Hør dog hvad de siger - Note-to-Self: Trials & Errors

Thus, it is understandable that the Finland Swedes find Norwegian and Danish difficult and
that their competence in these languages is quite slim.
The fact that the Finland Swedes consider the Scandinavian languages beautiful is a fur-
ther indication of their need – as speakers of a minority language – to construe a clear distance
between themselves and the influence of the majority language (Finnish) in an attempt to re-
tain their linguistic ‘independence’. In addition, these findings also point to another, more ge-
neral, potential interaction between attitudinal factors: in the Finland Swedish case we might
be witnessing the two dimensions of ‘practicality’ (competence) and ‘sentiment’ (beauty)
fighting it out, with ‘sentiment’ on the way to getting the upper hand. We will come back to
this issue of give-and-take in the next chapter – then in the form of ‘rationality’ vs. ‘(the
Nordic) tradition as ideology’.
Ideologies are complex constructs suspended in the interplay of many factors, competence
in a language and sentiments towards it being two; in addition, contact with the language and
the speakers of the language, as well as attitudes towards the communities where the language
is used also play an important role. Furthermore, dimensions such as competence in a langua-
ge and attitude towards speakers of that language mutually affect each other. The INS-study
also supplies us with excellent data on contact with Scandinavian languages as well as data on
attitudes towards the Scandinavian societies. In the INS-project, ‘contact’ is defined as any
contact with Scandinavian apart from intra-language contact, e.g., watching Scandinavian te-
levision, reading Scandinavian newspapers and books, or visiting Scandinavian countries.
‘Attitude’ is operationalized via the INS-question of whether respondents would be willing to
live and work in a(nother) Scandinavian country. The willingness to move to a country is thus
taken as an expression of positive attitude towards that country.
Table 3: Contact with and attitude towards Scandinavian(s)
‘Pro-Scandinavian’
Factor Most Least
INS- Contact Far Nor (Ice Den) Swe Fin SweFin
project Attitude Ice (Far SweFin) (Fin Swe) (Nor Den)
The contact scale shows a remarkable east-west split, with the speakers of communities geo-
graphically to the west having a more intense contact with (other) Scandinavians than the
speakers in the east. The Finns, both the Finnish and the Swedish speaking, have the least
there is an interest in Scandinavian matters. At the same time, watching Scandinavian TV is important in
strengthening the bond between the Nordic countries and in improving on inter-Nordic understanding. TVviewing,
language comprehension and ’Nordicity’, thus, stand in dialectic relationships to each other. We will
return to such ‘dialectics’ later on.
149