Stora författare från periferin : En jämförande studie mellan minoritetslitteratur från Friesland och Svenskfinland, med romanerna de fûke (1966) och Där vi en gång gått (2006) som utgångspunkt

Sammanfattning:

This master’s thesis considers the differences between the minority literature from Friesland, a province in the northwest of the Netherlands, and that of the Swedish-speaking part of Finland. The author of this paper tries to draw attention to the literatures of those minorities, which often are not well-known outside their own regions. The main issue discussed in this paper is: How is minority culture problematized in the novels de fûke (1966) by the Frisian author Rink van der Velde and Där vi en gång gått (2006) by the Finland-Swedish author Kjell Westö? The Frisian population in the Netherlands is considered by many as a very old people, because famous writers of the Roman Empire, such as Pliny the Elder, wrote specifically about their region and its people. Despite this, the Frisian language has been in a peripheral situation for many centuries. The Swedish minority in Finland, on the contrary, is much younger. Finland gained autonomy in 1809 and before that time the region currently known as Finland, was the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden. This meant that Swedish was the predominant language until that year. Later on Finnish became the main language in Finland. However, both the Frisian and the Finland-Swedish literature were not established before the nineteenth century. This changed partially as a result of ideas of the Romanticism, but also because of historical reasons. By analyzing the previously mentioned novels, Oetze Deelstra shows how the minorities in both countries fare in opposite situations. The Swedish-speaking population has often been, and continues to be, examined as upper-class. On the other hand, in Frisia should a very old countryside culture has been preserved. Those ideas have been important in forming the images of both minorities. A noticeable distinction is that the Frisian literature is defined by language, while the Finland-Swedish literature is characterized by political and ideological arguments.