Tatar literature in Finland is little known outside the community, although Tatars have published magazines and books here for over a hundred years. In fact they are one of the most active minorities producing literary works in the country. This diaspora literature is also rarely mentioned in the context of global Tatar literature.
Prerequisites for the manifold literary activities among the Tatars in Finland are the high educational and organisational levels of the community members and their interest in preserving the language and culture in the diaspora situation. These factors are also conducive to change and modernisation: an important transformation in the past century is the replacement of the Arabic script by Latin letters for the Tatar language in Finland. A present-day challenge is publishing electronically on the internet. Further, the publications by the Finnish Tatars have never been limited solely to the Tatar language; they have also published books in Finnish, Swedish and other languages, and multilingual and even mixed language works.
This article presents a general overview of the major trends and publications written by Tatars in Finland, including magazines, prose, historical works and poetry, as well as the most important authors, among them Hasan Hamidulla (1900–1988) and Sadri Hamid (1905–1987). These two prominent figures became writers in order to maintain and preserve the Tatar identity, language and culture in the diaspora. Hamidulla and Hamid also played an important role as historians of the Finnish Tatar community and they were active as poets, magazine editors and educators. These authors are together responsible for more than half of all Tatar literature published in Finland.
Tatar literature Tatar diaspora literary activities publishing multilingual literature Finland
Primary Language | English |
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Subjects | Linguistics |
Journal Section | Articles |
Authors | |
Publication Date | July 24, 2021 |
Submission Date | June 16, 2021 |
Published in Issue | Year 2021 Volume: 11 Issue: 19 |
Journal of Endangered Languages (JofEL)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) International License.