The Irony of “Drottningen av Åland”: Politics and Aesthetics in the Changing Landscape of Finland Swedish Popular Music

Abstract

In the spring of 2012, Radio X3M, the Swedish language youth station of YLE, Finland's national public service broadcasting company, released a song with an accompanying music video called “Drottningen av Åland” (The queen of Åland). The music and the video were created as an ironic reply to a public comment made by Teuvo Hakkarainen, a populist nationalist member of the Finnish parliament, who had suggested that the members of the gay, lesbian, and Somali minorities should be moved to the Åland islands. By analyzing the music video, the article discusses how music is used to create social belonging and distancing through cultural means in the politically and technologically changing environment of the beginning of the twenty-first century. The article shows how popular music and videos can be used to negotiate and renegotiate cultural belonging in a Finland Swedish context. A key argument is that music and audiovisual formats offer polysemic possibilities of expressing both critical and self-ironic humorous commentary in a multilayered form. From this perspective “Drottningen av Åland” clearly managed to highlight perspectives on ongoing debates in such a way that it both provoked and entertained, and manifested and questioned many issues that were experienced as important within a Finland Swedish cultural framework.