Svecoman movement
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The Svecoman (
The ideas of the "Svecomans" were an important part of the public debate of the 1870s and 1880s that was evoked by the reinstatement of the Diet of Finland, which now convened every third year.
History
Finland had been a part of
The Svecomans promoted the idea that Finland harbours two peoples, or nations, speaking different languages, with different cultures, and originating from separate parts of the country. In accordance with contemporary science, these two peoples were consequently denoted as members of different "races". This idea was radically new. Until then, the Swedish-speaking rural population had been mostly ignored, but now this minority was considered important and directly associated with the elite of Finland.
The language strife between Fennomans and Svecomans in these decades also mirrored more general political divisions:
- The Fennomans were favoured by the Russian authorities, while the Svecomans channeled the remaining fear of the Russians and the cultural attachment to their old enemy Sweden.
- After the neutralist views received strong support among educated Eastern-Swedish.[clarification needed]
- The Fennomans were chiefly dominated by the industrialists and academics from other faculties besides the theological one. The spiritual leader of the Svecomans was the linguist Axel Olof Freudenthal, who also had claims of racial supremacy.
The feeling of unity between the Swedish-speaking rural population and the (remains of the) Swedish-speaking elite is the lasting legacy of the Svecoman movement, and this became the core idea of the
See also
- Ethnogenesis
- Language strife
- Nation-building
- Suecophile
References
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