Finland-Swedes

Encyclopedia : F : FI : FIN : Finland-Swedes

Swedish in Finland: white = officially unilingual Finnish speaking municipalities (Sami bilingual municipalities not shown), light blue = bilingual municipalities with Finnish as majority language, darker blue = bilingual municipalities with Swedish as majority language, darkest blue = unilingual Swedish speaking municipalities and province. (Note: More than 17,000 Finland-Swedes do live in officially unilingual Finnish municipalities, and are thus not represented on the map. Gray dot: Town of Tampere, with one thousand Swedish speakers, 0.5% of the officially unilingual city's total population.)

Finland-Swedes make up a Swedish-speaking linguistic minority in Finland. Finland-Swedish, the name of the dialect group and the standard language spoken by Finland-Swedes, is for the most part mutually intelligible with the dialects spoken in Sweden.

Swedish is the mother tongue of about 265,000 people in Mainland Finland and 25,000 on Åland, in all 5.53% of the total population (according to official statistics for 2004 ^[1]) or 5.08% if excluding Åland. The proportion has been steadily diminishing since the 19th century, when approximately 15% of the population had Swedish as the mother tongue (estimate for 1815^[2]).

History

• peasant and fisherman settlements on coastal areas and islands in today's Finland some time between 1000 and 1250AD. [link]
• settlers who arrived to some archipelagos with the Viking raids and trade connections (the "East Way" in the 10th to 13th century, perhaps even earlier when towns in present-day Russia also had Norse colonies).
• settlers who arrived with Christian missionaries, crusaders and administrators in the early middle ages of Finland (13th to 15th century).
• socially ambitious Finnish families; the Swedish mother tongue was a great social advantage from the 17th to the 19th century. Socially ambitious families often raised their children in Swedish, ultimately leading to a situation where the administrative elite had a limited knowledge of the majority language, Finnish.
• foreign immigrants. Plenty of non-Finnic immigrants, particularly burgesses and the elite, chose to adopt the Swedish language instead of Finnish. For example, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim a Finland-Swedish military leader and President of Finland in the early 20th century, had his roots in the Netherlands.
• Swedish settlers throughout the period of close connections, ca 15th to 19th century.

The number of Finland-Swedes reached its maximum in 1940, with 354.286 persons.

Identity

Finland-Swedes and the Finnish-speaking Finns are usually considered one ethnicity ^{([Disputed statementdisputed]—see [finnar} ("Finns"); the latter, in Finland-Swedish usage, implying an Ethnic Finn, i.e. a speaker of Finnish. In Sweden, this distinction is not widely understood and often neglected.

Interaction between the language groups is very common, and a family may freely choose to send their children to schools of either language. In many cases, a family may decide that one parent consistently speaks Swedish and the other Finnish with the children, which thus grow up to become totally bilingual. The Finnish authorities classify a person as a Swedish or Finnish speaker based only upon that person's (or parent's) own choice, which can be changed at any time.

There are Finns who have learned Swedish as a second language and even they can be considered Finland-Swedes if they decide to identify with that minority, and will be so officially if they register as such with the authorities. Those who have Swedish as their first language usually regard themselves as Finland-Swedes, and register as such.

Bilingualism