The Kvens are difficult to spot. They live in a vast area here and there along Northern Norway, and are hard to count due to no official definitions of who is a Kven.
We drove from Troms to Skibotn (Yykeänperä in Kvensk) to meet the world’s youngest Kven. Noora Ollila (we didn’t ask her age, but young) told us she got her Kven identity straight from her surroundings and parents. This is not the case with everyone: the Kven language and culture is diminishing quickly, and many parents don’t know how to use the language. Even Ollila doesn’t have a friend of her age to speak the Kven language with.
It’s critically important to preserve the culture by teaching it to next generations. When there are no kids to teach, the culture must be preserved some other ways.
That means money.
The Kvens are an official minority with a minority language status, but the Norwegian government hands out annually only breadcrumbs to Kvens (more or less 300 000 euros/year). With that money Kvens are supposed to preserve the culture and the language.
The Sami people of Norway, however, get annually tens-if-not-a-hundred times more money compared to Kvens. This money inequality becomes an issue especially in the areas where the Sami and the Kvens live alongside. A bitter issue.
In addition to all sorts of external issues, the Kvens have problems of their own, too. One organization has created a Kven flag, but that’s no means universally accepted amongst Kvens. Also, few people use the term Kainu instead of Kven, and this causes confusion. In North-Eastern Norway some natives consider the language to not to be a language, but a dialect of Finnish. Quite honestly, the Kven language resembles Finnish so much, that we don’t have difficulties to understand it, but in terms of the culture and identity using the word “language” is appropriate.
The Kvens have their problems, and both the culture and the language are on the edge of falling into the bottomless pit of extinction. Today somewhat 2000 people know the language in a way or another, but the number is quickly diminishing.
Noora Ollila seems, however, slightly optimistic about the future. Once the torch passes on to the future generation, the Kvens will not end up being just a footnote on history books.
On the other hand, even now, no matter how thoroughly one reads history books from cover to cover, pärmistä pärmiin, Kvens are hardly mentioned at all.
– Jonne
