Were the “Kainulaiset” in the Kalix River valley Finnish or Swedish-speakers?

ABSTRACT

The Norwegian ethnonym Kven and the Finnish ethnonym Kainulainen occurred at latest in the first millennium AD. A tacit truth held today is that the ethnonyms represent the same ancient Finnish-speaking group, only named differently by Norwegians and Finns. The aim of the article is to find out whether the ethnonyms have been used to designate different groups of people. The Finnish-speakers in the nearby Tornedalen has called the lower part of the Kalix River in northernmost Sweden the Kainuu River and the upper part Kaalas River after the original Sámi name of the river. According to theories on ethnicity they called the lower part the Kainuu River [Fin. Kainuunväylä] because they wanted to mark out the Swedish speakers of different ethnicity, who they called Kainulaiset. The latter mainly settled the lower part of the river in the Middle Ages and Finnish-speakers the upper part. The article reveals that the Sámi variety Gainolâš was used by the Sámi for depicting dominant majority populations of different ethnicity, especially Scandinavians, but sometimes also Finns. It also argues that Finnish settlers in southern Finland and the northernmost Gulf of Bothnia used Kainulainen for depicting Swedish settlers when the two language groups first encountered.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnonym
• Kainulainen
• ethnicity
• nationalism
• Sámi
• Finn
• Kven

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In this article the ethnonyms for different historical ethnic groups are given in each nations’s language to keep them analytically apart. The Finnish ethnonym Kainulainen could otherwise be translated into such different ethnonyms as Kainulainen, Ostrobothnian, Kainuu-dweller or Kven, depending on how the researcher has interpreted the ethnonym in a historical context. Kainulainen is the singular form and kainulaiset the plural.

2 For more extenive overviews regarding research on the Kainulas and Kven problem, see Steckzén 1964, 32–118; Vilkuna 1969, 5; Julku 1986, 11–43, 170–187; Vahtola 1980 and Wallerström 1995, 213–238.

3 In the article the counties of Västerbotten and Österbotten are called Västerbotten and Österbotten. The new county of Norrbotten was created in 1809 as a result of the division of Västerbotten into two parts.

4 In the 17th of April 2018 I interviewed an 88 years old male Sámi who had carried out reindeer herding in the Råne river valley in the mid-twentieth century. The river is located between the Lule and Kalix rivers. He confirmed the use of ládde for coastal farmers in the Råneå and Luleå outlets, and also that gáidnolač had former been used for depicting those living in the lower part of the Kalix river valley (the Kalix people). Swedish-speakers according to language was called dárro. (Privat digitally stored interview).

5 For the discussion on the three language hypotheses, see Wiklund 1904, 182–184; Korhonen 1979, 59–60; Collinder 1953, 56–57.

6 It does not, however, exclude the possibility that there was also a small Finnish-speaking population at the time when the Swedes settled the mouth of the Kalix River.

7 The original Finnish sentence is: “Kainuunjoen takaa alkaa vasta Ruotsinmaa” … (Vilkuna 1969, 18–19)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [grant number M11-0361:1].