Interconnection between language, environment and identity in the poems of the Csángó Demeter Lakatos and the Kven Alf Nilsen-Børsskog

The purpose of this study is to make a comparative analysis of the interconnections between language, environment and identity from an ecolinguistic point of view. It is meant to analyse the attachment of two Finno-Ugric poets, Demeter Lakatos and Alf Nilsen-Børsskog to their own cultural and natural environment.

Demeter Lakatos was a Csángó folk poet, who consciously adopted the local, popular dialect to express his loyalty to his ancestry, to his roots that lay in the Moldavian Csángó identity. Alf Nilsen-Børsskog was the first writer and poet who wrote in Kven. His literary work has been of great significance in the context of the cultural emancipation of his ethnic minority and the revitalization of their language.

The main things that keep together a minority community – especially an endangered community – are basically language, faith, and certain characteristics of their own local natural surroundings (including the place where – for one reason or another – they had to flee from). This can be practically anything: a mountain, a river, even a tree. And whatever it is, it has a special, almost sacred place in the hearts of the members of the community.

I have chosen these two poets because their poetry has not been much analysed and also because both belong to Finno-Ugric minorities whose languages are highly endangered, and this fact marks their attitude towards their environment.

This study follows a qualitative approach through discourse analysis, and the source of data are the volumes of poems written by Demeter Lakatos and Alf Nilsen- Børsskog.