Pyssyjoki (Børselv – or Gun River, as we like to call it) is only a village occupied by a handful of inhabitants and a handful of refugees, but for one magical weekend it explodes with Kven party people when the annual Kipparin festivaali takes place. We wanted to take part of the bonanza too, so we drove a whole day from Skibotn to Finnmark to find out how the Kvens like to party – and how does the culture represents itself at the festival.
The festival area itself was small and intimate and could be walked through in one minute. It consisted of few booths with articraft and coffee…
And that’s about it.
However, inside a traditional wooden house right next to the parking place, one could see traces of Kven culture. Old fishing nets were hanging on the walls (Kvens used to be fishermen), and onto the old whiteboard someone had written a few words in Kven language with a chalk.
The festival area expanded also to another building, Kainun instituutti. It’s a nationwide institute created to preserve the Kven language and the culture, and despite not being one of the organizers of the festivals, it opened its doors for the festival, too. (This institute with its enthustiastic workers and researchers are busting their asses off to preserve and to develop the culture. We’re going to tell more about them later on.)
The second day of the festival consisted of a church ceremony in Kven language, and a church coffee munched at Kainun instituutti. We pagans took part in that ceremony with the after-cake-party, drank gallons of coffee and tried to think about the visibility of the culture and the language.
The Kven language itself is disappearing rapidly, but Kainun instituutti tries to keep it afloat by creating revitalisation projects. One of them is Kielipesä, in which old Kven speaking women go to local kindergartens to sing and play with the kids in the local language. Also the Kvens are enthusiastic and they talk about their culture with pride. It is good to see that the Kven culture is so well preserved and respected amongst the locals. And furthermore, it’s not the festival’s fault if the programme is tiny, when it indeed was well organized.
But the culture itself isn’t easily visible (except for 12 year old traditional outfits), so if you count out seeing local cheese cubes in the festival area and hearing Kven language here and there, you could imagine to have been at any village party anywhere.
Until the Kven culture became visible right there while munchin’ Christian cakes.
Between spoonfuls of coffee the Kvens suddenly started to discuss about being more united. The culture has quite many organizations separate from each other, Kvens have internal arguments, there’s not much money to spend around. They started talking about issues, and most of them were related to money.
Yes, money.
We’ve heard about the issue before, but during the weekend we found it to be really THE topic. The budget of the festival itself is tiny, and was compared to the Sami festival nearby. Also the Kvens don’t get as much attention from the media.
Why’s that? Does the Norwegian government simply not care about the Kvens? Can one imagine preserving the culture without money?
Could Kvens do something about it themselves? If there’s will, is there a way?
– Jonne
