dominated the relations to her extended family in Finland. She reasoned that not only would the contact be different if there were a shared language, but also that she would feel more connected with her Finnishness if she spoke the language. Her view is in accordance with the mainstream socio-psychological idea of the essential formative power of language for identities. When the connection is approached in this manner, language becomes a signifying aspect of identity formation (Giles & Coupland 1991).

However, Sofia, who brushed up her Finnish at the university after not having used the language for several years, was glad to have made the effort, yet she did not experience herself as Finnish to any higher degree than before the language classes. For her, the Finnishness that mattered was in the family traditions she shared with her mother. I read her contribution as reflecting a new, relaxed version of Finnishness, an attitude that embraces those aspects in the cultural and linguistic package of Finnishness that seem interesting and useful to the individual.

The interview data strongly suggests that Finnishness, or for that matter ethnicity of any kind, is not necessarily doomed to disappear even if the language is only spoken in a domestic setting, or has other limited domains of use. I agree with Edwards (2006: 6) who claims the home is the most salient domain for maintenance of a language. In addition, I argue that even if Finnish were not actively used, this would not necessarily mean that self-identification as a Finn would not be important for those with a Finnish background. The construction of Finnishness is a living, evolving and abstract construction that changes over time. The traditional elements of Finnishness, such as speaking Finnish, going to the sauna, or having sisu, were still important parts of the definitions of Finnishness for the key participants, but their central position as important markers of Finnishness were giving way to questions about and suggestions for individual ways of being Finnish.

According to the participants, to be a speaker of Finnish is a positive aspect in their life. Finnish plays different roles in their everyday lives depending on the social setting, place, and time. Sometimes it is mainly seen as a tool for communication, at other times it can be the language of intimate emotions and feelings, and is given a more emotional meaning than simply a tool enabling communication. Finnish was talked about as the ‘language of the heart’, it was the language spoken to children and parents, and it belonged to the private sphere of homes; whereas Swedish was presented as the functional ‘language of important things’ and dominated the public sphere (see also, Piller 2002; Pavlenko 2005). Finnish was mostly spoken only among family members, although some used Finnish also with friends and in workplace situations, expanding the radius of vocabulary and domains of everyday life to the sphere actually reserved for communication in Swedish. Yet, being bilingual in Finnish and Swedish was described as useful or worth striving for only in emotional terms. The participants felt that Finnish did not have a particularly high social status, nor was being bilingual in Finnish and Swedish especially valued by other people. Interestingly, this did not seem to worry them the slightest; on the contrary, they detested the claims that speakers of undervalued languages tend to create distance to the low status language (see also, Ågren 2006: 167–169; Lainio 1996: 271–272). For the participants, regardless of their level of proficiency, Finnish possesses a powerful symbolic value in addition to its communicative functions.

These findings highlight the social character of language which forms a solid undercurrent throughout the interviews. Firstly, it is through language, that we negotiate our identities, whether as an inner dialogue with ourselves or with real opponents of flesh and blood, or opponents in the sense that our thoughts and values are in dialogue with the mainstream understanding of the world. Secondly, language can provide a feeling of belonging and it can strengthen in-group feelings, but it can also be exclusive. Vernacular and accents are associated with prejudice about essential characteristics, and they function as important signifiers in the process of identity negotiations. I see three clear streams of thought about the significance of language and accents running through this section of the analysis. First, language matters in the private sphere, ranging from the practicalities of (potentially) bilingual families and relationships between partners, grandparents and children to fine-tuned emotional aspects of a language. Yet, we find very different views on the essence of language in the interviews. Those who felt themselves to be more or less fluent in both languages expressed pleasure in having linguistic and cultural access to both sources and expected to continue speaking Finnish also in the future if they were to have children. Still, Pia was the only participant who raised her children only in Finnish. She was the only one who had children with a Finnish-speaking partner at the time of the interviews. In her case it was not even necessary to debate whether her children would grow up bilingual – as she put it: ‘It is nothing we even talk about, it is natural.’ For the rest who had children, it was enough if their children could ‘understand some Finnish’.

If one wants to concentrate on the language shift of the immigrant Finns’ offspring, now is the right moment to start tapping into it (see, for example Lainio & Leppänen 2005). I, however, view the shifting of Finnish to Swedish, or to another language, as truncated multilingualism, a new term that refers to ‘linguistic competencies which are organized topically, on the basis of domains or activities’ (Blommaert et al., 2005, in Dyers 2008: 114). If we could imagine different languages being associated with different domains or activities, then the long-held notion that language shift equals language death within immigrant communities might become less dominant. The death of a language is certainly a gloomy scenario and I am not suggesting that it could not happen to Finnish in Sweden, but the findings of this study speak for a yearning for a guiltless life as a user of several languages in one’s daily life. The bilingualism debate often discusses language competency, and, in my experience, this approach quickly casts a shadow of guilt over many language users who experience their proficiency as weak.

Not only do we use language to negotiate identities on an individual level, but language also operates in a much larger framework by signifying communities. In the case of my study, the Finnish language marks the speakers as members of the community of Finns in Sweden. To be a speaker of Finnish means different things to different people, and opinions about how much, and exactly in which situations, Finnish should be spoken vary greatly, even within one interview. For some participants it was enough, or even the favored option, to keep Finnish inside the domestic sphere of the family home; others saw Finnish kindergarten groups and Finnish classes at school as the only possibility of guaranteeing and maintaining Finnish as a functional language in Sweden. Those who were happy to keep Finnish in the private sphere, for example, regarded it as angering and over the top to expect services in any other language than Swedish. Although Swedish does not have legal status as the official language of the country, it definitely is the official language of the state, and these arguments run along the lines of traditional national state rhetoric.

There were also communities that were no longer connected with the Finnish language, but had their origin in it, such as the former pesäpallo club in Köping. In this case the Finnish label of a group of people doing sports together had faded over the years. Since others besides Finnish speakers had also joined the team, the language used had changed into Swedish. The significance of the activity had, nonetheless, not lost its Finnishness in the sense of it still being an important reminder and a place for ethnic activity for the ‘Finnish’ members. The role of associations and clubs has changed over the years for people with a Finnish background, yet this does not have to mean that they no longer serve a purpose.

Sport in general was discussed vividly and portrayed as the arena of national, even nationalistic, passion and barbaric masquerade of national belonging. Many of the participants expressed awareness of their using clichés when they talked about Finnishness and Finland. It was obvious to them that their landscapes were imaginary. Attending a sport event, watching hockey or ski jumping on television symbolized for many the ultimate manifestation of Finnishness (see also, Billig 1995).

Language mattered more broadly in Swedish society as well. Here the questions about significance boil down to the scrutiny of the importance of language for a minority such as the first generation immigrant Finns and their offspring in Sweden. The connection between language and the sphere of society can also be regarded as taking the form of political actions for the maintenance of Finnish. In the interview data, this is expressed in treating Finnish-speaking education as a self-evident part of Swedish society, or participating in the activities of the Sweden’s Finn’s Youth Organization. For the vast majority of the participants, the public sphere at large remained untouched and was not introduced into discussion. This finding also underlines the private nature of identities and of ethnic identification with Finnishness. Most of the participants were not willing, or even interested, in undertaking actions in order to ensure the Finnish language’s special status in society, but treated ethnic identity as a private matter.

No one knows what the future holds for the Finnish speaking participants of this study and other speakers of Finnish in Sweden. The predictions by academic authorities and the Finnish media in Sweden are pessimistic, predicting that the language shift that is already taking place will be completed within a few generations (Lainio & Leppänen 2005: 557–559). Language shift is often perceived as the end, and sometimes even described as the ‘death’ of a language and the respective culture (Dixon et al. 1997: 144). The participants acknowledged that they might be the last generation that speaks Finnish to their children. Speaking Finnish to one’s children was talked about as something very natural, even as an obligation to, as many put it, ‘save one more generation’. The responsibility to maintain a minority language, such as Finnish in Sweden, was perceived as a duty of the respective minority themselves. The participants voiced little or no need at all to change the current state of affairs. To ensure care for the elderly – by this they were referring to their parents’ generation – in Finnish appeared much more urgent than securing any other type of service for themselves or their children. To appreciate Finnish and bilingualism, but simultaneously express little interest in undertaking any measures in order to maintain Finnish as an active language outside the home domain, are in obvious conflict. All had overwhelmingly positive memories, for example, about secondary education in Finnish, and the Finnish hobby and sport groups had certainly played a crucial role for their identifications as Finns in Sweden.

Language was given a central position in the process of describing Finnishness; sometimes its significance was strongly underlined, at other times its role was described as minor, or unimportant. Many were quick to emphasize that the core of Finnishness was not to be found in the language. Nonetheless, language was the topic around which the accounts swirled. Most participants voiced contradictory claims about the importance of language and the uniqueness of Finnishness in Sweden, and these contradictions took place often seconds apart. This does not suggest that the respondents were lying or did not know what they were talking about. It simply reflects the intense and difficult nature of defining something as intimate and yet as public as ethnic identifications, pondering about boundaries between us and them and ultimately, defining one’s place in the world. The contradictory accounts surely raise the question of what then constitutes Finnishness if the language is not its essence.

Finnishness as Difference

To find an answer to the question of what Finnishness was for the participants, I looked into other representation repertoires that occurred frequently in the interviews. In addition to the representation repertoire of Language, Finnishness was constructed through creating and pointing out boundaries between groups. This was done by talking about differences between groups, contrasting features of one group with those of another, and by looking for something that could signify uniqueness. The representation repertoire of Being Different proved to be a strong element in the creation of Finnishness. Being different was discussed from three perspectives: looking different, sounding different, and the conflicted situation where one is being perceived as different from others although one does not feel different at all. As visual differences between Finns and Swedes were presented as non-existent, the ways of signaling differences had to be found elsewhere. This emphasis on differences is remarkable especially because the participants explained the upward swing of Finns in Sweden partly as a result of similarities between Swedes and Finns.

In the creation of definitions for Finnishness and in the process of accounting for those creations, the participants made use of national clichés and humour, especially when these illustrated the differences between Finns and Swedes. I agree with Condor’s (2000) suggestion that when speakers employ humour, joking, and clichés they might be doing this to avoid problems of accountability (you can always say you were only kidding), and to enhance the commonsense status of their words. Many acknowledged the clichéd nature of their examples, and seemed fully aware of the not quite true meaning of the characteristics they made use of. Humour also offered an opportunity to talk about delicate topics such as alcoholism and the association of Finns with heavy drinking habits. Although laughter sometimes undermines the message, it can also offer a way, maybe the only way, to talk about taboo topics.

I would like to point out that when the participants made use of clichéd national images they used ways of talking that were available for the process of defining ethnicity, Finnish identities and themselves. Thus, again, although they disagreed with the idea of mutually exclusive polarization of Finns versus Swedes, they had to make use of the concept of contrast and polarization because the discourse functions, so far, in terms of contrasting us to them and perceives dual memberships as impossible. The interesting thing is, however, that these mutually exclusive definitions, this or the other, seem to bend and finally give way to new definitions of both this and that. This observation problematizes the assumption that strong identification with the mainstream culture would cancel out a strong identification with one’s ethnic group (see also, Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003; Verkuyten & de Wolf 2002; Koven 2007).

The participants not only contrasted themselves with different ethnic groups in Sweden, but also with their parents’ generation. They drew a clear line between themselves and their parents’ realities and experiences in Sweden. The gap between the realities and experiences as Finns in Sweden of the parents’ generation and the participants’ generation was presented as wide. The participants talked about high self-esteem and happiness associated with their ethnic and cultural identifications. Negative associations about Finns and Finnishness in Sweden were mostly played down with humour, or not discussed at all. It seems that things that were experienced as painful by the first generation of Finns did not touch their children’s generation in the same way. Nevertheless, some participants talked openly about serious harassment and humiliation that was based on their Finnishness. Those cases have been carved in the memory of the individual, but also in the collective memory of the group as a whole. Everyone spoke of someone they knew who had had some kinds of problems linked to their Finnishness.

Feeling and Being

The ways in which the participants talked about Finnishness in their everyday lives can be examined from three points of view: feeling, being, and doing Finnish(ness). To feel Finnish was the most frequent way of accounting for one’s sense of ethnic identity and the identities of others they described. The representation repertoire of Feeling was a highly productive way to account for definitions within all representations connected with Finnishness. Emotion-based arguments were presented as the most powerful ones, and they were impossible to refute because emotional attachment cannot be measured or judged by others. References to feelings make clear distinctions between the exterior (the looks, or the accents) and the interior (the emotions) of the speakers. To feel like something (like a Finn, a Greek, or a Swede) was presented as more true than looking like something. The participants phrased the sometimes conflicting contrast between their outer appearance and their inner feelings about themselves: ‘I sound like a Swede and look like one, but feel like a Finn’. They themselves considered their identification as both Swedes and Finns neither confusing nor disturbing, but they reported that their peers sometimes did. I argue that hybrid identities are a reality for the participants. Hopefully, it is only a matter of time until those who consider themselves as belonging to a pure category, as well, embrace hybridity as a normal state of life instead of an anomaly.

Verkyuten and de Wolf (2002: 382) evaluate emotional accounts along the same lines as Condor evaluates the employment of humour in interviews. Emotion-based arguments can be viewed as accounts for not accounting and as ways of avoiding having to provide explanations for difficult or sensitive issues. I agree with Verkyuten and de Wolf that it is difficult (if not impossible) to challenge accounts based on emotional arguments without ending up in circular reasoning. The participants, however, often elaborated on their feeling-based arguments. Feelings as an overriding argument were associated with early socialization, family and school. The participants also provided explanations for why emotional arguments were solid building blocks of their ethnic identifications. Feelings were subjective and private in nature, and so were ethnic identities.

Finnishness was often argued for in terms of feelings, but the participants also made a close connection between Finnishness and genetics. Thus, Finnishness was about being something one could prove, not just a feeling that could not be measured. One participant phrased it as ‘I can’t do anything about the fact that I am Finnish’, underlining genetics and our belief in its powerful implications. All of those who identified with being Finns, at least at times, mentioned their parents as the reason for this choice. However, no one claimed to be Finnish only on the basis of a genetic trace leading to Finland. Genetics was often talked about in terms of the metaphor of roots. Roots that connected them to a place called Finland were important to the participants, and roots played a crucial role in the constructions of Finnishness. None of them used this metaphor in connection with Sweden, although all of them called Sweden their home country. The term roots seemed to be reserved for genetic roots, not the new roots that actually connected the participants much more strongly to Sweden than to anywhere else in the world. (See also Lukkarinen Kvist 2006.)

Reliability, Responsibilities and Research Practices

I have dedicated quite an extensive part of this book to considerations of research and fieldwork practices in order to make the process transparent and to emphasize the importance of spelling out one’s research position, assumptions and research steps along the way. Addressing the question of the reliability of ethnographic work, and of this specific study, starts for me with a counter question: what do we mean by reliability? If the question includes pre-assumptions about all-embracing, objective answers to the question of how second generation Finns in Sweden think about themselves in the context of Finns in Sweden, or whether my results are applicable to every second generation Finn in Sweden, the answer is: ‘No, in those terms this study is not reliable’. Yet, it is crucial not to reduce ethnography and its reliability to a local study of small-scale events, to merely capturing one brief moment in time. Blommaert (2005) formulates ethnography as ‘an approach in which the analysis of small phenomena is set against an analysis of big phenomena, and in which both levels can only be understood in terms of one another’. Thus, there are criteria for evaluating the reliability of ethnographic work. Foremost, reliability criteria that apply to qualitative research in general can be employed for evaluating ethnographic research as well. In the following section, I will consider how suitable these criteria are, and to what extent they are, or were, applicable to my study.

When qualitative research methods are scrutinized, reliability and validity become a focus of attention (Denzin & Lincoln 1998). First of all, an awareness of the implications of theoretical frameworks and research methods is crucial. According to the criteria for qualitative research by Denzin & Lincoln (1998), the analysis should show that the research hypothesis, including its theoretical concepts, and the material are in interplay with one another. The choice of a particular research setting makes it possible to address the research questions. With this in mind I chose, after weighing other research methods, the analysis of representation repertoires with an emphasis on the dialogical and social nature of language. Theoretical concepts and the framework of social constructionism are served well with this methodological choice.

Furthermore, the question of to what extent the findings can be generalized must be examined. Because the findings of qualitative research are often unique and cannot be generalized per se, the principle of generalization requires some closer consideration. Generalization can also be understood as an encouragement to present something more than just the data; the researcher should not simply describe the results but show connections and link the analysis to a larger framework or discussion. My findings cannot be generalized to speak for every second generation Finn in Sweden, but they reflect several large-scale changes. First of all, they voice changes in the discourse of being something else than a proper Swede in Sweden and not experiencing this as a stigma (Ågren 2006; Lainio & Leppänen 2005; Weckström 2007; 2011). Secondly, they show how concepts are indeed changing, and, for example, hybridity talk has stepped down from the podium of ‘intellectuals only’.

I argue that although my research was not conducted with the intention that its results should (or even could, for that matter) be generally applicable to everyone, I have presented a close sample of the key participants’ accounts as the voice of their generation talking about ethnicity. There are, of course, hundreds of other voices as well, but I believe to have captured and presented a substantial sample. The participants and their voices are the core around which I have presented this study, trying to give them attention throughout the process. The decision to concentrate on ten key participants has, of course, excluded 19 other persons, and it is justified to ask whether justice has been done to them by this choice. I claim that all of the voices find echoes in the examples I have presented. I was fortunate to have the chance to return to Sweden on several occasions, and to concentrate on interviewing as not only information seeking but above all as an interactive give-and-take process in which we were engaged. To return for the feedback conversations was time consuming but absolutely worthwhile. Feedback conversations offered the participants a possibility to become more deeply involved in the research, and were therefore essential encounters. In particular, the feedback conversations have strengthened my understanding of ethnic identifications as products of interaction between individuals and their surroundings. Nevertheless, I am aware of the narrowness of the sample of second generation Finns, and do not seek to generalize the findings to speak for everyone.

I have discussed many of the choices and the main findings of the analysis with several participants, and found these conversations most inspiring. All key participants have been offered the opportunity to read and comment on the descriptions concerning themselves, and all of them have received excerpts of the analysis based on their interview data. I have tried to describe my role in the research process in as detailed a manner as possible, to show the researcher as a living person influencing interview situations, sometimes even determining them, and in the social interaction with which I have been engaged.

Ethnographic work with human beings, as I have done it, is closely connected to empathy. Conversations about identities were not always just happy recollections but sometimes involved intimate memories, changing the interview into a confidential conversation, blurring the boundaries between an information-seeking interview, which is what all interviews are somewhere deep down, and a normal personal conversation. At times, I did not know which script I should follow. Was I anticipated to assume the role of a therapeutic listener, maybe even a trusted friend, or an interviewer who kept the recorder in sight and never dropped the thread of the interview? In these situations I trusted my gut feeling, which proved to be a good choice. I have tried to treat all participants in a respectful manner and as equal partners in the research throughout the process. The relationship to some participants grew more intimate than with others; nevertheless, all were important. Their identities were protected by the pseudonyms they gave themselves and they have read and approved the descriptions I wrote about them and their backgrounds. Some wanted small modifications, others did not.

So far I have discussed the researcher’s responsibilities in the context of ethnographic work and towards the participants of this study, and assessed my practices according to available guidelines. Yet, it is important also to reflect on the researcher’s responsibilities from the point of view of the politics of conducting research on a linguistic minority to which one does not belong. People of Finnish descent in Sweden are one of the five national minorities, and thus the Finnish language is entitled to protection and promotion under Swedish law and international treaties. What kinds of responsibilities do researchers face when they study a minority whose language is, according to research, undergoing language shift from its ethnic language to the dominant language of society? (See, Lainio & Leppänen 2005: 557–559.)

The roles and responsibilities of researchers studying minority languages is a highly controversial topic, and opinions range from passive attitudes, according to which researchers should not participate in or interfere with any activities outside the research project, to active positions that encourage researchers to undertake action against the disappearance of threatened languages (Huss 2006: 584–587). The passive position implies that researchers should make no attempt to halt natural development: if a language is showing signs of disappearing, this is bound to happen anyway. Proponents of this view regard language shift, and the fact that some languages are no longer spoken, as a natural cycle of life with which researchers should not interfere (Huss 2006: 587). According to the opposing view, researchers bear the responsibility of participating in activities aimed at revitalizing and maintaining threatened languages. Those in favour of the active position argue that the situation on and statements from the field are not as simple as they might appear: if speakers of a minority or endangered language prefer the dominant language to their original language it usually has to do with their low status in society. (See also Edwards 2006: 5.) It is argued that people are willing to give up a feature which is not appreciated by the majority of the society in which they live, such as speaking certain languages (see, for example Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003; Liebkind 1989). This implies that assimilation is understood as going hand in hand with a high status in society, and segregation, on the contrary, causing low status.

The widely documented phenomenon that third generation immigrants express more interest in their ethnic background, language and traditions than those of the second generation is often explained by their better status in society. Third generation immigrants feel secure in their positions in society, and their interest in or even possible identification with a low status background does not affect them in the same way that it might have affected their parents’ and grandparents’ generation (see, for example Dorian 1993). What the explanation does not account for is the fact that stigmatized identifications can change over time, as the development of Finns in Sweden has shown. I argue the second and third generation’s interest in their roots and heritage languages can be motivated also by other factors, such as the trend in the western world to seek smaller and more specific communities, or ethnic groups, to identify with.

Another topic of political delicacy is how to deal with taboo topics, such as alcoholism, and other non-confirming results, such as not giving language a central role in the definitions of Finnishness in Sweden. In addition to ethical guidelines and the recommendation to acknowledge and reflect one’s position and starting points in relation to the findings, there is very little literature about how a researcher should present data that suggests something that is not in accordance with the official agenda of what is beneficial to a minority, or aspects that are less flattering, such as an addiction. If low interest in the native language is explained as a consequence of the groups’ low status in society, and more language-relevant information is suggested as the cure, I cannot help questioning my, or any researcher’s, moral right to dictate what is good in individual cases, or for a minority group as a whole. The discussion of the obligation to maintain a minority language always runs the risk of making heritage, including language, an unwanted burden, an ethnic duty that is experienced as obligating to the respective minority (Pöyhönen & Dufva 2007). This is a conflict that I have not, to my disappointment, been able to solve in the course of this research project, and shall continue to ponder.

To include the all too familiar combination of Finns, alcohol, and addiction, I contemplated at length whether to discuss the element in this report at all. It seemed to me such a worn-out topic, nothing my data could say anything new about. Actually, I did not want to talk about alcoholism and Finns at all. Yet, the topic was brought up in every single interview, without my encouraging it in the slightest, thus I feel the obligation to bring it up in the report as well. There is nothing nice about alcoholism or the reputation of Finns as not being able to control their alcohol consumption. For many, alcohol still draws some outlines of Finnishness, be it Emma’s story about the Finnish bag lady at the railway stop, or Aki-Petteri’s stone-faced friends who let everything out when drunk. Heavy drinking and alcoholism seemed to be an important, yet unpleasant, element of Finnishness, and if it is important to the participants, I reasoned, it should not be excluded from the results.

The findings of this study are not dramatic, nor even totally unexpected, yet there are aspects that are not in harmony with the idea of maintaining Finnish in Sweden as an active language (see, for example, SOU 2005: 40). There is, of course, nothing wrong with presenting such findings. The question is, however, how to talk about them. Are the participants ‘losing their Finnishness’, is Finnish ‘dying out’, and is ‘language shift’ something lethal, or are they ‘paving the way for hybrid identification’ and ‘new forms of Finnishness’? My research questions imply my interest in changes in the ways the participants relate to concepts of Finnishness in Sweden, and, on a terminological level, in how these concepts have changed over the years. It is a conscious decision to present the findings in a way that emphasizes movement and ongoing changes in Finnishness.

My Contribution

The very last question I want to address is: what can this book add to the already existing picture, or should I rather say, written accounts, of Finns in Sweden, and what lies around the bend in the future? I argue that there are at least three important aspects this study has to offer. First, this is a novel study about the second generation. It is about the offspring of those Finns who left Finland some 30 years ago, and whose stories have been well documented at least to some extent. My study is about the lives, hopes, and ideas of the next generation, about what Finnishness is for them, and how they talk about it. There are already detailed accounts of the first generation’s memories, ranging from historical reviews (Lainio 1995; Korkiasaari & Tarkiainen 2000) to anthologies (Junila & Westin 2007; Pelkonen & Vuonokari 1989), but with the exception of Ågren’s dissertation, only a few smaller scale studies about the second generation (for example, Lainio & Leppänen 2005). I hope that my research process created and will continue to create space for new definitions of Finnishness and different forms of Finnish identities as defined by the research participants, the second and third generation, themselves.

The second aspect concerns the idea of a rather invisible minority searching for something to create a feeling of uniqueness when this uniqueness cannot be manifested in traditional clothing that differs from the dominant mainstream of society, or when physical appearance does not differ from the features of the dominant inhabitants of the country. In the previous chapters I have examined whether it is essential for the participants as members of the group of Finns in Sweden to establish boundaries in order to create membership, as Barth (1969) suggests. Based on my analysis of the interview material I concluded that boundaries are slowly turning liquid and hybrid, constantly transforming according to individual needs. This, however, does not undermine the importance of the subjective feeling of belonging to a group which is distinctively different from other groups. For the creation of us, we seem to need the conceptual idea of borders and differences between people.

Thirdly, my study deals with delicate questions of responsibility concerning conducting research with a group that is, on one hand, close to and, on the other, far from the researcher. While conducting research about a minority one quickly faces questions about political aims and purposes, responsibilities, the right to undertake the research, and to publish the outcome. These questions are easily brushed off or simply ignored. I have tried to illuminate the research process also in terms of weighing out research responsibilities and implications which might merge from the published findings. Ever since the 1980s, the topic of Finns in Sweden has gained political weight and has became a rather controversial topic to discuss. Should research about a minority be supportive of and confirm existing beliefs? To be exact, whose existing beliefs? What does it mean to empower someone with research? Is it justified, or acceptable, to discuss topics that might not be ‘good’ for the minority’s public image, or should one point out political injustices toward this minority? I argue that too little attention has been paid to these questions in existing research and that in my study they are given the attention they deserve.

In addition to enriching the present picture of Finns and their offspring in Sweden, my research contributes to a more general body of literature concerning the transformation of identities and identifications in the rapidly changing world. The polyphonic voices of the participants reveal successful attempts to break free from the expectation of identifying with one of the mutually exclusive categories: Finnish or Swedish. The participants open a whole new landscape of possibilities for being Finnish in Sweden. In this sense, this research could serve as a fruitful contribution also to the discussion about immigrants and their growing generation in Finland. The participants express opinions that are in line with many academic observations of the changes our western world is going through: the hybridity discourse, challenging the notion that language shift equals the death of a language, or that language equals culture. For me as a researcher, it was delightful to be involved with these interview situations and to witness new forms of identities being discussed in front of my very eyes and my microphone, confirming often complicated academic accounts concerning hybrid identity discourses.

The participants in this study were not perceived as visually very different from the majority of their Swedish peers, and the interviews did not focus on visual differences, but rather on similarities. Nevertheless, some examples show that some participants have indeed been treated aggressively (Sanna’s example about the taxi driver) or unfairly (Katariina’s employer) based on their Finnishness. Finland has a very modest immigrant population in comparison to Sweden; nevertheless, the same invisibility applies, for example, to immigrants of Russian or Estonian background in Finland. Visual differences and the feeling of being excluded or treated differently based on looking different are often topics of second generation research that I referred to earlier as ‘conflict centered’. I argue, however, that the main considerations for all groups living in the margins are about the general rigidity, even unwillingness, of society to accept plurality. An accent can sometimes be as stigmatizing as the color of one’s skin. In this sense, my study offers examples of reflections about feelings of belonging, and can serve as a basis for discussing plurality in Finland as well.

What kinds of identities the participants of this study will assume in the future is unknown. According to the feedback from many participants, this research gave them an opportunity to think about languages and identities, to position oneself in a setting that combines elements from several different cultural and linguistic domains, and to reflect upon new positions one might assume. I hope, of course, that these reflections were positive and empowering regardless of the position the individuals assumed in regard to their Finnish background. Although the participants’ future is unknown, more can be said about the future of this research outside of the academic context; a popular scientific book about the main findings of this study was published in 2011 with a larger Finnish speaking audience in mind. According to the tradition of ethnographic work it is important to publish the findings also in the language of the group that has been studied. For me, the Finnish version is a tribute to the participants of this study and to Finns in Sweden, regardless of their ethnic identities or opinions about the matters discussed in this study.

Bibliography

Adams, Laura L. 1999: The mascot researcher. Identity, power, and knowledge in fieldwork. – Journal for Contemporary Ethnography 28 pp. 331–363.

Alitolppa-Niitamo, Anne 2004: The icebreakers. Somali-speaking youth in metropolitan Helsinki with a focus on the context of formal education. Helsinki: Väestöliiton väestöntutkimuslaitos.

Amersfoort, Hans van 2004: The waxing and waning of a diaspora. Moluccans in the Netherlands, 1950–2002. – Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30 pp. 151–174.

Amersfoort, Hans van 1993: Migratie, bevolking en polities. Nederland als immigratieland in een Westeuropese context. Amsterdamse Sociaal-Geografische Studies nr. 46. Amsterdam: Instituut voor Sociale Geografie, Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Anderson, Benedict 1991: Imagined communities. Reflections on the origin of spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

Anttonen, Marjut 1999: Etnopolitiikkaa Ruijassa. Suomalaislähtöisen väestön identiteetin politisoituminen 1990-luvulla. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 764. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Appel, René – Muysken, Pieter 1987: Language contact and bilingualism. London: Edward Arnold.

Ashcroft, Bill – Griffiths, Gareth – Tiffin, Helen (eds.) 2003: Post-colonial study. A reader. London: Routledge.

Aslama, Minna – Pantti, Mervi 2007: Flagging finnishness. Reporting national identity in reality television. – Television and New Media 8 pp. 49–67.

Auer, Peter 2007: Social identitites and style. Alternative approaches to linguistic heterogeneity. – Peter Auer (eds.), Social identity and communicative style. Alternatve approaches to variabilty in language pp. 1–21. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Auer, Peter 2002: Türkenslang: Ein jugendsprachlicher Ethnolekt des Deutschen und seine Transformationen. – Annelies Häcki-Buhofer (eds.), Spracherwerb und Lebensalter pp. 255–264. Basler Studien zur Deutshcen Sprache und Literatur, Vol. 83. Tübingen: Francke.

Barker, Chris – Galasinski, Dariusz 2001: Cultural studies and discourse analysis. A dialogue on language and identity. London: Sage.

Barth, Fredrik 1969: Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of cultural difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Bauman, Zygmunt 1990: Modernity and ambivalence. London: Blackwell.

Berger, Peter – Luckmann, Thomas 1994. The social construction of reality. A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.

Billig, Michael 2005: Laughter and ridicule. Towards a social critique of humour. London: Sage.

Billig, Michael 1995: Banal nationalism. London: Sage.

Bishop, Hywel – Jaworski, Adam 2003: ‘We beat ‘em’: nationalism and the hegemony of homogeneity in the British press reportage of Germany versus England during Euro 2000. – Discourse & Society 14 pp. 243–271.

Blackshire-Belay, Carol A. (eds.) 1996: The African-German experience. Critical essays. London: Praeger.

Blommaert, Jan 2005: Discourse. A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Blommaert, Jan – Collins, James – Slembrouck, Stef 2005: Spaces of multilingualism. – Language and Communication 25 pp. 197–216.

Bourdieu, Pierre 1990: In other words: Essays towards a reflexive Sociology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bucholtz, Mary 2000: The politics of transcription. – Journal of Pragmatics 32 pp. 1439–1462.

Burck, Charlotte 2004: Multilingual living. Explorations of language and subjectivity. Palgrave: Macmillian.

Burgos, Adrian 2005: Entering Cuba’s other playing field: Cuban baseball and the choice between race and nation, 1887–1912. – Journal Of Sport And Social Issues 29 pp. 9–40.

Burns, Robert B. 2000: Introduction to research methods. London: Sage.

Burr, Vivianne 1996: An introduction to social constructionism. London: Routledge.

Cameron, Deborah 2001: Working with spoken discourse. London: Sage.

Chapman Malcolm – McDonald, Maryon – Tonkin, Elizabeth 1989: Introduction – history and social anthropology. – Elizabeth Tonkin, Maryon McDonald & Malcolm Chapman (eds.), History and ethnicity. ASA Monographs 27. London: Routledge.

Chouliaraki, Lilie – Fairclough, Norman 1999: Discourse in late modernity. Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Cilla, Rudolf de – Reisigl, Martin – Wodak, Ruth 1999: Discursive construction of national identities. – Discourse and Society 10 pp. 149–173.

Clyne, Michael 2000: Codeswitching worldwide. – Language in Society pp. 123–126.

Coffey, Amanda 1999: The ethnographic self. Fieldwork and the representation of identity. London: Sage.

Coffey, Amanda – Atkinson, Paul 1996: Making sense of qualitative data. Complementary research strategies. London: Sage.

Condor, Susan 2000: Pride and prejudice: identity and management in English people’s talk about this country. – Discourse & Society 11 pp. 175–205.

Delgado, Fernando 2004: The fusing of sport and politics: media constructions of U.S. versus Iran at France ’98. – Journal of Sport & Social Issues 27 pp. 293–307.

Denzin, Norman K. – Lincoln, Yvonna S. (eds.) 1998: The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Dewaele, Jean-Marc 2008: The emotional weight of I love you in multilinguals’ languages. – Journal of Pragmatics 40 pp. 1753–1780.

Dijk, Teun van 1998a: Ideology. A multidisciplinary approach. London: Sage.

Dijk, Teun van (eds.) 1998b: Discourse studies. A multidisciplinary introduction. Vol 2. Discourse and social interaction. London: Longman.

Dijk, Teun van 1991: Racism and the press. London: Routledge.

Dijk, Teun van 1984: Prejudice in discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Dixon, John A. – Mahoney, Berenic – Cocks, Roger 1997: Accents of guilt? Effects of regional accents, race, and crime type on attribution of guilt. – Journal of Language and Social Psychology 21 pp. 142–168.

Dorian, Nancy C. 1993: Discussion note. A response to Ladefoged’s other view of endangered languages. – Language 69 pp. 575–579.

Dyers, Charlyn 2008: Truncated multilingualism or language shift? An examination of language use in intimate domains in a new non-racial working class township in South Africa. – Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural development 2 pp. 110–126.

Edwards, John 2006: Players and power in minority-group settings. – Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural development 27 pp. 4–21.

Eemeren, Frans H. van – Grotendorst, Rob 2004: A Systematic theory of argumentation. The pragma-dialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ehn, Billy – Klein, Barbro 1994: Från erfarenhet till text. Om kulturvetenskaplig reflexivitet. Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag.

Eriksen, Tomas H. 2004: Rötter och fötter. Identitet i en föränderlig tid. Nora: Nya Doxa.

Eriksen, Tomas H. 1998: Etnicitet och nationalism. Nora: Nya Doxa.

Eriksen, Tomas H. 1996: Kampen om framtiden. Et essay om myter, identitet og politik. Oslo: Aschehoug & Co.

Eskola, Jari 2001: Tieteen Juhannustaiat. – Juhani Aaltola & Raine Valli (eds.), Ikkunoita tutkimusmetodeihin II. Näkökulmia aloittelevalle tutkijalle tutkimuksen teoreettisiin lähtökohtiin ja analyysimenetelmiin pp. 133–157. Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus.

Extra, Guus – Yağmur, Kutlay 2004: Multidisciplinary perspectives. – Guus Extra & Kutlay Yağmur (eds.), Urban multilingualism in Europe. Immigrant minority languages at home and school pp. 11–99. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Fairclough, Norman – Wodak, Ruth 1998: Critical discourse analysis. – Teun van Dijk (eds.), Discourse studie: A multidisciplinary introduction vol 2. Discourse and social interaction pp. 258–284. London: Longman.

Fairclough, Norman 1992: Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Fairclough, Norman 1989: Language and power. London: Longman.

Fishman, Joshua A. (eds.) 1999: Handbook of language and ethnic identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1996. What do you do when you loose your language? – Gina Cantoni (eds.), Stabilizing indigenous languages pp. 71–81. Northern Arizona University: Flagstaff Centre for Excellence in education. http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/stabilize/iii-families/lose.htm [2.6.2008]

Fishman, Joshua A. 1989: Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective. Clevedon: Oxford University Press.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1977: Language and ethnicity. – Howard Giles (eds.), Language, ethnicity and intergroup relations pp. 15–57. London: Academic Press.

Foucault, Michel 1970: The order of discourse. An archaeology of the human sciences. London: Tavistock.

Geertz, Clifford 1973: The interpretation of culture. New York: Basic Books.

Gerger, Kenneth J. 1999: An invitation to social construction. London: Sage.

Gerger, Kenneth J. 1994: Relaties and relationships. Soundings in social construction. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Giles, Howard – Coupland, Nikolas 1991: Language. Context and consequences. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Giles, Howard – Robinson, W. Peter (eds.) 1990: Handbook of language and social psychology. Chichester: Wiley.

Gudykunst, William B. 2001: Asian American ethnicity and communication. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

Gudykunst, William B. – Ting-Toomey, Stella 1990: Ethnic identity, language and communication breakdowns. – Howard Giles & W. Peter Robinson (eds.), Handbook of language and social psychology pp. 309–327. Chichester: Wiley.

Gumperz, John J. 1992: Interviewing in intercultural situations. – Paul Drew & John Heritage (eds.), Talk at work. Interaction in institutional settings pp. 302–330. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hall, Stuart 2003: Monikulttuurisuus. – Mikko Lehtonen & Olli Löytty (eds.), Erilaisuus 233–281. Vastapaino: Tampere. [Translation by Mikko Lehtonen]

Hall, Stuart 1999: Identiteetti. Tampere: Vastapaino.

Hall, Stuart 1997: Representation. Cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage.

Hall, Stuart 1996: Cultural identity and diaspora. – Padmini Mongia (ed.), Contemporary postcolonial theory. A reader pp. 110–121. London: Arnold.

Hall, Stuart 1995: New cultures of the old. – Doreen Massey & Pat Jess (eds.), A Place in the World? pp. 175–213. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Hall, Stuart & Held, David & McGrew (eds.) 1992: Modernity and its future. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hammersley, Martin 1990: Reading ethnographic research. A critical guide. New York: Longman.

Hammersley, Martin – Atkinson, Paul 1995: Ethnography. Principles in practice. London: Routledge.

Hansegård, Nils-Erik 1968: Tvåspråkighet eller halvspråkighet? Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Hatton, Timothy J. & Jeffrey G. Williamson (eds.) 1994: Migration and the international labour market, 1850–1939. London: Routledge.

Heller, Monica 1999: Linguistic minorities and modernity. A sociolinguistic ethnography. Real Language Series. London: Longman.

Hidalgo, Margareta 1998: On the question of ‘standard’ versus ‘dialect’. – Michael D. Linn (eds.), Handbook of dialects and language variation pp. 555–572. London: Academic Press.

Hobsbawm, Eric 1983: Introduction. The invention of tradition. – Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (eds.), The invention of tradition pp. 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hoikkala, Tommi 1999: Suuret ikäluokat ja työ. – Raimo Parikka (eds.), Suomalaisen työn historiaa. Korvesta konttoriin. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Horak, Roman – Spitaler, Georg 2003: Sport, space and nationality. Soccer and skiing as formative forces. On the Austrian example. – American Behavioral Scientist 46 pp. 1506–1518.

Hujanen, Taisto 1986: Kultamaa ja kotimaa. Tutkimus Ruotsin ensimmäisen polven suomalaissiirtolaisten Suomi- ja Ruotsi-kuvasta. Ser A vol 25. Tampereen yliopisto.

Huss, Lena 2006: Uutta kielipolitiikkaa Skandinaviassa. Kenellä on vastuu kielen säilyttämisestä? – Virittäjä 4, pp. 578–589.

Huss, Lena 2001: The national minority languages of Sweden. – Guus Extra & Durk Gorter (eds.), The other languages of Europe. Demographic, sociolinguistic, and educational perspectives pp. 137–158. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Huss, Lena 1991: Simultan tvåspråkighet i svenskfinsk kontext. Studia Uralica Upsalensia 21. Uppsala universitet och Amlqvist & Wiksell International.

Hyltenstam, Kenneth (ed.) 1999: Sveriges sju inhemska språk. Ett minoritetsspråksperspektiv. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Hymes, Dell H. 1972: Reinventing anthropology. New York: Random House.

Iskanius, Sanna 2006: Venäjänkielisten maahanmuuttajaopiskelijoiden kieli-identiteetti. Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities 51. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän yliopisto.

Jaakkola, Magdalena 1989: Rinkebyn koululakko. Tutkimus ruotsinsuomalaisten etnisestä mobilisoitumisesta tukholmalaisessa lähiössä. Stockholm: Centrum för invandringsforskning CEIFO.

Jasinskaja-Lahti, Inga 2004: Perceived discrimination and psychological well-being among Russian- and Estonian-speaking immigrants in Finland. – Petra Sinisalo-Katajisto, Katja Hirvasaho & Edvard Hämäläinen (eds.), Russian-speaking immigrant population in Finland pp. 122–138. Studia Slavica Finlandensia, Helsinki.

Jokinen, Arja – Juhila, Kirsi – Suoninen, Eero 1999: Diskurssianalyysi liikkeessä. Tampere: Vastapaino.

Junila, Marianne – Westin, Charles 2007: Kahden puolen Pohjanlahtea II. Enemmistöjen ja vähemmistöjen kesken. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Keith, Michael & Pile, Steve (eds.) 1993: Place and the politics of identity. London: Routledge.

Kofman, Eleonore – Phizacklea, Annie – Raghuram, Parvati – Sales, Rosemary 2000: Gender and international migration in Europe. Employment, welfare and politics. London: Routledge.

Kofman, Eleonore 1999: Female ‘birds of passage’ a decade later. Gender and immigration in the European Union. – International Migration Review 33 pp. 269–299.

Koiranen, Vilho 1966: Suomalaisten siirtolaisten sulautuminen Ruotsissa. Sosiologinen tutkimus Ruotsiin vuosina 1945–1959 muuttaneiden suomenkielisten siirtolaisten kulttuurin muuttumisesta. Porvoo: WSOY.

Korkiasaari, Jouni – Tarkiainen, Kari 2000: Suomalaiset Ruotsissa. Suomalaisen siirtolaisuuden historia 3. Jyväskylä: Gummerus.

Kotsinas, Ulla-Brit 1990: Svensk, invandrarsvensk eller invandrare. Om bedömning av ”främmade” drag i svenskt talspråk. – Gunnar Tingbjorn (eds.), Andra symposiet om svenska som andraspråk i Göteborg 1989 pp. 244–273. Stockholm: Skriptor.

Kotsinas, Ulla-Brit 1988: Rinkebysvenskan – en dialekt? – Per Linell et al. (eds.), Svenskans Beskrivning 164–278. Linköping: Tema Kommunikation, Universitetet i Linköping.

Kotsinas, Ulla-Brit 1982: Svenska svårt. Några invandrares svenska talspråk. Stockholm: Ordförrådet, Institutionen för nordiska språk.

Kovèn, Michele 2007: Selves in two languages. – Studies in bilingualism 34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Kramsch, Claire 1998: Language and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kuosmanen, Jari 2001: Finnkampen. En studie av finska mäns liv och sociala karriärer i Sverige. Skriftserie nr 2001: 2. Stockholm: Institutionen för socialt arbete vid Göteborgs universitet.

Laakkonen Risto 1996: Finländarna på den svenska arbetsmarknaden efter andra världskriget – arbetskraftsfrågan i finsk-svenska relationer. – Jarmo Lainio (eds.), Finnarnas historia i Sverige 3. Tiden efter 1945. Stockholm: Nordiska museet, Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura.

Labov, William 1972: Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Laine-Sveiby, Kati 1991: Företag i kulturmöten. Tre finländska företag och deras svenska dotterbolag. En etnologisk studie. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet.

Lainio, Jarmo – Leppänen, Annaliina 2005: Sverigefinnars tankar om finskans möjligheter och rättigheter i Stockholm och Mälardalen. En intervjustudie. Rapport till Utredningen om finska språket i Stockholms- och Mälardalsregionen (Ju 2004:01). Finskt språk- och kulturcentrum, Mälardalens högskola. / Justitiedepartementet, Stockholm. Appendix 7 in SOU 2005: 40, Rätten till mitt språk, Förstärkt minoritetsskydd. Delbetänkande från Utredningen om finska och sydsamiska språken pp. 493–681.

Lainio, Jarmo (ed.) 1996: Finnarnas historia i Sverige 3. Tiden efter 1945. Helsingfors: Finska Historiska Samfundet & Stockholm: Nordiska Museet.

Lainio, Jarmo 1989: Spoken Finnish in urban Sweden. Uppsala Multiethnic Papers 15. Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic Research.

Land, Hedda Van ‘t 2000: Similar questions. Different meanings. Differences in the meaning of constructs for Dutch and Moroccan respondents. Effects of the ethnicity of the interviewer and language of the interviews among first and second generation Moroccan respondents. Amsterdam: Proefschrift Vreie Univeristeit van Amsterdam.

Lanza, Elizabeth 2004: Language mixing in infant bilingualism. A sociolinguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lehtonen, Mikko – Löytty, Olli (eds.) 2003: Erilaisuus. Tampere: Vastapaino.

Liebkind, Karmela 1989: Conceptual approaches to ethnic identity. – Karmela Liebkind (eds.), New identities in Europe pp. 25–31. London: Gower.

Lippe, Gerd Von der 2002: Media image. Sport, gender and national identities in five European countries. – International Review for the Sociology of Sport 37 pp. 371–395.

Loentz, Elizabeth 2006: Yiddish, kanak sprak, klezmer, and hiphop. Ethnolect, minority culture, multiculturalism, and stereotype in Germany. – Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 25 pp. 33–62.

Lukkarinen Kvist, Mirjaliisa 2006: Tiden har haft sin gång. Hem och tillhörighet bland sverigefinnar i Mälaren. Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 372. Linköping: Linköpings universitet.

Maanen, John van 1988: Tales of the field. On writing ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

MacClancy, Jeremy (eds.) 1996: Sport, identity and ethnicity. Oxford: Berg.

Mantila, Harri 2002: Tietoisuus ja kielipolitiikka. – Kielikuvia 1, pp. 4–11.

Massey, Doreen 1995: The conceptualizating of space. – Doreen Massey & Pat Jess (eds.), A Place in the World? pp. 45–86. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Miettinen, Helena 2004: Menetetyt kodit, elämät, unelmat. Suomalaisuus paluumuuttaja-statukseen oikeutettujen venäjänsuomalaisten narratiivisessa itsemäärittelyssä. Sosiaalipsykologisia tutkimuksia 11. Sosiaalipsykologian laitos. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto.

Mills, Sara 1997: Discourse. London: Routledge.

Murphy, Elizabeth & Dingwall, Robert 2001: The ethnics of ethnography. – Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland & Lyn Lofland (eds.), Handbook of ethnography pp. 339–351. London: Sage.

Nortier, Jacomine & Dorleijn, Margreet 2008: Moroccan accent in Dutch. A sociocultural style restricted to the Moroccan community? – International Journal of Bilingualism 12 pp. 125–142.

Nygren-Junkin, Lilian 2004: Multilingualism in Göteborg. – Guus Extra & Kutlay Yağmur (eds.), Urban multilingualism in Europe. Immigrant minority languages at home and school pp. 133–158. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Pavlenko, Aneta 2005: Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pavlenko, Aneta – Blackledge, Adrian (eds.) 2003: Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Pelkonen, Juhamatti – Vuonokari, Erkki (eds.) 1993: Luokan kynnyksen yli. Ruotsinsuomalaiset kirjoittavat kouluhistoriaa. Stockholm: Ruotsinsuomalaisten arkisto/ Sverige-finnarnas arkiv, Jyväskylä: Gummerus.

Pelkonen, Juhamatti – Vuonokari, Erkki (eds.) 1989: Hitsikissa hiipii uniin. Ruotsinsuomalaisten metallityöläisten kertomuksia pakkosulatuksen vuosilta. Jyväskylä: Gummerus.

Peura, Markku – Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove 1994: Man kan vara tvåländare också… Sverigefinnarnas väg från tystnad till kamp. Stockholm: Sverigefinnarnas arkiv.

Perelmann, Joel – Waldinger, Roger 1997: Second generation decline? Children of immigrants, past and present. A reconsideration. – International Migration Review 31 pp. 893–922.

Phillipson, Robert 2003: English-only Europe? Challenging language policy. London: Routledge.

Piller, Ingrid 2002: Bilingual couples talk. The discursive construction of hybridity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Porter, John 1965: The Vertical mosaic. An analysis of social class and power in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Potter, Jonathan 1996: Discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London: Sage.

Potter, Jonathan – Wetherell, Margaret 1994: Discourse and social psychology. Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London: Sage.

Poulton, Emma 2004: Mediated patriot games. The construction and representation of national identities in the British television production of Euro ’96. – International Review For The Sociology Of Sport 39 s. 437–455.

Provine, Robert 2000: Laughter. A scientific investigation. London: Penguin.

Purhonen, Semi 2007: Sukupolvien ongelma. Tutkielma sukupolven käsitteestä, sukupolvitietoisuudesta ja suurista ikäluokista. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto.

Pöyhönen, Sari & Dufva, Hannele 2007: Identity and heteroglossia: Negotiation of identities of Ingrian Finnish language teachers in Russia. – Riikka Alanen & S. Pöyhönen (eds.) Language in Action: Vygotsky and Leontievian Legacy Today. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 160–178.

Pöyhönen, Sari 2004: Suomen kielen opettajana Venäjällä. Ammatti-identiteetin tulkintoja koulutuksen ja opetuksen murroksessa. Jyväskylän yliopisto: Soveltavan kielentutkimuksen keskus.

Quist, Pia 2005: Stilistiske praksisser i storbyens heterogene skole. En etnografisk og sociolingvistisk undersøgelse af sproglig variation. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Nordisk Forskningsinstitut, Avd. for dialektforskning. Kobenhavn: Kobenhavns Universitet.

Quist, Pia 2008: Sociolinguistic approaches to multiethnolect. Language variety and stylistic practice. – International Journal of Bilingualism 12 pp. 43–61. http://www.kd.ac.uk/content/1/c6/01/42/29/paper43.pdf [2.6.2008]

Rampton, Ben 1995: Crossing. Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman.

Roderigo Blomqvist, Paula 2002: Från assimilation till separation. Den finska invandrargruppens krav på finskspråkig skolundervisning. Förvaltnings-högskolans rapport nr. 47. Göteborg: Förvaltninghögskolan.

Rosenberg, Thomas – Toukomaa, Pertti 1994: Om kvinnorns kraft, mäns marginalisering och pojkarnas kosmiska ensamhet. – Markku Peura & Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (eds.), Man kan vara tvåländare också…Sverigefinnarnas väg från tystnad till kamp. Stockholm: Sverigefinnarnas arkiv.

Sajavaara, Kari – Lehtonen, Jaakko 1997: The silent Finn revisited. – Adam Jaworski (ed.), Silence. Interdisciplinary perspectives pp. 263–283. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Savolainen, Maija 1982: “Jag skäms inte för att jag är finne”. Språket som stigmasymbol för finnar under assimilationstrycket i Sverige. CD-uppsats i sociologi. Göteborg: Göteborg universitet.

Shotter, John 1993: Conversational realities. Constructing life through language. London: Sage.

Sintonen, Teppo 1999: Etninen identiteetti ja narratiivisuus. Kanadan suomalaiset miehet elämänsä kertojina. Jyväskylän yliopisto: SopHi.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove 2000: Linguistic genocide in education or worldwide diversity and human rights? New Jersey: Mahwah.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove 1995: Introduction. – Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (ed.), Multilingualism for all pp. 7–20. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove 1987: Are the Finns an ethnic minority. Finnish parents talk about Finland and Sweden. Research project: The Education of the Finnish Minority in Sweden. Working paper nr I. Roskilde University Centre: Institute VI Roskilde.

Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove 1986: Minoritet, språk och rasism. Stockholm: Liber.

Snellman, Hanna 2006: Going to school in diaspora. – Marja Lähteenmäki & Hanna Snellman (eds.), Passages westward s.-X. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Snellman, Hanna 2005: The road taken. Narratives from Lapland. Inari: Kustannus Puntsi.

Snellman, Hanna 2003: Sallan suurin kylä – Göteborg. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Snoeck Henkemans, Anne F. 1997: Analysing complex argumentation. The construction of multiple and coordinatively compound argumentation in a critical discussion. Amsterdam: SicSat.

SOU: Rätten till mitt språk. Förstärkt minoritetsskydd. Statens offentliga utredningar 2005:4.

Spradley, James P. 1980: Participant observation. New York: Holt & Rinehart and Winston.

Stewart, Alex 1998: The ethnographer’s method. Qualitative Method Series 46. London: Sage.

Suutari, Pekka 2000: Götajoen Jenkka. Tanssimusiikki ruotsinsuomalaisen identiteetin rakentajana. Suomen Etnomusikologisen Seuran julkaisuja 7. Helsinki: Suomen etnomusikologinen seura, Tukholma: Ruotsinsuomalaisten arkiston julkaisuja 4.

Svendsen, Bente A. – Røneland Unn 2008: Multiethnolectal facts and functions in Oslo, Norway. – International Journal of Bilingualism 12 pp. 63–83.

Tajfel, Henri 1978: Social categorization, social identity and social comparison. – Henri Tajfel (eds.), Differentiation between social groups. Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations pp. 61–78. London: Academic Press.

Toukomaa, Pertti 1975: Siirtolaisoppilaan kielitaito ja koulumenestys. Siirtolaisuustutkimuksia 10. Helsinki: Työvoimaministeriö.

Verkuyten, Maykel – de Wolf, Angela 2002: Being, feeling and doing. Discourses and ethnic self-definitions among minority group members. – Culture and Psychology 8 pp. 371–399.

Virkamäki, Suvi 2005: ”Att få ett gott hem …” Finska krigsbarnsadoptioner i Stockholm 1946–1947. Web Reports No. 7, Turku: Migrationsinstitutet.

Virtanen, Matti 2001: Fennomanian perilliset. Poliittiset traditiot ja sukupolvien dynamiikka. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

Wardhaugh, Ronald 1999: Proper English. Myths and misunderstandings about language. London: Blackwell.

Waters, Mary C. 1990: Ethnic options. Choosing identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Weckström, Lotta L. 2011: Suomalaisuus on kuin vahakangas. Ruotsinsuomalaiset nuoret kertovat suomalaisuudestaan. Siirtolaisuusinstituutti, tutkimuksia A 36. Vammalan kirjapaino.

Weckström, Lotta 2007: Bredbyn suomalaisten luokkien koulutyönseisaus 1984. Ruotsinsuomalaisen kansalaisaktivismin voimannäyttö. – Inkeri Ahvenisto & Kirsi Mäki (eds.), Kansalaisvaikuttaminen ja poliittisuuden muutos pp. 224–248. Helsinki: Työväen historian ja perinteen tutkimuksen seura.

Weckström, Lotta 2006: The invisible opponent. A study about feelings of national belonging, Finnishness and immigration of second generation Finns in Sweden. Unpublished Licensiate’s thesis. Jyväskylän yliopiston Soveltavan kielentutkimuksen keskus.

Wetherell, Margaret – Taylor, Stephanie – Yates, Simeon J. 2001: Discourse as data. A guide for analysis. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Wetherell, Margaret – Potter, Jonathan 1993: Mapping the language of racism. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ågren, Marja 2006: Är du finsk, eller…? En etnologisk studie om att växa upp och leva med finsk bakgrund i Sverige. Stockholm: Arkipelag.

Ågren, Marja 2002: Vad sägs om finskhet? Stereotypa skildringar av finnar i Sverige. – Magnus Berg, Riina Reinvelt & Line A. Ytrehus (eds.), Etnisk komplexitet pp. 122–142 Nordiga länder kulturvetenskapliga perspektiv. Göteborg: Etnologiska föreningen i Västsverige.

Österlund-Pötzsch, Susanne 2003: American plus. Etnisk identitet hos finlands-svenskaättlingar i Nordamerika. Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland.

Other sources

Movies and Documentary films

Äideistä parhain (2005)

Director: Härö, Klaus

llkka Mattila / MRP Mattila Röhr Productions Oy (Feature film)

Melkein ruotsalaisia (1999)

Director: Hyvärinen, A.

TV2 Dokumenttiprojekti & SVT1 (Documentary film)

Kivenpyörittäjän kylä (1995)

Director: Pölönen, Markku

Fennado-Film Oy (Feature film)

Ajolähtö (1982)

Director: Niskanen, M.

Fantasia Filmi Oy (Feature film)

Fiction

Alakoski, Susanne 2006: Svinalängårna. Bonniers.

Khemiri, Johan Hassan 2004: Ett öga rött. Norstedts.

Lindqvist, Elin 2006: Tre röda näckrosor. Piratförlaget.