Summary:

Christer Kuvaja, Linguistic Frontier or Contact Zone? Swedish and Finnish Language in Southern Finland in the Late 18th Century

In the aftermath of the language disputes in Finland, the concept of the linguistic frontier became accepted at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the same time the concepts of the Finland-Swedes and Swedish Finland were established. The Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking settlements were constructed as if clearly separated from each other. This construct shaped the common conception that here had always been a distinct linguistic boundary between the Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking populations in Finland, both in a demographic as well as in an economic and a cultural sense.

Also, many scholars found that there was a distinct boundary between the Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking populations in the sense that nearly everyone on the one side of the boundary was Swedish-speakers whereas, on the other side, nearly everyone was Finnish-speakers. The scholars relied upon Holger Wallén’s dissertation from 1932 where he made a systematic investigation of the extension of the linguistic frontier and its change in Finland from the early 17th century until the mid-19th century. Wallén took it for granted that there actually was a linguistic frontier and he believed that he had been able to “draw a correct boundary, in the broad perspective, between the Swedish-speaking and the Finnish-speaking populations”.

Nevertheless, one could take a critical attitude to the term linguistic frontier. Could it maybe have been the case that a broad bilingual zone ran between the Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking settlements and that it would therefore be more natural to talk about a contact zone; a concept that has been used by the historian Nils Erik Villstrand.

In this article, I will show that in Southern Finland, in Nyland more precisely, both linguistic boundaries and contact zones occurred. Linguistic boundaries could mainly be found where vast spaces of wilderness separated the Swedish-speakers from the Finnish-speakers. The boundary was, in other words, geographically determined. Contact zones were areas with a living bilingualism, in the sense that many people were able to speak or at least understand both Swedish and Finnish. The close contacts and the business that united these people made many of them bilingual. However, knowledge of the second language varied from excellent to an ability to understand only certain terms. Bilingualism occurred in all social classes and was consequently not delimited to the higher estates.