Sweden Finns - History

History

Communities of Finns in Sweden can be traced back to the Reformation when the Finnish Church in Stockholm was founded in 1533, although earlier migration, and migration to other cities in present-day Sweden, remain undisputed. (Strictly speaking this was not a case of emigration/immigration but of "internal migration" within pre-1808 Sweden, a.k.a. Sweden-Finland.)

In the 16th and the 17th century large groups of Savonians moved from Finland to Dalecarlia, Bergslagen and other provinces where their slash and burn cultivation was suitable. This was part of an effort of the Swedish king Gustav Vasa, and his successors, to expand agriculture to these uninhabited parts of the country which were later on known as "Finn woods" (Finnskogar).

Cultural imperialism in combination with a fear of Russia led to efforts by Sweden's government aiming at assimilation and Swedification of the Finnish-speaking population. Similar attempts were already initiated in the late 17th century, but peaked in 1850–1950. Finnish speakers remain only along the border with Finland in the far North, and as domestic migrants due to unemployment in the North. Depending on definition they are reported to number to 30,000–90,000 — that is up to 1% of Sweden's population, but the proportion of active Finnish-speakers among them has declined drastically in the last generations, and Finnish is hardly spoken among the youngsters today. Since the 1970s largely unsuccessful efforts have been made to reverse some of the effects of Swedification, notably education and public broadcasts in Finnish, to raise the status of Finnish. As a result a written standard of the local dialect Meänkieli has been established and taught, which has given reason to critical remarks from Finland, along the line that standard Finnish would be of more use for the students.

The Finnish immigrants who moved to Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s were sometimes despised as being a very "low-class" people, as portrayed in the Swedish book and movie Svinalängorna. In 2009, Maria Wetterstrand, Swedish politician and then leader of the Green Party, wrote a Swedish article in Dagens Nyheter about this, and demanded that Sweden ought to give Finland an official apology. Matti Vanhanen, then Prime Minister of Finland, responded in 2011 that an apology was not needed.