Well only about 200 years since separation from Sweden in 1809, but this is really nice look on history and official languages.

Finns and Swedishspeakers go to different schools too so we get almost segregated from the start. We should have more contact with each other outside the walls of schools from childhood between neighbours, but it is not always so easy since swedish and finnish are wastly different languages. So we do not always understand each other.

My great-great-grandparents immigrated from the Munsala/Loilax/Monäs areas in the early 1890s & came to Maryland, where we still live. Unfortunately none of their Finnish heritage (to my knowledge) has tricked down to me, so finding things out about the areas they were from has been very insightful. I’ve recently been able to message a distant relative that still lives in Finland & they’ve been so helpful! They speak Swedish & confirmed that our family were & are Swedish-speaking Finns. It’s been interesting, & I hope to visit the area at some point in the future. I definitely would like to learn both Swedish & Finnish as well. All in good time. 😁

I’m a Swedish Finn or Finlandssvensk but I haven’t lived in Finland since I was 12 years old. I live in the US now and this was fun to see. Americans are always confused when I tell them I was born in Finland but my native tongue is Swedish. I don’t blame them for not knowing of course as it’s not a well known fact. Many Americans think of Northern Europe as one country called Scandinavia and Finland is often considered a part of Scandinavia by proxy (in American minds). It’s rare to have anyone recognize my heritage so thank you for making this video. Please make more! Hope you are happy living in Ekenäs.😊

HOMETOWN!!!!

I am swedish speaking finn who lives in and you are in my home town Ekenäs its lol weird to see this little town get rhis hype

Very brautiful and interesting video. Thank you for this, Kiitos and Tack!! :)

This is kind of relatable for me as a Russian-speaking Kazakh. But it's also a bit weird, like taking a peak into a parallel universe. Makes me realize how my grandchildren will likely be a peculiar and probably ridiculed minority.

Great to know. Thank you! I just learned there’s such a thing as ‘Finland-Swedish’ today!

It was very interesting video.

My wife was canadian, and she didn't learn swedish easy, she still doesn't understand it and tried to learn it 5yr now. Finnish was easier to her and she speaks pretty well finnish now. She thought it was a big help that finnish speak and write exactly same way. She didn't need to learn several ways to pronounce one letter like in english they do. In swedish and english if you never heard a word before, you can't be absolutely sure how you suppose to pronounce it, you can guess but you cant bet your nuts for it.

My great grandfather was a Finland Swede from Ostrobothnia, yet my mother told me he was Swedish. Even though his ancestors lived in Finland for centuries previously, it seems they couldn't lose their connection to the old country.

Finland was not a Swedish territory back then, it was part of the Swedish core lands. Finland is very much a continuation of eastern Sweden by the majority Finnish speaking population. Traditionally you would have heard Finnish and Swedish being spoken in every Swedish city of note. I have read estimations that some 20% of the population of Stockholm spoke Finnish in the 1700s. Don't let language differences fool you, Sweden and Finland are very much alike in fundamental ways.

Sadly, here in Estonia we lost our Swedish minority thanks to the Soviets. It’s like 500 Estonian Swedes left. Oh, and we lost our German minority as well, thanks to both Hitler and the Soviets. Although we gained more Russians instead. There were about 5% of them during the First Republic. Now it’s like 25%...

Back during the long centuries when Finland was the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden, many mainland Swedes ended up moving here for business, governance, and other reasons, such as to make the Swedish rule more solid simply by having around citizens with a more Swedish identity (technically colonising, I guess). The kings also were simply worried because the population in Finland was so sparse. Otherwise the Swedish language wouldn't have such a solid role today. It's a nice, enduring historical bridge between Finland and Sweden.

Finland was part of Sweden from 14th century, maybe even from earlier unofficially, and was lost to Russia in 1809 after the Finnish war, which was on of the Napoleonic wars.

You should look up when Finnish was actually written down and standardized and usable as an official language - only about 200 years ago. So before the 1800s it was just considered to be the dialects of aboriginal “tribes”.

I live in tammisaari

Ayy ekenäs for life boii.

A.I.T.arkoittaako se, että voit puhua ruotsia Karjalassa tai missä tahansa Swomekssa?Betyr det at du kan snak skvensk i Karelen eller hvor som helst i Finlandskvensk sveriksrootsi karjal

I understand that most Swedish - Finns are obviously bilingual as Finnish is the majority language of the country but does anybody know what percent of Swedish - Finns are still monolingual (only know Swedish) ?

Thank you for making this video, it's really nice to see someone doing a relaxed video about the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. :) I'm a bit saddened to see how much anger this video has attracted in the comments regarding Swedish in Finland, but as usual it's just a loud minority. One would think that language diversity would be a positive thing, especially since you can communicate with Norwegians, Danes and Swedes without English if you learn Swedish.

You're so cool guy that it would be ok "I haven't jacket on. Let me get jacket from my cars back pocket. Oh I didn't mention that I drive *some supercar* nowadays. :D

It feels kinda strange to say I am a finn but I can not speak (fluently) with 95 % of the finnish population 😂

im swedish speaking

Iiii ship it

Do Swedes living in Finland identify with Sweden as their homeland or Finland? I mean these cultures and languages are pretty different from each other. Also are there Swedes in Finland that don't know Finnish or even refuse to learn it?

Will the average person in Finland understand me and talk with me if I talk with them in Swedish?

Finland was part of Sweden as recently as 1809. Finland was part of the kingdom for ~600-650+ years depending on the region and where you start to consider it as an integrated territory. Most ethnic Finns are actually largely Swedish in terms of genetics as well, with western Finns being often more Scandinavian than Finnic. in 1809 Finland was cut off from the rest of Sweden by the Russian Empire. The Russians disliked the idea of "governing Sweden", so they decided to make Finland an autonomous Grand Duchy instead, which of course was later granted total independence in 1917.

HEY I'VE SEEN U

Or does a lot of Finnish cities also have a Finnish name. Like Åbo had a Swedish name before a Finnish

Go to karis insted

And since it's majority Swedish, it's Ekenäs in English as well.

You are right. History is a topic you should have to do research before you speak.

Yes Finland was a part of Sweden for a while a long time ago and now the finns still hold a grudge or something. Most of them saying we should "go home" or "go to Åland we the rest of the crap is kept" Sometimes when i lose my nerve over that stuff i tell them to go home to Russia aswell. To me, this is my home. It's the only home i've ever known. And i've been to Sweden just once or twice in my whole life. I also don't see the problem, i mean just as said in the video most of us learn finnish already from second or third grade in elementary school. And then there's also that stereotype that the swedish speaking people are always these rich bastards who just buy themselves everywhere with their big houses and fancy boats. Yes always sailing. Well guess what? There are these big names everywhere that do own a lot of land and such, but most of us ar pretty reglar working people with jobs just like the rest. And besides, here in Tammisaari i do see a lot of rich finnish speaking people building huge summercottages along the shorelines. There's even more of them than there is swedish speaking rich people. There might be some sort of cultural difference in that maybe effect the attitude towards us as well. I don't know where i'm going with this rant, but maybe that in the end we're al just people living here. No need to fight about things that happened hundreds of years ago. Or at least look for a way to punish the modern ascendants of those times. I personally find that the more languages you learn the better you're off. I always wish i would have had the chance to speak german since we had some classes in 9th grade. But it's since then slipped my memory. I speak swedish for the most part myself but with finnish people i just switch to finnish and no fuss about that. I even know a guy who comes from a home with both the languages who knows swedish yet i speak finnish with him just to keep my own finnish alive. I don't know.. it seems silly that it's the year 2019 and people are fighting over things such as language when there should be bigger problems to look at. I recently visited a local "Grilli" (burger/barbeque) and i stepped in front of the cashier to place my order, i know these people from before and we spoke for a while, swedish since it's a local place. And all the time i had this feeling of someone looking at me. And when i went to sit down and turned around there was two people staring at me, a man and a woman perhaps some years younger than me. Staring like i shouldn't be there or as if i was an alien or something. When they stood up to leave and put on their coats, they spoke finnish. This is how hated we are.

Finland and Sweden were one and the same for 600~700 years. There was no real distinction, and Finns and Swedes moved between the two halves of the country, as proven by the fact that there are lots of Swedes on the Finnish east coast and lots of Finns in Jämtland (in Central Sweden). Finland (referred to as "Österland" at the time) was as much of a core part of Sweden as Svealand, Götaland or Norrland. If you want a mirror relationship, think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: You have Swedes (aka. Austrian Germans) and Finns (aka. Hungarians) who together conquered lots of other nations (e.g., Estonians, Latvians, Russians, Germans, Danes) and consolidated them into one country. What I mean by this is that the relationship between Swedes and Finns was not an exploitative one unlike that of Denmark and Norway, China and Korea, Lithuania and Poland, or Russia and Ukraine. Obviously the two halves have diverged quite a bit since the Great Northern War, and it is quite sad to see that a lot of Finns have hard feelings for Swedes. There's a joke here in Sweden that goes something like this: "If Finland wins against Sweden in a football match, Swedes will route for Finland, but if Sweden wins against Finland, the Finns will route for Sweden's opponent." A finnish friend of mine told me that the joke is kinda true to some degree, and I feel like this joke perfectly reflects how Swedes feel about Finland and how Finns feel about Sweden. I think a lot of that animosity steems from Sweden's unwillingness to help Finland fight the Soviets.

Finland never belonged to Sweden and it was never conquered. When Sweden was formed as a nation, during the 12-13th centuries, what is now Finland was an equal part of the country. The new nation of Sweden had two languages, one law and people from eastern Sweden (todays Finland) elected the king and represented the government. The view that Finland was somehow occupied and a victim of Swedish conquest is a myth created during the nationalist movements of the late 19th century and early 20th century. When Swedish speaking people begun to settle in what is now Finland to greater extent, around 1000 years ago, there were no Sweden and no Finland. In the are of what is now Finland lived only around 40.000 people and most of them inland, probably since living along the coastline was dangerous due to raids from the sea. Also, the inland of todays Finland was full of lakes so transportation was easy and there was no need to live along the coast as in most other places. The Swedish speaking people started settling along the unpopulated coastline and fortresses were built to protect from influence and attacks from Novgorod (Russia). At the time of the migration from what is now Sweden, more than third of the population was native Swedish speaking and during the 17th century, 70% of people living in the Eastland (todays Finland) could speak Swedish. What is now called Finland was called Österland(Eastland) and was one of several equal region of sweden. Other regions were Norrland(Northland), Svealand, Götaland etc. In the war of 1809, the eastern half of Sweden was lost to Russia and the Grand Duchy of Finland was created, as a part of the Russia. In 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian revolution, Finland declared themselves independent and Finland was created. During the nationalist movements in the late 1800s and early 1900s, people all over the world started twisting history in order to form a national identity based on language, ethnicity and race. This is also when conflicts between language groups first emerged. Before that language was only a way of communicating. This alternation of history was especially strong in countries where there was a need for nationalism in order to unite people. This modified and nationalistic history description unfortunately lives on in Finland until today. If what is now Finland wasn’t influenced by people from the west, the influence would have come from the east and Finland would have become Russian.

Most????? No....

Va trevligt att dom blir bättre och bättre på svenska dom där finnarna. Snart så kan dom ju överge finskan 😃

"Pakkoruotsista" kärsiville tiedoksi että ruotsi on ihan äärettömän looginen ja helppo kieli kun vaa vähä yritätte. Suurimmalla osalla teistä on vaa asennevamma.

Nu hafver du säkerligen hört: finnarna pratar vad de KAN, vi Finlandssvenskar pratar hvad vi VILL. .....................

Nooooooo, that’s not true. Was never part of Sweden. It was Sweden.There was no Finland. The reason people speak Swedish here in Finland is that we have and will alway remain here.

The after-effects of 800 years of colonization.

I recently moved to Swedish speaking town because of work and I just plainly refuse to speak it. Besides Finnish, I can speak russian, spanish and English but Swedish is just something I've never picked up. And after learning Spanish I decided to say fuck it and not even try with Swedish because it just messed up everything, hah. I'd rather learn major languages that might be helpful in future and Swedish is not one of them, lol.

This IS Nice & Well Done ! But how many Swedes living in Finland Have heard of GAMMALSVENSKBY ? If intrerested - so everything in on KZfaq - but If Not - I wont spoil The Fun of Discovering something totally different !