Mandatory Swedish - History

History

The area that today is Finland was an integral part of Sweden proper from the Middle Ages to the end of the Finnish War in 1809. Swedish migrants settled in coastal areas, and the language of administration was Swedish. This prompted many Finnish-speakers to learn Swedish in hopes of improving their social status, and some switched to Swedish altogether.

As a result of the Finnish War, Sweden ceded Finland to Russia, and the Russian tsar established the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. Although a Governor-General was installed by the Russians as the highest authority within the Grand Duchy, much of the political system remained the same: Finland was allowed to keep its ”laws, religion and language” from the Swedish time. The tsar wanted to avoid trouble in the new territory and also used former Swedish upper class to further modernisation in Russia; Finnish was not an option at that time as official language, as the administration did not know Finnish well enough and the language was undeveloped regarding such use.

When Finland became autonomous there was a big interest in creating a new national identity. There was an immense interest in the Finnish language and Finnish culture in the mostly Swedish speaking upper class. At some point the Fennoman movement arose, that thought that the country should be a united nation, with only one language, and, as a reaction, the Svecoman movement, that was afraid that abandoning Swedish would lead to slavicisation or worse.

However, during the 1860s, under Tsar Alexander II, it was decided that legal equality between Finnish and Swedish as languages of administration was to be gradually introduced. Thus since the late 19th century Finnish has been a co-official language of administration in Finland. Modernizations typical for the era in Europe were introduced, boosting the status of the Finnish-speaking majority: the special rights of the higher estates of the realm were abolished, a modern parliament based on universal suffrage was introduced 1907 and in 1917 Finland became independent.

In the current form, mandatory Swedish was implemented as a part of the modernisation of the educational system in the 1970s. Previously, a Swedish test had been compulsory on university level and in oppikoulu, a secondary school that was a prerequisite to matriculation to a university, but not in the common kansakoulu. The introduction of the peruskoulu (student ages 7–15), compulsory for all children, introduced a course in Swedish compulsory to all pupils, while Swedish courses and standardized tests at higher levels remained compulsory. This was motivated by the possibility that any student could become a public official and would thus be required to know Swedish.