Dissenting narratives of identity in Saami, Meänkieli and Kven literatures

Abstract

In this study, I analyse the interconnections between language and identity in the literatures written in minority languages in Fennoscandia (Meänkieli, Saami and Kven). I concentrate on authors who write in their native languages (as well), and who can move between minority and majority language both as ordinary people and as writers. These literatures are small bodies, because there is a small number of people who can still read and write these languages. Minority literatures often deal with the relationship between minority and majority (dominant) cultures describing them by means of power relations. In the minority literatures I am going to deal with past, reconstructed on the horizon of the present, vizualised in a narrative frame, represeting an integral part of the minority writers’ great narratives, whose aim is to write their own minority histories, as opposed to the official ones. When examining the works of Fennoscandian minority writers, we can notice many a time that they build their own life-stories into the past recalled for the sake of community. In my study, I analyse some important elements of the writers’ narrative-building. I will be looking for answers for the following questions: What kind of power relations determine the life of the given minorities? How do they relate to different borders in their everyday life? How firm the virtual borders created by minority and majority populations are and what kind of consequences crossing borders has. As the theoretical basis of the lecture is concerned, I analyise the topic from the perspective of microhistorical research and the psychological study of identity and stigma.