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Blomqvist, C.O. 2017. Flerspråkighet eller språkförbistring? Finska Segment i svenska medeltidsbrev 1350-1526. (Doctoral Thesis). Uppsala.

The 14^th and 15^th centuries of European history, the period usually termed the Late Middle Ages, was characterized one decisive happening, striking Europe as it did in the beginning of this period. In fact, it was a catastrophe of unheard of proportion, namely the Plague, also known under the term Black Death. For subsequent ages, however, it was not so much the immense horror of the Black Death (killing at least 25 of 75 million Europeans), as, on the contrary, the social and economic upswing followed by it, which can be conceived of as all-important. The Plague served the making of Europe as we know it, firstly, in the sense that the industrial revolution of the 18^th century was prefigured in the so called “industrious revolution” of the post-plague world, when the de-populated Europe suddenly begun to require a whole new “work ethics” in order to be cultivated. Secondly, the plague caused the “rise of the west” in a purely material sense, in that the rising wages of the fewer and more valuable cultivators, and the concomitant spending fervor of the late 14^th century, led to what may be called a pre-industrial economic collapse, which occurred when the Medieval world suddenly found itself having run short of money supplies to pay for its heighten consumption. In a time when credit actually had to be backed up by metal, new precious “hardware” had to be found, and this enabled those adventurous expeditions of some western Europeans, which closed the 15^th century, and which disclosed the new trade routes along which western dominance was conducted.         

From the point of view of “world-history”, in itself a conception exclusively stemming from the era of “the triumph of the West”, what befell on the writing sheets of some Late Medieval scribes in the parts of Sweden, which now belong to Finland, may seem to be of little or no interest, especially since this was a time when Sweden was not of yet a dominant power in Europe. What makes a good researcher in a historical subject, though, is that he or she knows how to turn that, which seemingly consists exclusively of dryness, bore and fully antiquated questions, into a fascinating story, thereby disclosing and throwing light upon a historical process, as well as scrutinizing our own understanding of ourselves as historically formed subjects. In the hands of Carl Oliver Blomqvist, the Finnish Segments found in some Medieval manuscripts, containing administrative details on inhabitants of the bishopric of Åbo in between 1350 and 1526, transforms into an alluring new history of the hidden dialogue leading up to the birth of Finnish as a written language. Simultaneously, the assertion of this hitherto concealed dialogue, the inner dialogue of the “code-swithing” (basically: alteration between languages presupposing bilingualism) between Finnish and Swedish, evidenced in the manuscripts and conducted by the scribes in their profession, allows us to come to grips with some of the underpinnings of our own conceptions of language, and with some determining factor in our “ideologized” modern identities.         

Before the 18^th century, for sure, language was more or less lacking this quality of functioning as a means to enhance our ideologically tempered thirsts for self-assertion through affirmation and reshaping of identity. This was so simply because language itself was still largely lacking ideological dimensions; the idea of “progress”, of history in itself and of society, had not yet become ingrained in our souls. In the term favored by Blomqvist, language-use was, then, still by large instrumental, and may thus in general be seen to have been working towards a purpose disconnected from whatever desire for self-identification and ideals regarding world-forming processes, which may have been lurking in the back of the mind of the speaker. The material Blomqvist presents, offers a glimpse of this pre-ideological world, in which language, at least, was unequipped for the purpose of being used as an instrument for the enforcing of the world-dividing movement of the era of the nation-states, of the severing of the confrontations between these, and for the accomplishment of the larger picture of the “clash of civilizations”. At the same time, through the material Blomqvist has gathered, one may get a hunch of how earthly sovereignty, in the wake of the atomization of the nation-states, came to inaugurate the formation of the modern handling of language as a means to shape identity.