the Swedish edge

I am starting to realise that I was born on the edge of the world. Not in the centre.

Here is a big country (OK, everything is relative) and its people, a fairly homogeneous crowd who look alike and think alike, watch the same TV programmes and like the same mild coffee, get drunk on Saturday nights and doubt themselves, vow to beat the Swedes at ice hockey and speak a quirky, complex Finnish language that nobody else can understand.

On the very edge of this country the Swedish-speakers, as fiercely Finnish as the rest but forever different thanks to their mother tongue, a little more sociable and outgoing, struggling for their identity, always unsure of what the other Finns really think of them, tending to turn inwards and squabble among themselves regarding the best course for ethnic survival.

The majority Finns feel annoyed by their stubborn insistence to press the Swedish language on everybody else who does not want it, but forget about them the rest of the time - or ignore them just to annoy them back. On holiday trips to the coast they feel it is kind of cute, this chatty language which permeates every aspect of local society and which is as ancient as their own but with an international atmosphere. The world seems to be stretching outwards from the Swedish-speakers' seaside towns.

The trainee in the hotel reception is experiencing this for the first time, newly arrived from her inland Finnish city. More language skills are required of her here and more travellers from all over the world smile at her across the counter. There are traditions she has only heard about and she feels as if she is half-way to Sweden. The locals, as Finnish as herself, address her in that weird language which she has struggled to learn in theory for years.

I, her workmate and shift supervisor, speak to her in a broken Finnish, read a local newspaper in Swedish and seem too sure of my place in the world considering the fact that I struggle with the language of my own country.

And I smile way, way too much.