Creating Kvenness: Identity building among the Arctic Finns in northern Norway

In this article I will examine some aspects of identity building among the Arctic Finns or Kvens in Norway in the 1980s and 1990s. During these decades, the Kvens started to organize themselves on ethnic lines. The main organization, Norske Kveners Forbund (the Association of Norwegian Kvens), is engaged in the creation of ethnic markers, such as a common proper name, differentiating elements of common culture, and a common history or a myth of origin. While being successful on some fronts, the strategies chosen by the Kven Association have also created conflict within the Kven community. The identity‐building process and the nature of the elements used to accomplish it will be seen in relation to the movements’ strategies towards the Norwegian authorities, as based on a model borrowed from the Sami movement, and related to the ongoing debate in Norway, Sweden and Finland about indigenous peoples’ rights to land and water resources.

Like nationalism, modern ethnic associations and networks seek to emulate a politically useful and emotionally satisfactory Gemeinschaft in a historical situation where such communities have to be created because they do not already exist. (Eriksen 1993: 144)