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Swedish-speaking Finns are becoming all the more bilingual. That’s according to the latest trend from the Finland-Swedish Barometer survey.

According to researcher Kjell Herberts at the Institute for Finland-Swedish Future Research, one can read this trend by comparing the latest barometer results with surveys done in the past. In 1950, 46% of Swedish-speaking Finns asked said that they had a strong command of both national languages. According to the most recent research, 82% of Swedish-speaking Finns are of the opinion that they have a strong command of Finnish as well as Swedish. (Although it is apparently hard to make a totally accurate comparison, as the questions were asked differently in 1950 as to more recent surveys, and the question does not necessarily imply that one should be fluent in Finnish to give a positive response).

According to Herberts, the situation for Swedish in Finland is made more difficult by those Swedish-speaking Finns who so easily and willingly switch to using Finnish when accessing services. According to Herberts, it is also the case that the more bilingual one becomes, the easier it is to abandon one’s own language. Herberts, however, does not believe that the existence of Swedish in Finland is threatened in at least the short term.

The latest barometer survey also shows that Swedish-speaking young people are significantly less interested in politics than their Finnish-speaking counterparts. 77% of Swedish-speaking youths said that they were either not at all interested or not especially interested in politics.

So was the title of Björn Månsson’s interesting leader article in this morning’s Hufvudstadsbladet.

Revisiting the issue of a separate European parliament seat to represent Åland (as Åland politicians are demanding) or for the wider group of all Swedish-speaking Finns (as Henrik Lax and some others have raised), the leader article unveils some interesting facts which make the demand not so unreasonable as it might have previously seemed.

Månsson draws the reader to the attention of the case of the German-speaking minority in Belgium. Like Åland, they have their own parliament and effective autonomy in their own region. The German minority in Belgium are around 73 000 people - rather more than Åland (around 27 000) but small compared to the total number of around 300 000 Swedish-speaking Finns. Yet, the German-speaking Belgians are guaranteed their own place in the European parliament. And that’s despite their proportion of the entire Belgian population being only 0,7 %. Swedish-speaking Finns make up around 6 % of Finland’s population; Ålanders account for about 0,5 %. Looking at those statistics, it’s harder to argue against a specific Swedish-speaking mandate.

Månsson goes on to highlight the case of the German-speaking minority in Italy, the residents of South Tirol. They also have, practically, a safe seat in the European parliament. What’s especially interesting here is that this German minority is around 290 000 in number - i.e. more or less exactly the same in number as the Swedish-speaking Finns. Yet, looking at them as a proportion of Italy’s entire population, they comprise just 0,5 % - a percentage that is equivalent to Åland’s share of Finland’s people. Surely then, Åland’s demands for its own seat in the EU parliament are entirely reasonable.

Perhaps it’s not as easy as that. Månsson points out that it’s much easier for Italy to give away one seat to a minority as due to Italy’s large overall population it gets an entire 78 places in the EU parliament. But for Finland, with only 13 European parliament mandates, giving one mandate away to a district of just 0,5% of the people would seem highly inequitable.

So, perhaps Finland should ask the EU for an extra seat to be given to Åland. According to Hufvudstadsbladet, that seems an unlikely option. The EU has thrown that option out of the window for fear of opening a Pandora’s box where all of Europe’s autonomous areas demand their own individual seat. So, perhaps the second option is to give a mandate to the entire Swedish-speaking population. According to Månsson, that could be secured by introducing a requirement for one of Finland’s MEPs to have Swedish as their mother tongue.

For me, a Swedish speaking mandate sounds impracticable. If we were to use the suggestion in this Hbl leader, how would we make sure that the electorate vote in one MEP with Swedish as their mother tongue? If the first 13 people elected all have Finnish as their mother tongue, do you deprive number 13 of his or her seat and install the most popular Swedish-speaker even if they got a lot less votes than any in the top 13? Surely that would cause an outcry - not least in some quarters of the Finnish language press. It would also be impossible to create a geographic voting district - Finnish and Swedish speakers live side by side. Svenskfinland is not a clear cut geographic entity.

In any case, even if there were to be a Swedish-speaking seat created, would the people of Åland be satisfied? As Månsson writes, probably not. There are many people on Åland who don’t even consider themselves Swedish-speaking Finns (finlandssvenskar). For them, they are Ålanders (ålänningar) - and that is a status apart. For them, it’s only direct representation for Åland - and Åland alone - that will do.

The Minister of Culture and Sport Stefan Wallin (sfp) has repeated his belief that there should be more women in positions of leadership in Finland.

According to FNB (STT) via Hufvudstadsbladet, the chairman of the Swedish Peoples Party said today that “Women are often higher educated than men and make up almost half of the Finnish labour force. Yet, that’s not seen in leadership positions. In 2006, only around a fifth of all persons in positions of leadership were women.”

Wallin expressed particular disappointment that the percentage of women on the boards of publically traded companies had increased so slowly. Only 12 % of board members are female.

Nearly 4 out of 10 Swedish-speaking Finns believe that an organised resistance exists towards Swedish-speaking Finns and Swedish-speaking culture in Finland.

This is revealed in a opinion survey that the Swedish department of Finland’s public service broadcaster Yle ordered from the Institute for Finland-Swedish Societal Research (IFS) at the university Åbo akademi.

38% of Swedish-speaking Finns believe there is an organised opposition to all things Finland-Swedish, 35% don not share this view and 27% chose not to answer this question.

According to Yle, IFS researcher Kjell Herberts thinks the trend is clear - Swedish-speaking Finns feel concerned and anxious and see that understanding for the Swedish-speaking element in Finland can no longer be taken for granted. Herberts believes that, for example, the handling of the restructuring of the municipalities and basic services can have contributed to this viewpoint. In the view of Herberts, things felt much more secure in the past. Now Swedish-speaking Finns often see that it’s just talk, not action, when decision makers promise to safe-guard Swedish-language services.

Low marks for almost all decision makers

As part of the survey, respondents were asked to rate various institutions and the parliamentary political parties, using a school-style grade (from 4-10), for how good they are in handling Swedish-speaking issues. Few got good grades.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen’s (centre) coalition government received a low 5,9.

The Swedish Peoples’ Party (SFP) received the best grade, 8. This is quite a surprise as SFP has been criticised in recent times for not managing to succeed in defending Swedish-speaking interests well enough - it has sat in coalition governments that have removed Swedish as a compulsory element of the school graduation exam for Finnish-speaking students and that have reformed institutions in ways seen as marginalising the Swedish-speaking influence.

The other political parties received even worse grades. The Social Democrats (SDP) received 6,3. The Christian democrats got 6 and the Green party 5,9. The Left Alliance received 5,6. The two biggest parties in the current parliament, National Coalition (Kokoomus) and Centre received 5,5 and 5,4 respectively. The lowest grade was given to the True Finns party, who received 4,4.

85% think Swedish should be part of the school graduation exam

If it were up to Swedish-speaking Finns, Swedish would again be introduced as a compulsory element of the school graduation exam for Finnish-speaking students.

53% of respondents would make the other domestic language (i.e. Swedish for Finnish-speakers and Finnish for Swedish-speakers) obligatory in the test. 32% support making it compulsory but don’t believe it’s a realistic proposition. 15% thought it should not be compulsory.

The first of a planned series of four books on Finland’s history during the Swedish times has come out.

The first volume is written by the former national archivist Kari Tarkiainen and is called Sveriges Österland (roughly “Sweden’s Eastern Province”). The three later parts are written by Nils Erik Villstrand, Max Engman and Henrik Meinander.

Tarkiainen’s book chronicles Finland from pre-history until Gustav Vasa (who was elected king of Sweden on 6/6 1523) and includes the period before Erik the Holy’s mission to Christianise Finland up to the time of the first king to use the word fatherland.

The timing of the book series’ release is to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the Finnish war (between Sweden, of which Finland was then part, and Russia) which ended Finland’s time as part of the Swedish realm.

Tarkiainen’s book includes an insight into how the relationship between the Swedish and Finnish languages was during the early period of Swedish rule. Apparently it was relatively good; Finnish snapped up over a thousand loan words from Swedish, even some that Finnish already had its own word for. For example, the word leikkiä (from Swedish leka) replaced the word kisata (all meaning “to play”, as in how children do). At the same time, many Finnish place names were incorporated into Swedish. The Swedish language gained prestige as it was spoken by the nobility, civil servants and priests. The Finnish speakers were more typically found amongst the lesser bourgeoisie and the peasantry.
“The peasantry often couldn’t speak a single word of Swedish but there was no prejudice against Finnish. However, social mobility required a change of language” Tukiainen told Hufvudstadsbladet in an interview to mark the release of his book.

However, many ordinary Swedish countryfolk also migrated to the eastern part of the realm as many countryside districts in the area occupied by today’s Sweden were overpopulated. That many of the Swedes that came to Finland to settle were countryfolk is one of the reasons that the Swedish-speaking Finns today are found throughout the social scale. Many Finns also moved to Stockholm, this was not a move to Sweden but rather simply to the capital city.

The priests had to be able to speak the local language, not just Latin, and the demand for Finnish become gradually a way to bar Swedish-speakers from the priesthood. At very least, it lead to the priests becoming bilingual in Finnish and Swedish.
“Mikael Agricola [credited as the creator of written Finnish] was bilingual. He spoke both languages to a high-level. If that was because of his homelife or if he taught himself during his carrier is something people disagree on” says Tarkiainen.

Tarkiainen explains that “if the colonisation had come from the area of the Baltic countries or Novgorod, Finland would have been completely different. It was fortunate that the colonisers came from Sweden; freedom of the peasantary and the inheritance of a state with the rule of law were good for society. In fact, it’s not really right to talk about colonialism because the Finns had exactly the same rights and duties and from 1362 received the right also take part in the election of the king.”

Sveriges Österland is published by Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland (The Swedish Literature Society in Finland) with ISBN number 9789515831552. If you speak Swedish, the society has a video interview with the author Kari Tarkiainen on its website.

The map shows the core of the Swedish realm at around the year 1700, i.e. later than this post covers. At different times, the actual areas controlled by Sweden were smaller/larger, this map is therefore just as a guide.