Brit Reacts to What do Finnish People Think about Sweden?

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Dwayne's View

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[TheUffeess]

I have worked with Finns, Norwegians and Danes and my experience is that we Scandinavians are very similar, but the Finns are tougher and more independent. But when alcohol comes into play, the Finns are World Champions. There are no better people to party with! And as said, Finland vs Sweden in hockey is something special!

[AHVENAN]

Regarding the relationship between Finland and Sweden, I think ´Geography now said it best in their video about Finland "They have the biggest frenemy relationship, they'll share a beer or two but when hockey season comes, the bloodbath begins" 😅

[vansting]

Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark are all family. Historical we all been part of each others history and been part of each others country. So see us as brothers, always teasing and joking about each other but at the same time loving our neighbors and family. And hey, it’s always fun to crack jokes about someone you love and you know that it will come back at you with a big portion of love and irony.

And if you ask me about the language, we all speak English with each other except when Finn’s and Danes get really drunk, then we don’t understand a shit of what they are saying 😂😂😂

[hextatik_sound]

Sweden is great example for political decisions both in good and bad. We try to avoid some things Sweden has done and try to adapt some things to our society.

I use English daily both on live situations with different people or commenting on Facebook, here or somewhere. Swedish I use only in Sweden and in Åland.

[pierrelindqvist]

When it comes to icehockey the rivalry is with Finland. When it comes to football it is mainly Denmark and in skiing we have Norway. More or less like that.

[nocturne]

As a Swede, we REALLY accknowlege the rivalry in Ice-Hockey. We might loose a championship, but if we beat Finalnd it's eases the blow, and I know the Finns feel the same way. Also we have the Swedish/Finnish games every summer and that is 100% about beating the Finns. That said, we REALLY rival with the Norwegians in cross country skiing competitions, and the Danes in Football. So it's all about what time of the year and what sport you're talking about.

[falukropp]

The reason for Swedish language being mandatory in Finnish school goes back to the 50's and 60's, the Finnish job market were plummeting but Sweden needed a lot more workers. President Kekkonen made sure Finns could find work in Sweden if not in Finland by this move. That's the basic reason, but things have changed a lot, I guess it's mainly forgotten by now why that is. Finns more thinks it's some kind of infringement on their Finnish national soul. There is some tension between Finnish speakers and first-language Swedish speaking Finns, to make it worse. They are sometimes considered being a minority in power and with "special benefits". And so having to learn their language "in your own country", to some, that hurts and I get that.

[Gittas-tube]

Hello, Dwayne! Great reactions and comments once again!
As a Finland-Swede, my views and knowledge are perhaps more balanced than those of the Finns interviewed. I note that no Finland-Swedes were included in the programme.

The Finns who live in the part of Finland where hardly any Swedish-speakers live (inland, eastern and northern Finland) and have little use in practice for their knowledge of Swedish, tend to minimise the number of Swedish-speakers, so here's a more accurate picture:

-- In Finland, there are almost as many Finland-Swedes (finlandssvenskar) as there are inhabitants on Iceland - and they have a nation of their own!

-- While it is true that all along the coastal regions and all over the huge but sparsely populated archipelagoes, Swedish speakers abound and even constitute the majority in many of the oldest towns and of the fishermen out there in the archipelago, still, the biggest concentration of Swedish-speakers live in Helsinki and its surroundings, not counting Åland, which is an autonomous area. Swedish is the single official language in Åland, whereas Finnish and Swedish are the two official languages of the rest of the country.

Finland is made up of towns and regions that are either single language Finnish or Swedish, or bilingually both Finnish and Swedish. Official documents, administration and communications between the powers that be and the inhabitants have to follow the pertinent laws. Most of the small coastal towns (the oldest ones established in Finland when the area was an integral part of the Kingdom of Sweden and no country by the name of Finland yet existed, still have big Swedish-speaking minorities. And almost all of them have Swedish names, as do rural places along the coast, except for the ones in the very northernmost parts of Finland.

Historically, large groups of Finns emigrated to Sweden and vice versa. For example, when King Gustav Vasa wanted to have a trading town to compete with Tallinn, he ordered a portion of Swedes from Helsingland in Sweden to move to the area that later became Helsinki. Although not exactly in the same spot as today, Helsinki was founded in 1550.

The town got its name Helsingfors partly from where the Swedes came from (Helsingland) and partly because it was originally located by a smallish rapid (Vanda).

In the nineteensixties, Finland-Swedes started moving to Sweden, especially those living on our western shoreside of the Gulf of Bothnia, where many people spoke only Swedish or their own dialect of it. There is today about as many Finlanders, Finnish-speakers and Swedish-speakers, living in Sweden as there are Finland-Swedes living in Finland.

To give you a rough idea of the amount of Finland-Swedes living in Finland, when I was growing up, the population of Helsinki was about 400, 000 and 20% of those spoke Swedish as their mother tongue. The Finland-Swedes made up some 10% of the entire population. Today, we are about 6%. It's not that we have been diminishing, really, because we continue to increase, but that proportionally we make up a smaller part of the inhabitants.

One fact in the statististics that usually is overlooked is the big number of completely bilingual (Finnish and Swedish) people as well as the equally important number of bilingual families. Also, there's a lot of families with family ties to Sweden. All of this increases the Swedish-speakers considerably.

It's a complicated business tightly intertwined with the shared history of Finland and Sweden with many twists and turns...

[ristusnotta]

yeah i think many Finns would think of the gay/snob/arrogant stereotypes. I dont know how old this video is but i have noticed that we used to look up to Sweden a lot in the past but now we are trying to not be like them in many ways.
And yes, Finns use English way more than Swedish because its only needed on western coast at some rare instances (i have lived in Vaasa 6 years and havent needed it once because the Swedish speakers speak English and usually Finnish too). Vast majority of Finns forget the language because they have no need for it or never just learn it which makes the mandatory learning part a waste of tax money 😀

[hansericsson]

Cheers to my finnish brothers and sisters from Sweden and Slava Ukraini!

[Juhani]

i got that arrogant attitude. When i worked as a security officer at one hotel, swedish people (usually older) demanded me to speak swedish to them. When i could not say a word they got mad at me XD

[grhto]

We started learning English in 3rd grade but I and a lot of friends already knew a lot of English as we've been listening to music and watching moviesin English

[mixlllllll]

"Sweden hasn't been in any wars"
Somebody doesn't know any history 😂

[petereriksson]

Sweden and Finland was the same country for nearly 7 hundred years . Alot longer than the USA has been a nation. So educated swedes understand that we have a special relationship with the finns. We have the deepest military cooperation with Finland. When a new government is instalĺed the first they talk to is the finns. When Sweden was moving towards joining the EU the government was talking with the finnish government. When Sweden wanted to join NATO they talked with the finnish government about joining NATO together. The swedish primeminister have very close comunication with the finnish primeminister and president. Sweden does not have such relationship with any other nation.

[fridamarias]

So Finland studies Swedish because they were a part of Sweden for a time (but we don't study Finnish...). Finland is also placed between Sweden and Russia and have saved our asses (I'm Swedish) during war through sheer badassery while their kids were shipped to us. Look up the winter wars where Russia invaded Finland.

[KaptSuolisolmu]

18:40 i don’t speak english everyday but like, 50% i read in social media a day are in english and i write english everyday. Like everything in social media is in english (Football, wrestling, news etc.)

[actoni]

Im a Finn, but are born and have lived in Sweden all my life except when I did my military conscript in Oulu, Finland...
I speak both languages fluently + English and I can understand Norwegian and Danish, even some Serbian words and German.
Sadly I have lived through and experienced a lot of negative stuff here in Sweden and in Finland too.
My parents has been living pretty much "secluded" from the Swedish communities, because we have been treated badly wherever we have lived here.
My dad has been an industrial worker and my mom a Math and a Biology/Physics/Chemistry -teacher. They just wanted to live normal lives, but they have constantly been mistreated by both regular people and authorities. As an example I will tell you a story...
When I was a little kid and I had gotten a brand new bike, then out of nowhere some older Swedish kid got jealous and kicked me off the bike and beat me up, then he jumped on my bike just to ruin it.
His mom cheered at him out of their window and told him he was right beating me up, then he ended it by spitting me in the face not once but he came back and did it a second time.
My parents called the police and the entire blame was put on my parents and me, not his mother or him. I hadnt even spoken to him once in my life.
We have always been treated like everything is our fault, even though we have been forced to keep away and not being invited to community related stuff etc.
My parents have always been regarded as alcoholics and bums despite working their entire lives and not drinking a single drop of alcohol in their adult lives, not even smoking a cigarette. I went to a Finnish class as 6 year old up to grade 9. In the second gymnasium year (of 3, Machine mechanics) I was severely bullied because I was a Finn and a year younger (thus also smaller) than the others. Teacher didnt give a damn, he just told me to keep away from them. I also got lower grades than the Swedish students despite ace:ing every test and being great in gymnastics, the Swedish kids could skip more than half a years classes and still get highest grades. But the gym teacher had to ask my name...before deciding to give me a medium grade.
This is the #1 most humiliating thing thats ever happened to me.
Two separate teachers (English and Finnish as home language) said they didnt dare to put the highest grade because that would make the others "look bad" and "raise the entire grade average too much". They destroyed my chances to continue studying in a university...I wound up in a low pay workplace, injured my back after I fell down a forklift and now I basicly live on welfare alone in my apartment.
This is just a little piece of my story and how badly we Finns get treated here.
Sorry for a long comment, but I needed to tell someone this.

[washitokusei]

When that one lady mentioned sailing and arrogance she must have been thinking about the Swedish speaking Finns aka the "Swedes of the coast".

And about that gay stereotype:

A man who had just recently died entered heaven. Upon arrival he had to check in and was escorted to a waiting room. The room had its walls filled with clocks and dials that all had a name of a country next to them. The man asked the clerk what they were for and the clerk said "Every time a gay person is born in any of the countries, the indicator on that country's dial moves". So, the newcomer sat down and passed the time by looking at all the dials and saw one move every now and then. Then he suddenly asked the clerk where the dial for Sweden was as he couldn't find it. The clerk replied: "The old man uses it as a fan in his office".

[Cronin_]

For me as a Finland-Swede (Swedish-speaking Finn) I ofc use Swedish more than English, everything in my life ranging from family and friends to education is completely in Swedish. I actually use English more than I use Finnish. Idk about the rest of Finland, but English (and Finnish of course) has always been mandatory for us to learn where I live, since 4th grade up until upper secondary school.

I actually live in the city they were talking about in the video, Vasa/Vaasa. Vasa is actually majority Finnish, but there's still like 16.5k Swedish speakers here, and basically all other municipalities in Ostrobothnia (the region we live in) are majority Swedish speaking.

[gorauma]

Also I learned my English from books and games back in the day. Had to learn early to use the computers that were entirely in English, and later supplemented that vocabulary by reading English language novels. My favorite book is the Five part trilogy of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.