Misplaced Pages

Swedes

Article snapshot taken from[REDACTED] with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Podomi (talk | contribs) at 11:27, 31 January 2010 (Removed Finns from the "related ethnic groups". Finns, part of Uralic-Altain ethnicities, are obviously not near-related ethnic-group with the Swedes.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 11:27, 31 January 2010 by Podomi (talk | contribs) (Removed Finns from the "related ethnic groups". Finns, part of Uralic-Altain ethnicities, are obviously not near-related ethnic-group with the Swedes.)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) This article is about the Swedes as an ethnic group. For information on the population of Sweden, see Demographics of Sweden. For the ancient North Germanic tribe, see Swedes (Germanic tribe). Ethnic group
Swedish people
Svenskar
File:12-swedes-version2.jpgBridget of Sweden • Anders Celsius • Carl Linnaeus • Alfred Nobel
Selma Lagerlöf • Dag Hammarskjöld • Greta Garbo • Astrid Lindgren
Ingmar Bergman • Björn Ulvaeus • Ingvar Kamprad • Annika Sörenstam
Regions with significant populations
 Sweden:      7,500,000 (2009 est.)
Other significant population centers:
 Spain65,000
 United States56,324
 Norway28 730
 United Kingdom22,525
 Denmark21,000
 Germany9,500
 Finland
9,000 (Swedish citizens)
290,000 (Finland Swedes or Swedish-speaking Finns)
 Australia8,170
 Canada7,000
 Brazil2000 (est.)
 Argentina800
 Estonia300 (1989)
Other regions72,000
Languages
Swedish
Related languages include Norwegian, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, and to a lesser extent, all Germanic languages
Religion
Historically Norse paganism, Christianity (Mainly Lutheranism) and more recently Secularism. Also see Religion in Sweden.
Related ethnic groups
Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders, Faroese,English.
Other Germanic ethnic groups

Swedes (Template:Lang-sv) are a Scandinavian people, mostly inhabiting Sweden and the other Nordic countries, with descendants living in a number of countries.

Until the 9th century, the Scandinavian people lived in small Germanic kingdoms and chiefdoms known as petty kingdoms. The Germanic tribe of the Swedes (Template:Lang-sv; Old Norse: svíar) lived in Svealand, bordering the Geats to the south. The consolidation of Sweden was a long process, and later, as Sweden's borders fluctuated over the centuries, so did the use of the Swedish language as well as Swedish self-identification.

The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland trace back to the many centuries when Finland was an integral part of Sweden. Their identity and relation towards Swedish and Finnish identities is a subject of discussion. Other groups have acquired Swedish identity; until 1658, when Scania became a possession of the Swedish Crown, the Scanians were a people of the Eastern Province of Denmark speaking a dialect belonging to the East-Danish dialect group. Similarly, groups like the Walloons settled in Sweden already in the 17th century, followed by many other groups in later periods. There are also several million people with Swedish ancestry in the United States following the large-scale emigration of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Geography

The largest area inhabited by Swedes, as well as the earliest known original area inhabited by their linguistic ancestors, is in the country of Sweden, situated on the eastern side of the Scandinavian Peninsula and the islands adjacent to it, situated west of the Baltic Sea in northern Europe. The Swedish-speaking people living in near-coastal areas on the north-eastern and eastern side of the Baltic Sea also have a long history of continuous settlement, which in some of these areas possibly started about a millennium ago. These people include the Swedish-speakers in mainland Finland - speaking Swedish dialect commonly referred as Finland Swedish (finlandssvenska which is part of East-Swedish dialect group) and the almost exclusively Swedish-speaking population of the Åland Islands speaking in a manner closer to the adjacent dialects in Sweden than to adjacent dialects of Finland Swedish. Estonia also had an important Swedish minority until the 20th century. Smaller groups of historical descendants of 18th-20th century Swedish emigrants who still retain varying aspects of Swedish identity to this day can be found in the Americas (especially Minnesota and Wisconsin, see Swedish Americans) and in Ukraine.

Currently, Swedes tend to emigrate mostly to the Nordic neighbour countries (Norway, Denmark, Finland), English speaking countries (USA, UK), Spain and Germany.

Historically, the Kingdom of Sweden has been much larger than nowadays, especially during the "The Era of Great Power" (Swedish Empire) in 1611 - 1718. Finland belonged to Sweden until 1809. Since there was no separate Finnish nationality at those times, it is not unusual that sources predating 1809 refer both to Swedes and Finns as "Swedes". This is particularly the case with New Sweden, where some of the "Swedish" settlers were actually of Finnish origin.

Origin

The ancient Germanic tribe of the Suiones, sometimes called Svear in academic works, were at the roots of Swedish statehood and contemporary with the Geats and the Daner in Scandinavia. The roman bureaucrat and historian, Jordanes mentions in his work "Scandza" that these tribes are "the tallest of all men". He later mentions other Scandinavian tribes as being of the same height. He also mentions that the Swedes outmatched the others in class: "Suetidi, cogniti in hac gente reliquis corpore eminentiores". Notably, in modern Scandinavian languages, with the exception of Icelandic, there is a distinction between svenskar and svear (as between danskar and Daner), since the latter term does not include the Geats and the Gotlanders and whose descendants became a part of the Swedish ethnicity.

According to recent genetic analysis, both mtDNA and Y chromosome polymorphisms showed a noticeable genetic affinity between Swedes and central Europeans, especially Germans (conclusions also valid for Norwegians). For the global genetic make-up of the Swedish people and other peoples (see also and ). Another detailed nuclear genetic study has also implied that Swedes largely share genetics with Finns.

Famous Swedes

See also: List of Swedes, List of Swedish actors, List of Swedish film directors, List of Swedish scientists, and List of Swedish sportspeople

Swedes of international renown include Gustavus Adolphus, Dag Hammarskjöld and Carl Bildt, film directors Ingmar Bergman and Victor Sjöström, actors Greta Garbo, Stellan Skarsgård, Alexander Skarsgård, Maud Adams, Ingrid Bergman, Dolph Lundgren, Peter Stormare, Erland Josephson and Max von Sydow entrepreneurs Gustaf Dalén, Lars Magnus Ericsson, Bertil Hult, Gustav de Laval, Ingvar Kamprad, Ivar Kreuger, Anders Winroth, Alfred Nobel, Erling Persson, Ruben Rausing, Axel Wenner-Gren and Niklas Zennström, musicians In Flames, Hammerfall, Sabaton, Opeth, Pelle Almqvist, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, Jussi Björling, Birgit Nilsson, Charlotte Perrelli, Neneh Cherry, Per Gessle, Jenny Lind and Nina Persson, scientists Hannes Alfvén, Arvid Carlsson, Carolus Linnaeus, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Kai Siegbahn and Anders Jonas Ångström, sportspeople Zlatan Ibrahimović, Peter Forsberg, Daniel Sedin, Henrik Sedin, Henrik Zetterberg, Björn Borg, Jesper Parnevik, Fredrik Ljungberg, Lennart Skoglund, Ingemar Stenmark, Mats Sundin, Annika Sörenstam, Sven Tumba, Jan-Ove Waldner and Mats Wilander, and writers Selma Lagerlöf, Vilhelm Moberg, August Strindberg, Astrid Lindgren and Hjalmar Söderberg, and 1998 worlds strongest man winner Magnus Samuelsson.

Ethnic Swedes and Swedish speakers outside of Sweden

In Finland

The Swedish-speaking Finns or Finland-Swedes form a minority group in Finland. The characteristic of this minority is debated: while some see it as an ethnic group of its own some view it purely as a linguistic minority.. The group includes about 265,000 people, comprising 5.10% of the population of mainland Finland, or 5.50 % if the 26,000 inhabitants of Åland are included (there are also about 60,000 Swedish-speaking Finns currently resident in Sweden). It has been the presented that the ethnic group can also perceived as distinct Swedish-speaking nationality in Finland. There are also 9,000 Swedish citizens living in Finland.

In Estonia and Ukraine

The presence of Swedish speaking permanent residents in what is now Estonia (Estonia-Swedes) was first documented in the 14th century, and possibly dates back to the Viking Age. There were an estimated 12,000 Swedes resident in Estonia in 1563 . Estonia was under Swedish rule 1558–1710, after which the territory was ceded to Russia in the 1721 Treaty of Nystad. In 1781, 1,300 Estonia-Swedes of the island of Hiiumaa (Dagö) were forced to move to New Russia (today Ukraine) by Catherine II of Russia, where they formed Gammalsvenskby (Old Swedish Village). According to the 1934 census there were 7,641 Estonia-Swedes (Swedish speaking, 0.7% of the population in Estonia), making Swedes the third largest national minority in Estonia, after Russians and Germans. During World War II almost the entire community of Estonia-Swedes fled to Sweden. Today there are, at most, a few hundred Estonia-Swedes living in Estonia and a few hundred in Ukraine, with the estimates varying widely depending on who identifies, or can be identified, as a Swede. Many of them are living in northwestern mainland Estonia and on adjacent islands and on the island of Ruhnu (Runö) in the Gulf of Riga.

The majority of the 'Estonia-Swedes' who reside in Estonia and most 'Ukraine-Swedes' do not speak Swedish any more, but may be considered ethnic Swedes. In a nationalist context, the ethnic Swedes living outside Sweden are sometimes called 'East-Swedes' (in Swedish: östsvenskar), to distinguish them from the ethnic Swedes living in Sweden proper, called rikssvenskar or västsvenskar ('Western-Swedes'), reflecting irredentist sentiments.

Other

The Varangians, Vikings mostly from Sweden, were instrumental in the formation of the first Russian state. These Vikings called "Rus" (because of their origin from Roslagen) were described by the Arabic traveller Ibn Fadlan: "I have seen the Rus as they came on their merchant journeys and encamped by the Itil. I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy".

Swedish soldiers taken prisoner during the Great Northern War were sent in considerable numbers to Siberia. They numbered perhaps 25 % of the population of Tobolsk, the capital of Siberia, and some settled permanently.

There are numerous ethnic Swedes in places like the US and Canada (i.e. Swedish Americans and Swedish Canadians), descendants of 19th and 20th century immigrants, including some who still speak Swedish. There are also Swedes located in St Petersburg, Russia and in Siberia.

See also

Swedish diaspora

Ethnic groups in Sweden

Various

References

  1. "Summary of Population Statistics 1960 - 2008 (corrected version 2009-05-13)". www.scb.se. 2009-05-13. Retrieved 2009-07-08. (excluding 1,661,003 persons, or 17.9% of the population, living in Sweden with immigrant background.)
  2. Swedish Embassy, Madrid (2008) - in Swedish
  3. American Community Survey & Census 2000
  4. SSB Population Count 2009 (in Norwegian)
  5. ^ "Country-of-birth database". Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved 2010-01-16.
  6. Joshua project-Ethnic groups of Denmark
  7. "Migration" (PDF). 2006 Census. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 29 March 2007. Retrieved 2010-01-16. (table 6.8)
  8. Sweden's embassy in Ottowa (in Swedish)
  9. Sweden's embassy in Argentina (in Swedish)
  10. Estonian Institute
  11. SCB estimates that 300,000 Swedes live abroad. The countries above add up to roughly 228,000.
  12. Misplaced Pages: Early Swedish history.
  13. "In Finland this question (Swedish nationality) has been subjected to much discussion. The Finnish majority tries to deny the existence of a Swedish nationality. An example of this is the fact that the statutes always use the concept 'Swedish-speaking' instead of 'Swedish'", Tore Modeen, The cultural rights of the Swedish ethnic group in Finland (Europa Ethnica, 3-4 1999,jg.56).
  14. "Det är naturligt att betona Sverige-kontakten då man gör en analys av finlandssvenskarnas språk, kommunikation och historia. Ideologiskt kommer det att närma sig Axel Olof Freudenthals bygdesvenskhet och Sverige närheten kring sekelsskiftet."Finlandssvenskarna är ju helt enkelt svenskar, närmare bestämt östsvenskar"Höckerstedt, Leif. Fuskfinnar eller östsvenskar? Söderströms ISBN 9789515218254 2000.
  15. The identity of the Swedish minority is however clearly Finnish (Allardt 1997:110). But their identity is twofold: They are both Finland Swedes and Finns (Ivars 1987)." (Die Identität der schwedischen Minderheit ist jedoch eindeutig finnisch (Allardt 1997:110). Ihre Identität ist aber doppelt: sie sind sowohl Finnlandschweden als auch Finnen (Ivars 1987).) Saari, Mirja: Schwedisch als die zweite Nationalsprache Finnlands (retrieved 10 December 2006)
  16. Misplaced Pages: Scanian dialects.
  17. http://www.sviv.se/index.php/publisher/news/action/summary/frmArticleID/575/singlearticle/1/ "Flest svenskar tros bo i USA, Norge och Finland. Därefter följer Danmark, Storbritannien, Spanien och Tyskland."
  18. http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/EJHG_2002_v10_521-529.pdf
  19. scs.uiuc.edu
  20. nationalgeographic.com
  21. "The similarity between Finns and Swedes in allele and haplotype frequencies indicates that these two populations may be descended from the same central European source population—as has been suggested by Sajantila and Pääbo (1995)"
  22. "...Finland has a Swedish-speaking minority that meets the four major criteria of ethnicity, i.e. self-identification of ethnicity, language, social structure and ancestry (Allardt and Starck, 1981; Bhopal, 1997).
  23. ...As language is actually the basic or even the only criterion that distinguishes these two groups from each other, it is more correct to speak of Finnish-speakers and Swedish-speakers in Finland instead of Finns and Finland Swedes. Nowadays the most common English term denoting the latter group is ‘the Swedish-speaking Finns’.
  24. The identity of the Swedish minority is however clearly Finnish (Allardt 1997:110). But their identity is twofold: They are both Finland Swedes and Finns (Ivars 1987)." (Die Identität der schwedischen Minderheit ist jedoch eindeutig finnisch (Allardt 1997:110). Ihre Identität ist aber doppelt: sie sind sowohl Finnlandschweden als auch Finnen (Ivars 1987).) Saari, Mirja: Schwedisch als die zweite Nationalsprache Finnlands (retrieved 10 December 2006)
  25. "It is not correct to call a nationality a linguistic group or minority, if it has developed culture of its own. If there is not only a community of language, but also of other characteristics such as folklore, poetry and literature, folk music, theater, behavior.etc". "The concept of nation has a different significance as meaning of a population group or an ethnic community, irrespectively of its organization. For instance, the Swedes of Finland, with their distinctive language and culture form a nationality which under the Finnish constitution shall enjoy equal rights with the Finnish nationality"."In Finland this question (Swedish nationality) has been subjected to much discussion.The Finnish majority tries to deny the existence of a Swedish nationality. An example of this is the fact that the statutes always use the concept "Swedish-speaking" instead of Swedish". Tore Modeen, The cultural rights of the Swedish ethnic group in Finland (Europa Ethnica, 3-4 1999,jg.56)

External links

Categories:
Swedes Add topic