Finnish Migrants to North Norway - Supporting or Threatening the Kven Identifications of Today
Keywords:
Northern Norway, Finnish, Kven, ethnicity, identity, minority rights, ethnopoliticsAbstract
Since the 1970s there has been a remarkable interest in the situation of those Norwegians who have Finnish-speaking ancestry, i.e. people who are also called Kvens. Attention is paid on their culture and language as well as on the historical constructions of their past, which is typical for ethnic revitalization movements around the world. By the early 1990s some of the present-day Kvens had started making politics of identity. At that time Kven and Finnish matters were often discussed in very heated public debates.
The title of this article suggests that the encountering of present-day Finns and present-day Norwegians of Finnish origin could possibly become a dilemma. What, then, is the role of these Finns residing in Norway? Could their arrival be understood as a support of the local identifications with Finnish origins? Or could it be the opposite, could 'modem Finnishness' be understood as some kind of a threat to them?
