The Swedish language festival, Svenska veckan, in Helsinki, Finland

The next stop in our learning journey was Finland, where the Swedish language festival, Svenska veckan took place. The festival is organized annually by the Swedish Assembly of Finland (Folktinget) and a lot of different events take place all over the country during it. We, the representatives of the Language Museum Association, Snorre Karkkonen Svensson and Elīna Kokareviča, together with the representative of the partner organization Norwegian Museum of Written Culture (Nynorsk kultursentrum) from Norway, Tone Slenes and Yngve Knausgård, visited Helsinki and Porvoo and took a small part in the festival program.

The festival is organized in various places throughout Finland, but the main date everything evolves around is 6 November, The Finnish Swedish Heritage Day. During the day various formal events take place, for example, reception during which the awards for spreading and supporting Swedish in Finland are presented. The awardees are different people who work in different fields, for example, teachers, editors, comedians, etc. Other big event is the concert with award program in the evening, and we were excited to see how great an audience of this event was.

Other festival events take place on so called language islands in Finland and are dedicated to different audiences, especially children. They can be literature readings, performances, theatre, music shows, etc. The Swedish Assembly of Finland is the coordinator of almost 30 various event organizers.

During our visit we also discussed the issues behind lesser-used language activism, and as it is throughout the world, these issues usually are very similar despite available funding or support from the government. Although, those countries who support lesser-used language activism are more inclusive and diverse, the activists struggle to keep the movement alive long-term. The new approaches how to involve youth and younger generations are needed, but nevertheless the lesser-used language activism movement is enthusiastic and energetic to continue their work ensuring that the lesser-used languages are and will be used despite everything.

The experience exchange trip was organized with the aim of gaining an insight into such a wide festival dedicated to language and the process of organizing it, identifying both the capacity and the financial options, so that in the future Latvia could also have its own Language Festival, which the Language Museum Association plans to organize. The trip took place within the framework of the project ‘Cooperation and experience exchange within organizing language festivals’ as part of a series of several trips. The next one is scheduled for February 2025, when the project partners will come to Riga, Latvia.

The project ‘Cooperation and experience exchange within organising language festivals’ has been implemented with the financial support from the Nordic Council of Ministers. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the coordinators of this project and does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

More about the project and involved organizations.