Medieval Swedish colonisation The first Swedish arrivals in Finland have often been linked to the putative
First Swedish Crusade (ca. 1150) which, if it took place, served to expand Christianity and annex Finnish territories to the kingdom of Sweden. Simultaneously the growth of population in Sweden, together with lack of land, resulted in Swedish settlements in Southern and Western coastal areas of Finland. The
Second Swedish Crusade against the
Tavastians in the 13th century extended the Swedish settlements to
Nyland (Uusimaa). During the 14th century, the population expansion from Sweden proper increasingly took the form of organised mass migration: the new settlers came in large numbers in large ships from various parts of Sweden's Eastern coast, from Småland to Hälsingland. Their departure from Sweden proper to Finland was encouraged and organized by the Swedish authorities. The coast of Ostrobothnia received large-scale Swedish settlements during the 13th and 15th centuries, in parallel with events that resulted in Swedish expansion to
Norrland and
Estonia's coastal area.
Debate about the origin of the Swedish-speaking population in Finland The origin of the Swedish-speaking population in the territory that today constitutes Finland was a subject of fierce debate in the early 20th century as a part of
Finland's language strife. Some Finland-Swede scholars, such as , and
Tor Karsten, used place names in trying to prove that the Swedish settlement in Finland dates back to prehistoric times. Their views were opposed mainly by in the 1920s. In 1966, the historian Hämäläinen (as referenced by McRae 1993) addressed the strong correlation between the scholar's mother-tongue and the views on the Scandinavian settlement history of Finland. "Whereas Finnish-speaking scholars tended to deny or minimize the presence of Swedish-speakers before the historically documented Swedish expeditions starting from the 12th century, Swedish-speaking scholars have found archeological and philological evidence for a continuous and Swedish or Germanic presence in Finland from pre-historic times." Since the late 20th century, several Swedish-speaking philologists, archaeologists and historians from Finland have criticized the theories of
Germanic/
Scandinavian continuity in Finland. Current research has established that the Swedish-speaking population and Swedish place names in Finland date to the Swedish colonisation of
Nyland and
Ostrobothnia coastal regions of Finland in the 12th and 13th centuries. The language issue was not primarily an issue of ethnicity, but an
ideological and
philosophical issue as to what language policy would best preserve Finland as a nation. This explains why so many academically educated Swedish speakers changed to Finnish, motivated by ideology. Both parties had the same patriotic objectives, but their methods were completely the opposite. The language strife would continue up until
World War II. The majority of the population—both Swedish- and Finnish-speakers—were farmers, fishermen and other workers. The farmers lived mainly in unilingual areas, while the other workers lived in bilingual areas such as Helsinki. This co-existence gave birth to
Helsinki slang—a Finnish slang with novel slang-words of Finnish, local and common Swedish and Russian origin. Helsinki was primarily Swedish-speaking until the late-19th century, see:
Fennicization of Helsinki. Apart from the Swedish/Finnish interactions within the Grand Duchy of Finland, some Swedish-speaking Finns - such as the
Governor of Russian Alaska Arvid Adolf Etholén (in office 1840 to 1845) and the future
Finnish Marshal and
President Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867-1951) - made careers within the wider
Russian-speaking
tsarist system.
The Swedish nationality and quest for territorial recognition The Finnish-speaking parties, under the lead of Senator
E. N. Setälä who played a major role in the drafting the language act (1922) and the language paragraphs (1919) in the Finnish constitution, interpreted the language provisions so that they are not supposed to suggest the existence of two nationalities. According to this view Finland has two national languages but only one nationality. This view was never shared in the Swedish-speaking political circles and paved the way for a linguistic conflict. Contrary to the Finnish-speaking view the leaders of the Swedish nationality movement (
Axel Lille and others) maintained that the Swedish population of Finland constituted a nationality of its own and the provisions of the constitution act were seen to support the view. The Finnish-speaking parties and leadership studiously avoided self-government for Swedish speakers in the Finnish mainland. Of the broader wishes of the Swedish-speaking political movement only cultural concessions—most notably administrative autonomy for Swedish schools and a Swedish
diocese—were realized, which nevertheless were sufficient to prevent more thorough conflict between the ethno-linguistic groups.
Developments since the late 19th century The urbanization and industrialization that began in the late 19th century increased the interaction between people speaking different languages with each other, especially in the bigger towns. Helsinki ( in Swedish and predominantly used until the late 19th century), named after medieval settlers from the Swedish province of
Hälsingland, still mainly Swedish-speaking in the beginning of the 19th century, attracted Finnish-speaking workers, civil servants and university students from other parts of Finland, as did other Swedish-speaking areas. As a result, the originally unilingual Swedish-speaking coastal regions in the province of
Nyland were cut into two parts. There was a smaller migration in the opposite direction, and a few Swedish-speaking "islands" emerged in towns like
Tampere,
Oulu and
Kotka. According to official statistics, Swedish speakers made up 12.9% of the total population of Finland of 2.6 million in 1900. By 1950 their proportion had fallen to 8.6% of a total of 4 million people, and by 1990 they formed 5.9% of the country's 5 million people. This sharp decline has since levelled off to more modest annual declines. An important contribution to the decline of Swedish speakers in Finland during the second half of the 20th century was that many Swedish speakers emigrated to Sweden. An estimated 30–50% of all Finnish citizens who moved to Sweden were Swedish-speaking Finns. Reliable statistics are not available, as the Swedish authorities, as opposed to their Finnish counterpart, do not register languages. Another reason is that the
natural increase of the Finnish-speakers has been somewhat faster than that of the Swedish-speakers until recent times, when the trend has reversed. During most of the 20th century, marriages across language borders tended to result in children becoming Finnish speakers, and knowledge of Swedish declined. During the last decades the trend has been reversed: many bilingual families chose to register their children as Swedish speakers and put their children in Swedish schools. One motive is the language skills needed during their professional lives. Population statistics do not recognize bilingualism. ==Historical relationship of the Swedish- and Finnish-speaking populations==