I’ve started on the material for the ”Writing the Other”-class that starts next week, and that got me thinking about the particular minority I belong to – Finland Swedes.
We are a minority that don’t look like a minority. We get to be both privileged and persecuted at the same time, and even people from our community most often can’t agree which one we are. A part of a majority, or a persecuted minority. And that is because everyone’s experience is a bit different.
If you grew up in a small town surrounded by your culture and never really met anyone from other communities except maybe as tourists, you are going to think there aren’t any difficulties being from your particular culture.
If you grew up bilingual and could pass for a Finn as well as a Finland Swede, you probably aren’t going to have that many negative experiences either.
But if you grew up like me – never able to talk more than heavily accented Finnish (I swallow the endings of words in Finnish, because I never know how they are supposed to end!) and not just staying put in your original village, not content with fitting in with ”the Law of Jante” – then you might have a problem.
I’ve been assaulted twice by strangers. Once when I was about thirty years old talking Swedish to my husband on the phone on a bus in Denmark an young Arab guy with a lot of resentment grabbed me. ”Don’t speak a language that I don’t understand!” he yelled at me while throwing me physically through the corridor of the bus. A mother with a seven year old daughter tried to get the bus driver to stop, and tell the guy to get off the bus, but the bus driver just kept driving. ”There are wars going on in the world, stop your whining” he told her, and me, and made me be just a little bit more scared about what kind of a place the world was turning into.
The other time I was nineteen years old, and to this day I still don’t know if the man that attacked me did it because I was a young girl or because I couldn’t answer him in Finnish. He asked me something, then grabbed at my breasts and ran after me all the way to my apartment, and because of previous negative experiences with the police I didn’t even consider calling them. I phoned my Mom and went back to my parent’s house and had nightmares for many nights.
I never even considered asking the police for help, because in my limited experience they didn’t help people like me who spoke Swedish with a Finland Swede’s accent. I’ve tried to report a dangerous situation to the police, only to be forwarded to the lost-and-found-office over and over again (because they were the only ones who had someone on staff that could speak Swedish, despite the laws in this country stating that all government officials should speak both official languages).
When I was little we were on our way to the ferries to the Åland Islands and a policeman stopped our car in a crossing. The light had turned red while my Dad was still trying to navigate the crossing, and a policeman happened to see it and had questions. My Dad politely asked him what was wrong, and the moment my Dad opened his mouth the policeman’s behaviour changed. He looked aggressively at my Dad and in my childhood memory he yelled at my Dad and put his hand on his holster. My Dad immediately switched to Finnish, something I am not so certain I could have done in that position.
My little brother and I were so scared, I think we both started crying after the incident, or maybe it was just me, or maybe I only cried at night.
The only thing my Dad had done wrong was talk the wrong language.
So my experience of being a Finland Swede is not just roses and rainbows, or summer cottages and crayfish parties, like some people’s.
I grew up with stories about friends from the University who were chased by drunken men when they went out to party in a more Finnish speaking neighborhood.
I read the news and follow politics and watch as political parties try to erase my culture from the history of Finland. Nowadays some people try to rewrite history so that Finland was never a part of Sweden, but a country occupied by an oppressive power. People want us to ”go back to where we came from”, which is where exactly? My ancestors came to this island when the ground rose up from the sea, about the same time as the Finns moved in here. We’ve been here longer than all our Finnish neighbours.
If there is an original people of Finland, it is not the Finns nor us Swedes – it is the Saami. And they are treated even worse than us Swedes are. Probably sometimes also by us, because even though you are a minority, that doesn’t exempt you from being racist or privileged in some ways.
I try not to get discouraged, but sometimes it is difficult.
More and more Swedish speaking Finns are doing just what the racists want, and move to Sweden. I think there are as many of us now living in Sweden as there are living in Finland, and so, slowly a culture with its own set of values, history and connotation disappears.
Which is a great loss to the world, because the best thing about being a Finland Swede is that you don’t belong to a specific ethnic minority.
What defines you is language. The ability to speak Swedish with a Finland Swede’s accent. And even then you get to self-define – if you don’t feel like a Finland Swede, then you aren’t one.
And if you do speak Finland Swedish – you can be a Finland Swede in spite of your skin colour or country of origin.
Because our language is our culture, and our culture is what we are. With all the little inconsistencies and inner arguments about what it means to be a Finland Swede.
Följ Ninette Bahne på| Bloglovin’ | RSS | Instagram | Pinterest | Facebook