Lakkolaulu Pajalasta

In their 1978 book Edestä aattehen - suomalaisia työväenlauluja 1890 - 1938 (For the Cause - Finnish Working Class Songs 1890 - 1938), Ilpo Saunio and Timo Tuovinen write: »Lakkolaulu Pajalasta (Strike Song from Pajala) is a rare sample of the working class song tradition of Finnish-speaking people living in northern Sweden. It was written in Pajala during the 1930 - 1931 roadworkers' strike. The first labor union of Pajala was established in 1931. In the autumn of 1931, after the National Road Administration had refused to negotiate on wages, the workers called for a strike that continued until spring 1932. The name Anttila in the 4th stanza refers to a person who was recruiting scabs during the strike.«

The Torne is a river in northern Finland and Sweden and, since the annexation of Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809, the official border between the two countries. Throughout history, the western areas of the Torne Valley in modern Sweden have had a major Finnish-speaking population. Its language, called Torne Valley Finnish or Meänkieli, literally »our language«, has survived despite a heavy discrimination campaign of Finnish-speaking people by Swedish authorities in late 1800's and early 1900's. A living language with some 70 000 speakers on both sides of the Torne, Meänkieli became one of the nationally recognized minority languages in Sweden on April 1, 2000.