Finnish Swedes

In the XII - XVIII centuries, Finland was part of the Swedish Kingdom . Over these long centuries, numerous groups of the Swedish population from all walks of life have lived and settled on the lands of Finland: peasants, officials, nobles, merchants, clergy. A few groups of Scandinavian Viking settlers settled on the islands and coasts of Finland even earlier - in the VIII - X centuries . Often the sea coasts where Scandinavian fishermen, merchants and warriors settled were completely deserted, and they were pioneers and the first indigenous people of these harsh places. The beginning of the mass Swedish colonization of the region and the inclusion of Finland into the Swedish kingdom in the Middle Ages was laid by the Swedish Crusades . Finnish Swedes are the descendants of these Swedish settlers and other Europeans who have lived in these places for centuries, and especially during the time the region was part of Sweden. Despite the fact that the Swedes of different social status (including peasants) settled in Finland, the Swedes were the dominant minority in the country and formed the basis of the country's elite until the 20th century. A number of ancient, Swedish-born, aristocratic clans with significant hereditary possessions are still preserved in Finland. At the same time, part of the Swedish-speaking population comes from foreign immigrants (especially Germans and Russians ), who, immigrating to the territory of the then Swedish Kingdom or the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland under the auspices of the Russian Empire , preferred the more prestigious Swedish language and Swedish culture to Finnish. Finnish writing appeared only in the 16th century and almost never developed for a long time. The number of speakers or educators in Swedish has steadily increased until Finland came under the rule of the Russian Empire during the Russian-Swedish war (1808-1809) . So, at the end of the 18th century , Swedish was supposedly the mother tongue of 50% of the population. Accordingly, the proportion of those who consider themselves Swedes grew. However, since then, this figure has been steadily declining, although in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, Swedish continued to be the main written language until the fall of the empire and Finland gained independence in 1917 . Nevertheless, in the absence of mass Russian and Swedish immigration, the Finns assimilated this population, the emergence of the literary Finnish language, crowding out Swedish and Russian.

The traditional regions of Finnish Swedes in the country have been stable for over a millennium. This is the south and south-east coast of the country, the central part of the west coast ( Ostrobothnia ), the Turku Archipelago and, especially, the Aland Islands . According to excavations, at the time of the arrival of the Swedes, the coastal areas of Finland were almost deserted. Currently, the concentration of Finnish Swedes within these regions is decreasing due to Finnish immigration on the one hand, and the gradual assimilation of Finnish Swedes on the other. Thus, the share of Swedish speakers in Helsinki decreased from 57% in 1870 to 6% in 2007 , while Finnish speakers increased from 25% to 85%. In Helsinki, this is partly due to the attractiveness of the capital city, but the same trend, although not so extreme, is observed in all the continental regions of Finland, where Swedish-speaking Finns live (with the exception of Ostrobothnia and the Åland Islands ). The situation is characterized by relative stability only in geographical areas close to Sweden and separated from the Strait by the Aland Islands, where the Swedish-speaking are 91.2% and the Finnish-speaking - 5.0% (2007), including 96.0% in the island municipality of Hammarland Finnish Swedes.

According to modern Finnish laws, a municipality is considered bilingual Finnish-Swedish if the share of Swedish speakers in it exceeds 8%. If it falls below 6%, bilingual status is lost. The Åland Islands are officially considered monolingual Swedish, the inland regions on the continent are monolingual Finnish. Moreover, the so-called compulsory Swedish language is a school subject from grades 7 to 9 (from 13 to 16 years). In Swedish schools, Finnish is taught from the second grade.

The consequence of the gradual pushing out of the Swedish language after its actual transition from the official to the regional language position in the 20th century was the gradual loss of Swedish national identity among the Swedish-speaking population. Currently, most Swedish speakers in Finland are bilingual . Finnish Swedes traditionally have much more favorable indicators than the Finns in terms of well-being, life expectancy, and the absence of diseases; they have lower suicides and less tendency to violence than Finns ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]} .

Finnish Swedes identify with Finland despite their native Swedish language. They prefer the naming of "Swedish-speaking Finns." For example, during the traditional hockey confrontation between Finland and Sweden, they support the Finnish national team.

As can be seen from the censuses, the number of Finnish Swedes in Finland tends to long-term decline. Due to the gradual erosion of ethno-cultural differences between Swedes and Finns, by the middle of the 20th century, the main dividing line was not nationality, but language . Various reasons have led to this trend.

Political and Administrative

In the 19th century, among the political and administrative reasons were the loss of state ties with Sweden ( 1809 ), as well as the policy of the new Russian administration aimed at weakening cultural, linguistic and historical ties with it. To do this, at the first stage, the promotion of Finnish identity and the Finnish language was used, and later the forced introduction of the Russian language ( 1900 - 1917 ) as the state and mandatory language of the administration. At the same time, the Swedish language still retained its functions as the main written language of Finland throughout the 19th century. The Swedish population and the Swedish aristocracy retained their titles and privileges under the auspices of the Russian imperial house.

Demographic

Demographic shifts in Finland itself led to a decline in the number of Swedes. The Swedes formed the basis of the upper classes: the nobility and the higher church clergy, concentrated in fortresses on the narrow coastal strip of the Baltic . The internal regions of the country, dotted with peasant Finnish farms , did not undergo Swedishization. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, with the spread of medicine, a demographic explosion occurred among Finnish peasants: mortality, and in particular child mortality , sharply decreased, while the birth rate at that time remained at the same high level. Industrialization in the empire as a whole and in the Duchy of Finland in particular was accompanied by urbanization , which led to the mass migration of Finnish peasants to the cities of the south of the country. This was facilitated by the mass development of Helsinki by imperial decree. The Swedish population, previously absolutely predominant there, quickly found themselves in a minority position. At the same time, some Swedes voluntarily finnized their names and defended the Finnish language ( Finnomanians ). Few of them embarked on the struggle to preserve the Swedish language ( Swedeans ). This is basically what the Swedish population of the Åland Islands did, unaffected by mass migration because of its insular position, where the Swedes absolutely prevailed since the early Middle Ages. Due to the nationalist protests of the Swedish island population, the Åland crisis (1917) erupted, which was nevertheless successfully resolved.

Finnish Swedes Emigration

The next blow to the Swedish community, and as a result, the position of the Swedish language in the country, was caused by the war with the USSR (1939-1944), as a result of which Finland retained sovereignty, but lost a significant part of its territory, including the country's second largest city - Vyborg . In pre-war Vyborg, Finnish Swedes made up 10% of the population who settled in Finnish-speaking regions.

In addition, a significant part of Finnish Swedes, over 60 thousand people, among whom there were many wealthy titled hereditary owners, fearing for their property during the period of the so-called Finnishization , or because of a preference for a more developed Swedish economy and standard of living, repatriated to Sweden between the years 1917-1980. They were also followed by many Finns - migrant workers . The emigration and repatriation of the Swedes declined in the 1980s , and about 8,000 Swedish citizens now live in the country. in the 1950s and 1960s, Finland had a theory about the “harmfulness” of learning a second language by young children. In addition, over the course of the 20th century, the traditional endogamy of the Swedes gradually came to naught, and as a result of mixed Swedish-Finnish marriages, bilingualism in Finnish families became widespread.

The book dedicated to Finnish Swedes by Alexei Vostrov, “The Swedish archipelago of Finland: a view from the side” (St. Petersburg: Kareliko, 2014). ^[6]

• Per Ewind Swinhouwood
• Karl Gustav Emil Mannerheim
• Johan Ludwig Runeberg
• Sakarias Topelius
• Linus Torvalds
• Tove Jansson
• Georg Malmsten
• Kai (Carl) Donner
• Gustav Ramstedt
• Albert Edelfelt
• Eugen Schauman
• Lee Andersson

• Swedish in Finland
• Finnish language
• Baltic Swedes
• Swedish People's Party
• Swedish Finns

• Information about the Finnish Swedes on the official portal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland (Russian)
• Prokhorov P. What language will bring to Helsinki
• Alternative report of the Association of Swedes of Finland on the implementation in Finland of the Framework Convention on the Rights of National Minorities, 2005
• Swedish in Finnish Education , Mercator-Education, 1997