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Swedish is one of the official languages of the European Union, a working language for the Nordic Council and the first or sole native language of the majority of Sweden’s 10 million inhabitants. Despite this, it wasn’t made the official language of the country by law until 2009, when a broader language law was passed with the aim of making Swedish the main official language while also bolstering the status of the other official minority languages: Finnish, Meänkieli, Sámi, Romani and Yiddish.
Swedish is also one of the two official “national” languages of Finland, alongside Finnish, though only approximately 5.5 per cent of the country, or 290,000 people, are native speakers. 26,000 of these are inhabitants of the autonomous Finnish province of Åland, where Swedish is the first language of the vast majority – and the only official language.
The coastal region and the northern and western islands of Estonia had a Swedish-speaking population for over 650 years. During the Swedish rule of Estonia between 1558 and 1721, Swedish was considered one of the official languages, alongside Estonian and German.
After control of the country shifted to Russia, large numbers of the Estonian Swedes were forced to relocate, which is how Swedish-speaking villages were founded in other parts of Europe. One such example is Gammalsvenskby in modern Ukraine.
In 1934, the Estonian Swedes still accounted for the third largest minority in Estonia, but nearly all of them fled to Sweden during World War II. Today there are roughly 300 self-identified Estonian Swedes who still live in Estonia, with about an equal number spread out over Russia and Ukraine, of which only a handful still speak the old Estonian Swedish dialects.
