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.
