Abstract
Along with literature written in Finnish, that written in Swedish has always played a major role in the literature of the country; indeed, down till the 1880s the greater part of belles lettres writing was published in Swedish. In the self-perception of literature written in Swedish in Finland, an important shift has taken place: from its initial status as a literature belonging to Sweden, and its nineteenth-century position at the very heart of the Finnish national movement, at the beginning of the twentieth century it assumed the self-identity of a minority literature.
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Notes
- 1.
Holmqvist suggests that this restricted linguistic space may be one reason for the lack of great prose works: writers feel that their vocabulary might not be sufficiently comprehensive and that they might end up using “provincialisms” and “non-Swedish” expressions (Holmqvist, 1951, 21–22).
- 2.
In comparison to Volume 1, most of Volume 2 is more focused on literary texts, proceeding either thematically or author by author. Unlike earlier literary histories, the work covers children’s and popular literature, essays, literary scholarship, and the relationship between television and literature. The last of the four parts, comprising ten percent of the entire text, deals with “the institution of literature and its roles”. It includes chapters on book publishing, periodicals, public libraries, the teaching of literature in the schools, the roles and professional organizations of writers, and connections with literature in Finnish.
- 3.
See Ekman (2014). Most prominent among them are Monika Fagerholm and Kjell Westö, who have been awarded several Finnish and Nordic literary prizes.
- 4.
- 5.
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Steinby, L. (2024). Swedish-Language Literature in Finland: From a National to a Minority Literature. In: Steinby, L., Kalnačs, B., Oshukov, M., Parente-Čapková, V. (eds) The Politics of Literary History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18724-7_21
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