#tornedalian

[yokyopeli]

Satu Järvinen (Malin Buska) in A Discovery of Witches season 3 trailer (January 2022)

[nurmesiandesign]

groupings:

sardinian, breton, basque,  karelian 

karelian, tornedalian, kveeni/kven

[populusfennicapatriam]

Edward Lehto

[sariaghjik]

[Bengt] Pohjanen and [Mikael] Niemi highlight practices of exclusion and naming which have othered the Tornedalians. The ideological point of departure for these practices is the notion of ‘one people--one language--one culture--one nation’. Within this brand of nationalism the cultures of the Sámi and Tornedalians are conceived of as problematic as they do not fit into the paradigm of a linguistically and culturally homogeneous nation state. When Pohjanen writes about abusive enforcements of assimilationist policies in the poem ‘I was born without language’ and the subsequent generation of feelings of shame and contempt directed towards Tornedalian language and culture, he invokes the situation of a person living on a border, that is in a zone which may be conceived of as a third space when seen in relation to the two nation states separated by the concrete border. The mental mapping of this space in the work of Pohjanen is infuenced both by anti-colonial strategies of resistance to an oppressive majority culture implemented by state politics and institutions, as well as by postcolonial theories celebrating cultural hybridity and syncretism. One way of interpreting performances of critique of the ideal of assimilation and processes of homogenizing modernity is to relate these to postmodern and postcolonial challenges of notions of exceptionalism and purity. This involves the scrutiny of complacent self-images entertained at times in the Nordic countries: ‘The Nordic countries have always seen themselves as liberal and tolerant to strangers, refugees as well as immigrants. This they have obviously never been in real life…’. One space of critical scrutiny discussed in this article is that of cultural production in which alternative voices express hitherto suppressed elements of the histories of the Nordic countries. The alternative histories suggested by…the poem ‘I was born without language’ by Bengt Pohjanen, draw attention to the fact that Norway and Sweden have been multi-ethnic, multilingual, and multicultural since way back in time.

Anne Heith, “Aesthetics and Ethnicity: The Role of Boundaries in Sámi and Tornedalian Art”

[sariaghjik]

I was born without a language umbilical cord speechlessly bandaged by a mute midwife I grew up at the border under the cross-fire from two languages which have whipped my tongue to dumbness I was raised with demands of clarity language and nationality I was whipped at school into language, clarity nationality I was whipped to contempt for what was mine the want of language and the border. I was built by exterior violence as well as interior constraint on abbreviations and misunderstandings I was deprived of my identity card

Bengt Pohjanen, “Jag är född utan språk” (“I was born without language”)

“Ever since the 1970s, Bengt Pohjanen has repeatedly highlighted that the Tornedalian Finnish language was stigmatised and marginalised in a Swedish nation-state context.”

[selchieproductions]

UR, one of many Swedish TV channels, is in the process of making a TV series about Sweden's five officially recognised minorities

i.e. the Saami, the Tornedalians, Jewish people, the Rroma and the Finnish, and it looks like I might be one of the people involved with producing some of the learner's materials that are to go with the programmes. 

It'll be interesting to see how far I can go in terms of challenging the status quo - I will walk out on this project, flipping tables all over the place, if I'm expected to produce anything that is either making the atrocities committed against our people and indeed the other national minorities in Sweden something that can be safely placed in the past and thus approached as a non-issue today in order to not alienate the poor majority, or something that represents us as the Guovdageaidnu stereotype. 

But seeing as the latest programmes about the Saami produced by UR have been rather informative in a non-white-apologetic, non-stereotypical way, I am being rather positive about this so far.

Also, how is it that my academic publications always end up being related to education, no matter what I am writing about.

Oh, that's right, I'm a teacher and people don't generally publish angry literary criticism.