In a recent article in the Hufvudstadsbladet (a Finnish, Swedish-language quality daily tabloid) I read, with a grin, to be sure, how Finns and Swedes perceive each other and themselves.
The upshot of a report by Thorleif Petterson and Sakari Nurmela(1) , which is the basis for the article, you may well like your neighbour if you know little of of him, and you likely despise him if you know too much of his habits and proclivities. To put it another way, the Swedes like the Finns but they know next to nothing of the object of their admiration, and the Finns despise the Finns, though they know everything about them, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Finns and Swedes share a peninsula in the far north of Europe.
Cutting through the fluff the list looks like this:
| Swedes | Finns |
| * Strong defenders of democracy * Defenders of equality of the sexes * More politically engaged and self-identity with political party * 80% objected to the idea that – "men should be given preference in the job market when unemployment is high" – "men are better political leaders then women" "a university education is more important for boys than girls" —– |
*do not react to anti-democratic methods * more chauvinistic attitude on matters of equality of the sexes * more practical in political matters engaging the style "management by perkele(2)" * see Swedes as highbrow and self-important * believe that Swedes look down at their noses at Finns * 60% objected to the idea that – "men should be given preference in the job market when unemployment is high" – "men are better political leaders then women" "a university education is more important for boys than girls" —– * More egotistical and stress personal achievement * More often than Swedes will hold to the need to respect authority, obedience, law and order, God, struggle against inflation * Fit the "standardized" European model * more important to follow rules than to create them
————- |
– Bengt Lindroth added a caveat, namely that the questions were biased in such a way as to give the Swedes advantage. He claims, had the issues been about work ethic and the EU, the results might well be different.
1. Research funded by Kulturfonden, the Finnish Swedish-language culture fund with the World Values Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/)
2. perkele – a rather offensive word which has the strong flavour of the English f**k
Caveat: As we all know, all generalization are false including this one, but a grain of truth is to be found in all generalizations.
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The study did not consider another important issue when judging Finns and their relationship to Swedes. This is to say that Finns find it hard to focus on Swedes as a target of their love or hate because Finns can get a little mixed up about who is really a Swede or a make-believe Swede. Finns have a Swedish speaking minority in their midst which many group with Swedes. The expletive which Finnish speakers spit at Swedes include their own countrymen.
The first thing to appreciate is that Finns, perhaps more than any other nationality, are flattered that a non-Finn should speak their language. The most flattering is to actually listen to a "native" Swede speaking Finnish… in Sweden. I have a friend from Norrköping who actually has this trick up his sleeve. Had he been interested in Finnish politics, he could have garnered enough votes at national elections to get a seat in Finnish Parliament. Stupidly, he went back to Sweden.
We all like to be flattered, you are saying. Ah yes, flattery suggests a positive attitude by both the receiving and giving parties. Flattery, from a Finnish angle, however, is allowed to be the bad kind – that is to say, negative. To put it another way, it is good even though it is bad. Or to put it yet another way, there is no such thing as bad publicity. It is true that a Finn would prefer to hear nice things about himself and his nation but if not, then by all means say something bad. Anything. It does hurt Finns to be blasted by news from Uruguay and the Argentine that "el diablo Fennico" is building a paper mill (completed and ready to pulp trees into paper as soon as the Ibero-Latin American conference in Lisbon provides the forum for the new Argentine president to bless the project) but the same Finn is proud that it is a Finnish pulp mill and not a Swedish mill being lambasted by very angry Argentines.
Having lived in both countries, one cannot but smile at how true some of notions of national sensibilities really are. The study tangentially alludes to how Swedes simultaneously look down their collective noses at and look up in admiration, with blinking cow eyes, at the Finns. It does not mention that Finns just plainly find Swedes fickle therefore impossible to admire, although it should be said six million Finns visit Sweden every year (Finland’s population is five million).
The two neighbours, the Finns and the Swedes, have a very long common history. Finnish suedo-phobes use their common history to defend their mistrust and, one might even say, hate, of the damned neighbours to the west. Suedo-philes defend the special relationship with their western neighbour, claiming that there is a cultural and spiritual bond, and yes, gulp, a blood, genetic bond. The language bond is slowly disappearing, though. It is sad to note that Swedish in Finland is the language of the walking dead. It will disappear in the next three generations if the history of the Swedish-speakers in Finland in the past 100 years is the measure which we use.
Finns and Swedes are not as different from each other as they like to believe which is to say that more alike than almost any other folk group in the world. The countless number of regions in which I have travelled and lived has shown me that there might be more dissimilarity in the same country than that which might be found between the Finns and Swedes. Take Spain. Galicians speak a dialect of Portuguese, not Castilian. They are very different from the Andalusians, who speak a dialect of Castilian. Both groups will attest that although they live in the same country they are as different as oil and water. Moreover, other Spanish folk groups will attest and swear that, yes, the Andalusians are very different from the Galicians but then add that "more" different" again is their own from everyone else.
If you believe it is the geography that shapes the people then Finns and Swedes should be as different from each other as cherries in a cherry pie. Indeed, if you were to fly over both countries in an hot-air balloon you would clearly see that Finland and Sweden do not look all that different, until you come to southern Skåne (Scania). Even the Swedes would say that the robust citizens of Scania are not really Swedes.
The land of the Svea or Svea Rige Svea rike that is to say Sverige, also included the Finnish province until the Russians came in (with a little help from a Salo local hero/traitor – Armfeldt) and swept away the Swedish dominion and became a Russian Duchy in 1809. The common history of the two countries does not melt many Finnish hearts though. I clearly recall one student who became agitated when we discussed the history of Finland. His red face turned a Vatican purple when we came to the Vikings and the colonization of Finland. Our region was settled by Vikings therefore explaining, in some small way, why it has been a Swedish-speaking area of Finland. The sore point for Finnish speakers is that their forefathers, and some believe even they personally, were and have been on the wrong end of Swedish iron fist of occupying Swedish overlords. In other words, all the Swedes, this includes Finns with Swedish as mother tongue, have money (or land), have always had it, gloated over it and kept it for their own kind, making sure that all Finns, that is non-Swedish speakers, were kept as low down the social totem pole as possible say, mucking out the pig sties. It does not matter that the reality was that ninety nine percent of these colonizers were fisherfolk, artisans and small tenant farmers and indeed their own progenitors. This perspective of history is subtle because like all spurious interpretations of history, it is a mixture of fact and fiction.
I would suggest that this view of Finnish history is so pervasive that even well educated people promote it, subconsciously. People like Jari Tervo, a published author and social critic are prey to this malaise. Some days back in Uutisvuoto, he made a snide comment on the publication of the annual earnings of Finns. (This information is freely available and therefore published by all local papers. I know what my neighbour makes therefore making it possible to look down at nose at him or kowtow like any true blue sycophant to those up the hill). He is himself quite a wealthy man. He added to comic soliloquy by remarking on how bizarre it was that Swedish families – he meant Finns whose mother tongue was Swedish – were making vast sums of money from the robbery their forefathers perpetrated on the lowly Finnish speakers. The irony was surely not lost on the viewers: the fact that the chairman of the game show and two of the panellists were Swedish-speakers who surely had with no visible means of support other than their ability to gab in both tongues and – oh yes, forgot, sorry – their inherited vast tracts of farm and woodlands. What he was suggesting, of course, is that these people, the landed gentry, remnants of the Swedish Junker over-class, are lazy sods who make their millions because of an historical injustice. This attitude is not uncommon and will never disappear until all Swedish-speakin
g Finns are all dead. Or Finnish speakers like Jari Tervo think before they speak.
This points to another characteristic of Finns. They are bad imitators of other nations’ proclivities. They are bad at imitating the French, the Americans, anyone really. OK, perhaps the reason may not be that they are not good at imitating others. Perhaps it is because Finns are reflective and prone to keep quiet because they may say something silly or off-colour and thereby injure their own reputation. Jari is a poor example of this rule. Strike that. Jari is a good example: he tries to imitate one of the English clever clogs on the BBC’s News Quiz (say Jeremy Hardy) and comes out as being silly or worse, stupid.
Our town is one of those places which shows how the Swedish connection has been erased from folk memory. Sadly, it will never be brought back. This was obvious to me many years ago when I went to register my family at the police. I learned how ramrod the Finnish-speaking Finn could be. Since I was not (yet) capable of communicating in Finnish, I asked to be served in Swedish, at the police registration office. Since it was an obligation on the part of the authority in charge of the registration of in-coming resident to offer services in Swedish, my request was not unusual. The receptionist, the wife of the registering magistrate, was not competent in Swedish, she dutifully called her husband. What followed almost made me turn around, pack up the family and leave for warmer climes. The bureaucrat squalled like a storm in a teacup. The short of it was clear: service in Swedish was not available in his office and that Finnish will have to do "Hyvästi!" or ‘Adieu!’ in English. My Finnish skills were non-existent but I realized that since I was on the wrong side of the counter, I was the one to take off my cap and cower.
Now consider a few simple facts. As a higher apparatchik of the Finnish state, this man (a lawyer by training) could only have got his commission if he could prove a thoroughgoing competence in the Swedish language. Secondly, he had taken an oath to promote and protect the laws of Finland which clearly states that Finland is a bilingual country. There is the matter that I was a human being seeking to exercise my obligation to the Finnish state which is that a new resident must register in the new town in which he has taken up residence. Oh well, like a coin coin, a Finn has two sides. He is shy. But the other side of shyness is callous arrogance. The study brought this out.
Our town will be the core of the new commune. The "forced" joining of villages and towns into larger agglomerations is now in full swing. Salo will bring into its political sphere Finnish-speaking communes. However one of these is a Swedish-speaking commune – Finnby or Särkisalo. The Swedish-speakers tried to push for Swedish language services before the decision to join Salo was made. The village could have joined the Swedish-speaking commune centering on Kimito but finally chose Salo ostensibly for economic reasons. The Salo town mayor was quizzed by the local paper about Salo offering services in Swedish. There was no hand-wringing in his answer. This is the way Finns like it. There is no money, he said and thereby got full marks from pleased Salo burghers. Oh and total stumpf-ness.
Ironically, this was the same that Finby residents voted to go with Salo and not Kimito. There is NO money in Kimito, full stop, end of story and don’t bring it up again. Ok? Do we understand each other? Finns are ramrods when money is the issue.
Although the study seemed, on the face of it, a bit jokey, a bit of rib-jabbing over a cold bottle of Koskenkorva/Absolut, there was enough meat on the bone to get me and others to engage in a bit of head scratching. The fact is that Finns and Swedes do get along with each other and, when all is said and done, they are genuinely fond of each other. It is true that Swedes do not like to come second to Finns but Finns are even less keen on falling in behind the Swedes at the podium. Finns like to win at anything, everything. But the sweetest victory is Swede bashing on the ice rink. Beating the Swedes and Russians (in that order) is better than taking the gold. (This contrasts with the Swedes who prefer to beat the Canucks and Russians – n that order). To the Finns, the nectar of victory is sweeter still it is achieved in the host country, and that country is Sweden, that losing side is the Swedish Tre Kronor National side, it is done with aplomb, cheek, irony and from the position of underdog. The puck glided into the net to the sounds of "Det glider in…" a rather nice pop melody written for the Finnish national team, with a Swedish language libretto and a Swedish coach at the helm. Sweet. Häftigt! Makea!
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