FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

know both languages. Swedish may also be used when communicating
with state authorities. There are Swedish universities,
and the main Swedish "ethnic" party (The Swedish
People's Party) has maintained a constant presence in Finland's
governments. Both Finnish and Swedish are obligatory
subjects in the school. The maintenance of a kind of "status
quo" in terms of language policy has been essential to the
Swedish-speaking minority, and the presence of the Swedish
People's Party at coalitions has been understood as a guarantee
that the rights of the minority are respected. At times, the
demographic fears of the minority have also been taken into
account in formulating policy. Notably, hundreds of thousands
of ethnic Finnish refugees from Karelia after the Second World
War were mainly settled in Finnish-speaking areas.
The identity of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland has
been, and remains, a complicated question. Basically, the minority
meets the main criteria of a separate ethniC group,24 and
the majority of the Swedish-speaking population has, at least
to some extent, a distinct identity. In different periods there
have, however, been various viewpoints. Such concepts as the
Swedish-speaking population's formation of a separate national
group or sub-group of the Swedish nation have become less
common. In addition to geographic distinction from Sweden, it
is clear that pressure from the majority has played an additional
role in this development. Instead of being "East
Swedes," the Swedish-speaking minority have come to be seen
as Finns who speak the Swedish language. A potential ethnic or
even national minority has more or less become a mere linguistic
minority (perhaps with the exception of the Alanders). It
is highly likely that the power-sharing policy of the state has
been an important factor in this development, along with oth­
24 Cf. Hutchinson & Smith 1996,7.
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