Talk:Swedish-speaking Finns

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[edit] Spelling mistakes

There are some errors below the article, in the box of ´´Diaspora´´. Faroe Islands and the Netherlands must be corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Haettman1986 (talk • contribs) 09:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Finland-Swedes in the US

We are Swedish-speaking Finns, that is to say, descendents of Finnish immigrants who spoke Swedish to the USA, specifically the West Coast. Our spare time goes to volunteer for the Swedish Finn Historical Society, which is preserving the traces of Swedish Finnish emigrant culture around the world. SFHS began in Seattle WA and now has members from Australia to Alaska, Japan to Finland. The main reason for that is the informative Quarterly. You can read some of the articles on their web page. Just search Swedish Finn Historical Society. And their Finlander list is also an interesting Talk Page, in which many folks find or offer help locating info on family trees in Swedish Finland. Gott nytt År och Lycka till! D and S

I am one, but in english, I would prefer talking about us as the "finnish-swedish" and not the 'finlandssvensks'. Is there anyone who knows the english language better to tells us which one is the better one? --Tbackstr

I am one too. I think Swedish speaking Finns would be the best wording to use. --P0ppe

I don't quite agree. I'm a 'Finlandssvensk' too and I don't think the term 'Swedish speaking Finn' is quite the same thing. I have some good friends who speak excellent Swedish. Clearly they are 'Swedish speaking Finns' but they are not 'Finland-Swedes'/'Finlandssvenskar'.

In my vocabulary a Finlander (finländare) is basically an inhabitant in Finland, mostly either a Swedish speaking (finlandssvensk) or a Finnish speaker. Since I'm a "finlandssvensk" and not a "finlandsfinsk/finne" it is awkward to be called "finne" or Finn. I use the term Swedish-Finn to describe the Swedish speaking finlandssvensk in the same linguistic way as the constructions anglo american, afro american etc. I agree that all the name variants used all have their weaknesses, but Finlander and Swedish-Finn feels imho as being the "most suitable and descriptive".

I don't like to have to form complete sentances in order to get the message through. /H.

[edit] Are the Finland-Swedes an ethnic minority?

Shouldn't we then rename this page to, uh, something? "Swedish speaking Finns"? "Finnish-Swedish"? I think we should have headers in english in an encyclopedia in english. Anyway, for those not familiar with the topic, we are speaking about both the Swedish speaking people in Finland and the local variant of Swedish spoken in Finland. The swedish term "finlandssvensk" is in a word by word translation "a finnish Swede" and "finlandssvenska" is the corresponding language. Perhapse we should have a page for both. --Tbackstr

I think "Finnish-Swedish" is not as close a translation as "Finland-Swede(s)" (for the people; finlanddsvensk(ar)) and "Finland-Swedish" (for the language; finlandssvenska), but I definately agree that using "Finlandssvensk" in an English article [other than in the introductory definiton] is wholly inaccurate and inconsistent with Wikipedia policies. --217.215.99.203 14:24 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

If this is about an ethnic group, shouldn't it be at Finland-Swede according to naming conventions? Tokerboy

I don't think Finland-Swedish are an ethnic minority, but a lingual one. They are finns, not swedes after all.

There are differences between nationality and ethnicity. While the Finland-Swedes are ethnically Swedish their national belonging is to Finland. The term Finn refers to the Finnish ethnical group, which often inproperly is used also as the national designation for all Finnish citizens. The term Finlander is more proper since it includes both Finns and Swedes as Finnish nationals. -- Mic

On what basis do you consider Finland-Swedes ethnically Swedish?

From: http://www.lib.hel.fi/mcl/julkaisut/tutkielma/3.htm quote (in finnish): "Etninen ryhmä on siten vähemmistö, joka poikkeaa enemmistökulttuurista ulkonäöltään, kieleltään ja uskonnoltaan."

translation: "An ethnic group is thus a minority, which differs from the majority of the population by their appearance, language and religion"

Finland-Swedes not only appear Finns, they also have the same religion and almost all of them speak the same language. I have yet to meet a Finland-Swede who thinks of himself as a swede in a foreing country. -- Smicke

This is wrong, most Finland-Swedes do not speak Finnish. Some do, but most of them do not. Most Finland-Swedes feel a greater affiliation to Sweden than to Finland. They watch television, listen to radio from Sweden, read books from Sweden - all this in Swedish. Of course they not feel like they are living in a foreign country, after all, they have lived there for thousands of years - longer than the Finns! But they feel that they are Swedes, and that it is their country at least as much as the Finns. Den fjättrade ankan 01:19 May 5, 2003 (UTC)
I think you ought to support this with some data. It doesn't fit with the limited experience of mine. -- Ruhrjung 01:29 May 5, 2003 (UTC)
Well, that's what all my Finland-Swedes friends says, at least. And what they have written themselves at the Swedish Wikipedia sv:Finlandssvensk, as well as http://susning.nu/Finlandssvenska and http://susning.nu/Finlandssvensk(in Swedish). Den fjättrade ankan 02:16 May 5, 2003 (UTC)
With all respect, but...
  1. Where are there any credible or serious claims of the Swedes having lived in Finland for longer than the Finns?
  2. Regarding books: would you conclude that the German-speakers in Switzerland feel "a greater affiliation" to Germany than to Switzerland from the fact that more German books are written and printed in Germany and Austria than in Switzerland? No, I suppose you wouldn't.
  3. If it were so, that Finland-Swedes really felt closer affiliated to Sweden than to Finland, then I'm sure there would exist sociological surveys and treaties and gallup polls ad infinitum. Do you know of any?
  4. The figures for how the Finland-Swedes distribute their TV consumtion is:
25% Finnish language public service,
25% MTV,
20% Commercial TV in Scandinavian languages,
15% Public Service from Sweden,
10% Public service in Swedish from Finland (and 5% "Other").
-- Ruhrjung 04:20 May 5, 2003 (UTC)
Please note that "MTV" above refers to MTV3, a commercial Finnish terrestial broadcaster that existed long before the "Music" MTV's history began.
Correction: Finnish MTV3 had its own channel many years after Music television MTV had begun. --Lalli 18:13, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

1. Depends on what you mean by credible sources. You won't be able to find any definite sources saying that either group came first - it cannot be proven. Sure, you'll find people claiming that one group (usually their own) was their first but it is impossible to tell. Most probably there were Finns in the area around, say, Viipuri/Viborg before there were any Swedes there. Equally probable, there were Swedes in parts of the western coast of Finland before there were Finns there.

2. Almost no Finland-Swede feels "a greater affiliation" with Sweden. Our country is Finland, we support Finland, we feel for Finland.

3. There aren't any, see answer 2

4. This is an example of lying with statistics. Most Finland-Swedes I know watch only Swedish television and read only Swedish newspapers. According to the statistics you gave, this percentage is 45% - I have no idea why you've split it up into different categories. It all depends on the region, though. About 50% of the Finland-Swedes don't have access to Swedish television. In other words, almost all Finland-Swedes who do have that access watch Swedish television

I have yet to see a Swedish Finn who supports Sweden in ice hockey. - Cymydog Naakka 17:37, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Surely Swedes and Finns are both mostly Lutherans, no? So that doesn't prove anything. john 02:11 May 5, 2003 (UTC)
  • I am Finlandssvensk, but I now live in Sweden. I feel more like a Finländare, because of the fact that I feel that Swedes and Finlandssvenskar are two different groups. I feel that we finlandssvenskar have more common things with the finns. //Martin

Finland is bi-lingual country, therefore both Swedish and Finnish speaking residents of Finland can be ethnically Finnish - Officially there is no language barrier. Besides suomenruotsalaiset fought along their Finnish speaking brothers in Winter War and Continuation War. For all intents and purposes they are Finns. - G3, 15:32, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Finnic-speaking and Swedish-speaking Finns

The fact that English terminology doesn't seem to distinguish between members of the ethnical majority and citizens of Finland more generally is at the root of the problem discussed here. Can one intuitively distinguish between a Finnish language on one hand, and a Finnish national who is not Finnish, but Swedish? It doesn't really seem possible, at least not intuitively! Let's, for the sake of argument, refer to the language as Finnic instead of Finnish, and repeat the sentence. "Can one intuitively distinguish between a Finnic language on one hand, and a Finnish national who is not Finnic, but Swedish?" This change does seem clarifiy issues to a large extent.

The differences between the Finnic and the Swedish groups should not be over estimated, but neither should differences be neglected. In the discussion so far there has been some nationalistic overtones that I wish that we could do with out. It should be stated that the Finland-Swedes are neither Swedish nationals nor ethnically Finnic. However, as English doesn not make the distinction between Finnic and Finnish, the matter has to be expressed and terminology applied all the more delicately. -- Mic 16:42 May 5, 2003 (UTC)


I wish to second Mic above in the sense that the "ethnic" differences should not be just simply glossed over, as is often done in the official Finnish public discourse. I debate the language issue a lot with Fenno-Swedes -- personally, I believe that the Swedish language is given a lot of undue attention in Finland -- and my general observations on the ethnicity issue is that when it comes to it, the Fenno-Swedes are very skilled at shifting their ground as suits their purposes. If it is beneficial to their case, they are "just like the rest of us" and simply just speak a different language... but if you start to question the position granted to their mother tongue, all of a sudden they turn into this distinctly separate ethnic minority with special qualities that deserve to be protected -- even if it meant forcibly educating the entire rest of the population in their language, which is indeed a measure unheard of in the rest of the world. I wish they were, for once, at least consistent in defending their position.

The Fenno-Swedes were very eager to be recognized as an ethnicity of their own all the way until the last decades... in the old days, they even had leading individuals such as Axel Olof Freudenthal, a notorious racist, who were very eager to prove that the "Finnic Finns" where a lower race and thus deserved to be ruled by the higher-race Fenno-Swedes... their tone changed around 1980 when they realized that by isolation they were just going to go extinct. So, the better course of action was to try to seem as "Finnic" as they possibly could, so that the Swedish language would all of a sudden become the problem of everyone in the country... even of those who never had any contact with it before.

This is not just some random evil nazi attack on a minority... it is a wish that the Finnish language situation would be for once seen in a fair and balanced light, without the prejudice that is too often directed at individuals who wish to defend the rights of the people who speak Finnish as their mother tongue.

I have a serious gripe with "pakkoruotsi" ("mandatory Swedish") being characterized as a derogatory term. It simply just describes the school subject by its real name... that is what most Finnish-speaking Finns experience it as. Calling it "derogatory" is a politically loaded description that could come straight from the Svenska Folkpartiet... the Fenno-Swedish extremist party.

HuckFinn

The poster above is a classic example of an extreme nationalist that harbors an irrational hatred for the swedish-finnish population. They are eerily similar to nazis(note how he himself recognizes it and tries to address the issue before it is even raised) in how they vilify and demonize one minority group. They also have about the same credibility with the populace at large, both finnish and swedish-finnish, that is to say, next to none.

Lots of people might not like to learn swedish and there are tensions but extremist groups like these tries to capitalize on it.


Finland-Swedes appear very much like Finns in visage. The religion is the same, Lutheran, for those who have religion. (a buch of both of course have quitted membership of the church. A vast majority of Finland-Swedes think themselves as Finns (finländare).

It is totally wrong to claim that most Finland-Swedes do not speak Finnish. In reality, most of them do. Actually, a MAJORITY of them speak Finnish approximately as well as Swedish, thus being bilingual. (This is particularly true in areas of Nyland and Åboland, except some small villages. It is as true in towns in other provinces too, except Mariehamn.) Most of the rest have good grasp of Finnish language. A small minority of Finland-Swedes are not sufficiently familiar with Finnish, to use it. Most of them reside in Åland, and some rural municipalities of Ostrobothnia.

At hishest, only a small minority of Finland-Swedes feel a greater affiliation to Sweden than to Finland.

Duck: "Of course they not feel like they are living in a foreign country, after all, they have lived there for thousands of years" I must firstly quib stating that no living Finland-Swede has lived in Finland longer than 104 years, and most of them only for a remarkably shorter period. (Partially a joke, but of course very true. Of course, same goes for any living Finnish-speaking Finn.)

Thousands of years seems to be an exaggeration, even if speaking also about dead individuals aggregated as a race or whatever. We know that some archipelagoes got Swedish-speaking population about one thousand years ago, during the Viking raids, but no evidence shows Swedish inhabitation before that time.

However, it is absolutely incorrect to claim that Swddes lived in Finland long before the Finns. There is overwhelmingly vast amount of evidence of Finnic population in Finland already two or three thousands of years ago, and many signs already thousands of years before that.

213.243.157.114 18:17, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps but the argument I believe was that the now finnish-swedish peoples ancestors colonized the emerging archipelago and west coast before the finnic populations did, not that they got to finland first, only they got to a certain part of what is now modern Finland first.

[edit] Finland-Swedish fennomans

Reverted changes in which an anonymous user attempted to remove a number of the listed individuals of Finland-Swedish origin, presumably due to their fennoman affiliation. Practically all of the first generation fennomans where Finland-Swedes, but self-professed affilliation did not alter their ethnic background. -- Mic 13:28, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)


Dear Mic, the article itself agrees that Finland-Swedes are NOT ethnic Swedes. There is no significant differences in visage, coloration etc between Finns and Finland-swdes. Actually, bigger differences are found between two Finland-swedes, and between two Finns. You should learn that the language is the only thing that separates here.

Furthermore, the header of that list says "Swedish speakers". That is a very god choice, since the language is the difference. I understand the header to mean that those persons used swedish as their only (or at least main) language on their own volition.

jeffery and nihayah alexis and america and brittany and tony and dominique are all invete to my birthday and tre too

[edit] reflecting a Finnish nationalist point of view

As now this articel is NOT NPOV. It reflects a Finnish nationalist viewpoint. Finland-Swedes (or East Swedes, which many call themselves) themselves should tell what their feelings are, what they call themselves, etc, not outside people like Finnish nationalists. Den fjättrade ankan 22:26, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Maybe you could elaborate on what it is that you think could be better expressed?
--Ruhrjung 01:11, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes, they should tell what their feelings and not outside people like Swedish nationalists. Remember also that some Swedish-speaking Finns spoke first Finnish and then adobted Swedish-language. I don't have years now but "have heard about it once". Kahkonen 10:46, 2004 Jun 12 (UTC)

Ankan's view of how to make this article npov can be studied at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Finland-Swedish&diff=4032241&oldid=4025795 which I reverted all-in-all. To put it brief, there might have been parts of his edits which are of any value, but... if so, maybe a step-by-step approach would be to prefer. /Tuomas 10:53, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:NPOV dispute:

If you add the above code to an article which seems to you to be biased, but there is no prior discussion of the bias, you need to at least leave a note on the article's talk page describing what you consider unacceptable about the article.

I remove that banner now.
--Ruhrjung 12:57, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)


[edit] List of Swedish-speaking Finns

I think there is a factual error in the list of Finland-Swedes: the name of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud. Undeniably, his name is totally Swedish, but I have read that he was chiefly a Finnish-speaking person. One of the signs of his Finnish preference has been the first names of his children. He christened them with Finnic names. He lived in places where practically only Finnish is spoken, such as his home in Luumäki.

Strange, since what I remember from political autobiographies and similar works is that hes mothertongue was Swedish and that it's noted that he (at least at his age) as president spoke Swedish with Swedish speaking politicians. /Tuomas 19:14, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Regarding his refusal to finnicize the surname, there are excellent motivations for such refusal despite of his otherwise Finnish preference: 1) the ancient history of the surname and its position as a protected name, enrolled among the nobility in the Finnish riddarhuset. He actually was the primogenitural head of the said noble house, thus having an inherited place among vote-entitled chairs of the Riddarhuset - which was first of the four estates of the days of Diet, up to 1906. 2) direct translation would be Sianpää, Swinehead, not very nice. He could live with an ancient name (with historical value to counter the not very beautiful content) that he has not personally chosen and that was in language (Swedish) so alien to most of people surrounding him, but he could have been wary to choose himself a Finnish name that says Swinehead to everyone.

Regarding Svinhufvud if he could be called a Swedish-Finn by todays standard or not could be viewed by looking at his genealogy. On his father's side the namelist consists almost totally of nobility names that can be traced to Sweden, the area around Viborg and down towards the continent - many of them with old family brances in Finland. On his mother's side the lines are quite similar. I wouldn't be that sure that the language spoken at home at Svinhufvud's wasn't Swedish, after all also the Timgren family was quite Swedish speaking.

The fact that he was a fennoman doesn't necessary mean that he turned completely Finnish speaking over night and abolished his Swedish language heritage. He simply saw that the Finnish language was surpressed within the administration and should be given the status it should have and worked for this goal. Perhaps it even was politically wise for him to do? He was a prominent man in any case. Nice to be related to him!

Because of this line of thought the Svinhufvud name is a good candidate for a list of "Swedish-Finns" - if such a list is interesting to have. Hasse N.

He chose political parties, firstly "Nuorsuomalainen Puolue", then "Kansallinen Kokoomus" (both of full Fennoman origin) for his political activities, instead of Svenska Folkpartiet. Had he been of Finland-Swedish preference, and in agreement with SFP's goals, why did he not enroll that party? Why did he always chose heirs of original Fennomans, those parties which had advancement of Finnish language as their cultural program in all of his time there?

Therefore, I propose that Svinhufvud's name be removed from the list within two weeks, if no one brings convincing evidence of him being preferentially Finland-Swede on his own volition.

213.243.157.114 07:50, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)


Interesting that there apparently are so few truly Finland-Swedish notables that a bunch of Finnish-speakers are needed to fill that meager list.

Were I not overly enjoying the situation where our Fnnish citizens are welcomed to yet more lists of notable people around the world (apparently they are seen as national heroes in Sweden), I might suggest that such inclusion is the mark of what sort of success these Sveco-nationalists represent here. 213.243.157.114 21:45, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That's weird. There is many Finnish-speaking Finns in the list. If some Finnish-Swedish speaks Finnish, is he Finnish-Swedish aka. Swedish speaking Finn? Kahkonen 21:51, 2004 Jul 6 (UTC)

If their mother tongue was Swedish, or if they married Finland-Swedish (Lönnrot), and if the Finland-Swedes or the Sweden-Swedes are heppy with including ardent Fennomans, then why not?

I consider the following inclusions as more of pranks than serious additions suitable for an international public, why I remove them:

  • Markus Drake, a famed Green politician in Finnish politics. Mannequin of freedom of narcotics.
  • Hans Duncker, a politician of Svenska Folkpartiet, and a famed jailbird because of drug trafficking
  • Nils Gustafsson, survivor of Bodom massacre, and a suspect
  • Lennart Hohenthal, political assassin who shot Finnish attorney general Eliel Soisalon-Soininen
  • Nils Holgersson, world-traveller
  • Johnny Liebkind, famous Jew civil rights fighter. Spent a couple of years in Isreali prison.
  • Elias Lönnrot, (1802-1884), author. He did not speak particularly good Swedish, and was from Finnish-speaking rural parts. Finnish has been known to be his native language
    • This is of course a typical conception in Scandinavia. I wonder what's said among the Finland-Swedes.
  • Robert Rossander, former Finnish business magnate.

/Tuomas 19:14, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Would Snellman be a good addition to the list? As far as I know he hardly new any Finnish but was very active in Finland.

[edit] the introductory paragraph

The following sentence is simplified, as it according to my judgement is too convoluted for the introductory paragraph:

From the administrative centralization of the 17th century forwards until the mid-19th century it was the sole language of jurisdiction, administration and higher education in Finland, however in some respects only together with Latin. In 1892 Finnish as an official language (already granted 1863) gained a status fully equal to that of Swedish, and at Finland's independence in 1917 Finnish clearly dominated in government and society.

It's of limited relevance to remind an international audience that the then-international language of science, Latin, was used beside the local language in education. The domestic debate in Finland, and particularly its history, makes it motivated to remind about this - in Finland! ...and it's of course not wrong, But we must think on the poor reader who is not to be confused. After reformation, the importance of Latin in Finland were not at all comparable to the situation in the remaining Catholic lands.

The reference to the language edict by Charles XI is here first of all misdated, as the great administrative centralization was during the 30-Years War; and maybe more important, the reference is also misrepresenting King Charles's recasting of judicial procedure, church government, and central administration (including the riddarhuset) which for sure aimed at a unitary nation with one language being used in all parts of government, but it was aimed at the territorial gains in the south Swedish Pomerania, Scania etc, and elitist officials from the Continent who wrote and spoke Danish, Dutch and Low German also in official contexts. References to that language edict, and the interpretations of it, ...and the less benevolent effects of it for Finns in what remained of Sweden after 1808/09... are surely more relevant in the articles on Fennomans, Finland's language strife and the Sweden Finns.

I restore the introductory paragraph to the following wording:

Finland-Swedish is a variety of Swedish. Until 1863 it was the sole language of jurisdiction, administration and higher education in Finland. In 1892 Finnish became an official language and gained a status comparable to that of Swedish, and at Finland's independence in 1917 Finnish clearly dominated in government and society.

/Tuomas 18:16, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)


The "simplified" introductory above oversimplified the facts into untruthfulness.

Firstly, during the Middle Ages and up to administrative centralization which was completed by Gustav II Adolph's government, administrative language situation in Finland was semi-anarchic. Finnish was much used. German and Latin were approximately as important as Swedish. Finland did actually not have any centralized administration besides the bishopric of Turku, which actually mostly used Latin and Finnish.

Which was not at all unique for Finland, as I am sure you know. /Tuomas 23:53, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

So what. We have here an article that purports to describe the position of SWEDISH as language in Finland. Not an article that DIRECTLY deals with position of Finnish as language in Finland. I require that the position of Swedish is presented as truthfully and properly as possible. The fact remains, In Middle Ages, Swedish has a position that was nowhere as high as later after 1600´s. Therefore, those two eras shall NOT be dubbed into one. I believe Finnish as language of administration etc was more important than Swedish up to 1600´s. Do you agree? Or, do you have counterarguments and facts in its support?213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)


Actual contacts with Rikssverige were scarce. Österlandia was very separate from Sweden in almost all practical terms. Gustav Vasa made first attempts towards regular secular administration, but his "fogde"s were compelled to use much Finnish, since taxes were anyway rather difficult to collect from unwilling payers, and use of incomprehensible language (Swedish) in inner areas of Finland would have frustrated tax-collection efforts into failure. Gustav, after all, was a practical guy who wanted the money and was not so eager on principles, language ideologies etc. (Gustav was a Swede.)

This is stupid anti-Swedish arguments which reflects poorly on us if allowed to take up space in an article on a 5%-minority in Finland. Finland and the Finns have the moral high ground on our side until we start to demonize the Finland-Swedes. /Tuomas 23:53, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have not suggested adding Gustav's fogdes into the article. Those facts are to feature the context in this TALK, in order to let discussants understand what happened - regarding to use of administrative language. I do not bother with moral grounds etc. I require factual correctness.

Of course, you are welcome to present a case of pity - however, some elsewhere, thank you. Factual encyclopedia is not a place to twist facts to say that even before 1600´s, evil Swedes succeeded to use their language as sole one in Finland. Since that simply was not true.213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I oppose saying that before 1600's Swedish was anything like SOLE administrative language. The key word here is "sole".

This is (almost) perfectly allright. But as you point out yourself, there wasn't much of administration beside the (Catholic) Church and the governor in Viipuri before Reformation. The point is, you have to keep the introductory paragraph brief and inviting for the reader. And as the

Then, a chapter of history is needed in the article.213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

language of laws was Swedish, not Finnish, and the language used in communication from the state administration out to the provinces was mainly Scandinavian and in any case not Finnish, there is

Actually, I have believed that even throughout 1600-1860´s, judges needed to explain the court proceedings to their Finnish-speaking listeners, such as the accused (convicted), plaintiffs, and Finnish-speaking juries, in Finnish. Therefore, I somewhat doubt how correct is to say that the language of jurisdiction has been Swedish. Perhaps, "language of protocols of jurisdiction", would be a correct expression...213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Comm outside (adm): You need firstly to understand that before Gustav Vasa, there actually was very little communication between Finland and Sweden. Whereas there was much administration inside Finland, or more properly, inside a castle province, inside a parish, etc. E.g, tax-collection on behalf of castle lord and by fogdes. And I am rather sure that most of that communication took place in Finnish.213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

no reason to go into specific details in the introduction. You do surely know as well as I about the first occurences of translations to Finnish. /Tuomas 23:53, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Daily administration has all the time been made orally to large extent. You speak much about written language.213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

in 1860´s Finnish already became an official language, thus is is not correct to cite that as to 1893. 1893 was the point when Finnish as official language became fully equal with Swedish.

While I do understand what you mean, I beg to disagree strongly on the point of wording. Finnish became fully equal with Swedish in the administration after it had got a legally equal position in 1892.


Actually, I did not check that 1892/93 earlier (I was too trusting). Yesterday I went to pages of Suomalaisuuden Liitto. In their dateline listing, actually next to nothing happened in 1892 or 1893. The equalization happened in 1902. Please check the facts, and furnish the claims with evidence.213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)


It's questionable exactly when the languages de facto were equal in standing, but it's undisputable that it was at least some years into the 20th century, like after the parliamentary reform of 1906

Crap. Prlm reform had nothing to do with legal equalness. In dateline of SL, there was a legislative act of equalness in 1902. I think that date shoulde be used.213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

for instance. But I must admit that the wording I restored was[1] unlucky: It's of course not the year 1892 but 1863 that's relevant for the status as official language, although the Language Ordinance required a gradual introduction of Finnish – over a period of twenty years, was it? /Tuomas 23:53, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It was 20 yrs, intended to completed 1883. But unsurprisingly some delay took place, thus 1886 (three yrs late) a new act was in force. However, against the original intent, it did not guarantee full equalness. Equality was waited upon up until 1902.

(And, 1892 was nothing in this history, sorry.)213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Swedish was nothing like SOLE language of higher education even after the reformation, since in Academy of Turku, master's theses and bachelor's writings, as well as debate events etc, were conducted in Latin. I recommend the previous writer to check something as easy as the list of titles of master's theses during that period. My great-great-etc-greatgranduncle Simon Fretin's Master's thesis was titled in Latin. And so was H.G.Porthan's and of others, too. Please check.

This is undisputable. The question remains: what is appropriate to put into the introduction of this article. What would you say about the wording "Swedish, not Finnish, was the language of..."? On the other hand, I think the wording with "sole" has a merit as it highlights the reason, need and mandate for the fennomans (and the language strife). /Tuomas 23:53, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If Swedish was not the only, then an attribute "chief" or "main" should be used instead. Sole means actually the only, if you understand.213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There are clear indications that Swedish actually had a rather minor role in the Academy of Turku.

Yes, but still we would lead the reader astray if we gave the impression that Latin had an importance comparable with in for instance Poland. You remember that it was first in 1828 that a Finnish lectorate was introduced? /Tuomas 23:53, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No one has mentioned Polish universities in the article. Please do not direct the discussion into irrelevancy. In my opinion, it is not truthful to present Swedish even as "main language of higher education 1600-1860", since it was not. Rather, it should put forward that Finnish language was not present at all in higher education up to 1800´s...213.243.157.114 08:23, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Somehow I could agree to a narrow formulation: from 1600's up until 1863 it was the sole language of jurisdiction and administration in Finland.

213.243.157.114 18:44, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] List of Swe... criteria

What sort of criteria we want for the list? For reasons I can't fathom, IP-addressed editors have added numerous Finnish-speaking Finns to the list, such as Minna Canth, the first Finnish-speaking female journalist. It seems that it's enough that there is some, however tenuous, connection to the Swedish language, to classify the entire person as Finland-Swedish, as in real-world politics. For example, these criteria might be used:

  1. Swedish surname; many purely Finnish-speaking people have Swedish surnames. For one, the Swedish royal government refused to record Finnish names. Later, having a Swedish surname was a status symbol. Also, some Finnish noble families had to have a Swedish name to be recorded to the Swedish knight house, such as Svinhufvud.
  2. entirely Swedish name, again, the same story
  3. one Swedish-speaking parent
  4. went to Swedish-speaking school — the catch being that the only possible "not Swedish" school used to be a Latin-speaking school "in the olden days"
  5. bilingual, even if the achievements are literary works in Finnish, not Swedish

This is a bit similar to the "one drop of coloured blood" case in the USA, except for the motivation.

Names have nothing to do with it... language and identity, I'd say. I can imagine cases where it would make sense to call someone whose major work is in Finnish a Swedish-speaking Finn (if that is the best term), but generally no. OK I am a Swede (rikssvensk) and I shouldn't pretend to know all about these matters but is there really much confusion here? Outside of the Wikipedia list, that is. If you see people on the list you know as Finnish-speaking Finns, I suggest you take them out. /Habj 00:58, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
One problem is that in the olden days, Swedish used to be the official language. This meant that purely Finnish-speaking people had to learn it in order to end up in a list of "notables". Also, I wouldn't call anyone who publishes exclusively in Finnish and not in Swedish a probable Swedish-speaker. (There were also obvious cases of vandalism, like Larin Paraske, a Karelian poem singer.) Even if I have tried to prune the list, it's still not reliable. --Vuo 01:50, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I didn't have other intentions than alphabetising the list - it was an abvious mess. I can't understand that I didn't react on Mika Waltari, though. The longer a list on Wikipedia is, the less reliable it tends to be... /Habj 19:10, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Swedish-speaking Finns?

I lack an English word to translate finlandssvensk/suomenruotsalaisuus, i.e. what you call a person of Finland whose mother tongue is Swedish. It deserves an article, but what is the terminology in English? Is Swedish-speaking Finn a widely accepted term? How do the Finns - here meaning of both languages - feel about the term? /Habj 00:53, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Finlandsvensk would translate into Finland-Swede, that is the most used word. I guess "Swedish speaking Finn" works too and is used when you want to use a simpler and more describing word. I created a redirect from Swedish-speaking Finn to Finland-Swedish. bbx 23:47, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Finland-Swede is not used in English. You cannot concatenate two nouns like that in English.

[edit] Tensions?

Can anybody back up the claim of tensions between the Swedish minority and Finnish majority? I've spent one year as an exchange student at the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration in Helsinki and according to what I heard and read (in Swedish-language newspapers in Finland) the only reason for disagreement with some of the Finnish-speaking majority is the language issue. In brief: Some Finnish-speakers consider studying Swedish a waste of time that could be spent studying other (in their opinion more useful) languages whilst the Swedish-speakers are concerned about the future of their language (which as far as I could tell is a quite legitimate concern). Whilst speaking in English with exchange students the Finnish-Swedes referred to themselves as "Swedish-speaking Finns" - often complemented with explanations that they do have their own traditions and culture (i.e. different from what the Finnish-speaking majority has). Some of the traditions are the same as in Sweden whilst others are entirely their own. One year of studies has obviously not been enough to expose me to all Finnish-Swedish opinions but everyone I encountered felt as affiliated to Sweden as Americans to Great Britain (and before I learnt to immediately imply that I knew it they were easily offended and very quick to point that out to me immediately since I'm from Sweden). Since my contacts with Finnish-speakers were fairly limited I cannot compare their patriotism with that of the Swedish speakers so I don't know what the "average level of patriotism" in Finland is but the Swedish-speakers were very pro-Finland patriotic. Their pro-Finland patriotism was much stronger than e.g. the Swedish patriotism in Sweden and I believe that it's due to the history of the country since virtually everyone has an ancestor that has shed blood for the country and e.g. the school building (like all school buildings that existed during the war, I was told) have memorial plaques with names of students that died for the country.

The Swedish-speaking Finns are Finns. It's rather confusing to associate them with the Swedish. Only Åland Swedish-speakers have had any interest in joining Sweden. Tensions, though, are real. The language problem is rather simple, namely that the Finland-Swedes attempt to keep a 5% minority language, a local majority language only in some rural areas, as a national language. Attempts of conservation are highly expensive, e.g. keeping 10-student schools in rural areas (which costs 10 times more per student than bigger schools) or teaching everyone Swedish (which, again, takes time and money away from learning German, French, Russian etc.). They also want Swedish-speaker quotas for education, permitting inferior Swedish students in (seen that, it's not pretty → ended up taking an extra year for a 3-year programme). In effect, a small, but loud minority. In all other respects, the Finland-Swedish are just as the Finnish-speakers; you already mentioned patriotism. --Vuo 13:10, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No. The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland are ethnic Swedes. The only difference between them and the ethnic Swedes living in Sweden is their citizenship. There are for example larger differences between Swedes in Västerbotten and Småland than between Swedes in Västerbotten and Finland-Swedes in Österbotten. Den fjättrade ankan 11:39, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have to say that this might give a wrong impression that is almost "dangerous" since many of the Finland-Swedes I met quickly stated that they weren't the same as I was and some were, frankly, offended by the thought that they'd e.g. support Sweden in sports and that wasn't what I'd learnt to expect from reading this page prior to leaving for Finland last autumn. My experience is of course limited but a clarification on such issues might be in place since recognizing that they have their own identity is important (especially if you're from Sweden - othwerise you easily get accused of "storsvenskhet"). (unsigned)
I disagree with Ankan, who apparently is rikssvensk, with the POV which that implies - no offense intended ;-)
I definitely don't consider myself an "ethnic Swede"! I am a Finn, with Swedish as my mother tongue, thus I consider myself a finlandssvensk (Finland-Swede), or finländare (Finlander), but these are not well-known terms in English, and I never use them. To me, "Finland-Swede" implies Swedish ethnicity, which is totally foreign to me.
No, in the English language, I am definitely a "Swedish-speaking Finn". This is the term I always use myself, even though it is somewhat clumsy.
The differences in Swedish-language dialects within both Sweden and Finland are huge - I understand a Swede from Stockholm or Gotland much better than a Swedish-speaking Finn from, say, Nedervetil in Österbotten, Finland. But I'm pretty sure the latter would not consider himself an ethnic Swede! (I bet the Ålanders don't either, they're Ålänningar, and proud of it! ;-)
--Janke | Talk 30 June 2005 22:20 (UTC)
There are som small tensions, but these are not to be exaggerated. I as a Swedishspeaking Finn, or Finland-Swede, do not feel that my finnishspeaking brothers would be against me, in any way. Offcourse there are some nationalistic movements in Finland, who don't like the idea of having Swedish as a national language, as we are only 6% of the population. But from my personal point of view, these arguments aganist Finland-Swedes are baised on:
  • Some Finnishspeaking people feel that we don't like to be in Finland
  • Some Finnishspeakers have a steroptyp view on Finland-Swedes, that we are "bättre folk", or "Better People"
  • Some Finnishspeakers think that we nag to much when we want service in Swedish
  • There is a negative feeling aganist Sweden (and some Swedish speakers), from a)historic things b) pakkoruotsi, our plainly, the fact that Finnsh speakers have to read Swedish in every school in Finland
  • Some Finnish speaking feel that we feel more like Swedes, when we say that we are Finlandssvenskar

In my own opinion, and I come from a very Finnish town, are that many people are only positive towards Swedish speaking people. As many Finnish speaking know that the Finland-Swedes have lived in Finland for hundreds of years and that many have Finland-Swedes fought for Finland in the wars and acctualy built Finland togehter with their Finnish speaking brothers.

Talking about the diffrences between Finnish and Swedish speakers, there are some. Finland-Swedes have some other traditions and just speak Swedish, but mostly the cultural thing is not more then that we select Swedish as subtitile on a DVD or go to look at a Swedish language theather. Like, if I would go and have a beer with a Finnish speaker, we would not be arguing with eachother about culture or something, we would propablly get drunk and look at hockey or do something stupid. But, okeay, there are also some Finland-Swedes that feel negative against Finnish speakers, as many feel that they are threath or something. But, the absolut majority within both group are positive to eachother, or just don't think about it. I don't feel that we make so much diffrence between Finland-Swedes and Finnishspeakers.

  • Finland-Swedes and Finnishspeakers have lived side-by-side in many years
  • Both groups fought for Finland
  • Both groups have built Finland, and both groups have made large countributions to Finland

I live now in Sweden, but I can say that I do not feel that I am a Swede. I am maybe proud of myself, that I live in Sweden and share something with them and just live here. But I have been thought to be proud of my country, Finland. For me it feels very natural to celebrate the Independence Day of Finland and do support Finland in hockey and sports. I remember how my grandparents told me stories about how they or there parents fhought in the wars and how the survived. So I think that the arguments that Finland-Swedes feel more as Swedes, it totally wrong and I don't feel like I would have to defent myself, or explain why I feel as a Finlander. For me it is very natural to be a Finlander. Dr.Poison 11:11, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The problem with the term "Swedish-speaking Finn"

It seems that some believe that the usage of that term (in English) by Finnish-speakers is political whilst it IMHO is entirely linguistical. I'm a Finland-Swede but speak Finnish virtually flawlessly too and think that I can explain why the term is problematic and why Finnish-speakers fail to see the problem (and thus I don't think their use of it is political). The Finnish language only has one word for a member of the population in Finland and that is "suomalainen" and consequently think that "Finn" is a correct translation. Finland-Swedes, however, make a distinction between "finne" and "finländare". The word "finne" is used to refer to a member of the population in Finland that has Finnish as his/her mother tongue (and a Finnish surname and so on). "Finländare" is instead used to refer to every member of the population in Finland - i.e. regardless of mother tongue and surname. Thus even though "finn" = "suomalainen" is an acceptable translation for Finnish-speakers the translation "finn" = "finne" about a Finland-Swede is not preferable and "Swedish-speaking Finn" = "svenskpråkig finne" is quite misleading. Finland-Swedes would use the latter to refer to a Finn that can speak Swedish but isn't a Finland-Swede. I might also add that for this very reason it is quite inappropriate by Swedes in Sweden to refer to the population in Finland as "finnar", which unfortunately is quite common - "finländare" is much more preferable. The word Finlander would be better in English as well but unfortunately it hasn't caught on (13 900 hits on Google vs. 6 940 000 "Finn") since few foreigners even know that Finland-Swedes exist and I'm reasonably sure that the general use of the word on the Internet is to refer to members of the population in Finland and not only Finnish-speakers. As far as affiliation is concerned I don't think there's any factual basis for a claim that some would feel more affiliated to Sweden than Finland. We do feel some affiliation to Sweden since that's our origin but that's all. I have relatives in Sweden that despite living there, speaking Swedish like they do and having Swedish names consider themselves Finlanders living in Sweden and not Swedes moving back. /Mathias_Johansson (Added afterwards because I registered myself now.)

Finländare (Finlander) is a relatively recent term even in Swedish. It was artificially created in the 19th century to make a difference between Finnish-speakers (finnar)and Swedish-speakers. Before that ALL inhabitants of Finland were called Finns (finnar in Swedish, suomalaiset in Finnish). Therefore I think it is only natural, that this term has not gained popularity in other languages. It would be better, furthermore, if Swedish-speakers reverted back to the earlier tradition and called themselves Finns (finnar) in the cases when it is not important to pay special attention to the mother-tongue of the speakers.128.214.205.4 11:48, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect English

The problem is that you are inventing a word here - Finland Swede is simply not correct English even though you think it may describe you more accurately.

A secondary problem is that Finland Swede in English (were the term actually to exist) would mean a person of Swedish nationality living in Finland.

The conjuction of two nouns in English simply doesn't work in the way you are trying to use it - you perhaps should be talking about "Finnish Swede", and "Finnish Swedish" (compare the correct English description of the language spoken in Scotland: "Scottish Gaelic, or in Ireland: Irish Gaelic). But again Finnish Swede would actually suggest someone of Swedish nationality

From Forskningscentralen för de inhemska språken:
"Laurén använder i sin artikel Finland Swede om person, Finland-Swedish som adjektiv och Finland Swedish om språkvarianten. Efter att för säkerhets skull ha konsulterat engelsk expertis kan jag rekommendera de termerna för allmänt bruk i texter på engelska om finlandssvenska förhållanden."
Enough said. Den fjättrade ankan 22:33, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Translated to English (from Swedish): In his article, Laurén uses Finland Swede about a person, Finland-Swedish as an adjective and Finland Swedish about the variant of Swedish language. Having checked with English expertise just to be sure, I can recommend these terms for general use in texts in English regarding Finland-Swedish things. The web site belongs to an official research institute in Finland that deals with the languages of Finland. /Habj 08:31, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that translation should be used throughout the article. "Reuters ruta" is _the_ source for questions regarding the Swedish language in Finland and he made the same note as I did regarding the problem with "Swedish speaking Finn". Thus such corrections should be made everywhere in this article for starters but there are several other issues as well that I consider very strange. /Mathias_Johansson

Interesting discussion... Well, being a Swedish-speaking Finlander myself, I did add the term finländare to the ethnicity sector, and I also changed it to more NPOV. Looking at older edits, I see many versions, some very POV.
PS: See my comments in the previous section, too.
--Janke | Talk 30 June 2005 21:37 (UTC)

Why on earth does this article have this name? It is wrong and clearly goes agains the recommendation of The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland [2] (30/1 1987: Finsk formgivning). They have even consulted English experts on the naming issue. --MoRsE 00:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Affiliation"

I've been thinking about the presentation of "affiliation" here and consider it quite awkward. The Swedish wikipedia page is much better and although it seems to be written mostly for Swedes from Sweden, parts of it could be translated as such but the problem is the word "finländare" (which has been noted previously).

My point is that whilst it due to the aforementioned translation issue is difficult to translate the Swedish text as such it is also very strange to write "affiliated to" since in Finland the issue is obvious and should thus be presented as such here as well. That is, the following translation of the Swedish text makes perfect sense to anyone familiar with the terms but it probably seems strange to the vast majority of wikipedia readers that aren't: "In general, Finland-Swedes consider themselves to be just as much Finlanders as the Finnish-speaking majority..."

On the one hand wikipedia could do a small contribution to make the word "Finlander" more common by using it but on the other the problem is that because the word is unusual it could thus be perceived as poor quality.

I think that the following - more elaborate translation - could be used but preferably after a native-speaker (of English) has commented on it (I'm unsure whether the noun "national" has the right meaning):

In general, Finland-Swedes consider themselves to be just as much Finnish nationals as the Finnish-speaking majority, i.e. they support Finland in sports, consider Finland their home country and themselves a part of Finnish society but they have their own identity, which is distinct of that of the majority (and wish to be recognized as such).

Possibly, the word "Finlander" could be made more common by including the following (opinions, please!):

Preferably, Finnish nationals should be referred to as "Finlanders" since it encompasses all - regardless of native language. In English, however, the word "Finn" is more commonly used but Finland-Swedes, might dislike it because the accurate Swedish translation of it ("finne") usually implies a speaker of Finnish. In Swedish the word "finländare" is thus more commonly used (especially in Finland) and the accurate English translation of that is "Finlander", but that is - unfortunately - rarely used. Finnish-speakers usually fail to make this distinction in English (and have thus made the word "Finn" more common) because the Finnish language only has one word for Finlanders or Finns ("suomalainen").

The current version of the article is the first time ever that I encounter someone claiming that a Finn could perceive "Finlander" as offensive. What is that statement based on? As I've stated above there's a linguistical explanation why Finnish-speakers usually say "Finn".

I'd also add following part from the Swedish wikipedia, since it clarifies things (it's not an exact translation but a more elaborate continuation to the translation I made above and it's stated in conjunction with the same part on the Swedish wikipedia page): Even though their culture bears a stronger resemblance to that in Sweden than to that of the Finnish-speaking majority, they do not feel affiliated with present-day Sweden.

Furthermore I think that the sentence "Today, it's often stated that Finland-Swedes are not Swedes in any other sense than that of language, and that the history (from 1714 and on) gives them no reason to feel any obligation or allegiance to Sweden." is quite pointless for a couple of reasons: (1) What does obligation or allegiance really mean in this context (what are you trying to express)? (2) Stated by whom? In previous versions it was "the Finnish speakers" but I don't see why their opinion is relevant in an article about Finland-Swedes.

I also wonder whether the sentence "...the exception may be the monolingual Åland islands." only adds confusion? A friend of mine from Åland said that a poll that was recently conducted there showed that 7 % wish for independence, 2 % that Åland was part of Sweden and the rest are satisfied with its current status. The poll was, however, conducted by "Fria Åland", which strives for independence and might thus be a little bit biased - I have, however, been unable to find it online but only searched briefly since I really don't think the matter is very important. If others think it is, you should most definitely not just include those figures as such but instead first find the poll to use as a reference.

/Mathias_Johansson

  • Mathias - I totally support your suggestions. I've marked a few passages with bold type in your text above that I think should be incorporated in the article. Would you want to do it yourself? If I don't see the changes in a week or so, I'll do it myself. PS: Do create a user page, so we can send messages to you! --Janke | Talk 07:58, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I started my discussion page now (I wanted to do that yesterday but I had forgotten my login and the new password e-mail was somehow infinitely delayed). /Mathias_Johansson

[edit] "widely established tacit agreement"

In my opinion that part should be removed for several reasons: (1) It's quite likely based purely on the personal experience of the individual that wrote it and I can immediately say that my experience has been the complete opposite: Finnish-speakers frequently want to speak Swedish with us so that they can use the language and also improve it through practice (2) If it isn't obvious enough already due to the different experiences; it's ridiculous to state that there is any "tacit agreement" for choice of language in a group since it's simply case-by-case: varying language skills + context (eg. business meeting / party) + promille level (all Finns speak Swedish when they're drunk ;) (3) I don't see how an encyclopedia should include such an explanation of something so vague and irrelevant for people to whom this article should teach something new (i.e. foreigners that presumably speak neither Finnish nor Swedish).

/Mathias_Johansson

  • Well, this is a matter of opinion. It is a fact, at least in my own experience, that a group tends to speak Finnish if there's even one Finn present. (My girlfriend "listens fluently", and speaks Swedish pretty well, even though a bit shyly, but still all my Finlander friends always speak Finnish in her presence!) So, this part could be re-written somewhat. Can we reach consensus here? I will wait a few days before doing anything... --Janke | Talk 08:05, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean with concensus but I think it should simply be omitted - it's not relevant for foreigners reading this unless they speak both languages and visit Finland - and in that case they'll have their own experiences (which, as I noted, vary).

[edit] Finns or Finlanders

A few points regarding my changes:

I made the changes that I previously proposed and removed most parts regarding ethnicity - Janke suggested it and I agree; I think that the link to the article "ethnic Swedes" is enough. Even though I'm not familiar enough with that subject to assess that article I think that everybody agrees that the content here was a mess (ethnicity + status + politics all-in-one). I don't object if someone wants to re-enter some of that under "History", though.

I'm still unsure whether "Finnish nationals" has the right meaning - perhaps it should be replaced with "Finnish people". As I stated previously, if a native speaker of English can comment, it would be greatly appreciated. The question I'd like to get answered is whether the explanation "support Finland in sports, consider Finland their home country and themselves a part of Finnish society" is redundant or not - if it is, then the sentence would reflect the right meaning better without the explanation since the issue is obvious in Finland and thus explaining it is awkward (i.e. it shouldn't be "surprising" to anyone).

Personally, I'm unsure whether any Finland-Swede really would dislike being referred to as a Finn abroad but since some users here make claims that that is the case I included it. The difference is important in Swedish (when spoken in Finland) but I doubt that many even know of the word "Finlander" - perhaps it should be added to both Wikipedia and Wiktionary since it does exist in dictionaries (I just checked Norstedts). Swedes from Sweden: Please adopt our use of the words "finne" and "finländare", we'd really appreciate it! (Apologies to those who know the difference, but I read too many Swedish newspapers that don't.)

I kept the content regarding tensions almost intact but the statement "occupy unproportionally many administrative positions" is somewhat POV because: Good language skills (due to many being bilingual and Germanic languages being easier to learn for Swedish-speakers) + good education (due to well-educated parents, which of course is a consequence of past developments and an advantage but hard to see as unjust treatment of Finnish-speakers at present) = good job (and thus there's nothing unproportional about it unless there's discrimination against Finnish-speakers with identical skills). Such content could be included if reformulated to include explanations.

/Mathias_Johansson

  • Looks good now. Thanks for cleaning it up - that whole "ethnicity" stuff bothered me. --Janke | Talk 13:27, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
  • PS: I added a copyright-fee map - the old one was a copyvio! --Janke | Talk 14:24, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Speaking as your everyday run-of-the-mill finne, I'd like to point out that I have an issue with the word 'Finlander'. First of all, it is not an English word, and is in my opinion a very crude loan. I haven't found it in any dictionary, and it doesn't get very many Google hits on English pages. - ulayiti (talk) 00:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Really? Check http://lexikon.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/sve-eng or http://mot.kielikone.fi/mot/ (the latter requires subscription). /Mathias_Johansson
Secondly, the existence of the distinction in Swedish between finne and finländare does not, in my opinion, justify artificially creating such a distinction in any other language. I find the whole distinction very artificial anyhow - why segregate between two groups of Finns who are nearly identical apart from the language they were raised in? I don't see any beneficial cause as to why this distinction should be artificially enforced on Wikipedia - either the English or the Swedish one. It's not one based on any actual difference, and thus applying a label to a group of Finns that seems to question their 'Finnishness' can only feed prejudice. - ulayiti (talk) 00:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
You should also read my previous comments about the issue ("The problem with the term 'Swedish-speaking Finn'" and "Affiliation"). As far as the Swedish wikipedia is concerned the difference between "finländare" and "finne" is a valuable contribution since many in Sweden are unaware of it and the words contribute to the language. They're used consistently in Finland-Swedish to distinguish between different groups of Finnish people, whenever necessary - you would say "finsk kultur" rather than "finskspråkig kultur", wouldn't you? That doesn't constitute any "segregation" or "artificial distinction". /Mathias_Johansson
It does, because it gives the impression that finländarna aren't 'real' Finns, they just happen to live in a country called Finland. By the way, I just found out that according to the Swedish Academy the use of finländare to refer to Finland-Swedes has developed 'through misunderstanding of the views that the word's creation was based on' and that it really should mean 'citizens of Finland regardless of their race' (see [3] for the entry). And Finland-Swedes aren't exactly a 'race', are they? - ulayiti (talk) 09:12, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
What comes to your phrasing of 'Finnish nationals', I think it's not a suitable expression to use when talking about Finland-Swedes. It seems to suggest someone who's only recently attained the nationality, and so using 'Finnish people' instead would be infinitely better to me. - ulayiti (talk) 00:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tensions between Finnish and Swedish speakers

I removed two paragraphs here - they really don't belong in this article at all. See Mathias' comments above. --Janke | Talk 20:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Tacit agreement"

This paragraph actually said the same thing twice. So, I removed the "tacit agreement" part. --Janke | Talk 20:06, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

  • That change took into account my previous objections as well (I definitely agree about "more convenient") so that's good too. /Mathias_Johansson

[edit] Removal of persons-lists

I took the liberty of removing the list of prominent people. These lists really don't serve much purpose, are hardly encyclopedic and notoriously difficult to effectively delimit. If you really want to dabble in name-dropping, try to do it in the actual article text and not merely to list names. That these people are prominent isn't reason enough to mention them here.

Peter Isotalo 21:46, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 'Ethnic minority' is POV

The very first sentence of this article says that Finland-Swedes are an 'ethnic minority'. This is a very controversial claim, and is actually denied by most Finland-Swedes themselves, at least according to my personal experience as well as this document from the city of Tampere (the only thing I could find with a quick Google search). The ethnic group article, which is linked to from here, says as follows,

Ethnic groups share a common origin, and exhibit a continuity in time, that is, a history and a future as a people. This is achieved through the intergenerational transmission of common language, institutions, values and traditions. It is important to consider this characteristic of ethnic groups if we are to distinguish them from a group of individuals who share a common characteristic, such as ancestry, in a specific point in time.

Most of this certainly suggests that the Finland-Swedes are not an ethnic group (I mean, they don't even have a common origin, and don't try to claim there's such a thing as Finland-Swedish values).

Now, this has been discussed before (even on this page), but I'm creating a new topic to awaken people to the fact that the last discussion didn't actually result in anything being done. The article is still highly POV, and should be changed to reflect the fact that Finland-Swedes are nothing but a linguistic group (and one that's easy to become part of and disassociate oneself with as well). The ethnic Finn article is problematic as well, since aren't Finland-Swedes ethnic Finns as well? - ulayiti (talk) 15:57, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

  • I totally and absolutley agree with you, being a finlandssvensk myself. I definitely don't consider myself belonging to any ethnic minority, only to a linguistic one. (Wikipedia doesn't even have a Babel code for Finland-Swedish! ;-) I usually call myself a Swedish-speaking Finn (or even Finlander) when I correspond in English. Last time around editing, we tried to work around this problem by using weasel words, but I think a total rewrite would be in order. Shall we start a subpage where we can try it out? --Janke | Talk 09:34, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
That would be a good idea. I'd start it myself right now if I had the time, and access to Wikipedia from my home, which I unfortunately haven't got at the moment. But you go ahead and start it and I hope to be able to contribute as well at some point. - ulayiti (talk) 11:07, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
The temporary page is at Finland-Swedes/sub. I'll copy the entire article there, and make some changes. Others who follow this talk can contribute. After some time we can copy the stuff over to the article. OK? --Janke | Talk 13:18, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Recent addition to previous section on this page: I am Finlandssvensk, but I now live in Sweden. I feel more like a Finländare, because of the fact that I feel that Swedes and Finlandssvenskar are two different groups. I feel that we finlandssvenskar have more common things with the finns. //Martin (copied here by--Janke | Talk 20:05, 21 October 2005 (UTC))

Well, more than two weeks with no opposition on this talk page, so I moved the section from the sub-page here. I also removed the active-discuss tag. --Janke | Talk 13:21, 6 November 2005 (UTC) (Svenska dagen... ;-)

I don't quite see the problem with defining Finland-Swedes as an ethnic group. "Ethnicity" is a very broad concept, and as far as I can tell "intergenerational transmission of common language, institutions, values and traditions" is exactly what Finland-Swedes have, even if it doesn't differ vastly from Finnish traditions. Just the fact that Finland-Swedes have their own language separate and unique from Finnish is more than enough to define them as a separate ethnicity. Calling Finland-Swedes just a "linguistic minority" is overlooking the fact that language is one of the primary common denominators of many ethnicities.
Peter Isotalo 20:16, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
Swedish is an official language of Finland, alongside Finnish. Therefore officially there is no language division. - G3, 15:43, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Finno-Swedes, not "Finland-Swedes"

This and the related articles are basically a joke, as long as proper grammar isn't used for the naming convention. There's no such real word as "Finland-Swedes" or "Finland-Swedish", because there's a more correct and proper naming convention for cases involving two nationalities or nationalility adjectives spelled together as one word with a hyphen. Just look up in a professional encyclopedia like Britannica how Finno-Swedish is written. The main point is that both words get the right form, just like in Finno-Ugric (eg. Finno-Ugric peoples, Finno-Ugric languages) or Sino-Japanese (eg. the Sino-Japanese War). This note applies to also to eg. the "Finland-Swedish" page.

Just a note, the fenno-prefix is, to me at least, mainly used as an adjective, and I would interpret Fenno-Swedish as "Finnish-Swedish", which clearly has a quite different semantic meaning than "Finland-Swedish". 81.232.72.53 20:26, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
The equivalent of "Fenno-Swedish" or "Finno-Swedish" in Swedish would be finsk-svensk as in finsk-svensk diplomati ("Finno-Swedish diplomacy"). The term in Swedish is finlandssvensk, so I can see nothing wrong with current translation. The use of finlandssvensk has clearly been the most relevant because it makes a point about Finland-Swedes being ethnic Swedes (defined by culture, not genetics) who live in Finland and that Finland-Swedish is primarily Swedish spoken in Finland, not an equal merger of Finnish and Swedish.
Peter Isotalo 14:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Slight disagreement, if I may, as a finlandssvensk myself: Finland-Swedes are not ethnic Swedes, however the word "ethnic" is defined. The only thing separating us from the Finnish majority is our mother tongue, and indeed, our culture, but that is not the culture of Sweden-Swedes. There are significant differences, in some cases more marked than between us and the Finnish majority. --Janke | Talk 15:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
You're right. I didn't mean to equate them with Sweden-Swedes. Just to separate them from Finns. However, I don't think that speaking a different language is as superficial as is claimed. See above for further discussion.
Peter Isotalo 20:20, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology

I'm not sure if it means anything but the Swedish Assembly of Finland (svenska Finlands folkting), "a semi-official body representing the Swedish-speaking population" (direct quote from their publication, see later), uses the English term Swedish-speaking Finns and the French term les suèdophones de Finlande in their own communications. Please see [4]. The principle of the right for self-designation should of course be followed, whatever is decided on this issue... Clarifer

  • This is indeed the term I prefer, being a Swedish-speaking Finn, myself. It is totally inambiguous, while "Finland-Swede" is not - it could be applied to Swede who has moved to Finland... --Janke | Talk 22:03, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree. The people should be called 'Swedish-speaking Finns' and the language 'Finnish Swedish' (by analogy to 'American English', for example). We should try and establish consensus for a consistent set of terms to be used within the project. I propose a straw poll on the subject. - ulayiti (talk) 22:16, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I think that the term Swedish-speaking Finn is actually ambiguous. To me this could mean any Finlander who speaks Swedish, regardless of their mother-tongue, e.g. one could say that Tarja Halonen is a Swedish-speaking Finn, as she is a Finn who is able to speak Swedish. However, this does not make her finlandssvensk of course. I agree that the terms Finland-Swede and Finland-Swedish are slightly confusing in English, especially as most English people will hear them with little context or understanding the first time, however, I think they are the best that there is. --94pjg 13:32, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
    I agree with 94. Finland-Swedes are quite clearly defined as a group in Swedish-language encyclopedias and to a Swede it would seem very strange to call a person from, say, Malmö or Västerås who has moved to Finland a "Finland-Swede". Even people who confuse Finland-Swedish and Finnich-accented Swedish would probably make the distinction. Personally, I can only perceive "Finland-Swede" as being a confusing term for people who've never heard it before. The solution to this is obviously to encourage people to read the article for clarification, not to invent new hyper-correct terminology.
    As for the right for self-designation, I am skeptical that the Swedish Assembly of Finland is representative of all Finland-Swedes, and it really seems more like politically correct POV than a relevant or intuitive self-designation. / Peter Isotalo 15:12, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Germanic language influence in Finnish

There is no doubt that Finnish has Germanic influence and many loan words. However, a few points may perhaps be allowed. 1. Not only Finnish but also all other Baltic-Finnic languages have Germanic loans. Therefore, the real source of such words in Finnish may not be directly a Germanic language itself but one of the close relatives of Finnish. 2. There are many layers of loans that can be considered Germanic and they do include also 'basic' words. 'Ja', however, cannot be found in any lists (at least I couldn't). Chronologically, loans from the postulated influence from the Corded Ware Culture would probably fall more on a pre-Germanic, pre-Baltic phase of the Indo-European languages in northern Europe. It has been estimated that from this period, words like 'kesä' (Summer) 'kasvaa' (grow), 'soutaa' (row) could have entered the (at the time) proto-Finno-Samic languages. 3. Words that look Germanic are in fact older Indo-European loans (i.e. from a pre-Germanic period). These would include 'nimi' (name, ancient Indian 'näma' Gothic 'namo'), 'kuka' (who, ancient Indian ku-tah, Gothic 'hvas') etc. There's no doubt that the Germanic languages (Swedish, which separated from 'eastern Norse' by the 13th century, inclusive) have influenced also Finnish over an extensive period of time. However, as with everything, this influence should not be exaggerated. The Baltic languages of the Indo-European group (with their own Germanic loans) may have had a far deeper and an older impact on Finnish, which might have earlier been interpreted as "Germanic" due to historical reasons. Clarifer

1, OK, but then the words are at least originally Germanic. 2. "Jah" is found in Gothic with the meaning "and". 85.226.122.205 16:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the Finland-Swedish standard language

There's more to Finland-Swedish than just unofficial regional dialects... FST newscasters (who supposedly speak non-colloquial language) sound totally different from the Swedish ones. I think this deserves to be mentioned.

In what way do they sound totally different? They obviously have a Finland-Swede accent, which lacks the sing-song nature of a lot of Rikssvenska speakers that you will find on SVT or TV4 or other channels from Sweden. But, essentially, the language itself is virtually the same. Of course, many governmental system terms are different between Finland and Sweden, but that's largely because in Finland, the Swedish terms for the Finnish authorties will largely follow their Finnish-language versions (e.g. using ministry instead of department in describing the government's sub-units etc). --94pjg 00:20, 14 January 2006 (CET)

In Finland Swedish-language terms do actually not follow Finnish terms as such, but both the Finnish and the Swedish terms follow tzarist Russian terms. This is because the foundations of the Finnish administative system was built during Finland's time as an autonomous part of Russia during the 19th century. As for more modern terms Swedish language terms do follow the Finnish example in Finland, but after some akward translations in the 1960s-1980s, there is a very strong effort to follow the development of the language in Sweden.

[edit] (Primary) ethnic identity

Claiming that nearly all Finland-Swedes are simply ethnic Finns with an "alternative linguistic preference" is like saying that Russian-speaking residents of Latvia are merely Letts who happen to speak Russian. This may be the self-designation of some and the label given to these groups by some in the surrounding societies, but it is definitely not a universally accepted fact. See Talk:Finnish people and Talk:Swedish people. //Big Adamsky 07:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, after starting contributing to this subject on Wiki, I've asked dozens of Finland-Swedes what they themselves think. They come from all over Finland: Åland, Osthrobotnia, Uusimaa and so on. Not a single one could identify with being an ethnic Swede, not even the Ålanders! They all considered themselves Finns who speak Swedish. I know this is not a large sample, but since it is geographically diverse, I think it's valid. However, saying Finns with an "alternative linguistic preference" isn't right, either - they were "born into the language", even though born as Finns. --Janke | Talk 07:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with Janke. I have never met a Finland-Swede who considered themselves to be an ethnic Swede either. Every single Finland-Swede I have ever met has considered themselves to be a Finn and indeed invariably are very proud of their 'Finnishness'. 94pjg 21:15, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I have never met or even heard of Finland-Swedes who refer to themselves as ethnically Finnish. (Being "proud" of where one lives or belongs doesn't affect ethnic identities radically.) But surely there are bound to be some who will self-identify as ethnic Finns with an exotic twist. =] //Big Adamsky 02:48, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Note here that there are many citizens in Sweden which do not consider themselves as ethnic swedes. I am not only referring to immigrants and non-scandinavian speaking minorities (like samis and Tornedalen finns) but also to e.g. scanians (from Skåneland/Scania), guts (from Gotland), jamts (from Jämtland) etc. I am a jamt myself, and do not label myself as ethnic swede, but rather ethnic jamt. This is probably analogous to how the Ålanders label themselves as being Ålanders rather than finns or swedes, ethnically. To me, the ethnic swedes are those who live in Svealand and southeastern Norrland. The rest are geats, guts, jamts, scanians, vestrobothnians/norrlanders etc.

Jens Persson, jepe2503 at hotmail dot com (30 Jan 06)


It's deeply rooted into the mindset of the Finland-Swedes that they are not (i.e. no longer) "Swedes". The current wording "Finland-Swedes and the Finnish-speaking Finns are usually considered one ethnicity" is however not the best, since Finns do not go around and feel ethnic - one may have nationalist feelings and patriotic feelings and political identity and religious identity and often a weak feeling of belonging to one or some of a set of different cultural regions (West, East, Far North, Woods, Lakes, Coasts, Archipelago, Capital, Province), but ethnic identification is of no relevance except with regard to the Saami people.

If now ethnicity is what necessarily has to be mentioned, then for sure it would be the best to word it more along the lines of "Finland-Swedes and Ethnic Finns in Finland have during some periods felt reason to exaggerate their differences, and at other times to emphasize unity and similarities. Today in Mainland Finland Finland-Swedes overwhelmingly consider themselves to be closer affiliated with the Ethnic Finns than with Ethnic Swedes, although with somewhat closer cultural similarities and ties to Sweden than what's the case for the Ethnic Finns in Finland." 81.236.184.210 10:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Well said! I absolutely agree with the above, and won't object if you put that into the article. - If I'd have to choose an "ethnicity" other than "Finland-Swede", it wold naturally be Finnish. However, I do also feel that "ethnic" is a bit too strong a distiction between our two language groups - in many bilingual families, it is simply a matter of choice, i.e. what one reports to the authorities. Sami, Roma, immigrants - they are of different ethnicity, naturally, as is a Swede born in Sweden, but who happens to live in Finland. --Janke | Talk 12:31, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
So, what [some of] you are essentially saying is that Finnish society on the whole is actually a lot more coherent and "naturally" bilingual in the "private sphere" (many mixed marriages and kindergartens, etc) than what is the case in, say, Ireland or eastern Canada or southern and western Switzerland? Interesting... //Big Adamsky 15:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
It's a bit difficult to compare, because in actual fact the only difference between Finland-Swedes and other Finns is what language they've reported as their mother tongue to the authorities. Anyone living in Finland can become a Finland-Swede simply by going to the registry office and giving Swedish as your native language. You don't even have to be a citizen (though I think actually being able to speak Swedish helps). And yes, people who change from Finnish to Swedish (or vice versa) are actually considered 'real' Finland-Swedes just as much as the next person. - ulayiti (talk) 02:01, 11 February 2006 (UTC)


I'll make yet another attempt to state what I perceive is the totally dominant view:
Finns, regardless of mothertongue, do not consider the difference between Finland-Swedes and "Finland-Finns" to be one of ethnicity, but chiefly one of language and of geographical region within Finland. This difference is to some degree also considered to be a difference of "culture" but not sufficiently much so to motivate a feeling of difference with regard to ethnicity. The concept of ethnicity is spared for other uses.
Åland is a particular case, some people, particularly them from Åland, might object against calling native Åland inhabitants for "Finns" - and let's now for the sake of simplicity forget about them.
There are a set of stereotypes connected to the minority, and the minority has as every minority reasons to protect its security and survival, but this does not affect the issue.
Minority status per se does not create separate ethnicities. At least not in Finland.
This is not to say that ethnicities are totally beyond the thinking of the Finns.
Saami people and Gypsie people are domestic ethnic minorities (although much smaller than the Finland-Swedes).
Then there are non-Finnic immigrants. They are considered "ethnic" too. :-)
But often not their children.
Where it gets really tricky is when discussing the Sweden-Finns. I do not know what proportion of Finns feel them to be ethnically different from the (Sweden-) Swedes, but I would guess that quite a few do so.
Who said people must follow logics?
81.236.184.210 15:27, 11 February 2006 (UTC)


Yes, there are many mixed marriages.
No, there are not many mixed schools or pre-schools. Or at least not mixed classes. Education is the most prominent locus for segregation between the language groups. This segregation is considered a good thing that ensures the minority rights that go beyond them in any comparable country.
The society as such puts pride into its bilingualism, and not being fluent in both languages is a considerable disadvantage for politicians, corporative executives and that lot. Approximately 50% of the electorate voted for a Finland-Swedish woman for president a few years ago. Her Finnish is quite good, of course, but correspondingly were all serious presidential candidates in this year's election eager to show off their competence in "the other domestic language".
In the officially bi-lingual parts of Finland, the legal rights of the minority are not always equally accessible, for instance when visiting a police station in the evening you may discover that your knowledge in the majority-language is superior to their knowledge in the minority-language, why you conveniently give up your legal rights of communicating with governmental authorities in your mother tongue. This affects also Finnish speakers. Very few make a fuss about it.
From knowing very little about Canada or Belgium, it seems as the minority rights are far superior and also far better implemented in Finland. Similarly, the tensions are much more lenient.
There exists a strand of resent among the native Finnish speakers, that to its character is easiest to compare to populist xenophobic movements in other European countries. It's often mixed with a general anti-authoritorian antipathy against "the elite" in posh Helsinki officies. The strength of this current is hard to assess.
81.236.184.210 15:27, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anon user's additions

An anonymous editor (apparently pushing an agenda against Finland-Swedes and the Swedish language in Finland; see contribs at Special:Contributions/84.231.217.70), repeatedly re-inserts POV material here. In the article Apartheid_outside_South_Africa the same anon. repeatedly inserts a section about Finland, claiming our country's constitutional bilingualism constitutes "Åpartheid". This is utter nonsense, and has been repeatedly removed by logged-in editors. The anon. also posts mock vandalism warnings on reverting logged-in users' talk pages. Please keep an eye on this, thank you. --Janke | Talk 22:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hate mongering

I have no strong feelings about whether "Apartheid" as a political slur is used in very creative ways (I've given up on that). But when referencing phrases like "pampered minority" that needs to be followed by a general discussion of minority-majority relations. Otherwise it is just hate speech with an external source. Cf. Model minority and Consociational state. //Big Adamsky 21:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

The reference the anon. points to, as having appeared in several papers, is one opinion piece by one journalist, reprinted in other media. --Janke | Talk 07:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Back again

The same anon. is back again, inserting his/her POV, and doing a minor edit after that, to cover up. Just so you know. --Janke | Talk 06:54, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Today, the coverup was the edit summary itself: (I'm glad to finally see an accurate map, instead of propaganda). I agree about the map, though. The new one is better, the previous was just a quick fix I did to avoid a copyvio - not "propaganda", however! --Janke | Talk 14:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology again

I can neither speak Finnish or Swedish, English is my mother tongue.

The term "Finland Swede" is simply not correct English. Whatever the political connotations, "Swedish-speaking Finn" is the correct term. You just cannot say Finland Swede - it's like saying "England Frenchman". It sounds like a typical error from a foreigner.

It is the best there is in English, it's not perfect. However, "Swedish-speaking Finn" could refer to any person from Finland who can speak Swedish, as many Finns with Finnish as their mother tongue can indeed do. Finland Swede makes the distinction that the individual is a Finn with Swedish as their mother-tongue. 94pjg 19:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Finland Swede is gramatically incorrect in English. Moreover it is simply not the correct term. The term used in the English language for many years for the Swedish minority in Finland is "Swedish-speaking Finn". "Finland Swede" says nothing about language the person speaks in any case. (IP: 85.210.29.96)

I removed the "disputed" tag you put up - you only dispute the terminology, not the actual article, right? Swedish-speaking Finn already redirects to this article, so anybody looking for that term will get to the right place. (In fact, I myself prefer "Swedish-speaking Finn", but I'm not so bold as to change it everywhere... PS; Please sign your posts, even just with your IP, or preferably, sign in with a username - thanks! --Janke | Talk 20:50, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

How About:

  • Finnish Swede
  • Fenno-Swede
  • Finno-Swede

The "Swedish-Speaking Finn" sounds so stiff, and they never refer themselves as Finns (finnar) in Swedish. Finlanders (Finländare) is a usable word, if they mean all the Finnish people. If they talk about only the Swedish-speaking residents of Finland, they say "Finland Swedes" or "Finland's Swedes" (finlandsvenskar/finlandssvenskar) or only "Swedes" if it can't be confused with the Swedes living in Sweden. So let's choose one of the above terms. I'd like to point out that the term "finn" in Swedish language means also "acne". --84.231.134.30 09:50, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Finnish Swede, Fenno-Swede, Finno-Swede - They are no better than Finland-Swede. I'm not a Swede! I am a Finnish citizen, who happens to have Swedish as my first language. The best alternative is Swedish speaking Finn, but there seems to be opposition to that, and it is somewhat clumsy. BTW, it's not finn that is acne, it's finne. --Janke | Talk 11:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
What I meant was that "En finne" is "acne", as well it is "a finn". Finnish-speaking people are sometimes offended about this. --84.231.134.30 18:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
  • "Swedish speaking Finn" is correct, although clumsy. Look prior in discussion to see why your three proposed alternatives all are incorrect: [[5]] 惑乱 分からん 22:38, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

"This is wrong, most Finland-Swedes do not speak Finnish. Some do, but most of them do not. Most Finland-Swedes feel a greater affiliation to Sweden than to Finland. They watch television, listen to radio from Sweden, read books from Sweden - all this in Swedish. Of course they not feel like they are living in a foreign country, after all, they have lived there for thousands of years - longer than the Finns! But they feel that they are Swedes, and that it is their country at least as much as the Finns. Den fjättrade ankan 01:19 May 5, 2003 (UTC)"

None of that is correct... Finland-Swedes would laugh at that if they would read this!

Wouldn't "Swedish Finns" be the best English description for these people. If you wanted to specify the majority, you could call them Finnish Finns. This terminology is more in line with normal English, I think. Since most Swedish Finns feel they are Finns (and now I mean Finn in the normal English use, not ethinicity), the description Swedish Finn would tell us that, indeed, this is a Swedish Finn. Think of French Canadians (5 060 000 hits in Google) - same thing. We don't call them Canada Frenchmen.

The dialect (but not the people speaking it) could be called "Finland Swedish".

By the way, Finlander and Finland-Swedes are words that won't survive in the English usage.

Cheerio from Sweden --Wahlin 01:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think 'Swedish Finns' would be a good description, since they're not 'Swedish'. In my opinion, 'Swedish-speaking Finns' would be the best option, but 'Finland-Swedes' is all right too, as it's based on the actual Swedish usage. - ulayiti (talk) 10:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
And Finnish usage: Suomenruotsalaiset.
As another mother-tongue English-speaker, I have to mildly disagree with 94pjg. The term 'Finland Swede' is at least totally transparent: it means a Swede of Finland (i.e. neither a Swede of Sweden nor a Finnish-speaking Finn). True, it's not the term I would have been most likely to volunteer myself, which is 'Swedish-speaking Finn', but it's not really wrong, if we want to stress the territorial aspect of Finnishness. 'Finnish Swede' doesn't pack the same territorial punch, and 'Swedish Finn' – well, that makes sense to me by analogy with 'English Canadian', but it may confuse others. Anyway, 'English Canadian' is just conversational shorthand for 'English-speaking Canadian', which brings me back to 'Swedish-speaking Finn'... QuartierLatin1968 El bien mas preciado es la libertad 01:24, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually, you've convinced me: I'd even prefer 'Swedish Finn' over 'Finland-Swede'. But 'Swedish-speaking Finn' still sounds best. Should we have a straw poll to get a clearer view on what the majority opinion is on this? - ulayiti (talk) 15:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Best to call these people Swedish Finns in English

We are discussing the best English term for a minority of Finnish citiziens.

Saying that someone is a Swedish Finn does not mean that they are "Swedish". If a boxer is light heavyweight, he is not "light", but light heavyweight. Someone who lives in British Columbia is not "British", but a British Columbian. A Russian Jew (who lives in Israel) does not consider himself to be a Russian, I think, but a Russian Jew.

In the construction Swedish Finn, the Finn is the noun, and the adjective Swedish adds a property to this noun.

French Canadians are not "French", but they are, in fact, French Canadians. The French Canadian is actually a good example of a large majority in an otherwise English-speaking country. The French Canadians by the way, support Canada in ice hockey, not France (no surprise, of course). These French Canadians can be quite well corresponded to the Swedish Finns. And French-speaking Canadians and Swedish-speaking Finns are too clumsy constructions. Words must be efficient if they want to be used. Let's call them French Candadians and Swedish Finns. Nice constructions of adjective + noun, easily understood by everyone.

I think the Swedish term "Finlandssvensk" is an unhappy one, and svenskfinne would be better. But since finlandssvensk has been throroughly rubbed in by now, I guess we have to stick with it in Swedish. Especially since conversely a Finnish Swede is called "Sverigefinne". Just don't try to spread these terms into English. They are not typical for Swedish either. A man of Swedish descent in the US is called "svenskamerikan" (Swedish American) and not "amerikasvensk". The good old French Canadians are called "franskkanadensare", not "kanadafransmän".

--Wahlin 17:58, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

These things seem difficult to standardize. Your idea is good and logically sound in an American English (sic! ;) language context of course. Could it be that in Swedish the term 'finlandssvenskar' (the people) has originally been derived from 'finlandssvenska' (the name of the Swedish language variant) rather than from 'Finland's svenskar'? (svenskar as an ethnic group is fairly modern?) If so, it follows the pattern of language variants like e.g. "Swiss German" (Schwyzerdütsch), "Swiss French" etc. etc. I'm not sure, but I've never heard of German Swiss people or French Swiss people. The people are just Swiss who speak a certain language as mother tongue ;) (Similarly: French Belgians for Walloons? Dutch Belgians for Flemings? Would seem a bit strange?) In Finnish, the relevant term is 'suomenruotsalainen' which is in line with the pattern of e.g. 'kanadanranskalainen' (French Canadian) or 'ruotsinsuomalainen' (Finnish Swede? Sweden-Finn?). These are nouns with a meaning of their own. E.g. 'suomenruotsalainen' is very seldom understood as 'Suomen ruotsalainen' which means 'Finland's Swede'. Should we now introduce the use of lower-case letters into the English language in this context? ;) Clarifer 08:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Swedish Finns can be confused to Sweden Finns. --Lalli 10:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussing what is best is irrelevant. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and should thus reflect common usage and not invent new terms. Common usage in English, whether you think it is logically correct or not, is "Swedish-speaking Finn". Noone knows what a Finland Swede is whereas plenty of people know the term Swedish-speaking Finn. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.178.105.9 (talk • contribs) 14:55, 12 September 2006 (UTC).
Yes, you are right, and most of the comments by all the apparently mostly non-native speakers above are unfortunately not correct or relevant. Please see discussion below. --Espoo 17:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tampere not bilingual

The map shows Tampere as a "bilingual city with Finnish speaking majority". This is not true: Tampere is really unilingually Finnish.--80.186.100.180 12:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

To my understanding the Language Act defines a bilingual municipality as one with at least 3000 registered speakers of the second domestic language. I'm pretty sure that in a city of ca. 200000 inhabitants this holds true. [6] Clarifer 07:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
In this link: http://www.kotus.fi/kielitoimisto/nimisto/paikannimet/kaksikiel.shtml#2suomi Tampere is not on the list of bilingual cities and it IS mentioned on the list of Swedish names for FINNISH speaking cities. Anyone visiting Tampere can also see that it is not bilingual, since the street names are only in Finnish. 80.186.100.180 01:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I stand corrected. The map should be edited then. Clarifer 06:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Tammerfors is definately unilingual Finnish. There are some Finland-Swedes living there, for instance there are church services and a (possibly private) Swedish school. However, the number is just a handfull; too low to make Tampere bilingual. 94pjg 10:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Didn't anybody read the info on the map's image page? It clearly states Tampere is unilingual, but has 1,000 Swedish speakers. I've copied that text into the map's caption. --Janke | Talk 15:13, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Why then is Tampere marked on the map at all?81.175.134.236 21:46, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Swedish missionaries

"Christianity was introduced to Finland from the east a couple of hundred years before)"

This is very a simplistic and partial view. Of course, there were some early influences of Eastern Christianity, but sure as hell there were Swedish and other western missionaries too. This is elementary knowledge of Finnish medieval history, so there is no reason to ask for citations.--217.112.242.181 10:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Crosses and Christian tombs have been found 100, 200 years before the alleged crusade in 1150s. So, if the land was under Christian influence, why would there be need for missionaries? I think it seems quite likely that the Swedes only (later?) described the conquest as a crusade to justify their aggression towards Finns. --Jaakko Sivonen 13:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Archaeologically documednted Christian influence during the 11th century or possibly before was exactly that: "influence", not a complete conversion. Of course, it did not eliminate the need for missionaries later. The crusade myth probably is a later construct, but it has nothing to do with missionary thing. Finland had some Christianity already before the Swedish takeover, but the process certainly was not finished, and missionaries certainly were involded even later stages. Please read some books of this and avoid making your own conclusions.--217.112.242.181 16:42, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Jaakko is right in mentioning a most probable occurence of Christianity in Finland before the 'crusades' but that does not mean that the Swedes did not bring missionaries. Once again, it's pointless thinking of Finland as a modern state almost a thousand years ago. The presence of Christianity in some parts of the country does not mean that the whole area that constitute Finland today was Christian, nor was it after the Swedish 'crusades' were over. JdeJ 18:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

BTW, could give some sources for the claim that large numbers of immigrants from Sweden arrived with the missionaries? --Jaakko Sivonen 20:58, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried to give a more neutral formulation for it.--217.112.242.181 11:08, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was Move. Duja► 15:31, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Finland-Swedes → Swedish-speaking Finns — Despite widespread use in Finland, "Finland-Swedes" is not correct English; it is an incorrect translation of the Swedish and Finnish terms that have "Swedes" as the noun for historic reasons. (Arose prior to birth of concept of nation-state, so "Swede" meant "speaker of Swedish", not "citizen of Sweden". In addition, historical and genetic studies have shown that Swedish-speaking Finns and Finnish-speaking Finns are not different ethnic groups and have intermarried and switched language use back and forth extensively.) The correct English term for the Swedish language minority in Finland would be "Swedish Finns" (similarly to "French Canadians", who are also not called "Canada French(men)"), but this is not possible because "Swedish Finns" is also incorrectly used, especially in Sweden, to refer to Finns that have moved to Sweden and to the Finnish minority that has lived there for a long time (which should be called "Finnish immigrants" and "Finnish Swedes" respectively.) Therefore the only correct English term that is unambiguous is "Swedish-speaking Finns". Espoo 18:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add  * '''Support'''  or  * '''Oppose'''  on a new line followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~.

  • Support - I am a PhD student in linguistics and a native speaker of English who has lived in Finland using Swedish as my main language, and with social networks consisting mainly of Swedish-speaking Finns. I do not feel strongly about making the change, but I do agree that "Finland-Swedes" is a simple translation of the terms "finlandssvenskar" and "suomenruotsalaisia" and sounds a little funny in English - the same way the "France Canadians" (as opposed to the better-sounding French Canadians) would sound strange. I suppose the reason "Finland-Swedes" is parsable is because most people who use it are familiar with the terms in the other languages. So more grammatically correct English might be "Finnish Swedes," but then this doesn't seem to be the right term, since these people don't self-identify as being from Sweden. I think "Swedish-speaking Finns" is the most appropriate, since it neither sounds like non-native English nor creates ambiguity about which group of people is meant. I have heard the term "Swedo-Finns" which I also think is fine, but it is less transparent and might be harder to find in a search. Yuni123 21:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)Yuni
  • Support. Being a Swedish-speaking Finn myself, that's the term I've used in English correspondence. Note however, that the person(s) doing the change will have to edit about 80 pages that refer to "Finland-Swedes" in order to be consistent (see "What links here"). A simple page move won't fix this. --Janke | Talk 06:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I'll gladly volunteer to do that. It's high time this remnant of the cultural isolation of Finland during the Kekkonen era disappears, and it's a disgrace to the Swedish Finns (especially since they have always had more international contacts than the Finnish Finns) that they're still described by erroneous terms in the most international language. I'd advise any Swedish Finns that want to help get rid of this disgrace to send their feedback to Forskningscentralen för de inhemska språken. (They're primarily responsible for this mess.) --Espoo 08:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support "I agree that the use of "Finland Swedes" should be discontinued. In spite of the fact that it is widely used in Finland and Sweden, it is not proper English and would likely be confusing to English speakers hearing the term for the first time. "Swedish Finns" would not be confusing (except for the fact that most people seem to be surprised to learn that there are Swedish speakers in Finland!), and "Swedish-speaking Finns" would be equally clear." -- statement made by David Jansson, professor of geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, for this discussion and sent to me by private correspondence. He adds "Feel free to use that in my name. (And in case you need to know, I was born and raised in the US, am a professor of geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, and I have roots in Åland, Finland, and I have recently learned how to speak Swedish.)" And as explained on http://geologyandgeography.vassar.edu/jansson.html, "he is currently working on a research project in Scandinavia examining geographic identity among Swedish Finns." (My emphasis) --Espoo 06:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support the term "Swedish speaking finns" is more correct than "Finland-Swedes", which would mean the swedes (svensson :) ) living in Finland. While it is exactly what is used in Swedish (Finlandsvenskar) or Finnish (Suomenruotsalaiset), but a literal translation to English loses its meaning and is not correct.--A Jalil 22:23, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments:

http://www.folktinget.fi/en/index.html)

http://www.emich.edu/symposium/abstracts2002/students/long.html

http://cognition.clas.uconn.edu/~jboster/research/working_papers/maltseva.pdf

http://davidwit.bol.ucla.edu/biography1.htm

http://ohioline.osu.edu/~ockint/countries/Finland.doc

http://www.naha.stolaf.edu/oldsite/publications/volume27/vol27_15.htm http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:D-fw4twXi8MJ:www.naha.stolaf.edu/oldsite/publications/volume27/vol27_15.htm+site:edu+%22Swedish+Finns&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=24

(This one may be an exception due to the writer apparently being a visiting professor from Finland or Sweden: http://geologyandgeography.vassar.edu/jansson.html ) Edit: I've corresponded with the author and he also uses "Swedish Finns" in the normal English way that means "Finnish citizens that are native Swedish speakers" (which corresponds exactly to hundreds of other designations in English such as Finnish Americans and Italian Americans).

http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052183225X&ss=ind (uses "Swedish-speaking Finns" throughout book)

--Espoo 18:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


This has been discussed earlier - but frankly, does it matter? There's already a redirect with that name, so anyone searching can find it, and get a redirect here. If you do change it, you'll have to change the link names on a lot of pages (check the "What links here" on this article). I won't oppose, but I won't do it either... --Janke | Talk 18:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, i know it's been discussed before, but the result was that the incorrect name is still there. "Finland Swedes" and especially "Finland-Swedes" is incorrect English and therefore does not fulfill Wikipedia:Naming conventions --Espoo 19:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Swede-Finns?

Sorry if this has already been discussed... this is a long talk page! I just wanted to say that I'm half "Swede-Finn" through my mother, and have never heard any term for this other than "Swede-Finn". My grandfather was born in Finland and came to the United States. Even in old age when I knew him he spoke Swedish and little to no Finnish. But I never heard him or anyone else say he was a "Swedish-speaking Finn". He was a "Swede-Finn". And I've met other Americans with this ancestry who also call such people "Swede-Finns". So I wonder, is there something wrong with this term? Is my experience unusual? Is "Swede-Finn" not the common English term for the people this article describes? Just wondering.. I don't know that much about it, despite my heritage. (and btw, although my mom's family were Swedish speaking, they always identified with the country of Finland and not Sweden. My mom's side of the family is from Finland -- they are Finnish... but happen to be Swedish-speaking Finns, as I understood it. What I personally got from this heritage was a feeling of connection to Finland, not Sweden. Pfly 08:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point, but it seems to reflect an older language situation, and a situation in which a small group of immigrants spoke about itself without majority input to correct the language error. In English, we say "Spanish American" and "Turkish American", and it's plain bad English to say "Spaniard American" or "Turk American". (And adding a hyphen doesn't help; on the contrary, it's probably a second error. UK English likes to add hyphens more often than US English to compound nouns, but it's usually avoided whenever possible in UK English too.)
More importantly, the expression is very confusing to most English speakers who don't already know a lot about the situation. "Swede-Finn" would make most people think "huh, what are they now, Swedes or Finns?". I would go so far as to say that the inherent ambiguousness of noun+noun instead of adjective+noun is not only bad or at least very unconventional English for describing a people; it may even have been a prime factor in causing the confusion about Finland and its relationship to Sweden and Swedish among the few English speakers who even know where Finland is... The following Googles on edu sites and Google Scholar searches give an indication of usage frequency among careful and educated English speakers although they of course need to be analysed in detail before making any real deductions:

46 hits for site:edu "Swedish-speaking Finns"

41 hits for site:edu "Swedish Finns"

13 hits for site:edu "Swede-Finns"

207 hits for "Swedish-speaking Finns"

60 hits for "Swedish Finns"

13 hits for "Swede-Finns"

--Espoo 09:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

In defense of the English language skills of these usually not well-educated immigrants (as were most US immigrants), i should add that due to "Finn" being in the noun position, "Swede-Finns" is still much better English (despite the idiosyncratic use of the wrong demonym for the modifier) than "Finland Swedes", which is not only linguistically incorrect but also sociologically and logically erroneous and nevertheless used by many even highly educated Finns in English... --Espoo 08:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for expansion

This article mostly focused on current-day Finland-Swedes. There is very little about the Finland-Swedes history. They were a significant group because of their political and cultural importance between 1600–1900.

Fred-Chess 09:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

You know the term "Finland-Swede" was coined in the late 19th century... And since the adminstration language in Finland for most of that period was Swedish (racism) those working for the state had to speak Swedish whether it was their native language or not. --Jaakko Sivonen 20:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Could any other person please comment? / Fred-Chess 07:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

What I stated is not an opinion but a fact. --Jaakko Sivonen 15:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course it's pure nonsense to talk about racism as Jaakko does. The administrative language of the Swedish empire was Swedish, the administrative language of the English empire was English, French in the French empire, German in the German empire and so on. There was nothin racial nor anything unusual about it. JdeJ 17:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I would like to have this article linked to Zacharius Topelius, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, and others. Currently there is very little relevant information. Compare to sv:Finlandssvensk and fi:Suomenruotsalaiset, and I hope you realize how this article could be expanded. / Fred-Chess 18:50, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Topelius was no Finland-Swede: his family's original name was Toppila, a Finnish name, they later latinized it. Topelius also wished that his generation would be the last to use Swedish. And as mentioned, there were no Finland-Swedes before the second half of the 19th century when for example the Swedish Party was founded. One of the guys who helped to inspire this Svecoman movement was this bastard (JdeJ, look at the sub-paragraph 'Rasismi' to understand how the Swedish "bättre folk" thought of Finns then. He is also the spiritual father of the modern Swedish People's Party). Jan-Erik Enestam recognizes this as well: "Allt hade sin begynnelse i slutet av 1800-talet. Då var begreppet finlandssvensk obekant. I Finland talade man svenska eller finska. Det var ingenting märkvärdigt med det. Men i och med att den finska medvetenheten växte till sig uppstod det också ett behov av att samla landets svenskspråkiga kring en egen identitet. Den kanske främsta banerföraren för de svenska strävandena var Axel Olof Freudenthal. Han och hans gelikar lyckades samla de svenskspråkiga kring tanken att svenskan hade ett egenvärde. Finlandssvenskarna både i Österbotten och i södra Finland hittade sig själva." From this speech. Therefore you can't say that Finland-Swedes were an important group in 1600-1900: they did not exist then, they were merely Finns with Swedish as their mother language --Jaakko Sivonen 00:10, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
<sigh> Topelius was born in a monolingual Swedish speaking town of Swedish speaking parents and grew up speaking Swedish. It's true that the term Finlandssvensk was introduced quite late. Just like the term Italian, Croat, Swiss, Belgian etc. If we can call Dante an Italian author we can do the same thing with Finland-Swedes. These days we often use terms such as Italian or German when refering to people who today would be included in that nationality, so the same principle goes here. And up to 1809, these people were of course Swedes, living in the Kingdom of Sweden. It also seems like Jaakko wishes to forget that the term Finnish is quite young as well. Finns identified as Carelians, Hämelaiset, Savolaiset and other groups, just as people did all across Europe. People generally started to identify in terms of nationalities in the 19th century, and that does not apply just to Finland-Swedes. Oh, and using swear words for people you don't like doesn't exactly increase your credibility.JdeJ 09:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Neither does Svecomania increase your credibility... Uusikaarlepyy is bilingual by the way and Topelius' family originated from Liminka, a definately unilingual Finnish municipality. Topelius for example fought for the status of Finnish as an official language. "Topelius osasi erittäin hyvin suomea ja hän ajoi lehdellään itsenäisen, mutta kaksikielisen Suomen aatetta." From here. Finns always shared for example the common language and culture, which means that Finns were always a people. --Jaakko Sivonen 19:46, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm not a Svecoman. In sharp contrast to you, I'm not driven by a nationalistic agenda. It's not like I go around changing the names of cities to versions not used in English or take every opportunity to attack Finnish speakers. You use Wikipedia as a tool for your personal hatred towards Swedes. Nykarleby is well over 90% Swedish and was even closer to 100% at the time Topelius was born. His grandfather's grandfather was born in a Finnish place, sure enough. He himself didn't speak Finnish.JdeJ 20:34, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Only Swedish was official for hundreds of years in a land where the overwhelming majority always spoke Finnish. That is racism and apartheid. How would you like it if Arabic would be made the only official language in Sweden and it would be the only language used in adminstration, court and education? --Jaakko Sivonen 00:10, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
No, that's not true. Swedish was the official language of the Swedish empire and Swedish speakers were always the largest group of people in that empire. JdeJ 09:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
In Finland Finnish speakers were always in the majority and still the only official language was Swedish (=racism). --Jaakko Sivonen 19:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
There was no country called Finland in that time. JdeJ 20:34, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Of course there was, it just wasn't independent. --Jaakko Sivonen 22:42, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Not only that it wasn't independent, it didn't even have any fixed borders. Finland as understood today came into being in 1809.JdeJ 23:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
So? There weren't defined borders but Finland was that part of the land which had Finnish speakers. --Jaakko Sivonen 16:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Since noone else has said anything opposing, I take it you have a point. To inform you about me -- I don't care about promoting Swedish or Swedish-Finnish; I live in Skåne and couldn't care less. If you are right I think you should just add it to the article, now that you have references and all... add them too... / Fred-Chess 00:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
But stop this rubbish about Arabic and apartheid . Keep factual and accurate and it will be much easier for you to be taken serious. / Fred-Chess 00:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV article

Finland Swedes are not Finns, they are Swedes living in Finland that are citizens of Finland. Thus, this article is completely POV. For example, check this webpage by a Finland Swede, you could hardly argue that he consider himself being a Finn. Den fjättrade ankan 19:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

This is the opinion of only you and him so far; not a large enough minority to deserve any mention in an encyclopedia. Obviously there are more of your kind, but you're part of an extremely small group of people and it seems most of you do not live in Finland and know nothing about Finland or its Swedish-speaking citizens. If you cannot find better sources to back up your completely wild and erroneous claims, i will remove the unfounded NPOV tag from the article.
As shown by the many reputable sources and personal comments in the discussions above, almost all Swedish-speaking Finns do not consider themselves Swedes. You are insulting them badly by trying to present them as something that they do not consider themselves to be and that they are not in any genetic, sociological, ethnic, cultural, or any other sense. To repeat just one important point that shows you're completely wrong with your claims: most Swedish-speaking Finns descend from Finnish-speaking people who switched their names and language to Swedish because this opened up better job opportunities and enabled them to rise in society.
The only kind of people that could be called "Finland Swedes" in English are immigrants from Sweden living in Finland, and then it's better English to call them Swedish immigrants or Swedish Finns depending on whether or not they've acquired Finnish citizenship. --Espoo 21:42, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I probably know more Finland Swedes and have spoken to more Finland Swedes than you ever will. The fact is that Finnish nationalists like you try to make the Finland Swedes be Finns against their own wish. They consider themselves Finland Swedes, not Finns. I have never met a Finland Swede calling himself or herself a Finn. On the contrary, they call themselves Finland Swedes or just Swedes. And no, most Finland Swedes do not descend from Finnish-speaking families, they have arrived to Finland from Sweden, often long before the Finns did. And more Finland Swedes have changed to Finnish than the other way around. Please take your Finnish nationalist propaganda out of Wikipedia, it does not belong here. Den fjättrade ankan 22:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
If your views are not those of an extremely eccentric and extremely small minority, you'll be able to present us with reputable sources that say the same. Until then, it'd be best if you don't call me something i'm not and that most Swedish-speaking Finns would find insulting. You're lucky i'm a US American and do not feel insulted and only amused by your unfounded and ridiculous claims about Finland's Swedish-speaking population and about myself. If you don't present anything except private opinions by you and other unqualified individuals, i will remove the unfounded NPOV tag that is in fact a Swedish nationalist POV that is not based on facts and does not belong in an encyclopedia. Numerous reputable sources support the article's content and you have not presented any to support your wild claims. --Espoo 22:51, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I hardly think a US American would misspell the word "I". BTW, you haven't presented any credible sources yourself, only your opinions (and no, Finnish nationalist web pages does not count). And IF you were a US American, I hardly think you have ever met a Finland Swede, so you don't know what you are talking about. Just read the prior discussions on this page and you'll see that many Finland Swedes object to being called Finns. This alone deserve the name of this article to be changed since it is not NPOV now, whatever you Finnish nationalists think. Den fjättrade ankan 23:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
First of all, you haven't read at all or carefully and haven't understood anything explained in the article in great detail about naming conventions in English. Even if Swedish-speaking Finns were a Swedish ethnic minority like the Swedish immigrants in the USA, it would still be incorrect or at least very old-fashioned and completely misleading to call them "Swedes" or "Finland Swedes" or "anything Swedes" in English. Swedish immigrants are called "Swedish Americans", not "US Swedes", and any attempt to defend such terminology would show that you're presenting a ridiculous private opinion.
And if you're seriously claiming that the Swedish Assembly of Finland and the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland are "Finnish nationalist web pages", then you're even more eccentric and ridiculous than i thought. Unless you present at least one reputable source for your claims by tomorrow, i will remove your trolling NPOV tag. BTW, i've been living in Finland for a very long time, and i've never met anyone with your eccentric views.
I'm a professional copyeditor, and i reserve the right to spell English any way i see fit in my private correspondence. I have never used the more modern and more polite spelling "i" instead of "I" in any professional work or in WP articles because it is not yet recorded in dictionaries, but you can be sure that these will both change very soon. --Espoo 23:48, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Take it from me Espoo (or Esbo in Swedish) I am a Finland-Swede, and I am not a Finn. Why would I be? "Finn" is someone whose first language and ethnicity is Finnish, mine is not - it is Swedish, and I am a Finnish citizen...I am therefore a Finland-Swede, and I have all the right in the world to call myself that. You say you are a US American, following your logic I could call you an native Indian. --MoRsE 00:01, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi MoRsE, welcome to the discussion, especially since you are one of the people this article is about! (Den fjättrade ankan has apparently lived in Sweden all his/her life.) All modern scientists, including linguists and lexicologists, and lexicographers consider self-designation the most important criterion in naming groups of people. We do have to take into consideration, however, that people are not necessarily able to represent their wishes well in a foreign language. I have no idea what you're trying to say with "following your logic I could call you an native Indian". Do you agree that it is correct to call ethnic Swedes living in the USA "Swedish Americans"? Do you agree that it would be incorrect to call them "US Swedes"?

What would you estimate is the percentage of Swedish-speaking Finns that share your opinion that they would like to be called "Swedes"? Are you implying that the Swedish Assembly of Finland and the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland are not representing the wishes of the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns and of all Swedish authors in Finland respectively?

BTW your unilateral page move is in violation of WP policies and will be reverted by an admin shortly. --Espoo 01:01, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

From my experience, it is a clear majority of the Swedish speaking population in Finland that describe themselves as Finland Swedes when it comes to language issues and ethnic issues .
This is obviously nonsense because otherwise the Swedish Assembly of Finland would not be using exclusively "Swedish-speaking Finns". You are clearly representing the opinion of a very small minority. In addition, many of these have incorrect ideas about what "Swedish-speaking" or "Italian-speaking" etc. mean in English and many don't know what normal English usage is for all other similar situations.
Comment: Hey, I am a Finland Swede, and I have been actively working with these issues since 2001, (e.g. cooperation with the said organization Swedish Assembly of Finland), so I should know these issues. Your view is not the real view, as the situation is as I tried to explain.
This comment is completely illogical. If that organisation has decided to use "Swedish-speaking Finns" and stop using the old-fashioned and misleading term, then their opinion is obviously the consensus among the people represented by them. So you are obviously representing a minority opinion. In addition, you still haven't answered my questions, which i'll repeat here:
Do you agree that it is correct to call ethnic Swedes living in the USA "Swedish Americans"? Do you agree that it would be incorrect to call them "US Swedes"?
What would you estimate is the percentage of Swedish-speaking Finns that share your opinion that they would like to be called "Swedes"? Are you implying that the Swedish Assembly of Finland and the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland are not representing the wishes of the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns and of all Swedish authors in Finland respectively?
The problem is that usually the terminology does not consider "language" when naming a group of people like the Finland Swedes. They are of Finnish nationality and are Finns when we're leaving out the linguistic issue. When we deal with linguistic issues, it is important to know that we are not Swedes, as that would imply that we have a Swedish nationality, which we don't have ("Swedish speaker" is although sometimes used). Swedish Finns is not correct either as this is used to for the large group of ethnic Finns that reside in Sweden (to complicate it further, there are also Sweden Finland Swedes (Finland Swedes who have moved to Sweden).
These designations are dealt with in the article. They are not correct in modern English in the sense you want to use them. It is irrelevant that they are often used incorrectly in English texts produced outside of English-speaking countries, i.e. in Finland and Sweden.
Comment: The term Finland-Swede is not incorrect, see e.g. the European Commission document [7] , the official European Union bureau for lesser used languages (EBLUL) news agency document: [8]. (The latter use both versions)
Yes, they show the shift to the new terminology, and this shift is described in the WP article now. "Finland Swedes" is misleading and old-fashioned and the linguist and the geography professor as well as the Swedish-speaking Finns who participated in the requested move discussion above agreed that it should no longer be used. As explained in the WP article right now, the modern naming method is exclusively used in the USA and also used in the UK. That means that we can mention both, but we should base the usage in the article and its title on the one acceptable in all English-speaking countries, especially when this is the more modern one and the one used by the most representative organisation of this minority.
"Swedish-speaking Finn" is a problematic term, which leaves the question of ethnicity unsolved, e.g. by "Finnish author" most would believe he writes in Finnish, by "Finland-Swedish author" we know that the person is from Finland and that he/she writes in Swedish.
The question of ethnicity is clear for most "Swedish-speaking Finns" except you and a very small minority; most consider themselves Finns, not Swedes. The language is called "Finland Swedish" and that is why an author writing in that language can be called a "Finland Swedish author"; it has nothing to do with the name of the people. In correct English, the order of the words is different when talking about the people or the language in such situations. The correct English designations are that Swiss German is spoken by German Swiss and correspondingly that "Finland Swedish" is spoken by "Swedish Finns" or "Swedish-speaking Finns". (Edit: which can also be said "Finnish Swedish is spoken by Swedish Finns", as explained in the article.)
Clarifying You are mixing up nationality and ethnicity here. Yes, most consider them being of Finnish nationality - that I agree on, but I can guarantee you that only a fraction would call themselvelves "Finns" when it comes to defining something that has to do with the language. And, yes, Finland Swedes are a different etnicity, the same goes for Ingrians, Somali, Finns, Swedes etc, that live in Finland too. MoRsE 11:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
only a fraction would call themselvelves "Finns" when it comes to defining something that has to do with the language - I never said anything of the sort. The following sentence was talking about ethnicity: The question of ethnicity is clear for most "Swedish-speaking Finns" except you and a very small minority; most consider themselves Finns, not Swedes. If you can find reputable sources supporting your claim, we can add it to the article. So far we have no proof that this is not the eccentric view of only a very small group.
And the following sentence was talking about the language; i never mixed them up, on the contrary i was unravelling your confusion of the two: The language is called "Finland Swedish" and that is why an author writing in that language can be called a "Finland Swedish author"; it has nothing to do with the name of the people.
The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland is not only old-fashioned and provincial in still advocating "Finland Swedes" when the majority of these people have rejected it and when it isn't correct English; the institute is also using incorrect/sloppy English in recommending "Finland-Swedish as an adjective" without saying for what. It's simply incorrect English to say "Swiss German people are called 'Swiss Germans' and speak Swiss German". Correct English is that "German Swiss people are called 'German Swiss' and speak Swiss German".
Commenting: It is your view that they are "old fashioned". They are de facto a State insititution and the ruling body on how to use the languages of Finland. Their opinions weighs very heavy here. MoRsE 11:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
They are not authorities on English terminology! The native English linguist and geography professor quoted above already carry more weight. In addition, the institute confusingly and amateurishly uses different terms on different pages and even on the same page. (will quote later, server down just now) --Espoo 14:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
When we need to separate the groups for some reason, the terms Finn ("Finne" = Finnish speaker), Finland Swede ("Svensk" = Swedish speaker) and Finlander ("Finländare"=linguistically neutral neutral) are used here (The oldest use of this that I know of is from 1820 from S:t Petersburg, where the Russians used this system to separate Finnish speaking individuals in Finland and other ethic groups like Swedes, Russians, Germans etc. "Finlander" implies that there is a linguistic/ethnic issue when used. Likewise there are Estonian Swedes, American Swedes are not being used, as the term Swedish descendants are used. MoRsE 01:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
This is all incorrect or non-existent English. You cannot apply habits and expressions from foreign languages to English. And some of these were never used in some foreign languages either (Finländare in Sweden, as i seem to remember from old discussions above), and some of them have been abandoned now. And "Swedish descendants" is just as non-existent as "American Swedes" for what have been called "Swedish Americans" for many generations. --Espoo 06:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
You didn't answer my questions.
Your edits and page moves constitute vandalism because they delete important and valid information and violate WP policies on approved RMs and achieved consensus. The fact that you're an admin at the Swedish WP means that these are very serious offenses. You knew exactly what you were doing. --Espoo 01:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
It was in the middle of the night and I have a work to take care of too, I don't have the possibility to sit here all night. MoRsE 11:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's any need to start talking about vandalism. MoRsE, it seems you have some good reasons to suggest that Finland-Swedes is a better name for the article. If that's the case, then we'll want to move the article correctly, with all of its history, and doing that will require administrative assistance. Since this is clearly a controversial move proposal - we've got people defending both names - we'll need to use the Requested Moves procedure to determine consensus. MoRsE, are you familiar with Wikipedia:Requested moves? If you follow the procedures there, we can have a focused discussion on whether or not to move the page, and we can consider everybody's arguments and make sure everyone has a chance to be heard, and then we'll make a decision. I've undone the "cut-and-paste" move you did, MoRsE, and let's have the discussion before we move any pages. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:58, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The most recent 13 entries in my admin log are a good testament to why cut-and-paste moves are a bad idea. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Somehow someone had managed to vote through a page move of this article, a move that was and is wrong. This target page consisted only of redirect links and could thus not be moved in a normal manner, I tried to contact some admin in the English wikipedia IRC channel, but noone was around. I was concerned about the history, but decided to move it anyway in order to raise the question. The page should be temporarliy be moved back to preserve the history and then in a correct manner be moved here. MoRsE 11:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, to move it "in a correct manner" involves using the procedures at Wikipedia:Requested moves. I hope you refrain from doing cut-and-paste moves to "raise the question" in the future. Raising a question by bringing it up on the talk page creates much less unnecessary work for someone like myself. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:53, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for reverting MoRsE's unilateral changes. MoRsE's "reasons" and the source he provided and its opinion were already dealt with and cited in the article before he simply removed a large part and ignored the exceptionally well-supported RM on the same discussion page. Being an admin, he certainly knows what an RM is and knows about the need for an RM since he could see one had just been carried out and could see that his unilateral move had recently been reverted by an admin.
In the case of a normal user, such actions might be just being bold, but in the hands of an admin they seem to be in clear violation of the content and spirit of basic WP policies. And since an admin knows that cut-and-paste moves hide the history and prevent normal users from restoring older versions, it would seem MoRsE not only violated WP policies but in effect destroyed community efforts, which definitely is vandalism. --Espoo 05:03, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I couldn't care less what makes you conclude that MoRsE's move was "vandalism". I will not entertain that conversation. Even if you're right, it's not a productive line of argument. It is very clear to me that MoRsE believes that this page should be located at Finland-Swedes, and I don't see any evidence that his goal is to degrade the quality of the encyclopedia. The correct next step is hear and consider MoRsE's reponses to your arguments, and not move any more pages unless we have a consensus to do so. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:25, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

A couple of things which I think we all could agree on:

  1. everyone should be able to agree that this is obviously a controversial topic where no clear-cut answer exists
  2. biologically, Swedish and Finnish speaking groups in Finland have become mixed
  3. culturally, there clearly are differences, as language is an important aspect of culture
  4. during the late middle ages, there was considerable settlement of groups from Sweden proper on the coast of Finland
  5. some Finland-Swedes consider themselves to be a separate ethnic group from Finnish speaking Finlanders while others don't
  6. Finland-Swedes, as a linguistic group, have some constitutionally enshrined rights
  7. in Swedish (also in 'Finland-Swedish') there is a difference between being a Finn (sv. "finne") and being a 'Finlander' ("Finländare), with the former only including Finnish speaking Finns and the latter also including Finland-Swedes. A bit like Bosnians includes all ethnic groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina while Bosniak only includes Bosnian-muslims.

Based on the above, I'm definately leaning towards Finland-Swedes being a different ethnic group (with ethnicity defined as different culture, in this case, language).KarlXII 10:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


Hello everyone,

This is obviously a controversy. In the interests of trying to forge some type of agreement I've dug up some material, first an official Finnish view, second comments from the Swedish People's Party and finally, Google results for various name forms. The first of from the very offical Virtual Finland website. It recognizes that there are two views, but clearly prefers the view that Finland-Swedes are only a linguistic minority, not an ethnic minority.

As language is actually the basic or even the only criterion that distinguishes these two groups from each other, it is more correct to speak of Finnish- speakers and Swedish-speakers in Finland instead of Finns and Finland Swedes. Nowadays the most common English term denoting the latter group is ‘the Swedish-speaking Finns’.

The Swedish People's Party (Sfp), the leading party among Finland-Swedes/Swedish speaking Finns, appart from the very name implying that there is a separate "Swedish people" in Finland talks about Swedish culture and a separate Finland-Swedish identity in its party program (here in Swedish):

Vår nation genomsyras sedan flera sekler av såväl den svenska som den finska kulturen. Finlandssvenskheten är en hörnpelare i det nationella kultur- och samhällsbygget.

While Finland Swedes will feel themselves to be full citizens of Finland and that Finland is their 'motherland' they do have a separate identity to that of Finnish speaking Finns. Some would argue that this constitutes the basis for being an ethnic minority, wile other say it is simply a cultural and linguistic minority. So, there are different views on the topic. However, as Wikipedia is supposed to convey the most common view rather than the 'right' one I opt for letting Google decide. Searching in English but excluding all hits including the word "Wikipedia" gives the following results:

  • "Swedish speaking Finns" -Wikipedia: 13,400 hits [9]
  • "Swedish Finns" -Wikipedia: 571 hits [10]
  • "Finland Swedes" -Wikipedia 580 hits [11]
    • Correction 10,400 hits [12] (MoRsE)
      • Your correction is incorrect and ignores KarlXII's whole point of excluding reference to Wikipedia. --Espoo 15:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
        • Okay, doing it again, excluding wikipedia, result 188.000 hits! [13]--MoRsE 15:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
          • Wrong again; your search is for the language, not the people ("187 000 vid sökning efter Finland-Swedish -wikipedia."). KarlXII's results are correct: [Finland Swedes" -Wikipedia 580 hits --Espoo 16:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Searching for "Finland-Swedes" and excluding "Wikipedia" does indeed give577 hits. You have to put the "Finland-Swedes" in citation marks. The hyphen makes no difference.KarlXII 08:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

So, while I agree that the article should be called "Swedish speaking Finns" it should (a) aknowledge that there are other views and (b) be clear that while it may not be an ethnic minority, it clearly a speparate linguistic and cultural minority.KarlXII 10:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good, but we need reputable sources to back up these claims. I suggest you call professors at at least one university in Finland and Sweden and ask for sources. --Espoo 15:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo and others, I don't see this as a right or wrong issues, I see it as "what is the current common practice?" What matters is not if Swedish speaking Finns (who presumably call themselves "Finländare" in Swedish, for which there is not good English equivalent) are genetically different from ethnic Finns or not or if they have a different historical geographic origin from Finnish speaking Finns. What is important is how the majority of Swedish speaking Finns view themselves today. While historically Swedish speaking Finns may have viewed themselves as a separate ethnic group from the Finnish speakers, this is, generally, not the case today. Are German speaking Swiss "ethnically" different from French speaking Swiss? However, in both cases there is a very clear linguistic difference and a certain cultural difference (which is strongly linked with the linguistic difference).

So, I see no need to contact any professors for sources. Better to agree on the following:

  1. calling the group "Swedish speaking Finns", but also give the other variant used: "Finland Swedes", "Finlanders", etc.
  2. stating that the Finnish state and the majority of Swedish speaking Finns do not see themselves as a distinct ethnic group but rather as a separate linguistic and cultural group. Maybe it might even be appropriate to mention the Swiss example above, I don't know.
  3. stating that Swedish speaking communities (or, rather, their ancestor, the Suiones/Svear) had arrived in western Finland already in pre-historic times and continued to settle after that, but that, following long periods of mixing and intermarriage etc with Finno-Ugrik peoples, there are now few genetic differences (are there any, I don't know).

How about it?KarlXII 08:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I can live with no 1 if the alternative is clearly mentioned in the opening paragraph. Nos 2 and 3 I agree on.--MoRsE 09:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


In order to state things like "the majority of Swedish speaking Finns do not see themselves as a distinct ethnic group but rather as a separate linguistic and cultural group" we do need a reputable source, especially because we will need to be able to present contradicting views with the appropriate weight. If the contradicting views are only those of an extremely small and eccentric group, they cannot be presented as an equally widespread opinion, but we can't just claim this is a very rare opinion without sources that report research on these opinions. More importantly for the present discussion, two participants have claimed that this view is the more common one. You and i and most other participants of prior discussions on this page know this is nonsense, but we can't claim it's a rare opinion without at least one reputable source.
In addition, we also need at least one reputable source to be able to claim that the opinion you and most others here feel to be much more common is also more valid in a scientific sense. In other words we do need a reputable source to be able to claim what you wrote ("clear that while it may not be an ethnic minority, it clearly a speparate linguistic and cultural minority")
We have enough reputable sources to claim that "Swedish-speaking Finns" is preferred by native English experts on the topic and preferred by the organisation that apparently best i.e. most comprehensively represents these people, the Swedish Assembly of Finland. The opinions of non-native English speakers on what is correct English or what term should be used to designate them in English are not really relevant, but we can add the comment that "Finlander" does not exist in English and is Swenglish/Finglish, and the erroneous belief that "Swedish-speaking" also means non-native speakers is already mentioned and can be explained in more detail in the article. --Espoo 10:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo and others, I'm in agreement with you. Except I do feel that enough arguments and sources have been presented above to convince me that the term "Swedish speaking Finns" is correct. No need to call any professors (I'm not sure that would necessarily be seen as more convincing than any of the above arguments/sources). So, let's settle on the following:

  1. the "Swedish speaking Finns" wording, using the surces above
  2. that there are other wordings as well, such as eg "Finland Swedes", "Finlanders" etc. No need to say that these are "extrememely rare" or "incorrect". Just say that the "Swedish speaking Finns" is the most common one.
  3. state that the Swedish speaking Finns today are defined, and define themselves, as a distinct linguistic and cultural group, though not necessarily a distinct ethnic group. Again there are those who disagree. No need to characterize how many or if they are "eccentric", this will only lead to unnecessary provocations and discussions.

Are we all OK with this? Let's wait a couple of days (say, towards the weekend) and then implement the above on the related articles (Finnish people, Swedish speaking Finns, to name a few).KarlXII 10:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

KarlXII, you're confusing issues that i tried hard to keep separate. I already said that we have enough sources for the naming issue but we don't have any for the ethnic, cultural, or other claims. Those latter claims are the ones we need the reputable sources for. Not the least important reason being that we can let this article's editing start to again reflect the calm surrounding this issue normally in Finland. People are upset about pakkoruotsi but nobody does anything but laugh about the kind of claims of NPOV we will encounter regularly from Swedish nationalists (and the time wasted on repeated RMs etc.) if we don't have reputable sources on ethnic, cultural, genetic, language-switching percentages, and related issues.

More specifically, i have read on at least 3 occasions in Helsingin Sanomat about research showing that there are "surprising" and statistically very significant differences in suicide rates and disease rates between Swedish and Finnish speakers in Finland despite the lack of statistically significant differences in terms of income, education, or genetic makeup between these population groups. This kind of research shows that there are clear cultural differences including more and closer family ties, greater willingness/ability to communicate (talk), and a stronger sense of responsibility for others which all result in better care, less loneliness, and basically "better vibes". I don't remember if these studies were able to or even tried to show if the stronger sense of community and better vibes and better health were due to cultural traditions or caused by the feeling of being a minority and being forced to stick up for their rights and each other.

And, once again, we cannot present "Finlander" as just another possible or even traditional name without explaining that this does not exist except in texts badly translated by non-native English speakers. --Espoo 11:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo:

  1. I misunderstood you earlier. My apologies. I agree that we have enough information to settle the language issue but not enough to settle the cultural and ethnic differences (the language differences are obvious)
  2. I'm not sure what the pakkoruotsi you are referring to is/means or its relevance here.
  3. I don't think the view that the Swedish speaking Finns are a different ethnic group to be a "Swedish nationlist" view. Difficult to tell which is the 'natinalist view' - to say that Swedish speakers in Finland are actually Swedish or if it is a Finnish nationalist view to say that Swedish speakers are just Finns who switched to Swedish for reasons of historical convenience or to say that Swedish speakers are a separate ethnic group from the Finnish speakers (a bit like the controversy about whether Bosniaks are a separate ethnic group or just Serbs/Croats who have converted to islam to gain benefits from the Ottomans). Let's keep the nationalism discussions/accusations out of this forum.
  4. "Finlander" may be a bad (and that's an opinion) translation of a Swedish word, but that doesn't stop it from being common. Again, a Google search for "Finlander" in English yields some 38,700 hits [14] (though a lot of these may not refer to the meaning we're discussing here).
  5. I agree, let's see if we can find any good sources referring to any possible genetic and/or cultural differences (apart from the language). In that case, the Swedish speaking Finns would definately classify as a separate ethnic group in the common understanding of that word, even though that is not the common view in Finland (either among Finnish or Swedish speakers).

RegardsKarlXII 13:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Google, especially combined with WP, is your friend. By putting site:wikipedia.org pakkoruotsi into Google (or adding the relevant search engine to your browser) you'd have found http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakkoruotsi and the link to Mandatory Swedish. Honestly not trying to give you a hard time, but if there's one Finnish word a Swede should know, it's this. It's killing Swedish in Finland, as has mandatory study of any language in any country throughout history, and the Finns have shown special talent in being stubborn with Russian. Instead of getting people to want to learn Swedish (for example by reserving one job in every public office for a truly fluent speaker), Swedish is being made into something repulsive. It's horrible to see what cultural damage both stupid politics and nationalism still cause today even in so-called civilised countries.
  • I don't think so either, as you can see by my detailed example of research that proves the contrary. But you seem to have forgotten what started this debate. The following kind of wild claim will resurface regularly and we and other future editors will have to desperately search around for a reputable source to prevent a possible requested move: "Finland Swedes are not Finns, they are Swedes living in Finland that are citizens of Finland."
  • It's not just any old opinion; it's an informed opinion of a professional copyeditor based on actual usage in well-edited English texts. "Finlander" is today plain bad (or very outdated) English and not used by native English speakers, especially not in well-edited texts.
  • I remember enough about relevant newspaper articles to be pretty sure that you're barking up the wrong tree with the genetic issue. As i already wrote despite the lack of statistically significant differences in terms of income, education, or genetic makeup between these population groups. --Espoo 14:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo: I'd like to draw some conclusions. So, do we decide on the following:

  1. we'll set "Swedish speaking Finns" as the norm thoughout Wikipedia, but mention that finländare, Finland-Swedes etc also exist and are used. "Finlander" should be mentioned, since it appears to be quite common, even though it's not a proper English word (which we should say, rather than saying that it's "bad" Englis, but that's a minor point).
  2. that the Swedish speaking Finns today usually consider themselves to be ethnic Finns (we should link to the pages referred to above, both the Virtual Finland website and the Swedish speaking associations referred to) but also mention that this has not always been the case and that there is a debate/controversy about their origins compared to the Finnish speaking population (see this article on Finnish DNA analysis is quite interesting, although it doesn't say anything differences, or lack thereof, between Swedish and Finnish speakers. This article, in Swedish by I'm not sure who, does deal with the issue though)

OK?KarlXII 15:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


KarlXII, that "Swedish-speaking Finns" is the best term was already decided in this article's successful and very recent requested move. This move was exceptionally well supported by reputable sources, a majority of votes (all 5, in fact), and even participation and voting by professional experts on the topic, which is very rare on WP. There also already was a long explanation in the article explaining why it's the best term before this newest claim of violation of NPOV started. Obviously the supporters of this claim did not take seriously the arguments presented in the requested move. They perhaps didn't even bother to read them because their haphazard edits of the article showed that they hadn't bothered to read that either.

Obviously, we could have just reverted the unsupported changes and refused to respond to the accusations here on the talk page in any way except to demand sources for the wild claims. I however find it's better to take everyone seriously who bothers to state their case even when they don't supply reputable sources. The only source they provided is the same one you just listed too, which only has information in Swedish (which i don't understand) and is apparently written by an amateur with a private theory. He doesn't present this theory even on his Finnish pages, but what he writes in Finnish about family names shows that he is not an expert nor interested in unbiased reporting of historical research.

As for the rest of your proposed point #1:

- Finland-Swedes is an incorrect or at least outdated spelling for Finland Swedes

- We cannot say that finländare exists or is used in English because it isn't. We can say that this term is apparently used in Finland Swedish but not in Swedish (as far as i remember the discussions and other WP articles). We can say that this means "Finlander" but we should point out that this is term is not used in well-edited English texts. In fact, i can try to find some reputable source that says what is in fact the case, that this is an outdated term that labels its user as ignorant. You're right that when used by uninformed English speakers it should not be labeled as "bad" English, and i was specifically referring to texts written by non-native speakers. In that context, even linguists speak about "bad" English although they also use that term only on talk pages, as i did too. I was obviously not proposing use of that terminology in the article. When native speakers use a form that used to be called "bad" or "wrong" by linguists and still are by school teachers, modern linguists explain that that is unscientific because all "rules" and "correct English" are exclusively statistically more common and that they are continuously replaced by forms once considered incorrect once these become more common. This does not apply to people trying to use a foreign language though. Even if most Finns (both Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking Finns) and Swedes used the term “Finlander” in trying to speak and write English (very few do), WP should not say that this is an acceptable form if it is not used in carefully edited English texts (which even in Finland of course follow usage in English-speaking countries).

Your point #2: We already have enough reputable sources (and I found some more) to claim that Swedish-speaking Finns today usually consider themselves to be ethnic Finns, but we have no reputable sources that support other claims. We have private claims by two participants in this discussion that the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns don’t think of themselves as ethnic Finns and even don’t think of themselves as Finns and even think of themselves as Swedes. These are private opinions that are clearly incorrect as to their claims of representing the views of “most” and “all” Swedish-speaking Finns etc. and apparently represent an extremely small minority. I’m not sure what WP policy is on theories and opinions presented by extremely small groups of people. It would seem that these opinions cannot be presented in WP unless they have some kind of reputable source to back them up. I’m pretty sure that these people cannot find any serious researcher employed at any major institution that would back these claims. Obviously private pages written by amateur historians and other blog-like sources do not qualify as reputable sources. The only thing that might seem to suffice is if there were some kind of private organisation that printed material with these wild claims; then we could quote those eccentric claims and put them into the correct perspective by saying that the organisation has X number of members and that the Swedish Assembly of Finland has said Y and Z about these claims. --Espoo 10:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo, I think you are being a bit too dogmatic/absolute on a couple of topics:

  1. "Finland-Swedes" certainly does exist in English and is fairly common. It, apparently, used to be the most common term. However, today "Swedish speaking Finns" appears to be the more commonly used term. Finlandssvenskar is certainly the most common term in Swedish (to say svensktalande finländare is not so common). No need to be so black and white as you are making it out to be.
  2. "finländare" certainly is used in Swedish (both in Finland and in Sweden, though the distinction is not as common) and is sometimes translated into Finlander in English. You are right, WP should state that this is not a proper English word.
  3. as for the ethnic Finns or not discussion, I think it is sufficient to say that most Finland Swedes consider themselves to be Finnish but with a separate linguistic and cultural identity (finländare rather than finnar, in their own words).
  • Since the term 'ethnic group' is so vague (most people would say that if you have a different language and, to a certain extent, different culture you are a separate ethnic group, while in this case it seems too harsh) this is probably best left unstated. No need to talk about 'extreme' minorities etc
  • Perhaps just state that there appear to be very few consistent genetic differences between Swedish and Finnish speakers.

KarlXII 12:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


KarlXII, it seems you're again misunderstanding things i wrote or i'm writing them badly. I never said anything that contradicted what you're saying above. I have no idea why you think i'm being "dogmatic/absolute". It seems that you didn't realise that most of my post was not dealing with your comments but with the opinions of the people who started this debate without anything except incorrect personal claims and theories about what Swedish-speaking Finns are and consider themselves to be. I feel responsible for dealing with their comments in a mature way even if they've disappeared.

I never said "Finland Swedes" doesn't exist in English nor that it isn't fairly common. Nevertheless, i think it has never been as common in texts written by native English speakers as in English texts written by Finns and Swedes, and i think that many times native English speakers especially in the USA used it only because they copied the usage in English by Finns and Swedes although it was/is illogical according to the naming usage in use in the USA. I believe the term was even rarer in carefully edited texts by native English experts who weren't just rephrasing things they'd heard non-native speakers say about this exotic topic. I have no idea where i was "being black and white". I was simply pointing out that i agree with your proposal "we'll set 'Swedish speaking Finns' as the norm thoughout Wikipedia" because that "was already decided in this article's successful and very recent requested move". Nothing new in your proposal or my agreement, and definitely nothing dogmatic or black and white, just an attempt to defend our decision despite being against the wishes of the ghost participants in this discussion. Most of the rest of my post was also trying to point out that you and i agree on almost everything, but that we have to deal with the people who started this debate and have now disappeared and will suddenly appear again sometime in the future with the same claims and the same lack of reputable sources to back up their claims.

You know much more than me about the frequency of usage of "finländare" in Swedish and i specifically said "We can say that this term is apparently used in Finland Swedish but not in Swedish (as far as i remember the discussions and other WP articles)." Perhaps i remembered incorrectly or maybe the claims to that effect by others were wrong, but once again, nothing dogmatic in my post.

I also agree with most of your third point now because i seem to have convinced you to drop the previous idea of saying that although Swedish-speaking Finns today usually consider themselves to be ethnic Finns "this has not always been the case and that there is a debate/controversy about their origins compared to the Finnish speaking population". Since we have no reputable sources for these claims, we cannot put them into an encyclopedia. The same problem is with "appear to be very few consistent genetic differences". As long as we have no reputable source for that, we can't add it. On the other hand, http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomenruotsalaiset claims that the genetic makeup is 80% identical and no one has removed that claim, so we can probably copy it here. In fact, there are quite a few other interesting things in the Finnish WP article, and since most Swedish-speaking Finns speak Finnish fluently, we can be pretty sure that there is nothing in that article that the majority of them would disagree with. I will start to transfer info from there and provide any sources that i have. You may want to do similar translation and copy work from the Swedish article. If we run into serious disagreements, we can ask for comments exclusively by Swedish-speaking Finns (and no Swedes) on the relevant talk pages. --Espoo 23:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing History page

I'm editing the parts of the History section which discusses the 'ethnic' background of the Swedish speaking population of Finland, mainly because it is not properly sourced.

The first source, written by a Finnish professor in Japan about the situatin of Koreans in Japan has several shortcomings which means it's not a sufficient source for the claims made:

  1. only mentions the background of the Swedish speaking population as a side note, and provides no source for this.
  2. is not an academic or scientific paper, but a transcript of lecture (it starts "Good morning everyone")
  3. given that it includes sentences like "Fortunately the Finns and Swedes have been able to put behind them the long history of Swedish colonialism (1155-1809) and the political attempts of Sweden to dominate regional politics (the most serious incident for Finland being the Swedish attempt to occupy the Åland Islands immediately after the Finnish independence)" means it doesn't feel very NPOV.

The second source, which unfortunately is only in Finnish and Swedish but gives a much more serious/academic impression, only deals with cultural (ie not the 'ethnic' issues means here).

  1. it sets out the long and harmonious coexistence and integration between Swedish speaking and Finnish speaking culture in Finland and, as a result, the Swedish speakers do not consider themselves as a separate group in any other sense than linguistically (compared to eg roma or sami): "Den finlandssvenska kulturens djupa integration i det finländska samhället återspeglas också av det faktum att finlandssvenskarna som folkgrupp i hög grad identifierar sig som en språklig minoritet och inte som en folkgrupp med särskilda karakteristika, som till exempel samer och romer."
  2. it does not anywhere mention that the Swedish speakers are mainly descendants of Finnish speakers (or vice versa, which has also been argued, a f a i k).

Therefore I am removing the text referring to the Swedish speaking population descending from Finnish speakers.KarlXII 10:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


As for the switching between languages, this appears to have been a two-way street, so it's not necessarily so that most Swedish speakers have orginiated from Finnish speakers (or vice versa). This is from the Swedish and Finnish language source mentioned above:

"I Finland har bytet av språk gått åt bägge hållen – från finska till svenska och från svenska till finska – och så är fortsättningsvis fallet. Före cirka 1850-talet gick bytet oftare i riktning mot svenskan eftersom språket vid den tiden kunde innebära sociala och andra fördelar. Kring sekelskiftet 1900 har vi däremot många exempel på ett medvetet byte till finska av språk- och kulturpolitiska skäl. Sedan drygt 50 år går språkbytet emellertid i regel från svenska till finska närmast som en mer eller mindre omedveten följd av dominansförhållandena i en tvåspråkig miljö (Wallén 1932, Finnäs 1981, 1986, Tandefelt 1988)."

As far as I know it was also quite common for Swedish speaking families to switch to Finnish during the nationalist period during the early 19th century. KarlXII

Well it did happen sometimes, but I do not know how common it really was. And to be precise, it happened during the late 19th and early 20th century, and definitely not during the early 19th century.--217.112.249.156 19:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
What I meant was that...
  • since it was/has been a two-way street it would be incorrect for the article to only mention the switching which took place in one direction.
  • As for the numbers who switched in either direction, I have never seen any figures.KarlXII 13:13, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


KarlXII, it seems you didn't read or understand what i wrote above. I'll quote the relevant part here so that you can take a stand on my proposal, but it's not a good idea to not react to it at all and to simply delete the section i translated from the Finnish WP article:
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomenruotsalaiset claims that the genetic makeup is 80% identical and no one has removed that claim, so we can probably copy it here. In fact, there are quite a few other interesting things in the Finnish WP article, and since most Swedish-speaking Finns speak Finnish fluently, we can be pretty sure that there is nothing in that article that the majority of them would disagree with. I will start to transfer info from there and provide any sources that i have. You may want to do similar translation and copy work from the Swedish article. If we run into serious disagreements, we can ask for comments exclusively by Swedish-speaking Finns (and no Swedes) on the relevant talk pages.
And if you do nevertheless feel strongly about removing this section before asking for comments from the relevant talk pages of the Finnish and Swedish WP articles, there is no sense in removing the sources i provided. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The first source may not be the best possible, but it's better than nothing and it provides more insight into some aspects than the second source. In any case, your removal of the second is clearly uncalled for because it is an official document on the topic drawn up by a committee of experts for the Finnish Ministry of Justice. More importantly, it contains the important sentence "Swedish-speaking Finns, so-called Finland Swedes, are also genetically Finns and not Swedes", which definitely would defend use of the 80% figure, even though the source for that precise number is missing in the Finnish WP article. (I will simply write "most", which i hope you will agree is OK.) Just because you don't understand Finnish and only understand the Swedish parts doesn't mean you can claim this article doesn't say something that i translated from there. According to WP policy, it's perfectly OK to use this Finnish source until we find an English version of this information. It is not OK to delete it on the basis of your lack of understanding of its contents. The experts who drew up this document include some of the most reputable Swedish-speaking experts on the topic!
And the quote from the first article is also relevant until we find something better because it well describes generally accepted opinions on the issue by educated Finns. It is completely irrelevant whether this opinion is expressed in a scientific paper or a lecture or a different public address. I suggest you only remove this quote if you can find any Swedish-speaking professors at any Finnish university that would object to its contents. Even a professor of political science is more of an expert on the issue of ethnicity than anything else so far presented in this article as a reputable source.
And please do not quote Swedish texts here without providing a translation. --Espoo 15:10, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo, Gotta go, so I only have time for some comments:

  1. that the Finnish Wikipedia states that 80% of the genes are the same and that therefore Swedish speaking Finns must be 'ethnic' Finns isn't really very helpful here. Also, then there is not possibility for the editors here to scrutinize the source. Finally, most Europeans will have more or less the same DNA profiles. I'm not sure that "80% of their genes" is that relevant. E.g. What's the correlation between Swedes and Finns?
  2. you state that the second source mentions the "80%" figure - I can't find it. Which source are you referring to? Where in the text is it?
  3. I don't agree about the first source you mentioned. It doesn't come accross as very serious and only mentions the matter for which you are using it in passing. You claim that it's important because it "describes generally accepted opinions on the issue by educated Finns", well, how do we know that? And why the mention of "educated" Finns? Are you implying that those who disagree are "not educated"?

KarlXII 15:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


KarlXII, I neither used the figure 80% nor did i say the document contained it. I specifically said i'd replace it with "most" because the document can be interpreted as saying even more than 80%. Please tell me what part of the following explanation and quote from the document you didn't understand:

More importantly, it contains the important sentence "Swedish-speaking Finns, so-called Finland Swedes, are also genetically Finns and not Swedes", which definitely would defend use of the 80% figure, even though the source for that precise number is missing in the Finnish WP article. (I will simply write "most", which i hope you will agree is OK.)

You may be right that i should find a better way of introducing the second source than by using the word "educated", but the fact that something on such a central topic is publicly stated by a professor of political science means that this is most likely not just a personal opinion but an opinion based on the extensive research of many experts on the topic. Very many "less informed people" in both population groups in Finland (and in Sweden) say completely racist and stupid things about the other population group because they are not educated enough and therefore believe too much junk that they hear and read. If we find a quote from another well-informed person saying something that contradicts the current quote, we can of course add that, but i'm afraid we won't find anybody professor of any discipline that would say something like that. You're right that a political science professor is not the best expert to quote on this topic, but political science is also concerned with this topic, and no political science professor would state something on this topic without having read more on this topic than almost all WP editors ever will... --Espoo 16:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo, thank's for your respons. Unfortunately I'm not 100% clear here,

  1. well, someone brought up the 80% figure to justify the whole genetic issue. What document/source is referring to 80% / 'genetic' finns issue?
  2. I'm sorry, but the lecture notes of some professor on the situation of the Korean minority in Japan, where he makes a comparison to Finland, is not a good source. There are lots of professors out there with some very particular ideas and understndings of things which do not fit with the consensus.

KarlXII 23:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


KarlXII,

Why are you still talking about 80%? It's not in the article, so we don't need to find the source or hearsay that this claim in the Finnish WP article is (perhaps) based on. As i already pointed out, we have the statement by the committee of experts saying "Swedish-speaking Finns, so-called Finland Swedes, are also genetically Finns and not Swedes". Don't you understand what that means? That means Swedish-speaking Finns are genetically more or less identical to the Finnish-speaking Finns. If a small minority group's genotype is more or less identical to the majority's, that means that most of the minority's genes are inherited from the majority. We don't need a percentage; it's enough to say "most" to stop the wild claims of Swedish-speaking Finns being Swedes.

As for the second quote, you're right that we can and do need to find a better source than a statement by a political science professor, but it's completely irrelevant where he presented this statement or the fact that most of the lecture is about a different minority in a different country. And your derogatory comments about some professors in general are not really relevant either. Obviously, if this one's a crackpot, we can find statements by other highly educated people that will say completely different things. We can then remove this quote or, if it represents the opinion of a notable small group of crackpots or of well-informed people, we can have it in addition to the majority opinion. In any case, as i already said, a political science professor knows more about research results on this topic than almost all WP editors ever will. Much of the article now consists of unsupported claims added by people with much less knowledge about this subject and much less intellectual integrity and, most importantly, much more anonymity than this quote from a respected member of the international scientific community. Unless you have clear proof that this professor is talking nonsense, his statement is more reliable than most of what is in WP in general and than much of what is in this article.

I'd estimate that 90% of everything in most WP articles could be in principle removed by saying the content is not verifiable or at least has no source provided. The general practice is however not to remove any info without a source unless the info is disputed. It makes absolutely no sense starting the verification process by removing some of those parts of the 10% or so of WP that do have a source on the basis that they have "less good reputable sources". Even if a political science professor isn't the best expert on this topic, he's still better than none. And his statement does not contradict in any way the other reputable sources provided. Unless you can find a reputable source that contradicts this member of the international scientific community, there is no reason to doubt the reputation of the person or of the scientific verifiability of his statement.

The specific reasons i believe we should leave this quote until we find a better one by separate experts on genetics and genealogy and linguistics is because this quote specifically mentions these other aspects and also the reciprocity of the situation. He specifically points out that "many Finnish speakers can list among their ancestors more Swedish speakers than Finnish speakers", which will stop wild claims from the other side that Finnish speakers didn't inherit any genes from Swedish speakers. In the current situation of nearly identical genotypes, the average amount of genes inherited by the majority from the minority is obviously much smaller than the other way around, but there are many exceptions to the rule.

The rest of the quote is similarly important and informative, providing an insight not elsewhere in the article: "Many Finns simply adopted [the] Swedish language as their first language during the [period of] Swedish rule, but [for] centuries, many families and individuals used both languages." --Espoo 10:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo,

  1. you mentioned the 80% figure, not me
  2. could you please point me to where in the article (page nr.) the "committee of experts" states this
  3. I agree that everything doesn't have to be 100% verifiable. However, controversial, or very important, points, such as this, definately should be backed up by some kind of good source

KarlXII 22:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


Hi, I'm sorry but i can't really think of doing anything except repeating my first paragraph above and ask you to say what you don't understand in it:

Why are you still talking about 80%? It's not in the article, so we don't need to find the source or hearsay that this claim in the Finnish WP article is (perhaps) based on. As i already pointed out, we have the statement by the committee of experts saying "Swedish-speaking Finns ... are also genetically Finns and not Swedes". Don't you understand what that means? That means Swedish-speaking Finns are genetically more or less identical to the Finnish-speaking Finns. If a small minority group's genotype is more or less identical to the majority's, that means that most of the minority's genes are inherited from the majority. We don't need a percentage; it's enough to say "most" to stop the wild claims of Swedish-speaking Finns being Swedes.

Well, let me try to rephrase it simply: The experts are saying that the genes of the two groups are now more or less identical. Since this is the result of intermarriage between 2 originally separate and probably genetically different population groups of which one was much smaller, this is only possible if the small group's genes were "diluted" so much by the big group's genes that the original differences are now statistically insignificant. It of course also implies that the genes of the small group spread out throughout Finland in smaller amounts but very extensively and homogeneously. (The only way that two groups that are now genetically identical could have inherited similar amounts of genes from each other is if the groups were about equal in size.) I'm no expert on statistics or genetics and don't know what "statistically significant" means in numbers, but i'd guess that this means that the Swedish-speaking Finns have apparently inherited more than perhaps 95% of their genes from the originally distinct majority. --Espoo 00:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


Espoo,

  1. Your source for the statement that the Swedish speaking Finns are genetically Finns is only in Finnish. Do you have any source in English? This would be helpful since it is such a, apparently, central issue (eg the "wild claims of Swedish-speaking Finns being Swedes").
  2. Otherwise I'm completely happy with the text as it is now in the article.

RegardsKarlXII 10:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The very next reference is in English: "Since the population genetic, ecological and socioeconomic circumstances are equal..." --Espoo 10:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Translation

Is it actually necessary to provide a translation for the term suomenruotsalaiset or finlandsvenskar. I am not a English speaker myself, but I think that they sometimes adopt foreign ethnonymes in English without translating them. Would it be possible to talk just about "the Finlandsvenskar" in English Wikipedia. That would avoid all the POV problems in tranlation. Oh, well, I do not know if this makes any sense, it is just a suggestion...--130.234.75.19 13:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

As a native English speaker who just happened to come across this article, I'd like to point out that English usage is more flexible than has sometimes been implied in this discussion, and thus while Swedish-speaking Finn, Finland Swede, Finno-Swede, Swedo-Finn, or any of several others could be considered sufficiently correct English, I think that User:130.234.75.19 is right that if there's so much dispute over translation, there is no reason the article can't be placed at Finlandssvensk.--Kineticman 09:00, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Swedishspeaking or Swedish-speaking

Is the current name of the article, Swedishspeaking Finns, correct English?--130.234.75.164 11:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Definitely not.JdeJ 12:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Please correct it; I do not know how to do it.--130.234.75.164 15:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming problem at Sweden Finns

Den fjättrade ankan keeps moving the article Sweden Finns to "Finnishspeaking Swedes" and "Finnish-speaking Swedes". I think this is wrong as it for instance excludes a large number of Sweden Finns that happen to be Finnish citizens. We could benefit from some more opinions at Talk:Sweden Finns. -- Jniemenmaa 11:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The name may be a problem whichever way it goes. In my experience, both the Swedish-speakers in Finland and the Finnish-speakers in Sweden see themselves as Finns. For that reason, I think the names "Sweden Finns" and "Swedish-speaking Finns" are the best, although far from perfect. Dusis 20:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

In the newish section of the article about naming, there is a sentence that states that some Swedish speaking Finns would prefer to be known as "svenskspråkiga Finnar". I believe that is completely rubbish as use of such a term does not make sense in the Swedish language (especially in finlandssvenska) as finne/finnar refers specifically to a Finn or Finns who speak Finnish as their mother tongue. There is no equivalent distinction in the English language (i.e. the word "Finn" in English includes all Finns regardless of language, the equivalent Swedish would be finländare). I think it should be removed. Certainly as one myself, I know of no Finland Swede who would call themselves this. 94pjg 02:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't expect the article to be changed. It has been kidnapped by Finnish nationalist who use it to present their nationalist double standard views, regardless of what the Finland Swedes think themselves. Den fjättrade ankan 20:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
There does seems to be a detectable bias of a Fennomen nature which I think would be uncharacteristic of the general Finnish population's view on Finland Swedes (regardless of their mothertongue). I have noted significant changes in this article during the last few months, its quality has lessened and its bias increased. 94pjg 02:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Please do point out any false information and/or correct it. I find it interesting that you use a term of the late 19th century/early 20th century in a contemporary discussion. Clarifer 08:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
It is no use to correct any false information, because as soon as it is corrected some Finnish nationalist come and change it back to his nationalist view again. Den fjättrade ankan 20:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh please...you are not the right person to accuse anyone of nationalism.--217.112.249.156 15:27, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
It does seem to be at least true to an extent though. However, Den fjättrade ankan has a message on his user page stating he supports the "return" of Svenskfinland to Sweden. I have NEVER ever heard any Finland Swede suggest such a thing, and to the vast majority of us the idea is obscene. We are Finnish as much as a Finnish-speaker, and proudly so. That is what makes it even more frustrating when some of our fellow compatriots misunderstand our group and even also Swedes from Sweden who are often surprisingly ignorant of a group with whom they share our very small (in global terms) language with. 94pjg 22:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm a little baffled here. The article is quite clear that

"...the Finnish Government Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, which has consulted other English experts, recommends ([7]), the following use: "Finland Swede should be used about persons, Finland-Swedish as the adjective, and Finland Swedish for the version of Swedish that is spoken in Finland"."

Despite this, there is an unsourced argument for why the term "Swedish-speaking Finns" should be used instead. Most likely this is WP:OR. I realize this is probably due to some underlying debate about whether or not this group are actually Finns who speak Swedish or actually 'Swedes' who happen to live in Finland. Regardless of this, it would see pretty clear to me that if a Finnish government institute has looked into the specific matter and recommends "Finland Swedes" then that is what the article should be called. Of course other variants should be mentioned in the intro. CheersOsli73 (talk) 11:50, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The link you mention is dead. On the other hand at this page, the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland uses Finland Swedish to describe the dialect and as an adjective for things pertaining to this dialect, but Swedish-speaking Finn for the speakers of this dialect. --MPorciusCato (talk) 12:45, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. All is well then. CheersOsli73 (talk) 16:10, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sources validation

Seems like the sources claiming that Finnish Swedes/Finnish speaking Finns genetically are ethnical Finns not Swedes come just from the finnish side. Generally I think the article promotes just one point of view(i.e. finnish), it should be more balanced in my opinion. Why don't we see any info reagrding genetical research about the subject coming from Sweden or any third-party country? Also I haven't heard any Fenno-Swede calling himself/herself svenskspråkiga Finnar, I agree with 94jpg - seems like this term makes no sense. I believe Finlandssvenskar is the most used term.

By the way, I'd like to state that even if that reserach is correct, it doesn't mean that most of Finnish Swedes ancestors were ethnical Finns. Genetical studies about Finnish people say that up to 50% of their genotype is also Germanic. Probably, there were some Finnish people among Finnish Swedes ancestors but the thesis that they make vast majority does seem to be very doubtful and generally unprovable.Der_Ritter 15:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the discussion on ethnicity and the genome is both interesting and frustrating. One of the problem seems to be that people confuse terminology. 'Germanic' is NOT a genetic characterisation but a LINGUISTIC one. A person speaking a Germanic language can have a variety of genetic markers and the same is true for a person speaking a Finnic or a Balto-Finnic language. The statement 'Genetical studies about Finnish people say that up to 50% of their genotype is also Germanic' makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Compare: 'Genetic studies about Swedish people say that 50% of their genotype is also Indic. What makes sense geneticwise is (the numbers being uncertain): '50% of the genes found in Finnish speakers are shared with people speaking Germanic languages.' Genes are not Germanic or Finnic or Indic or whatever. Clarifer 10:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I am a "Finlandssvensk", and I do not consider myself a Swede - no way! My nationality is Finnish, but my mother's tongue is Swedish. This discussion has been held before (summer of 2005 IIRC), and then I interviewed several (about a dozen) Swedish-speaking Finns from different regions (all over southernn Finland, and Ostrobothnia). No-one of them considered themselves to be of Swedish ethnicity - not even the Ålanders, they are proud to be just that - Ålanders. Greetings, --Janke | Talk 08:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Der Ritter, the genetic research referenced here is by no means controversial in Finland. Therefore, it is unlikely that you find a group of Swedish-speakers doing this same research, as Åbo akademi does not have a faculty of medicine. Indeed, most of the research mentioned here is a result of wide international cooperation, so it is not just a nationalist fantasy of some fringe group. You seem to be concerned about the Finnish-speaking ancestors of Swedish-speaking Finns. The same research which shwos that Finns, regardless of their mother tongue, are a rather closed and homogeneous group, also show that the closest conections of Finns are with Western, nowadays predominantly Germanic ethnic groups. I wouldn't have any problems with genetic connections to east either, but the genetic links towards west are stronger. --MPorciusCato (talk) 12:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Janke, I do not say that Fenno-Swedes are Swedish, as I remember from talks to Finnish Swedes, they really don't consider their nationality Swedish, but they do say that their ethicity does differ from Finnish people of Finland... They call themselfs Finnish by nation, but Swedisth by mother tongue and claim to have different heritage and traditions from Finnish people. So it seems like that people do belong to a separate ethnic group to my mind. And yes, I've met just one who was calling himself a Swede rather than a Finn...(actually this one was a Finnish Swede from Big Helsinki area).Der_Ritter 17:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

    • Hi Der Ritter, it may well be that the Finland Swede from Helsinki that you mention calling himself a Swede did not mean Swede as in Swede from Sweden. It's a confusing issue when translating from Swedish (in the way that it is used in Finland especially) to English. He quite likely did not consider himself a Finn, because to a Swedish-speaker the English word "Finn" can sound like a translation of the Swedish word "finne", the word finne in Swedish means "Finnish speaking Finn". The Swedish word finländare is used in roughly the same sense as "Finn" in English, as in to mean all the people of Finland regardless of language. As to his usage of the word "Swede", in Finland it is quite common just to say "svensk" (Swede) to mean Finland-Swede but without any meaning of "from Sweden". I know that sounds slightly confusing, but I guess it stems from a time when there was less contact with Sweden (no tv from Sweden, no internet etc) so there was less need to differentiate in conversation that you meant Finland-Swede or Sweden-Swede.

Interesting piece on this here (in Swedish though): http://www.kotus.fi/index.phtml?l=sv&s=2209 94pjg 22:04, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ålanders

This article is about Swedish-speaking finns. Translated into Swedish this would be Finlandssvenskar. Finlandssvenskar is an ethnic group in Finland, but as far as I am concerned the inhabitants of Åland are not considered as Finlandssvenskar, yet this article considers the Ålanders as swedish-speaking finns. This would be accurate on the basis that they are citizens of Finland and that they speak swedish. We have to keep in mind that Åland is an autonomous part within the finlandic borders. The dialects resembles the most the swedish ones spoken on the swedish side north of Stockholm (Roslagen). Finnish speaking finns normally consider them as Ålanders and not finns or finlandssvenskar for that matter. Among Swedes (In Sweden, Åland and in Finland) there is no notion: svensktalande finländare - Swedish-speaking finns so why inventing this notion on en.wiki? It would be more accurate to use the swedish notion, "finlandssvenskar", i.e finland swedes, to avoid this article to be an expression of original research. Nirro (talk) 22:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I would dispute the statement that finlandssvenskar are an ethnic group. That is not agreed by all, including finlandssvenskar themselves. Many people consider themselves to be of the same ethnic group as Finnish-speaking Finns. So, therefore it is more of a language group than a n ethnic group in the views of many. I agree though, that Ålanders are often not considered to be finlandssvenskar, as many consider that they don't speak finlandssvenska and than the dialects on Åland share more in common with rikssvenska. Then again, there are lots of words in åländska that would be understood by a finlandssvensk and not by a rikssvensk (with some that perhaps might at least be found in usage in Norrland). So, really åländska lies somewhere in between - which makes its classification problematic. Ålanders are represented in institutions such as Folktinget and their MP has always sat with SFP to form the Swedish parliamentary group in the Finnish parliament - so you could use these as evidence to say that they also, at least partially, have a binding relationship to Svenskfinland.

94pjg (talk) 15:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology

How many percent of the Swedish-speaking Finns/Finland-Swedes might be willing to denote their own group "svenskar" either in Finland or outside? Clarifer (talk) 14:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

We do refer to ourselves as "svenskar" often, at least in Finland or within certain contexts where it's clear it doesn't mean anything to do with Sweden. I suppose you could argue we mean it as a shortening of finlandssvenskar. It's perhaps fair to say it was even more used in the past when there was far less contact with Sweden (i.e. no Swedish tv channels or internet) and thus less room for confusion with "rikssvenskar". But people certainly use it today still, i.e. if a new family moves in next door, you might ask "are they svenskar" or say my doctor is "svensk" and not mean to be referring to anyone from Sweden at all. Confusing perhaps, but in the context it makes sense. I guess you could make a comparison with the fact that there are institutions etc called Svenska handelshögskolan or indeed Svenska folkpartiet. Again, in their context they make sense and it's clear they don't refer to the country of Sweden in any way. 94pjg (talk) 00:01, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

In this article, Mikael Reuter of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland discusses the usages of svensk, finsk and finländsk in Swedish language, unfortunately only in Swedish. It seems that the Finnish Swedish-speaking and mainland Swedish terminology is quite different. In Sweden, the words svensk and finsk is used to describe nationality: Munsala i finska Österbotten (Munsala in the Finnish Ostrobothnia), which is factually correct. Munsala is indeed a village in Ostrobothnia, a Finnish province. However, a Swedish-speaking Finn would say: Munsala i svenska Österbotten. (Munsala in the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia), which is also factually correct: Munsala is in the Swedish-speaking part of the bilingual region of Ostrobothnia.
Reuter goes on to show, with statistics of the Stockholm-based Dagens Nyheter, Vaasa-based Vasabladet and Helsinki-based Hufvudstadsbladet, that in the texts of his corpus, the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter used word svensk almost exclusively as a nationality attribute. On the other hand, for the Finnish, Swedish-speaking newspapers, the word svensk was used in two different meanings: as a nationality attribute (relating to Sweden) in 55% of the uses, and as a language attribute (relating to Swedish-speakers) in 45% of the uses. I think that Reuter shows very clearly, with examples, that the words svensk and finsk have a two separate meanings, both usual and easily distinguishable.
Reuter also discusses the uses of finsk and finländsk. He notes that finsk is also used both as nationality and language attributes in Swedish texts, both in Sweden and in Finland. Especially, certain Swedish terms require the use of word finsk instead of finländsk, even when talking about the nationality: finsk mark, finsk medborgare (Finnish terrain, Finnish citizen). In addition, in some cases the writer or speaker may feel the need to tone down the language question and decide not to use either word. Then, the forms Finlands and i Finland (of Finland, in Finland) is usually used: Finlands folk stod enat. (The people of Finland was united.) In such usage, choice between finsk and finländsk would undermine the meaning of the sentence.
So, this is the Swedish usage. In addition, I note that the Research Institute of Languages of Finland has changed to using the form Swedish-speaking Finn[15]. --MPorciusCato (talk) 07:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
There is awareness of the difference between finne / finländare etc in Sweden. It's just not universally known in Sweden. The confusion is generally due to ignorance, i.e. it's not on purpose - it's lack of awareness. For instance, some Swedes have the impression that Finland-Swedish (in a linguistic sense) actually refers to the way Swedish sounds when it is spoken by someone who has Finnish as their mother tongue. The awareness does seem to be improving though. It's noticeable, especially in sports commentary etc, on Swedish tv. A few prominent Swedish-speaking Finns have come to view in Sweden, that might be to do with it (e.g. the longest running programme on tv in Sweden (a film review show) now has a Swedish-speaking Finn as the presenter). There was an article a few weeks back in Dagens Nyheter saying that "Finland Swedish is in" (i.e. "cool".) But yes, you're quite right, often in the Swedish language it's correct to say finsk, as Reuter says. 94pjg (talk) 23:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)