The Lost Brothers of Meänmaa : Historicizing Finnish nationalist discourse on Swedish politics of language

Sammanfattning

This thesis investigates the discursive construction of Finnish national identity and the ideological positioning of Tornedalians within Finnish nationalist discourse between the 1800s and the Second World War. Drawing on the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) and theories of language ideology from linguistic anthropology, the study explores how Finnish press discourse, political writing, and intellectual debates contributed to shaping narratives of nationhood, belonging, and linguistic legitimacy. The analysis is guided by two central research questions: (1) How was Finnish national identity discursively constructed through press discourse, nationalist writings and language ideological debates during this period? (2) How did Finnish nationalist discourse frame Tornedalians and the Finnish-speaking borderlands, and with what implications for linguistic hierarchies, minority language rights, and national inclusion or exclusion? The thesis demonstrates that Finnish nationalism relied heavily on the ideology of language authenticity, elevating Finnish as a symbol of cultural continuity and moral value. At the same time, Tornedalians, Finnish-speaking communities on the Swedish side of the border, were symbolically reimagined as “lost brothers,” whose linguistic and cultural ties to Finland were variably emphasized or ignored, depending on political context. These shifting discursive strategies reveal the contingent and instrumental nature of nationalist narratives where language served beyond communicative purposes as it functioned as a semiotic tool to represent loyalty, legitimacy and belonging. The thesis offers new insight into how transnational borderlands like Tornedalen were mobilized in the ideological construction of Finnish nationhood, and how historical language ideologies continue to shape understandings of minority rights and multilingualism in the Nordic region today.