Finland Swedish Folklore Studies

Authors

• Ulrika Wolf-Knuts

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37447/bk.130567

Keywords:

folklore studies, nation building, history of scholarship, Finland Swedish

Abstract

Due to historical and political matters, what is, today, called Finland was a part of Sweden until 1809. Thereafter, the region was an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire. Beside Latin, for a long time, Swedish was the language of the authorities, of education, and partly of science and scholarship. Not until the Russian time Finnish played an important role as a language outside the private sphere. German and Russian, respectively, were used on special occasions. Finland certainly was a polyglot region.

Folklore plays a great role in the shaping of the identity not only of single individuals, but also of nations. The Finnish case demonstrates this very clearly.