The Languages of Scandinavia: Seven Sisters of the North by Sanders Ruth H

Author:Sanders, Ruth H. [Sanders, Ruth H.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780226493923
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

A CHANGE OF FORTUNE, A WAR OF WORDS

In 1863 Czar Alexander II, emperor of Russia from 1855 until his assassination in Russia in 1881, boosted Finland’s language nationalists with his Language Decree of 1863, which defined Finnish as one of two official languages (Swedish being the other) of Finland. The influence of Finnish politician and writer Johan Vilhelm Snellman is credited with encouraging Alexander’s declaration of Finnish “on a footing of complete equality with Swedish in all matters which directly concern the Finnish-speaking part of the population” (quoted in Wuorinen 1965, 158). The official status of Finnish was to be phased in, taking full effect in all offices and administrations of the Finnish government, within twenty years.

For the Fennomanes (advocates of Finnish as the primary national language), the point was patriotism and nationalism: Finland was Finnish. The Svecomanes (advocates of Swedish as the primary national language), argued that Finnish was undeveloped, inadequate to serve the country’s needs. Since it had never been a national language in a modern country, it wasn’t suited to be one now, they claimed. But, despite their hearty disagreement, the Fennomanes and the Svecomanes shared a motive: both groups were acting from Finnish patriotism as they understood it. It was not a disagreement about Finland’s becoming more close or less close to Sweden or Swedish culture, but an issue concerning language and Finland’s future.

In the closing years of the nineteenth century and the beginning years of the twentieth century, the claims of the Fennomanes gained traction. Soon a change in public education policy also made a decisive impact.

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