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

We also know from the MIN-results that the Faeroes are the most positive towards global
English, whereas the Finland Swedes are the least positive. First, this clearly goes to show
that different outreaches for the ideology of the Nordic are not by definition realized similarly,
but a community’s attachment to the ideology can take very different forms. That is, the Fae-
roes would view the use of foreign languages positively, as providing access to a larger world,
be it the Danish quasi-homeland or the global world. To the Finland Swedes, however, the
ideology of the Nordic is rather used in opposition to the majority Finnish speaking populati-
on, cf. (3) from the Finland-Swedish material.
(3) […] finlandssvenskarna […] har mera den där rädslan att man liksom (.) tappar
det där språket så att säga när det ändå så mycket finska talas här att man mera
liksom benägen på att försvara det
‘[We] Finland Swedes fear that we lose our language, so to speak, because there
is so much Finnish spoken here, and one is more inclined to defend it
[=Swedish].’
That is, the ideology is used first and foremost to tie the Finland Swedes to the larger Swedish
speaking community of Sweden, wherefrom they receive linguistic support. This may be cou-
pled with a general positive view towards linguistic pluralism often found in a linguistic mi-
nority, which may in turn be reflected in a rather negative view on English as a global langua-
ge.
In the other two ‘peripheral’ societies, (Finnish-language) Finland and Iceland, the rea-
ding of inter-Nordic, and thus of the inter-Nordic project, again varies slightly. Here the un-
derstanding is not as in Scandinavia one of closely related mother tongues (or dialects), nor is
it comparable to that found among the Finland Swedes and the Faeroes, one of mutual lan-
guage and one of ‘mainland’ vs. geographical periphery. Neither of the nations shares in ha-
ving closely related mother tongues (as is the case within Scandinavia) and neither has a close
political or linguistic affinity with any of the Scandinavian countries (like the Faeroes and the
Finland Swedes). The typical reading of inter-Nordic in Finland and Iceland is indeed inter-
Nordic, or at least one of ‘inter-Scandinavia-plus-ourselves’. The Finns and the Icelanders
share in the Scandinavians’ assumption that they themselves are not very fluent or competent
in Scandinavian – as indeed data from the INS-project also confirm – and their conclusion is
that an inter-Nordic linguistic community is not a reality.
The discrepancy in the interpretation of the word inter-Nordic by representatives of the
seven speech communities gives us several interesting foods for thought. Methodologically, it
indicates that the interpretation of the quantitative data in chapter 5 should be restrained by a
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