PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Charlotte Kalla has put her skis on the shelf.
But there is something that she still ponders over.
– It is a sadness and rootlessness, she says in “Summer in P1”.
It was an era that ended last spring when Charlotte Kalla announced that she is ending her sports career. As early as seven years old, she learned to ski at home in Tärendö, Norrbotten, and founded what would become a fantastic career.
Called career
She quickly went from great promise to full-fledged Olympic queen during 16 seasons at the World Cup, 8 World Championships and 4 Winter Olympics. There were a total of 9 Olympic medals, 13 WC medals and a whopping 37 SM golds during the long and successful career.
Kalla will be remembered as one of the foremost cross-country skiers in Swedish sports history. Now begins a new life as a “retiree” and this summer the 35-year-old had the chance to summarize her career in words in her own summer talks in P1.
Big mistake
Then the Swedish ski star reveals his big mistake in life, which is not about cross-country skiing at all. But about her heritage from Tornedalen and the sadness of not understanding or speaking Meänkieli, the minority language found in her family.
Kalla truly regrets that she never learned the language her grandmother spoke fluently.
– I who never knew the language, do I have the right to call myself Tornedaling? It’s a question I’ve often pondered. When I was still living at home in Tärendö, I thought it was hard not knowing the language and not being able to speak fluently. We had compulsory home language teaching at primary school, but no one in my cohort saw the value in learning the language. There wasn’t much status in learning Meänkieli, we put more value in learning English or French, says Kalla in Sommar in P1.
“Is a sadness”
According to Kalla herself, there was resistance to learning Meänkieli while growing up, both in her generation and her parents’.
– We should not blame our parents for not having taught us, it is a social phenomenon that the third generation has been left without the language. I have grown up with it and I have heard it around me. Still, I didn’t get to learn it or take the chance as a child, she says in her summer talk.
– I notice many people around me who haven’t taken the language with them from home either, but who want to take it back to root around among their roots. It is a sadness and rootlessness not to know the language. There are many expressions in Meänkieli, in fairy tales or stories, which are completely hopeless to reproduce or even try to translate into Swedish. It is a loss of my cultural heritage.
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