History of Finland X: The birth of Finnish identity

This is the tenth part of a blog post series in which I go through the most significant phases of Finnish history. In the ninth post, I described how the change of power in Russia led to the creation of liberal legislation and enormous progress in the development of society.

At the end of the 19th century, the Finnish nationalistic movement, or Fennomania, also emerged, which, alongside the liberalization of the country, was the most significant development of the time. We Finns remember it best from our school days as an idea created by Swedish-speaking great men such as Arwidsson, Snellman, Runeberg, and Topelius to improve the position of the Finnish people and their language.

And to some extent, that was indeed the case. However, school books left open the question of why Swedish-speaking great men originally started advocating for the position of the Finnish people.

The explanation for this can be found by examining fennomania as a transfer of power between social classes. The growing intelligentsia allied themselves with the wealthy peasants who had benefited from pre-capitalist economic policies to challenge the predominantly aristocratic, Swedish-speaking civil servants in the distribution of high-level positions reserved solely for the Swedish-speaking upper class. And in this battle, the language of the peasant class was well-suited, especially since the children of noble estates did not speak it.

In addition to the rising peasant class that challenged the Swedish-speaking civil servants, the will of the emperor - or grand duke as the Tsar was called in Finland - was also crucial in this struggle. His advantage was to weaken the close ties of the civil servants with the old motherland, Sweden, and the elevation of the status of the Finnish language was ideal for this.

Throughout the 19th century, however, the civil servants were initially stronger than the fennomaniacs, and by the mid-1800s, it appeared that the fate of the Finnish language would be that of the disappearing Irish language. However, an unexpected change occurred when Alexander II ascended the throne and signed the Language Decree of 1863, which made Finnish an equal language alongside Swedish.

This had far-reaching consequences. Firstly, despite the great disappointment of the Swedish-speaking population, the decision ultimately saved their mother tongue in Finland, as it ensured them an equal linguistic status with the Finnish-speaking population after Finland's independence. Otherwise, Finland would have become a monolingual country like Estonia.

The second significant consequence was that, after winning the language struggle, the original fennomans, i.e. the old Finns, became advocates of the emperor in Finland. This was evident during the years of oppression, where to preserve the autonomy of the Grand Duchy, concessions were repeatedly made to the Tsar's administration. In exchange for this submission, they were granted official positions by the Grand Duke, but as a reaction to this, the younger generation of fennomans, the young Finns, emerged with a highly negative view of their predecessors.

At the same time, there was a lively debate in the Swedish press, in which Snellman also participated. The Swedish government had recognized the facts and reluctantly accepted the loss of the eastern part of the country to Russia. Despite this, there was still debate on the western side of the Gulf of Bothnia, where since the 1830s and especially during the Crimean War, there were voices calling for Finland to be returned to the old motherland by joining forces with its enemies.

This debate likely had a strong impact on the Tsars allowing Finland to maintain its autonomous special status, which allowed the former backward eastern part of the Swedish kingdom to develop into a state capable of achieving high-level accomplishments in almost every field within a hundred years. Thus, the Swedish revanchist spirit ended up doing a favor for Finland - albeit in a way that its representatives had not intended.

The original blog post in Finnish:
Suomalaisuuden synty

All the blog posts in this series:
History of Finland I: How did Finland become culturally part of the West?
History of Finland II: From a hinterland of the Union into a modern state
History of Finland III: The legal and economic weakening of the position of the people
History of Finland IV: The bleakest time in Finnish history
History of Finland V: The pursuit of economic profit saved the country
History of Finland VI: Age of freedom and utility
History of Finland VII: The dictator of the era of Enlightenment promoted capitalist economy
History of Finland VIII: Joining of Finland to Russia led to an increase in crime
History of Finland IX: Enlightended dictator initiated economic growth
History of Finland X: The birth of Finnish identity
History of Finland XI: Finnish democracy and gender equality for women
History of Finland XII: Bloody civil war
History of Finland XIII: The far-right's rebellion
History of Finland XIV: The end of the first Finnish Republic
History of Finland XV: Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine
History of Finland XVI: Through rise and fall to a new kind of future