Afterword: Re-Narrating Finnish Histories and Searching for the Politics of Hope

Although commonly perceived as ’outsiders’ to colonial and racial histories, the Nordic countries’ participation in colonialism and their complicity in the colonial/racial project need to be thoroughly investigated in order to understand the countries’ current racial formations. The economic, political, cultural and knowledge-production processes, developed in and through European colonialism, produced a world-system, in which Europe became equalized with civilized, culturally superior and economically developed nations. Even those parts of Europe not considered to constitute its political and cultural core, benefited in many ways from their location in Europe and (what later became named as) the “Western world.” Race and racial thinking was an elementary part of this world-system and the power relations it built. Moreover, settler colonialism in the Arctic is an essential part of Nordic colonialism.

The chapter discusses central concepts that can guide critical analyses – colonialism, settler colonialism, colonial complicity and coloniality – connecting them to Finnish history. Moreover, an analysis of current Finnish society and its racial politics is elaborated through a reflection on the crisis of white hegemony, rise of white nationalism and the emerging politics of solidarity that could provide more hopeful future visions.