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The 'language strife' was one of the major conflicts of Finland's national history and domestic politics. (The others revolve around the relations to Tsarist Russia, to Socialism, and to the Finnic peoples under Russian jurisdiction.)

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The 19th century resurgence of Finnish nationalism

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The 19th century resurgence of Finnish nationalism

In the centuries following the present-day Finland's gradual incorporation into the Swedish Realm from the 13th century onwars, Swedish gradually became dominant over Latin and Finnish as the most-used language of administration and education among the Finns.
Besides having to acquire the right language skills for good education and work opportunities, many Finns found it useful, and even fashionable, to acquire a foreign—or foreign sounding—name for themselves. From early on, the Latin sounding versions/translations became popular: ''Alopaeus'', ''Chydenius'', ''Hackzelius'', ''Cadolin'', etc. (even Sibelius, much later). Later on, also Swedish names gained popularity.
However, Finnish eventually recovered its predominance after the 19th-century resurgence of Fennomanic Finnish nationalism, also working to assure Imperial Russia of the loyalty of the then-Russian autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland.
The publication in 1835 of the Finnish national epic ''The Kalevala'' first stirred the nationalism that later led to Finland's independence from Russia.
The Finnish national awakening in the mid-19th century was the result of members of the Finland-Swedish upper classes deliberately choosing to promote Finnish culture and language. They fennicized their family names, learned the language, and made a point of using it both in the society and at home, giving their children what they themselves had missed: the Finnish mother tongue. However, another faction of the Swedish-speaking elite did not wish to abandon Swedish, as they felt it was a guarantee that Finland would remain within the cultural sphere of Western Europe.
Beginning in 1892 Finnish gained an official language status comparable to that of Swedish, and within a generation Finnish clearly dominated in government and society in Finland. Inevitably, this situation made for conflict between the supporters of the two languages. In the beginning, the conflict only involved the upper social strata, but the population at large was drawn into it after universal suffrage was implemented in 1906.
The last surge of Fennicization frenzy came in the 1920s. After Finland's independence in 1917, relations with Sweden unexpectedly became strained in connection with the Finnish Civil War and the Åland crisis, which further aggravated the language dispute, sharpening it to become a prominent feature of domestic politics during the 1920s and 1930s. This time, the Fennicization of surnames was chiefly a middle-class phenomenon.
In the newly independent Finnish constitution of 1919, the minority language, Swedish, was given far-reaching privileges. The language strife thereafter centered on these privileges and on the role of Swedish in universities, particularly regarding the number of professors lecturing and examining in Swedish. Then, at the resettlement of over 420,000 Karelians after the Winter War against the Soviet Union (1939-1940), the Swedish-speaking minority feared that new Finnish-speaking settlers would change the linguistic balance of their neighborhoods. These issues were ultimately settled by the Fennoman Prime Minister and later President of Finland Juho Kusti Paasikivi, in a way that was too generous to attract criticism from Finland-Swedes.

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★ - linked 10 February 2006

See also

★ Language policy

★ Language revival