New speakers and use of Russian in the Northern Norway

Project Information

NEW_WAY

Grant agreement ID: 798157

DOI

10.3030/798157

Project closed

EC signature date 26 February 2018

Start date 1 September 2018

End date 31 August 2020

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 196 400,40

EU contribution

€ 196 400,40

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NEW_WAY (New speakers and use of Russian in the Northern Norway)

Reporting period: 2018-09-01 to 2020-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Kirkenes is a small border town in Northern Norway where 10% of the population speaks Russian. Lessons can be learned from this multilingual region about how languages sustain the success of the long-term trans-border cooperation between Norway, Russia and Finland. The project aimed to look how adult learners changed their life trajectories through learning Russian or Norwegian, and what impact this change had on their identities. The project was based at the Centre for Studies of Multilingualism across the Lifespan at the University of Oslo.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project studied what people managed to accomplish with their languages - their actions rather than competences. Each social action (speaking, reading or writing) was analysed as a result of (1) a history of events/actions/practices; (2) the type of interactions the action is linked with, and (3) the discourses connected to it. The design combined bibliographic, ethnographic and biographical research.
The bibliographic research outlined the role of the Russian language in Northern Norway through its historic links to merchant trade, seafaring and conversion of Eastern Sami into the Orthodox faith. Its importance for the region culminated in the emergence of a trade language (Russenorsk) out of the active language contact. After the WWII, Russian was associated with war memories and the liberation of Finnmark in October 1944. Trans-border collaboration started in the Khrushchev’s Thaw times and went on till now. Since 2012, a traffic permit has facilitated cross-border travel to inhabitants of settlements within 50 km from the border, thus leading to a steady exchange across the Norwegian/Finnish border with Russia and consolidating the significance of Russian.
The special role of Russian in the lives of the Kirkenes population was confirmed in the project’s ethnographic fieldwork. At the pilot action, the researcher, Olga Solovova, identified the linguistic rhythms and flows of public spaces such as main streets, shopping centres, museums, schools and libraries. Language artefacts in public spaces (linguistic landscape) were photographed to document discourses, to identify their audiences and authors, and analyse registers, wording and format used for messages. Solovova mapped and observed how Russian shaped social space across the region. The most significant discourses associated with Russian were linked with trans-border cooperation, tourism, culture, sports and arts; shopping, ecology, security and war memories.
The main fieldwork focused on the changes in the linguistic landscape across the public spaces during important community events (e.g. festivals, Stoltenberg Seminar, and the 70th anniversary of Liberation of Finnmark). Solovova observed the events to highlight most common discursive positions people took on, and interviewed both Norwegians and Russians who live in the area on the topics of languages across lifetime, multilingual public spaces, languages in the workplace and family, past and future changes, the role of border in shaping linguistic behaviour.
The biographical approach involved language portraits and diaries, to see how languages shaped multilingual identities and how those were distributed across the participants’ daily interactions. Alongside interviews, these methods provided a glimpse into the language ideologies present in local lives, and allowed to trace Russian across community discourses and family histories. 96 items of linguistic landscape register, 14 interviews, 13 language portraits and 5 language diaries were collected. All the data was analysed in collaboration with the participants and with other researchers working on the region/use of Russian language or Nordic multilingualism.
Solovova has presented the progress and findings in international conferences and seminars, published papers. She gave public talks in Kirkenes on multilingualism; shared insights from the project with MA students in Oslo and Coimbra, and tips for research management/writing proposals with colleagues. Overall, the researcher gave 7 presentations; 2 public talks; prepared 3 teaching seminars; 2 publications (2 more in preparation); 4 research seminars, and hosted 2 annual series of research seminars.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The NEW_WAY project built on existing research on Northern Norway and on the use of Russian in other Nordic borderland regions, for ex., on the described constellations of multilingual practices on the trilateral border, on the multisided views of border and transnational Barents identities, on commodification of Russian and borderland cooperation across history. The fieldwork and bibliographic research within NEW_WAY trace the linguistic diversity in the region beyond recent migration and globalisation processes (‘superdiversity’), back into the history of cultural and language contact across the borderland.
Solovova has shown that speakers come from both historical minorities’ linguistic groups; migration and transnational mobility. All these contributed to the linguistic complexity, hence the need to include both the new speakers of Russian and Norwegian in the analysis. Existing transnational cooperation appears to suggest an increased use of English as a base for effective communication between partners. Yet the historical cross-border, people-to-people cooperation places stronger emphasis on the use of local language by the Norwegian and Russian representatives respectively, to engage on a deeper level and make up a multilingual identity.
The project urged the need to include the materiality, as material choices give clues about authors and readers. So linguistic landscape analysis gets conceptually extended to a semiotic one. Often cultural products like Cyrillic letters rather than use of Russian language are seen as marketable. Thus emerges a unique 'borderscape' - a socio-cultural construct in the state of flux and dispute, shaped by the use of Russian.
A more nuanced view on the concepts of periphery and centre is called for. Kirkenes, while situated on the periphery of EEA and Norway, is placed in the very centre of geopolitical, historical, security, economic and environmental debates. The project's societal impact stems from a polycentric understanding of the role of the region in the national and global context; from the revealed heterogeneity of Russian community, and from identity tensions in multilingual borderland contexts.
EC 2019-2024 policy priorities “Promoting our European way of life” and “Stronger Europe in the World” target deeper and more conscientious constructing of a regional identity and its diversity. Solovova’s work shows the special place the Russian language has in the multilingual economy of the region, and the complex role it plays in ensuring stability in cooperation across the border. Ethnographic research of people’s linguistic choices, along with collaborative interpretation of its findings, contributes to good neighbourly relations, with impact in the local and regional community. Education authority representatives and bilingual parents have benefited from discovering how the special role of Russian in the borderland region may shape a linguistic identity, and how multilingualism may be supported in the family. The active cooperation in various spheres seems to imply that language maintenance practices in Russian are not endangered, given both the available resources and formal/informal spaces where Russian language is spoken and written.

Public talk in Kirkenes