The Norwegian Parliament issued a formal apology on Tuesday to Norway’s indigenous people and ethnic groups including the Sami, Kvener and Finnish migrants. Norwegian state officials tried for more than a century to force them to give up their native languages, traditions and religion and become “as Norwegian as possible,” but have now concluded that just wasn’t right.
The policy was known as fornorsking, and it included such offenses as splitting up families and sending children to boarding schools, where they weren’t allowed to speak their own languages, only Norwegian. Various forms of forced assimilation regarding religion, language and lifestyles began as early as the 1700s and became formal state policy in 1851.
Both the late King Olav V, King Harald V and former Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of the Christian Democrats party have earlier apologized for the state’s assaults on ethnic minority cultures over the years. Tuesday’s formal apology from the Parliament itself came after a state “truth and reconciliation” commission delivered its report on the assimilation policy last year. It presented a record of the damage caused by fornorsking and discrimination, along with various proposals that could help repair it.
After several hours of discussion and regrets came what many were calling an “historic” response from a majority in Parliament. It extended its “deepest apology” for the infringements that fornorsking imposed upon the Sami, Kvener/norskfinner and Skogfinner groups. The Parliament not only “begged pardon” from those affected by fornorsking but also took “responsibility for the policy’s consequences on groups and individuals.”
That means the Parliament will now carry out many of the commission’s proposals, including establishment of a national competence center on assimilation policy. The Labour, Conservative and Center parties secured a majority to in total carry out 13 various proposals in the commission’s report.
Only the right-wing Progress Party voted against the apology and the commission’s proposals, claiming Norwegian leaders already had apologized enough on earlier occasions. The Socialist Left, Greens, Liberals and Reds parties, in contrast, wanted to move forward on even more proposals for reconciliation.
“Many have waited a long time for the Parliament to handle the commission’s report,” said Parliament President Masud Gharahkhani. “At the same time, the Parliament’s handling isn’t the end of this important work … efforts aimed at reconciliation will continue.”
That’s why, he said, the leadership of Parliament “decided to do something we’ve never done before: Mark this day by providing a dialogue arena at Eidsvolls Plass (the park area in front of the Parliament in downtown Oslo) for all the groups involved.”
Frode Jacobsen of the Labour Party, a member of Parliament and its committee that acted on the commission’s report, thinks reconciliation is already underway. “It will take time before the wounds from the assimilation policy will heal,” he told news service NTB, “but the first step in building confidence and dialogue is to admit wrongdoing. Now we’re taking a major step forward in the reconciliation effort.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund