Some issues in the study of language shift in the northern calotte

Abstract

The Northern Calotte encompasses the administrative areas of Norway, Sweden and Finland which lie above the Arctic Circle.

At present, four languages are spoken in the Northern Calotte: Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Sámi. The first three have the status of official language. Finnish is a minority language in northern Norway and northern Sweden. Two of the four languages, Finnish and Sámi, are therefore in the position of being minority languages. There are, however, five linguistic minorities in the Northern Calotte: two Finnish‐speaking minorities and three Sámi‐speaking minorities.

The linguistic minorities of the Northern Calotte differ as to their origin. The Sámi represent an indigenous minority, the Tornedal Finnish a border minority and the Kven primarily an immigrant minority, although their linguistic position exhibits features of a border minority as well.

Circumstances have often forced members of the linguistic minorities of the Northern Calotte to be multilingual, but today they are being assimilated. The Kven in Norway are close to final assimilation as are some of the Sámi. I present two case studies from an historical perspective in the context of innovation theory, focusing on a group of reindeer‐herding Sámi in Finland. I have developed methods for studying the dynamics of the language shift process. This research has required extensive study of demography, family history, ethnicity, language ecology and language use history.

Notes

A paper presented at the 7th World Congress of Applied Linguistics, Brussels, Belgium, August 5–10, 1984.