SWEDISH OULU

The dominant language in the Oulu region has always been Finnish, but Swedish was strong in the city for a long time. Many professionals, such as goldsmiths and shoemakers, came here from Sweden. Oulu, known for its tar trade, was granted free foreign trade rights in 1765. The bourgeoisie and officials were Swedish-speaking, and some of the craftsmen and sailors also spoke Swedish. The wealthiest bourgeoisie of the city included several successful trading houses, such as Snellman, Bergbom, and Åström, which were Swedish speaking.

National politics of the 19th century led to language strife, during which Finnish gained equal status with Swedish as the language of administration and in time led to the weakening of Swedish in Oulu. In 1900, Swedish speakers accounted for about 10 percent of the population of Oulu. In 1989, the figure was only 0.25 percent.

In Oulu, there is a Swedish-language school, Svenska Privatskolan i Uleåborg, which includes a comprehensive school and an upper secondary school, upper secondary school, as well as a Swedish kindergarten. The school was originally a Swedish-language girls' school, Svenska Fruntimmersskolan i Uleåborg, founded in 1859. Today, there are 481 registered Swedish-speaking people in Oulu. Every year, the communities organise festivities related to St. Lucia Day on 13 December. Founded in 2000, Svenska Klubben i Uleåborg organises lectures, seminars, trips, and other festive and cultural events. The aim is to promote and advance Swedish culture.

PHOTOS:

J. W. and Jeanette Snellman’s family were entrepreneurs of one of the most successful trading houses in 19th Century Oulu. Photo: L. J. Peldan 1861, Oulu Museum collections.

Play at the Christmas party of the Swedish secondary school in Oulu in 1933. Photo: JOKA Journalistinen kuva-arkisto, Kaleva.

ROMA PEOPLE WERE HERE BEFORE THE OULU CASTLE

Roma people arrived in Finland in the 16th century, mainly via Sweden. However, they did not receive citizenship until 1919 in the independent State of Finland. Certain Roma families are known to have lived in the same localities in the Oulu region for centuries. However, due to constraining circumstances, many have not been considered to have had stable housing throughout this period.

Housing conditions for the Roma population were poor for a long time. Roma people themselves were held responsible for this, which led to persistent discrimination and society's indifference towards Roma people. The status of Roma was not systematically promoted until the 1970s, even though the National Advisory Board on Romani Affairs had already been established in 1956. Improvement happened slowly, and the attitudes of the majority population did not make the situation any easier. Just like many immigrants, Roma people have faced employment discrimination because of their ethnic background or their names alone.

Roma peoples’ own advocacy has been central in improving their status and conditions. The oldest organisation in the community is Romano Missio, formerly the Gypsy Mission, founded in 1906. The organisation has a Christian value base and cooperates with both the authorities and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. In Oulu, Romano Missio's activities include the Women's Corner, which supports the social rehabilitation of Roma women.

For a long time, social discrimination affected children's schooling. As housing conditions improved in the late 1970s, 65% of Roma young people completed their comprehensive school education. Today, all Roma young people in Oulu complete comprehensive school. The number of people with upper secondary education, especially vocational qualifications, has risen rapidly in recent years. This is thanks to the consistent cooperation between Roma people and the Oulu city authorities.

For the Roma community, work for the preservation of the Romani language and culture has been particularly important. In 1996, the Constitution of Finland enshrined the right of the Roma community to maintain and develop their language and culture. At the University of Helsinki, the Romani language can be studied as a minor subject. In Oulu, the Romani language is offered from preschool education to the ninth grade of comprehensive school for a few hours per week.

Teacher Sofia Schwartz

Anna Sofia Schwartz was born in Kuivaniemi, near Oulu, in 1887 and was the first Finnish Roma person to graduate as a primary school teacher. Her education and professional career tell us about the position of Roma people in Finland in the early 1900s. The Gypsy Mission supported Schwartz in her studies.

Schwartz, who worked as a Sunday school teacher for Roma children in Vyborg, described the school's everyday life in the Kiertolainen magazine (1907):

When the children came to school, they didn't know any kind of letter. We started working with enthusiasm. The religion classes were a lot of fun. I told them in my own words a story about the history of the Bible. Then I let them tell me (...) I tried to see if they understood. They understood, I have to admit. What they didn't understand, they asked.

In 1907 Schwartz travelled to Ingria (near St. Petersburg) to learn about Roma people who lived there, after which she began her studies at the Sortavala Teacher Seminary. To improve her employment opportunities, she changed her surname to Säilä. After graduating as a primary school teacher in 1911, Sofia Säilä worked as a substitute teacher at the elementary school in the village of Ylikiiminki and later in various schools in Karelia. Her Roma background made it difficult to get a permanent position. She married elementary school teacher Väinö Santamo but died in 1932 at the age of 45. Although Sofia Schwartz faced challenges in her career, she was an exceptional pioneer as the first Roma person to graduate as a teacher.

FROM LIP-READING TO SIGN LANGUAGE

The Oulu School for the Deaf was founded in 1898 as a boarding school which permitted pupils to go home for Christmas and summer holidays. Deaf children sometimes left their families for school at the age of seven.

At school, I was surrounded by a horde of children who were waving lively. I saw sign language for the first time. I clung to my father. The dormitory was a tall building. When we went there, I was afraid that I would have to go to the hospital again (...) While I was inside, my father just disappeared. At that time, it was customary that relatives were not allowed to stay at the school, but only brought their children.
– Esko Sänkiniemi, student at Oulu School for the Deaf in 1947–1954

At school, children were taught to speak and read lips so that deafness would be as unnoticeable as possible. For decades, the use of sign language was prohibited in classes. However, it was permitted to sign in the dormitory.

My father and mother escorted us long-distance travellers to school, me to Oulu and Voitto to Jyväskylä. Once I was traveling with my father. We left home early in the morning and arrived in Oulu in the late afternoon (...) Dad took me all the way to the school and could stay for the night. I got to sleep next to my father (...) When I woke up, I noticed that my father wasn't next to me and started looking for him. I couldn't find him and cried bitterly.
– Aila Viinikainen, started school in 1954

Times changed at school as well. Whereas in the 1960s, people in school were beaten on the fingers with a map stick and lived in a dreary dormitory, in the 1970s, free education was supported and the boarding school became more like a home. In the 1990s, class trips were made all the way to Stockholm.

The School for the Deaf also encouraged other community activities. By the early 1900s, teachers had started the Deaf-Mute Assistance Association to organise activities for school graduates. In 1932, the Deaf community of Oulu founded the Oulu Association of the Deaf. The association's activities were lively, especially in the decades after the wars.

Since 1981, Oulu has been home to the Runola Service Centre for the Deaf. This allows the elderly and deaf people with multiple disabilities in Northern Finland to live in their home region. Runola offers supported housing, home care and day activities. The activities promote the wellbeing, inclusion, and equality of those who use sign language and need help with communication.

FACT BOX:

-          Sign language users are those who identify with the sign language community. This means, for example, deaf people and their family members.

-          Support signs that support speech development are borrowed from sign language, but they are different from the actual sign language.

PHOTOS:

Pupils of the Oulu School for the Deaf in the 1950s. Photo: Aila Viinikainen.

Pupils of the Oulu School for the Deaf in the early 1900s. From the desks placed in a semicircle, everyone could see each other and the teacher. Photo: Museum of the Deaf, Finnish Labour Museum Werstas.

MANY ROUTES FROM RUSSIA TO OULU

When Finland was part of the Russian Empire (1809-1917), Russian soldiers and officials were stationed in Oulu. There were also itinerant merchants in the city, some of whom later settled here permanently. For example, the couples Dubatscheff, Lidow, and Lapin, as well as the Tatars Hamidulla, Hasan, and Hairetdin, were known as merchants during the early 1900s. They and their family members became citizens of independent Finland.

Historically, Russia was and still is a multinational state. People who have come to Finland from Russia at different stages or speak Russian today represent many ethnic and linguistic groups.

Nikolai and Anna Lidow

In 1915, the commander of the Oulu Coast Guard Station was Colonel Nikolai Lidow (1861–1956). At that time, there were approximately a thousand Russian soldiers in Oulu. After Finland became independent (1917), Lidow and his wife Anna (1891–1964) stayed in Oulu. In 1922, they founded a fruit and general store called Lyyra on Isokatu and actively participated in the city's leisure activities. The Lidows were granted Finnish citizenship in 1929 and lived in Oulu for the rest of their lives.

The Tatars of Oulu – from itinerant traders to conglomerates

Members of the Hamidulla family arrived in Oulu at the end of the 1800s from Terijoki, where they had come from the village of Aktuk in the Province of Nizhny Novgorod. They set up shops in Oulu and Kemi.

Osman Hisametdin Hamidulla (1864–1949) ran a cloth and fur shop. His son Ibrahim Hamidulla (1906–1998) continued trading and received Finnish citizenship in 1934. The family lived for decades in the house they had built in Raksila. Ibrahim Hamidulla fought in the Finnish army in the Continuation War.

Hasan Hamidulla (1900–1988) was a writer, merchant, and publisher who settled in Oulu in 1923. In the 1920s, he also lived in Turkey for a while. In addition to Tatar, Hamidulla spoke Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Finnish, and Swedish. He ran an electronics shop in Kemi and later in Helsinki. Hamidulla published the magazine Mägrifät (in Finnish Valistus, 1925) and produced a large number of publications in Tatar with his own printing press.

Writer, poet and merchant Sadri Hamid (1905–1987) started out as a peddler and then opened a textile and general store in Oulu. The works published by Hamid and his cousin Hasan Hamidulla accounted for more than half of all Tatar literature published in Finland. Hamid published the Tatar-language magazine Ak Yul (In Finnish, The White Road, 1967–1977). His writings include the history and ethnology of Turkic peoples, as well as poems and stories. Hamid also established contacts between the Tatars of Finland and Russia. Sadri Hamid was a Muslim like other Tatars. He was granted Finnish citizenship in the 1930s, but the feeling of alienation did not subside, as illustrated by excerpts from his poem Säkeitä Oululle (In English, Verses to Oulu, 1954).

My father brought me, his beloved son, to the land of Finland

When I arrived in the city of Oulu, my eyes filled with tears.

When I left home, I read a prayer

I think I will die in Finland and never see my birthplace again.

Bright lights on the streets of Oulu

Finns look at us strangers with disdain.

Finnish language was difficult to learn

In the store, I didn’t even know how to ask for food.

For thirty years of my life I have spent in a city called Oulu.

I don’t wish such big troubles on anyone.

English translation from Feride Nisametdin’s Finnish version: Seija Jalagin

THE LONG JOURNEYS OF REFUGEES

More than 40,000 people fled the Russian revolution to Finland. Most of those who came to Oulu in 1922–1923 were from the neighbouring White Sea Karelia region. In Finland, most of the East Karelian and Ingrian small farmers became wage workers. Refugees were employed predominantly in the sawmill industry. The descendants of the refugees became builders of the welfare state and eventually, Finnish citizens. Many of the older generation were left without citizenship. Discrimination and settling in Finland weakened the preservation of the Karelian language, among other things.

As a result of the Second World War, 10% of Finnish citizens lost their land and access to their home regions as well. Evacuees were mostly resettled in southern Finland, and thus at the end of 1944 there were only about a thousand evacuees in Oulu. In 1950, the 2247 evacuees formed 5% of the city's population. They were mainly from Vyborg and other settlements of the ceded Karelia.

After the war, approximately 240 Ingrians and East Karelians lived in the province of Oulu (1947). 63,000 Ingrians had been transferred from the German-occupied regions in the Soviet Union to Finland in 1943, whereas the East Karelians arrived at the end of the Continuation War in 1944. Thousands of Ingrians and East Karelians fled from Finland to Sweden and were granted asylum there.

In recent decades, refugees from all over Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa have settled in the Oulu region. There is a reception centre for asylum seekers in Oulu. The International House Oulu offers all immigrants support in settling in, studying, and looking for work. Refugees, like many other people with a foreign background who have moved to the region, form their own linguistic and cultural communities and are part of the diverse Oulu community. About 5% of Oulu residents are citizens of other countries.

PHOTOS:

Teacher Toini Kälviäinen and pupils of the elementary school for refugee children in 1931–1932. The former reserve barracks in Maikkula on the Oulujoki River housed a refugee centre for East Karelian refugees from 1923 to 1927, an elementary school until 1940, and a retirement home until the 1970s. Photo: Sampo database, www.karjalansivistysseura.fi.

In August 1945, war children returned home from Sweden via Oulu. Photo: JOKA, Kaleva, Finnish Heritage Agency.

SÁMI CENTRE OF FINLAND

About 700–900 Sámi people live in Oulu, which makes the city one of Finland's largest Sámi centres. The Sámi community in Oulu has grown through diverse teaching of Sámi languages from early childhood education to university.

The teaching of Northern Sámi began at the University of Oulu in 1970, with this program leading to a degree in Sámi language and culture by 1980. Higher education was implemented because schools in the Sámi Homeland needed teachers who could teach in Sámi languages. The aim was also to improve the status of Sámi languages.

Today, the national responsibility for teaching and research in Sámi languages and culture lies with the University of Oulu's Giellagas Institute, which was established in 2001. In addition to Northern Sámi, it has been possible to study Inari Sámi at the university since 2000 and Skolt Sámi since 2015. GieKu, the student association for students of Sámi languages and culture, also serves as a meeting place for Sámi students from other fields.

The Association Oulu Sàmit promotes cultural activities and has also been central in advancing Sámi language education in Oulu. On the initiative of the association, a North Sámi language day club offers activities, and early childhood education was started in Oulu in the 2000s. Weekly Sámi language lessons have been organised in basic education in Oulu since 1997.

 FACT BOX:

-          The Sámi are Indigenous peoples. There are about 10,000 Sámi people in Finland, more than 60 percent of whom live outside the Sámi Homeland. The Sámi Homeland includes Enontekiö, Inari, and Utsjoki (in Sámi Eanodat, Aanaar, and Ohcejohka) as well as the northern part of Sodankylä (Soađegilli).

-          Northern Sámi, Inari Sámi, and Skolt Sámi are spoken in Finland. All Sámi languages are endangered languages.

-          Opportunities for education in the Sámi language, both in the homeland and outside it, are important for the preservation of Sámi languages and culture.

PHOTO:

Sámi people at Heinätori in Oulu in the late 1800s. Photo: Finno-Ugric Picture Collection, Finnish Heritage Agency.

This exhibition is a result of collaborative work by history students and their teachers. It is part of the Mobile Futures research project at the University of Oulu in 2021–2027. Mobile Futures is an interdisciplinary, action-oriented research project that promotes a fair and inclusive society through research on trust and two-way integration (https://mobilefutures.fi/).

Exhibition work group: Nadra Ali, Jasmine Arppi, Seija Jalagin, Iida Kauhanen, Ella Marjanen, Eetu Partanen, Aino Pöykkö, Martti Turunen, Timi Vähäsarja.
Visual design: Shima Salehi.