ECMI Minorities Blog. The Diverse Ways of Managing the Language Question in Finnish-Swedish Sport
*** The blog posts are prepared by the authors in their personal capacity. The views expressed in the blog posts are the sole responsibility of the authors concerned and do not necessarily reflect the view of the European Centre for Minority Issues. ***
Author: Sami Koskelainen | https://doi.org/10.53779/HFBC5536
* Sami Koskelainen is a PhD researcher in History at the University of Helsinki. His doctoral research focuses on Finnish men’s football and Europeanisation since the 1980s. Contact info: sami.koskelainen@helsinki.fi
Introduction
Sports are a key way for constructing collective identities in our contemporary world. This blog post sketches a history of Finnish-Swedish sports, studying the ways in which Finnish-Swedish sports actors have negotiated national and local language relations. Swedish was the main language of administration in modern-day Finland from the 12th century until the 19th century – however, it was always a minority language, mostly spoken in major towns and coastal areas. In the late 19th century, when modern-day Finland was part of the Russian Empire, Finnish was incrementally promoted to an equal status with Swedish. This provoked the ‘language strife’ over the status of Finnish and Swedish. The Republic of Finland declared its independence in 1917: the country was to have two national languages, Finnish and Swedish. This did not fully solve the ‘language strife’; in the 1920s and 1930s, the debate centred especially around the language of higher education. Certain circles pushed for greater Finnish-Swedish autonomy within the republic. However, the Second World War caused the ‘language strife’ to dissipate into a ‘language peace’; the status of the Finnish-Swedish population has not been a major political issue since. Still today, Finland is officially a bilingual country. Swedish is mainly spoken in southern Finland (including the capital Helsinki), southwest Finland, the western Finnish region of Ostrobothnia, and the monolingually Swedish, partly self-governing Åland Islands. This area is collectively titled Svenskfinland. However, from 1917 to the present day, the proportion of people with Swedish as their mother tongue (here titled Finnish-Swedes) has declined from 10% to 5%. How have Finnish-Swedish sports actors managed the changing linguistic situation and negotiated local language relations?
Finland’s bilingualism is characterized by parallel monolingual institutions: schools, for example, are separated by language. As the Finnish-speaking population far outnumbers the Swedish-speaking one, in situations where speakers are mixed and the language of business is not explicitly stated, it is more likely to be Finnish than Swedish. Thus, bilingualism leads to monolingualism – and to guarantee Finland’s bilingualism, monolingual Swedish spaces must be arranged. This is sometimes called ‘Taxell’s paradox’. These monolingually Swedish spaces are often called svenska rum, ‘Swedish room’.
Historical language relations in sports
The first Finnish sports clubs were founded in the second half of the 19th century; sports organised themselves into national associations in the early 20th century. The language strife reverberated through Finnish sports. SVUL, the largest national sports federation founded in 1906, was officially bilingual. However, there was also an influential streak of sports activists who promoted monolingual Finnishness; the bilingual principle was also not always translated into practice. In the late 1890s, the Swedish IFK sports movement spread to Finland – this led to founding of several Finnish IFK clubs and the foundation of a Finnish IFK club federation in 1909. This paved the way for the founding of a separate Swedish-speaking association for athletics and gymnastics in 1912. Relations between Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking sports were often strained from the 1910s to 1930s, mirroring the language strife. In 1945, an umbrella organisation for Swedish-speaking sports, Centralidrottsförbundet (CIF), was founded. Swedish-speaking clubs and athletes participated in nationwide tournaments together with Finnish-speakers, but they also possessed their own, officially-acknowledged parallel structures.
On the local level, implicitly or explicitly, sports clubs had to take a stand on the language question: they could be monolingual or bilingual. Both strategies were viable. As an example, in Finland’s capital Helsinki/Helsingfors, there were two major sports clubs recruiting from the city’s Swedish-speaking population: IFK Helsingfors (henceforth HIFK) and KIF. The former took a strict stance, allowing only Swedish-speakers; the latter, on the other hand, recruited from both language communities. Sometimes clubs even cooperated within language borders to ensure the strength of sports in their own language. In the 1920s, there were two Swedish clubs in Ostrobothnia’s largest town Vaasa/Vasa with strong football teams: Vasa IFK (VIFK) and VIS. In 1924, a Finnish-speaking football club (VPS) was founded in the town. According to a history of VIFK, noticing the growth of football among the town’s Finnish-speakers, the two Swedish clubs decided to mend divisions within the Swedish camp and unite their football activities behind one club – VIFK.
The proportional decline of Swedish-speakers on one hand and the demands of elite sport on the other made monolingual Swedish elite sport difficult to organise. Tammerfors Bollklub (TBK) was founded in 1932 by schoolboys from Tampere’s Swedish school – Tampere is not a part of Svenskfinland, but it is a Swedish ‘speech island’ with a historic Swedish-speaking community. TBK became especially successful in ice hockey, winning three national titles in a row (1953-1955). Yet the club became Finnish-speaking after 1955, changing its name to Tappara. This was done to increase the club’s appeal among the overwhelming Finnish-speaking majority of Tampere. TBK’s final title-winning squad had included only one player who spoke Swedish as their mother tongue.Others adjusted to demographic changes by incrementally opening their doors to Finnish-speakers while maintaining Swedish as the language of business and holding on to their old club identity – as was done in HIFK in the 1960s and 1970s. Often this was a fait accompli; according to Juha Kanerva’s history of HIFK, their ice hockey and football teams already had plenty of Finnish players by the time the club officially opened itself to speakers of all languages.
Contemporary manifestations of Finnish-Swedishness in sports
Still today, Swedish-language sports have a nationwide presence through Finnish-Swedish sports institutions. Today, the national federation for sports in Swedish is called Finlands Svenska Idrott (FSI, ‘Finland’s Swedish sports’). FSI has ten member associations, of which five organise separate national championships for Finnish-Swedish clubs in athletics, cycling, swimming, strength sports, cross-country skiing, biathlon, gymnastics, orienteering, and shooting.On the grassroots level, FSI and the Swedish-language school sports association organise the annual Stafettkarnevalen relay race event for Swedish-language schools. First held in 1961, Stafettkarnevalen is currently, according to its organisers, Europe’s largest annually hosted school sports event with over 12,000 yearly participants. The event’s founder, Carl-Olof Homén, stated in 2005 that Stafettkarnevalen’s “societal, Finnish-Swedish goal is to strengthen Finnish-Swedish identity while simultaneously creating goodwill over language boundaries.”
Locally, clubs have had to adapt to their respective local and national sporting and linguistic contexts. Using examples from elite level men’s football and, to a lesser degree, ice hockey, at least three different contexts necessitating their own strategies can be identified. Firstly, there are large towns in Ostrobothnia with both Finnish and Swedish spoken by sizeable communities. There, the stronger club is generally that of the stronger community. In Pietarsaari/Jakobstad where over half of the population are Swedish-speakers, the town’s main club FF Jaro has a Swedish background. In Vaasa/Vasa and Kokkola/Karleby, where Swedish-speakers nowadays compose a quarter and eighth of the population respectively, the Finnish clubs – VPS and KPV – have been stronger.
Yet the gap has not been deemed insurmountable, which had led to intense rivalry even up to the 21st century. In Kokkola/Karleby, the Finnish club KPV nearly went bankrupt in the early 1990s. A KPV club official implied that the local Swedish-speaking business sector was in cahoots with GBK and purposefully pushed KPV deeper into financial trouble. While all other local debtors had agreed to debt rescheduling in order to save the club, all the Swedish-speaking businesses had declined to do so, allegedly to boost the local Swedish club GBK’s fortunes. Today, though, their relations are more cordial. KPV became the clearly stronger club of the two in the 2010s, and in 2019 the clubs signed a cooperation agreement entailing player exchanges and creating paths for youth players to the national elite level. Thus, the interests of local football have, at least temporarily, trumped linguistic rivalries.
In Vaasa/Vasa, a similar turn is embodied in the figure of Sebastian Strandvall. A promising teenager from VIFK, Strandvall made his first team debut in 2003 at the age of 16. Around this time, he vowed to never play for VPS – the team felt that in a few years’ time, VIFK could realistically challenge VPS for the town’s supremacy. However, ten years later (in 2013), Strandvall signed for VPS. As he later explained, the rivalry between the clubs had dissipated during the 2000s when VPS established itself as the town’s top club while VIFK languished in the lower levels. If the Swedish minority is unable to realistically challenge the Finnish majority, rivalry does not make as much sense. Strandvall became VPS’s captain and a fan favourite – the town’s Finnish club thus embraced a star of the town’s Swedish-speaking community. Before Strandvall’s final game for VPS in 2023, VPS fans honoured him and another VPS legend, Jamaican striker Steven Morrissey, with a large banner tifo. Beneath the likenesses of these two VPS legends, there were banners bearing the text “Legends forever – för evigt legender” – note the absence of a Finnish phrase. Morrissey, suitably enough, now turns out for VIFK.
Majority-minority relations are also negotiated by fans in the stands. In ice hockey, Vaasa/Vasa has one strong club, Vaasan Sport. Studying the fans of Vaasan Sport, area studies scholar Peter Ehrströmnoticed a tendency for the fans to chant in three languages – Finnish, Swedish, and English. As most Finns are capable of speaking English to some degree, it can be a way of transcending linguistic tensions. The fans of FF Jaro, in majority-Swedish Pietarsaari/Jakobstad, also occasionally sing in three languages. This, according to sports scholar and Jaro fan Kaj Ahlsved, makes FF Jaro unique in uniting the town over language and class borders. Though language has historically divided sports, these divisions can also be overcome: in these examples, language has the potential to spark deep rivalries and animosity, but it can also be made subservient to shared goals of success and local unity.
A second context is that of larger cities of the south, such as Helsinki/Helsingfors and Turku/Åbo, where Swedish clubs have had to adjust to representing only a small local minority (around 5% in both cities). A club like HIFK has not been able to realistically challenge their Finnish counterparts in football for decades with purely Swedish-speaking means – thus leading to the incremental opening up to Finnish-speakers in the interests of success. However, Swedish language still plays a role in HIFK. On the youth level, HIFK recruits from Swedish-speaking schools and offers training in Swedish – thus expanding the ’Swedish room’ and allowing youths to practice sports in Swedish. On the elite level, the Swedish language provides a strategic discursive resource. Swedish-speakers are often associated by Finnish-speakers with social elites and cultural capital, though in reality there is of course great variety within the minority. This has led to the slightly derogatory phrase ‘bättre folk’ (lit. ‘better people’) to be used in reference to Swedish-speakers. HIFK’s ice hockey team adopted Bättre folk as its marketing slogan in the 2010s; HIFK also offers its supporters a ‘Bättre folk’ membership providing discounts and other perks. By appropriating the phrase, it was transformed into a symbol of confidence and superiority – qualities suited for one of Finnish ice hockey’s giants. Both in ice hockey and football, HIFK fans occasionally chant and sing in Swedish – despite their players and the majority of their supporter base being Finnish-speaking.Within a Helsinki context, invoking the Swedish language can be a useful way of contrasting HIFK with other Helsinki clubs. At the same time, it does not create an alienating factor as Swedish is used selectively – and all HIFK fans are aware of the club’s Swedish-speaking history.
The monolingually Swedish Åland Islands form the third context – a special case where Swedish is the unquestionable majority language with linguistic rights guaranteed by international treaties. Åland’s main men’s football club is IFK Mariehamn which has played in Finland’s top league since 2005. IFK Mariehamn can afford to be as monolingual as its Finnish counterparts on the mainland; for instance, IFK Mariehamn’s website does not have a Finnish version. Singing in Swedish does not alienate fans either. IFK Mariehamn has fostered strong connections to Sweden: many of the club’s best foreign players have been sourced from Swedish clubs. Some of the youth teams of IFK Mariehamn – and other Åland clubs – play in Swedish rather than Finnish competitions. Ice hockey is a minor sport in Åland; in that sport, IFK Mariehamn’s adult ice hockey sides also play in Swedish competitions.
Historically, football supporter culture in Sweden has been noisier and more colourful than in Finland – of which Finnish football followers have been well-aware. When IFK Mariehamn was promoted to the Finnish top league for the 2005 season, they wowed the mainland with their large fan groups which followed the team to their away games. Considering Åland-Sweden connections, they were likely inspired by football in Sweden – at least this was the interpretation on the mainland. Prior to their first away game in Helsinki, over 400 IFK Mariehamn fans (over 1% of Åland’s population) were expected to take a special fan ferry to Helsinki to attend the game. A leading Finnish sports magazine described this as “a breath of western football culture.” The home club, HJK, had also given free tickets to pupils in Helsinki’s Swedish schools so they could watch the game in the same section with IFK Mariehamn fans. Thus, on this special occasion, IFK Mariehamn represented both Sweden and Svenskfinland. (Lahti, 2005, p. 37)
Yet even Åland’s Swedish monolingualism does not guarantee the use of Swedish in all levels. If even team sports can be organized monolingually at the youth level, avoiding the dominance of English at the elite level is difficult. This goes for both Finnish and Swedish: for example, from 2025 onwards, the Finnish football association’s highest level of coaching training will be taught solely in English as it has become the main language of communication for many elite teams. Even IFK Mariehamn, based in the monolingually Swedish Åland Islands, has a multilingual squad as a result of the globalisation of professional football– and of signing Finns from the mainland. Thus, while the team mainly use Swedish in training sessions, players sometimes communicate in English during matches and most of the time off-field.
Conclusions
Nationally, Finnish-Swedish institutions have upheld Swedish as the language of elite and grassroots sports. Locally, each club has adjusted to the changing linguistic environment in their own way. On the level of adult elite sports, sports clubs are not divided into monolingual Finnish and Swedish streams – on the contrary, all have to contend with the global dominance of English. On the youth level, though, ‘Taxell’s paradox’ is still present. For some clubs, local language relations need to be actively managed; for others, the Swedish language can be a resource, a way to differentiate from one’s competitors; for still others, it is an unproblematic part of everyday life. This much is clear from supporter culture too – some evade difficult decisions through strategically employing English, and others selectively sing in Swedish to signal heritage and prestige. The use of the Swedish language in sports and the manifestations of Finnish-Swedishness reflect the variance within Svenskfinland itself: a single Svenskfinland comes to life in a multitude of ways.
References
Lahti, P. (2005, May 3). ”Saarelaiset valtaavat Helsingin”. IS Veikkaaja, 37.
