The Writer Who Hated the Swedish Language

“At first, everything was fine. People had nice clothes and their own teeth. There were no war invalids. There was enough work for everyone.”

This is how the Swedish-Finnish author Antti Jalava describes Sweden in an archival interview; the land of fortune, where he and his family moved when Jalava was ten.

But it soon became clear that the Finns were only easy labour, and that their children were expected to quickly assimilate into the Swedish society. You weren’t allowed to speak Finnish, and the constant taunt and bullying was something you just had to accept.

All his life, Jalava felt a sense of placelessness. By having his mother tongue taken away from him, he was also robbed of his childhood and his roots. Being a Finn was something to be ashamed of, and you had to cover all traces as thoroughly as possible. This is still a familiar feeling for many immigrants in Sweden today. As playwright Athena Farrokhzad states in the documentary, Jalava’s debut novel from 1981, The Asphalt Flower, could be a description of the experiences of any immigrant group in the 2020s. That says a lot about the continuous attitude problems in the Swedish society.

Jalava wasn’t bilingual, and he didn’t have a language to support his identity. He ended up writing in Swedish – a language he was forced to use. What’s it like to write about things close to you in a hostile language? Karin Tötterman’s and Lina Puranen’s documentary poignantly depicts a society first alienating and then crushing a literary talent.

Mirkka Maikola (translated by Charlotte Elo)