Negotiating a Dark Past in the Swedish-language Press in Finland and Sweden

Abstract

History is written by historians; but history is also written in a variety of popular media, and across Scandinavia journalists and non-academic writers have often been among the first to unsettle the truisms of professional “history.” The challenging interpretive issues posed by the varied “national” histories of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland during World War II have galvanized the unsettled relations between academic historians and journalist provocateurs, a conflict animating the public discussion of Finland’s possible role in the Holocaust emerging in the last quarter of the twentieth century. This dynamic is particularly engaging in Finland. Long a colony of Sweden, Finland is an officially bilingual state, and its Swedish-speaking minority (about 5.5 percent of the population) not only maintains a distinct cultural and political identity, but maintains a significant Swedish-language press as well. Here, I examine the treatment of emerging studies of Finland and the Holocaust in Finland’s Swedish-language press, placed in dialogue with comparable accounts in the Swedish press. Analyzing articles and reviews in Finland’s daily Swedish-language newspapers (Hufvudstadsbladet, Västra Nyland) as well as the Helsingin Sanomat International Edition and comparing them with counterparts in Sweden (Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen, and Aftonbladet), I aim to show how the “dark past of Finland,” Finland’s link to the Holocaust, has been negotiated in the public sphere, a sphere that once marks and complicates the national borders, and national histories, relating and distinguishing Finland and Sweden today.