Norwegian version

Publication No. 25: The National Minorities

The report The archives, libraries and museums and the national minorities gives an introduction into the issues and problems involving national minorities in Norway.  As human rights organizations, the archives, libraries and museums have particular responsibility to help raise awareness of minority cultures.

The archives, libraries and museums are important institutions for the shaping of identity.  Throughout history, the institutions have served to support the supremacy of the cultural majority with the task of strengthening a single national identity.  The ideal of nation building around a common national cultural heritage contributed to the suppression of minority cultures, to make them invisible.  Today, however, national cultural policy has given the archive, library and museum institutions the task of serving as “banks of information, documentation and knowledge to support a continuing project of democratization” as is stated in the Report to the Storting which formed the basis of the creation of ABM-utvikling.

As human rights organizations, the archives, libraries and museums have particular responsibility for raising awareness of minority cultures.  This is the purpose of the present report.  We would like to draw attention to some of the activities concerning the spread of information about our national minority cultures in many of the archive, library and museum institutions, and at the same time we would invite the sector to become more involved in the area.

The report contains an introduction into the issues and problems surrounding national minorities in Norway, and raises questions including  the following: What is a national minority?  Who belongs to them?  What kind of human rights protection has Norway signed up to?  In the Report to the Storting No. 15 (2000-2001), the government apologizes for those policies that strove to create a single Norwegian national culture, which were damaging to the national minorities.  The report briefly takes a deeper look at what this policy of assimilation meant.  Last but not least, the report examines the relationship between the minorities and the archives, libraries and museums.

The national minorities in Norway: The Kvener (population of Finnish stock), The Forest Finns, the Roma, the Romany population and the Jews

National minorities are ethnic, language, cultural and/or religious minority groups with long-standing links to the country they live in.  Norway has ratified the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages and the Framework Convention of the European Council for the Protection of National Minorities, thereby accepting a special responsibility to support efforts to maintain, strengthen and further develop national minority cultures and the minority languages of Kvensk/ Finnish, Romanes and Romani.

The archives, libraries and museums have been given central roles for the following up and implementation of the responsibilities set out in the Charter for Regional and Minority Languages and the Framework Convention.

The Kvener and the Forest Finns

The settlement and the history of the Kvener and the Forest Finns in Norway were a consequence of extensive Finnish agricultural colonization of the old farming districts in Finland and northern Sweden.  Emigration from these areas continued for hundreds of years, from around 1500 to the first part of the 19^th century.

The Kvener

The Kvener of the counties of North Troms and of parts of Finnmark are descendants of immigrants from the north western areas of present-day Finland and from the Tornedal valley on the Swedish side of the border.  Later, more immigrants arrived from other parts of Finland.  The first Kvener arrived in Northern Norway as early as around 1500, although the greater number arrived in the period from 1720 to the end of the 1800s.  The Norwegian authorities have chosen to use the term “Kvener”, even though some members of the population prefer to be described as being of Finnish stock, or as descendants of Finnish migrants.  The language is often called Kvensk, although there is no full agreement as to whether it should be called Kvensk or Finnish.  Therefore the double term Kvensk/Finnish is also used.

The Forest Finns

The Forest Finns originate from the time of Finnish emigration, in particular from the area Savolaks, at around the middle of the 16^th century.  The Forest Finns settled in large parts of Eastern Norway, but most settled in the “Forest of the Finns” on both sides of the Norwegian/Swedish border.  The Forest Finns lived largely by “slash-burn agriculture” (Svedjebruk).

The authorities have chosen the term Forest Finns for this population group, although members of the group often call themselves Finnish.  Up to the mid 1900s, the Forest Finns traditionally spoke Finnish, although the language gradually disappeared, and today they speak Norwegian, although Finnish words and expressions are still used in the Forest of the Finns.

The Romanies and the Gypsies

The first documentation of this population in the Nordic countries dates from 1505, when a group presented themselves to King Hans of Denmark/Norway.  In 1512 another itinerant group arrived in Stockholm, recorded in Stockholm’s contemporary chronicle “Tenkeboken” as “tattare”, or travellers.  It is likely that these two groups were members of the same population.  From the 1600s and 1700s it is difficult to separate the Roma (gypsies) from the Romanies (travellers) in source materials.  Based upon language studies, some researchers are of the view that the Roma and the Romanies are of the same origin, whereas other researchers maintain that the groups are distinct and that the similarities between their languages of Romanes and Romani are a consequence of encounters between the populations.

The Romanies

The Romanies (travellers) have made up a part of the Norwegian population from the 1500s.  Their origins are unclear.  The Romanies share their own historic background and traditional methods of earning a living, and for them travelling is a way of life, particularly in spring and summer.  Among the Romanies there is no agreement on what they should be called and therefore the compound term the “Romany people” (travellers) is used in many official documents.  Over time, members of the national majority culture have used various names for the group, e.g. tramps and vagrants, but these are terms not used by the group itself and are considered highly derogatory.

The language of the Romany people is called Romani or Norwegian Romani.  It is separate from Romanes, the language of gypsies.  There are international differences for the terms for these languages. 

The Roma (Gypsies)

The Roma (gypsies) emigrated from India about 1,000 years ago, settling in many parts of the world.  The largest group travelling to the Nordic countries arrived from areas of present-day Romania around the mid 1800s.  The Roma have long maintained their cultural characteristics but in most countries, including Norway, they have become a settled population.  The population calls itself Roma, and in official documents the term Roma, not gypsies, is used, although “gypsies” is sometimes indicated to make clear which group is in question.  In the international community, the terms used for the Roma vary, and often the group is subdivided.  In Norway, their language is called Romanes.  Internationally, the language is variously called Romani, Romanes, or Romani chib.  Romanes belongs to the Indo Arian group of the Indo European languages and is related to the languages Sanskrit and Hindi.

The Jews

Jews in Norway represent above all a religious minority.  Most are organized in the Mosaic religious community centred in Oslo and Trondheim.  The group possesses cultural characteristics which they have maintained throughout their long history in Norway.

In Norway, the term Jews is used for this national minority.  Most of Norwegian Jews speak Norwegian, a few hundred use also Hebraic, and some understand Yiddish.