From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik )
Subject: Re: The Finns of Sweden
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 20:12:22 GMT
Organization: Apple
Followup-To: soc.culture.nordic

In article <1992Nov19.153649.11960@ericsson.se>, etxonss@ufsa.ericsson.se
(Staffan Axelsson) wrote:
>  When the Finns came to Finnskogen, they brought an outstanding technique
>  of farming called burn-beating (svedjebruk) i.e. burning down the woods
>  and grow seeds in the ashes. Since the Finns were the masters in this
>  area they managed to stay together and this enabled them to keep their
>  language and their customs. However, in the 1960's, more advanced
>  farming techniques developed causing the assimilation process to speed up.
>  The mixture between the Swedes and the Finns became more apparent and as
>  a result Swedish became the language they chose to speak.

Staffan, thanks for the excellent ground work. It is good to hear
from a real source about the history of Finns living in V{rmland.
 
>  I visited Finnskogen this past summer and it is very interesting to note how
>  well preserved the Finnish culture is, e.g. many old buildings are intact
>  such as R|kstugor (smoke-houses?) and names of villages, mountains, lakes
>  etc are still in Finnish. The people that live there now (many are of  
>  mixed Finnish and Swedish descent) are very nice, easy-going and
>  relaxed people. May I recommend for Mr. Ryyti an extended vacation in
>  Finnskogen. I think he would find it interesting and it would most
>  likely help him to lighten up.

I agree, travelling and looking at places and doing a decent 
investigation of issues would hopefully open his mind.
 
> >The funny thing, this happens in my own small village in Finland, more and 
> >more Finns have moved to this originally Swedish speaking settlement,
> >and mixed marriages cause the village to slowly become Finnish. But
> >I don't call it genocide, exactly :-).
> >
>  This is a very good example. As time goes by, these things are
>  bound to happen. Just look at what happened to the Finns, Swedes and 
>  Yugoslavs in Minnesota... exactly the same thing and, as you correctly
>  pointed out, it can by no means be called genocide.

Yes, back in the early 20:th century our village was 100% Swedish speaking,
the Finns started to buy land and move into the village slowly but
steadily,
and during WW2 it was a 50/50 population split. Now it's more like 70/30
and the Swedish speaking population is slowly dying due to mixed marriages
(where the language seems to become Finnish dominated, of many interesting
reasons), emigration and of course the slow death of the small villages
in Finland. Anyway, I would not call this genocide, instead the classical
melting pot and 'the bigger culture takes it all' system.

I would not call this a genocide, even if I'm unfortunately pessimistic
and I assume that the Swedish speaking population will slowly die in
Finland. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I read somewhere that the
combined group of Finnish-Swedes living in Sweden today is bigger than
the same population in Finland (300k).

And I do think this is the reason why Finns in Sweden are scared about
their kids talking Swedish solely, and they see how their culture is
rapidly (similarly) disappearing. They should look at how immigrants 
in USA and Canada are taking care of their roots -- and at the same
time these emigrants really want to melt into their new environment
as first class citizens. And in these cases they don't demand school
systems using native languages, they want *better* public schools
for their kids, and they want to make sure that their kids will be
accepted into the new society. In other words they want to build
the country -- not split it.


Kent
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
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