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Rethinking the Acculturation and Assimilation of ‘Others’ in a ‘Monocultural’ Country: Forms of Intercultural Pygmalionism in Two Finnish Novels

This article poses and attempts to answer questions regarding the concepts of acculturation and assimilation in a European country that is often described as ‘monocultural’, Finland. Often lauded for its educational achievements, very little is said or written about immigration and policies/discourses on these phenomena in this ‘small’ country (five million inhabitants) when its ‘miracle’ is described. I problematise the issues of acculturation and assimilation in this context by examining micro-politics in the construction, expression and negotiation of what I propose to call forms of Intercultural Pygmalionism in two Finnish novels. In the novels, the main protagonists experience a need/an urge for change of national/cultural identity. Intercultural pygmalionism can be defined as an attempt to construct an image of the ‘national self and other’ and to copy certain national characteristics to become like the other. The two novels under scrutiny, Stalin's Cows by Sofi Oksanen (2003) and Miika Nousiainen's The Refugee of the Boat-Shaped Pink Candy (2007), each describe different forms of pygmalionism. Nousiainen's Finnish character, who wants to be Swedish, manages to become a ‘real’ Swede after months of training, while Oksanen's bulimic Finno-Estonian protagonist battles to pass as a ‘real’ Finn by hiding marks of Estonianness. A constructivist and critical approach to acculturation and assimilation is used to analyse excerpts from the novels.