Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the nation is imagined as home and homeland in the Finnish national anthem and in recent debates on immigrants and asylum seekers by those welcoming or unwelcoming them.

Paper long abstract:

It is a commonplace to speak of the nation or the state as home, and it is no less common to observe this idea in use for example in the term 'domestic policy'. However, we do not always stop to examine in detail the politicized meanings attached to the concept of home in the discourses on the nation and the state.

According to research conducted by Lea Laitinen, in the original Swedish-language 11 stanza poem that is used as the Finnish national anthem, composed by J. L. Runeberg in 1846, there are altogether 14 occurrences of the word 'here' and 22 occurrences of 'our', but only one occurrence of the phrase 'the Finnish people'. The Swedish word 'fosterland', with four occurrences, denotes the native land, the land in which one has grown, or where one was born. In the many Finnish translations and adaptations of Runeberg's poem, this word was often translated as 'homeland' or' land of dwelling', although the standard translation is 'birthland'. In the Finnish translations and adaptations from the 19th and 20th centuries, 'home' and 'homeland' are of key symbolic significance, but in the Swedish-language original, both the word and the idea of home are altogether missing.

In my paper, I will discuss the notions of 'home' and 'homeland' in the Finnish translations and adaptations of Runeberg's poem and juxtapose these imaginings to archived arguments concerning home and homeland in recent heated debates on immigrants and asylum seekers in Finland.