STOCKHOLM Supplier Timo Laine read in Swedish Radio’s Finnish morning news that the website of the southern Swedish city of Kalmar has been attacked by hackers. Laine continues long traditions, as the Finnish edition was already established in 1969.
Swedish Radio’s Finnish edition will continue to broadcast news. But otherwise, Yleisradio’s Finnish-language activities will be severely cut.
There are currently 37 vacancies in delivery, of which 8–10, i.e. one in four, will be terminated.
The cuts in Finnish-language delivery are part of the savings plan of the entire Sveriges Radio company. Swedish radio’s annual budget is just under 285 million euros, and now a generous 19.3 million euros will be cut from it.
60 percent of the cuts are aimed at personnel expenses. There are now 2,000 permanent employees in radio, and 1,800 after the cuts.
The operation is financed by a payment similar to the tax, which is levied in connection with taxation.
As a result of savings for example, individual programs will be discontinued completely, the number of special editors in the Swedish-language news delivery will be reduced, the Kurdish-language delivery will be stopped, as well as the broadcasts in Russian.
The audience has changed
Channel Manager Helena Huhta Hermans there will be no layoffs in the Finnish-language edition, as vacancies have been left unfilled and part of the reductions will be taken care of by the pension system.
The reason behind the cuts in Finnish-language delivery, i.e. Sveriges Radio Finska, is a general increase in costs and a change in the audience.
It is estimated that there are approximately 700,000 Swedish Finns. An estimated 250,000 of them speak Finnish. There are fewer and fewer first-generation Finnish immigrants in the audience, and more and more of their descendants.
Delivery was established at the time of the great wave of migrationwhen, for example, in the peak years 1968–71, 111 000 Finns immigrated to Sweden.
– At this moment, Finska is going to the point that our clear core target groups are the second and third generations. So that’s the big mass. They were born here, they are bilingual and some are completely Swedish-speaking, Huhta Hermans emphasizes.
Most of the delivery’s programs will continue to be in Finnish, but not all.
– For example, we publish the most important news in two languages, so we also make Swedish versions. Some of our documents are deliberately made in Swedish. Part of our program production is bilingual precisely because it is very important to us not to exclude anyone because of language, explains Helena Huhta Hermans.
Gaps in the library bookshelf
A Stockholmer Mirja Huusko says his visit Stockholm Finland Institute in the connected library a few times a month.
The Stockholm institute belongs to the network of cultural and scientific institutes in Finland. Their task is to promote, among other things, the visibility of Finnish art, culture and science as well as joint work.
Huusko is attracted to the library by the good selection of books in Finnish.
The city of Stockholm has already reduced the subsidy paid to the library in previous years, but for this year it was no longer granted at all. The institute applied for 9,000 euros.
– Of course, it hurts terribly. This is an important library for Finns in Stockholm, and books can be ordered from other parts of the country, Huusko laments.
Stockholm’s Finnish-language library was founded 130 years ago. It currently has this important task covering the whole of Sweden as a Finnish-language resource librarywhich supports Swedish municipalities and public libraries in work related to the Finnish language.
Funding for the Finnish-language resource library is very fragmented. It is financed by the Swedish Cultural Council or Kulturrådet, the Royal Library, the Stockholm region and the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, which grants money for book purchases.
With the help of the city of Stockholm, for example, the library has been able to order magazines and pay for an extensive digital magazine reading right for those who visit the library.
– We are not ready to give up all of them, but now we have to weed them out with a hard hand. We are now losing, for example, digital services that allowed us to read Finnish magazines online in the library’s premises, director of the library Eeva Östberg list.
The media researcher considers the situation contradictory
Maarit Jaakkola works as an assistant professor at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Gothenburg.
The surgical decisions about him tell about the contradiction that is now connected to the Finnish language. Swedish Finns and the Finnish language have in Sweden the status of a national minoritybut it does not guarantee, for example, teaching in Finnish or resources.
– This is a little contradictory to the political guidelines, according to which one should invest in national minorities and specifically develop the conditions for revitalizing the language, Jaakkola says.
– If resources are cut, how can the language revitalization processes be supported and the Finnish language kept alive in Sweden?