What is a Swedish Ethnology in Finland?

Författare

• Anna-Maria Åström

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37447/bk.130568

Nyckelord:

ethnology, history of scholarship, Finland Swedish, archive

Abstract

In his article Five ethnologies – the rise of Finnish ethnology from a Finland-Swedish point of view, prof. Nils Storå has characterised the development of Ethnology in Finnish and in Swedish not as dichotomised striving for two unique kinds of ethnology based only on two languages in Finland but as five paths that together make the history more diverse and sometimes overlapping, sometimes not. The article looks for the roots in different spheres: antiquarian interests, languages, regionalism, an interest in cultural history and in anthropology. Prof. Storå takes us up to the 1960s. The starting point is of course language based disciplines where the need for this emphasis was felt very strongly. In Finland almost 5.9% of the population has Swedish as their mother tongue; in the beginning of the 20th century the percentage was 12,9. A result of the fact that the Swedish speaking also under the Russian rule until the late 19th century held important civilian and political posts, was that Finland after the independence 1917 was declared a bilingual state (1919). This meant and means that the Swedish speaking have a strong guarantee when it comes to their linguistic rights. Also strong institutional support make a Swedish or bilingual life especially in the Swedish coastal regions and towns possible.

My intention is to look to what has happened in ethnology since 1960 in this Swedish context and what actors where and are working and also in which scientific context one can look at the ethnology that is carried out at the Åbo Akademi University in Åbo (Turku), that is the Swedish university in Finland. But I will also consider the ethnological work at the Folk Culture Archives in Helsinki, since a similar documentation and research work has been made there. A third actor is the Scientific section of the Brage Society also situated in Helsinki.