FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

Viskms ofit Real Multiculturalism
prise an autonomous Swedish-speaking area. A century ago,
the proportion of the Swedish-speaking population was higher
(about 15% in the 19 th century) and, due to historical reasons,
Swedish was the only official language until 1853. The change
in the official status of the Finnish language (the language of
the vast majority even then) was closely connected to the rise
of Finnish nationalism in the 19 th century. Notably, the early
Finnish nationalists came mainly from the Swedish-speaking
cultural elite (e.g. Johan Vilhelm Snellman). These families typically
adopted Finnish family names and began using Finnish as
an everyday language.
The question about the status of Swedish vis-a-vis Finnish,
however, gave rise to a linguistic conflict that continued well
into 1930s. This strife was also complicated by the Aland crises
of 1917-1921. When Finland declared independence, the vast
majority of the Alanders supported secession from Finland in
order to be annexed to Sweden. One of the reasons for this
was fear of anti-Swedish prejudice in Finland. Finally, the
league of Nations decided that the "sovereignty of the Aaland
Island is recognized to belong to Finland.,,23 Even before the
final decision by the league of Nations, Finland granted political
autonomy to the Aland Islands with a protected status for
the Swedish language.
As noted above, Finland practices extensive ethnic powersharing
vis-a-vis the Swedish-speaking minority. The Swedish
language has a constitutionally guaranteed position as an official
national language alongside Finnish. Any municipality in
which more than 8 percent of the population speaks a minority
language (whether Finnish or Swedish) is considered bilingual.
In bilingual municipalities, all civil servants are required to
21 Decision of the Council of the league of Nations on the Aland Islands including
Sweden's Protest 1921, Article One.
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